Courses
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Featured Courses
ADVANCED MACROECONOMICS
Course Description:
Advanced Macroeconomics is a semester course that covers the study of an economic system as a whole. Topics include economic performance measures, price-level determination (inflation and deflation), the financial sector, monetary and fiscal policies, economic growth, productivity, unemployment, and international trade and the balance of payments. Students will manipulate economic models and “think like an economist.” While the course does not follow the AP curriculum, students will be positioned, with extra work on their own, to take the AP exam if they wish.
CHINESE SEMINAR
Course Description:
This intermediate level Chinese course is conducted entirely in Chinese. The main topics/themes to be covered will be based around the nature of contemporary society and current affairs, such as stories, films, dialogue, and documentaries using multimedia materials ranging from the internet, videos to traditional textbooks. Students will write essays/papers, critique films, and participate in oral discussion and debates. While this course does not follow the AP Chinese Language and Culture curriculum, AP level topics will be involved.
DIVERSITY IN A GLOBAL COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVE
Course Description:
This course examines the ways our Human Family has sought to create, marshal, contest, and maintain identities through Culture and relations of power. These identities can be appreciated through “lenses of analysis.” The course critically engages the traditional “Big Five ” lenses of analysis: Race, Class, and Gender & Gender Expression, Sexual Orientation, and Ability, understanding that Culture serves as an important backdrop against which these identities emerge. Once students appreciate the important ways the Social Sciences have engaged with, written about, and debated these five core modes of analysis, the course expands to incorporate other, equally rich, lenses: age, ableism, intellectual diversity, geographic diversity, cognitive and neurological diversity, and the business case for Diversity, as well as how to study synergistically intertwined phenomena. Film and Critical Film Studies, as well as the role Colonialism has played in the major conflicts of the last 500 years, each serve to enrich student understandings of diversity.
MULTIVARIABLE CALCULUS
Instructors: Elena Zaurova, Stanford Online High School
Course Description:
The mathematics of three dimensions is the emphasis of this college-level course. Multivariable Calculus will explore the geometry of three-dimensional space, including vector arithmetic. It will also explore threedimensional surfaces, using the tools of derivatives and integrals expanded into multiple dimensions. A robust unit on differential equations will allow students to review the topics of single-variable calculus. The emphasis throughout the course will be on problem-solving and on real-world applications of the tools students learn in fields such as economics, astronomy, physics, engineering, and medicine
DATA STRUCTURES AND DESIGN PATTERNS
Instructor: Steve Young, The Derryfield School, Manchester, NH
Course Description:
This year-long course in Java programming starts with a review of some concepts from the AP Computer Science A curriculum, such as inheritance, interfaces, generic types, sorting and searching, and recursion. We extend these ideas, and build larger and more complicated software projects, using data structures – ways of organizing data in programs to maximize efficiency and clarity. You are already familiar with two examples: arrays and array lists. We will explore many other data structures, including linked lists, stacks and queues, binary and balanced trees, heaps, and graphs. Course assessments consist primarily of programming projects, and some class time will be allotted for students to work together on these assignments. We will also touch on design patterns, which are software structures to help design and manage larger programming projects.
INTRODUCTION TO ORGANIC CHEMISTRY
Instructor: Jocelyn Rodgers, Maret School, Washington, DC
Course Description:
This semester course will provide useful background information in organic chemistry by covering topics not typically found in high school chemistry courses. The course will give insight into the importance of the chemistry of carbon compounds to our daily lives. Topics covered will include organic nomenclature, structural formulas, stereochemistry, bonding, reaction mechanisms, and chemical transformations of functional groups. Completion of the course should make students more confident in their chemical background when entering college biology or chemistry courses.
A NATION DIVIDED: THE LITERATURE OF CIVIL RIGHTS IN THE MODERN US
Instructor: Linda Rodriguez, St. Andrews Episcopal School, Ridgeland, MS
Course Description:
The story of equality in America is a tale of achingly slow but steady progress. From the Civil War to the present day, the path toward equal rights has never been direct or secure. This semester course is designed as an interdisciplinary exploration of the quest for civil rights throughout the 19th and 20th centuries as it relates to African Americans, women, Native Americans, Asian Americans, migrant workers and the LGBTQ community. Special focus will be given to the indelible role that the deep South played in the struggle. Students will work with various texts including Supreme Court Cases, memoire, essays, poetry, short fiction, and primary source documents. Additionally, students will design and implement their own oral history projects as a culmination to the class.
POSITIVE PSYCHOLOGY
Course Description:
This course begins by providing a historical context of Positive Psychology within broader psychological research and helps explain why the field is of particular importance to those in a high school or college setting. Students will be introduced to the primary components and related functions of the brain in order to understand the biological foundation of our emotional experiences. Current research will be used to develop a broader sense of what Positive Psychology is and is not, and how it applies to lived experiences such as peer relationships, the global pandemic, and developing a growth mindset. This course will require substantial reading and writing (sometimes on par with 100 level college courses). Students will be asked to reflect on their individual experiences, or the experiences of other influential figures, in order to demonstrate thorough understanding of course concepts like neuroplasticity, habit loops, PERMA, and adolescent development. By the end of the course, students will have the terminology for and a better understanding of many phenomena they observe and experience.