Year 11 – Exploring Exploration

Year 11 students at EISB school are embarking on an exciting journey in their English Language and Literature class, discovering the rich tradition of travel writing and exploring the art of the travel diary. Their current focus involves reading select chapters from John Lloyd Stephens’s classic work, Incidents of Travel in Yucatan, which features the detailed illustrations of Frederick Catherwood. This exploration is highly valuable as it allows students to analyze how personal experience, observation, and descriptive language merge to create compelling narratives.

By studying Stephens’s vivid accounts of archaeological discovery and cultural encounters in the Maya region, students are learning to distinguish between factual reporting and subjective interpretation. This unit not only sharpens their critical analysis skills but also inspires them to consider how they might structure and populate their own travel journals, bridging the historical accounts with contemporary self-expression.