A Year in an Amercian High School

High school drama is a big part of everyone’s life, especially in the book, “A Year in an American high school,” by Elisha Cooper. People have dreams of what they want to be in life and so do the characters in “A Year in an American high school.” In high school everyone has a dream of being something when they grow up. This was a year of soccer and theater, of dances and secrets, of hanging out and hooking up and every other crazy thing that happens in high school.


The main idea of the book is what happens in high school, every year, every day. Elisha Cooper, the author, had a very big interest in knowing about teenager’s life so she went to learn about teenager’s lives. I think it was a good idea for the author to go to Walter Payton High School and write a book about what goes on in high school because the world needs to know how it really is and how it shapes the lives of people. Knowing that it is the truth about high school is a heart breaker, but high school is also super fun. It is a heartbreaker because the book is about how students bring each other down, to the point where people cannot take it anymore. It is a happy feeling because it is a time of experiences and a really good four years of someone’s life.

This story relates and affects me because I am in high school and I have also been through a lot of high school drama. High school drama usually ends okay, but usually it ends relationships. This also affects the world by that high school shapes someone for life but people can change from what they did in high school to what kind of future they want when they get older and can do big and better things. The city also could have problems because something that happens in school affects the city by if it is suicide or something extremely horrible.

This book does remind me of a lot of other situations. It reminds me of my life in high school, I am a totally different person and I have my goals just like the characters in the book, “A year in an American high school.” Every character has their lifelong goal to achieve before they leave and go on to college. People that I know are getting ready for college and getting ready for the real world all alone. Having a hobby in life always shapes who someone is as a person, and it gives a person a title or a name someone is known as.

From reading this book I have learned that high school is really hard to be in and someone does not get what they always want and no matter how hard high school is, everyone can survive the hard ships of it and deal with life. I have learned that non-fiction can be written as a story about people in their life and it does not have to seem as some people think non-fiction is. Also I learned that an author can write about all different people in one book and explain a short time period of their life.