Jenna Clark

Welcome to English! My name is Jenna Clark, and 2025-26 is my 15th year at Helena High School.

Students will find most course content for 2025-26 on Microsoft Teams, including class announcements, readings, and other resources.

You will find my weekly agendas in the class pages (see left) as well as on the Weekly Agenda channel of our class Team.

Parents are always welcome to reach out to me via email (jclark@helenaschools.org), and students may email or use Teams Chat if they have any questions or concerns throughout the year.

What are we working on this month?

AP Language: In April, AP Language will take the ACT (April 8th) and then practice responding to Multiple Choice and Free Response prompts for the AP Language Exam (May 13th). This will include writing two timed writes per week, beginning with Synthesis prompts, then Rhetorical Analysis. We’ll spend the short week of Vigilante Day focusing on Multiple Choice, and finally circle back to Argument in the last week before the test. You can support your student at home by assisting them with the stress that can accompany test season, and by encouraging them to keep up on current events, which can be a big help when they need to recall evidence for use in timed essay writing.

English IV (Mythology):  The Mythology class will begin Quarter 4 with a unit on Heroes that will see us first deep diving into the ancient story of Beowulf and its use of Old English, and then meeting many varied heroes from around the globe. This will include stories about the Mayan Hero Twins, the Greek hero Theseus, the Mesopotamian Gilgamesh, and Celtic heroes Fionn MacCumhaill and Cuchulainn, amongst others. We’ll explore what it means to be heroic, and ultimately write an analysis essay based on the traits we identify in these characters. While the essay will come at the end of the unit, your student may find it helpful to review these stories (and our unit vocabulary) by telling family members about them at home.

English IV (True Crime & Holocaust): In our third unit, the True Crime & Holocaust class will shift from the smaller-scale crimes of Unit 2 toward the historical atrocities of the Holocaust. We’ll view this event through several lenses, including the film Schindler’s List, a series of poems on this and other large-scale or societal crimes, the novel Night by Elie Wiesel, and excerpts from Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning and the memoir Rena’s Promise. These texts are emotionally challenging, so I would encourage you to talk to your student about what they are learning and to check in with them throughout the unit. At the end of the unit, students will compose a Synthesis Essay, blending the texts from throughout the unit to draw new conclusions. A Synthesis Essay is very similar to a research essay, but students will use primarily texts already provided in class– this is a stepping stone to a larger research project in Unit 4.