Leadership & Decision-Making

 

Our local community is the focus of 11th graders’ studies in leadership and decision-making. In English and history classes, students take in multiple perspectives about our region and its history, as well as their implications for citizen leadership — including their own leadership. An internship program enables students to see leadership and decision-making in action. Throughout the year, students have multiple opportunities to develop their own leadership and decision-making skills in preparation for the year’s closing intensive, Entrepreneurship. 

Opening Intensive: Ethics & Citizenship

Ethics and Citizenship
In this three-week intensive, students will be called upon to be leaders and to reflect upon the communities to which they belong. This course provides the scaffolding for future learning and the skills to be an active and engaged citizen, which include practicing effective discourse around difficult topics. Students deepen their understanding of citizenship in the U.S. through readings that focus on the ways in which nationalism and patriotism have played out across U.S. history. Students engage with speakers—including local leaders—on voting and immigration. Students then reflect upon their own ethics, as well as the role that rapidly developing technology such as artificial intelligence and gene editing plays in our lives. Finally, students complete a culminating project that demonstrates their understanding of their own ethical systems, as well as a knowledge of citizenship at a personal, local, and national levels. Students will prepare and present in a classroom summit on a biomedical topic from an assigned stakeholder’s perspective.

English

English 3 - Narrative Nonfiction
This course dovetails with the Ethics and Citizenship intensive by looking at the ethics and philosophies of the narrative nonfiction genre. Students will engage in the study of narrative nonfiction through its various forms including journalism, true crime, memoir, and personal essay. Students continue to develop their vocabulary and grammar skills and practice various styles of writing, including research writing, personal narrative, literary analysis, and college essays. Students will continue to grow their skills in public speaking, scholarly discourse, and creativity.

History & Social Sciences

Half-Century History
This course builds off of the Ethics and Citizenship course to further delve into the question of what it means to be a global citizen. The past 50 years have represented a period of tremendous change. Colonialism ended, the Cold War sputtered to a close as the Berlin Wall fell, global trade increased dramatically, extreme poverty decreased worldwide, and new technology allowed for a new sense of a global community. This led to a surge of optimism in the 1990s, and even a book called The End of History, which argued that humanity had reached—and would stay at—an apex. This opinion proved to be overly optimistic, and the increase in nationalism, tensions around immigration, challenges to the global order, and the War on Terror have made many question what exactly the arc of the past 50 years has been. This course will have the students look at popular culture, technology, economics, and politics. The course will be discussion-based, and the students will will both lead discussions and complete research-based projects.

Investigating Seattle
What is Seattle? This will be the central question of this semester-long course. We will use primary sources, interviews, and literature to explore what Seattle was, is, and possibly what it can be. In addition to academic coursework, the class invites students to act as participatory citizens, immersing themselves in their communities and the challenges that arise from the various dynamics of a thriving city. The form of this engagement will vary depending on the issues of the year, but it may include visits to municipal offices, collaboration with nonprofits, fieldwork, and community service. In addition to learning content, students are evaluated using activities and assessments relevant to civic work: public speaking, report writing, community discussions, and promoting awareness of critical issues.

Math

Precalculus
This is a problem-based inquiry course focused on polynomial, exponential, logarithmic, power, and trigonometric functions. Students also explore ideas in probability and statistics, sequences and series, limits, and rates of change. They expand their programming skills to include functions/methods and explore the importance of procedural decomposition (breaking a complex problem or system into parts that are easier to conceive, understand, program, and maintain). In line with the leadership and decision-making theme, students are asked to design insightful solutions to challenging problems, choosing between various mathematical and/or computational tools to analyze and communicate their findings. Students’ progress is assessed through frequent quizzes and larger traditional assessments that illuminate depth of understanding. They finish the class prepared for Calculus, Statistics, and the challenges of higher-level mathematics. 

Science

Physics
This rigorous and experiential course introduces students to the physics that underpin the world around, and it is designed to inspire curiosity and to develop critical thinking skills. Students use labs and hands-on activities to explore freefall and projectiles, Newton’s laws of motion, flight and concepts such as energy and momentum. The mathematics of quadratics and trigonometry help students to model motion and forces in two dimensions, and experimental design challenges lead students to think critically about the validity and usefulness of data that they collect. Students also practice relevant professional skills such as technical communication and computational thinking, and they use software tools to model real-world data. While not an AP course, the topics covered align with a significant portion of the AP curriculum; with some additional studying outside of class, students may choose to take the AP Physics 1 exam.

Spanish

Global Citizens
This in-depth course focuses on cultural literacy, a key component of leadership in today’s globalized world. Students learn about the history, culture, and literature of major regions of the Spanish-speaking world, with an emphasis on Mexico, the Caribbean, and Central America. They also explore the experiences of the three most influential Spanish-speaking immigrant communities in the US. Students reflect on their own individual culture and increase their understanding of cultural diversity in a variety of contexts. They expand their skills in reading, writing, listening to, and speaking Spanish, with an emphasis on higher-order comprehension and production. Students collaborate on projects that explore belief systems; indigenous cultures in the Spanish-speaking world; and the impact of globalization on local culture. Classes are fully immersive; students use exclusively Spanish.