A Classic Approach to Learning About Life

Senior year in high school can be an emotional roller coaster, with steep climbs toward final exams, thrilling turns on prom dance floors and deep drops when friends exchange goodbyes.

To navigate the course, North Hollywood High School Principal John Hyland teaches a class in his office that explores how historic literary works--the “Odyssey,” “Walden,” “Don Quixote” and the Old Testament Book of Job--illuminate the human experience.

By sharing these works, Hyland--who’s teaching his first class since 1984, when he was at Belvedere Middle School in East Los Angeles--said he hopes students will learn more about the world beyond high school and the place they will come to occupy in it.

Seated around a conference table, Hyland opened the class, “The Human Journey as Presented in Great Reading,” with a brief summary of Miguel de Cervantes’ “Don Quixote.”

“Why does this book persist in literature as a novel that differs from the ones that came before it?” Hyland asked. “What can we learn from the human experiences of Don Quixote?”

As several students read aloud from the novel’s introduction, inflections in their voices revealed that they appreciated Cervantes’ tongue-in-cheek mocking of 17th-century Spanish society, literature, religion and government.

Although the classic tales they are reading take place in a time and place far from 1997 North Hollywood, students said they connect with the works’ universal themes.

“While most of the characters have been extreme, there are certain aspects in everything that we’ve read that I can relate to,” said Rachel Zaidan, a 17-year-old senior.

“In the ‘Odyssey’ and ‘Walden,’ there was a theme of coming home and finding the place where you are most comfortable,” said senior Casey Butterfield, 17.

“ ‘Walden’ symbolizes an escape from society and civilization,” added classmate Chris Jurick, 18. “It’s kind of like us wanting to be out on our own.”

“This class has made us feel close as a group,” Rachel said, “because we are able to discuss deep personal issues without fear.”