We will explore these question and more through readings, discussion, interview and writing. Be prepared to reflect and discuss.

REQUIREMENT: You have passed About Men and Women or have permission from Gail.

(Students will be expected to do some rehearsal on their own, outside of class, especially in the latter half of the course.)

This class will focus on improving your conversation, reading and writing skills. We will read and discuss short stories, articles and essays. We will watch novelas and read the Spanish newspapers. We will write our own stories and novelas. If you are interested in this class but you are not sure if you have enough Spanish skills, talk to Marcela during Registration.

The basic procedures of the class are playing games and solving puzzles. You will work mainly in small groups. Your job will be to figure out and explain your work. There will be regular homework, two closed book quizzes, and two open book exams.

Students will pursue these issues by reading conflicting primary and secondary source interpretations of them, exchanging our own ideas about them, doing independent research, interviewing guest speakers, and writing assignments and paper that develop our their own point of view.

Remember: A student needs to have taken two creative arts courses before beginning his/her proficiency project.

In this class you will create audio portraits of the people, places and things that make up your life. You will use an audio recorder to conduct interviews and keep an audio journal. You will capture the sounds of daily life. In order to make sense of these recordings, you will then learn how to edit your sound using ProTools sound editing software to produce a series of audio portraits.

In this class, you will listen and critique each other's work and also professional audio pieces. An after school lab is required.

In this course you will also read excerpts from the autobiographies of a variety of people. You'll examine the way that people represent their childhoods and teenage years. How do people tell the stories from their youth? What do they choose to tell and what do they leave out?

In this literature course we will examine award-winning novels that were written for young audiences. We will read novels about the future, magic, survival and death. We will talk with publishers, teachers, and kids about what sorts of books older children like to read and what sort of books, if any they need to read. Be prepared to read many children's novels from an analytical point of view.

In this class you will learn ceramic techniques that have been used for thousands of years: coil-building, slab-building, and sculpting. You will learn how to design and develop forms and how to decorate them. Just as importantly, you will learn how to evaluate your progress and develop ways of problem solving.

The emphasis of this class is for you to be able to transform your ideas and feelings into a three-dimensional project.

Open to beginner and experienced ceramic scientists. Prerequisite - Algebra 1

This course is open to any student who has passed a java programming course.

These are issues of constitutional law that have been or will be decided by the United States Supreme Court, and they all affect your individual rights. In this class we will examine several constitutional questions by reading Supreme Court cases, by talking to lawyers and other legal experts and by arguing about the cases in class. We will also pick a case the Court will be hearing this term, read related cases, and then travel to Washington, D.C. to hear oral argument in the case.

All students will be expected to function as lawyers (writing briefs and arguing cases) and judges (asking oral argument questions and writing opinions) during class.

In this class, students will be visiting various museums and galleries to determine why they show the work that they do. We will look at the different themes that exhibitions are based on, and determine how well they work. On a weekly basis, we will visit many different traditional and alternative spaces to find out how they function and why they present art in the manner that they do. As a final project, the class will also work together to propose an exhibition of work for the Urban Academy community. Be prepared to see.

Students will work mainly in small groups and there will be regular homework, puzzles, small group projects and periodic quizzes and tests.

Prerequisite- Teacher recommendation

We will return to the beginnings of Western drama and discover much about our own time. Readings will include plays by Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides as well as selections from Aristotle. We will also venture into modern playwriting and cinema to examine the similarities between the ancients and us. Were their passions so different from our own? Writing assignments will range from analysis to creative interpretations and rewrites of the plays.

Also, we will attend performances of at least two plays in the evening.

Yet, how does one define Hip Hop? What is it really? In this class we will look specifically at a body of written work, which is being called Hip Hop fiction. What makes this genre unique? What are the stories being told? Are these stories any different from stories, which have come before?

In this class students will be expected to keep up with reading and writing assignments. Several papers will be assigned so there will be ample opportunity to work towards completing pre-requisite papers. It goes without saying that involvement in class discussions will be an essential ingredient to help us clarify ideas raised.

We'll look at questions like: How good are your senses? How well do you judge things like size or temperature? What is a typical heart rate, and how is that affected by exercise? In this hands-on science class, we will test these things out on ourselves, and then focus on how we can make sense of the data we collect.

The course will require a lot of reading and several papers. Students will have two opportunities to try for the literature prereq.

You will take notes during every debate and do in-class reading and highlighting of articles that relate to the topics being debated. Every week you will also plan and write an in-class essay that connects or refers to the issues the teachers have debated. The in-class essays are aimed at giving you the kind of time-limited, pressured writing experiences you can expect to encounter in college. You will need to use your notes and your highlighted readings in order to write these weekly essays.

No homework will be assigned in this class. Students who arrive late or who, for any reason, are absent will be responsible for making up assignments, to be completed at home. All in-class work will be placed in folders that the teachers and students will periodically examine and evaluate.

The microbes, these unfathomably tiny creatures, are everywhere. I mean everywhere, like inside volcano vents at the bottom of the ocean, or in your very own digestive tract. They are more diverse than all of the rest of life combined. For instance, you share more DNA with a mushroom than some kinds of bacteria share with other bacteria. They were the first life and they may be the last (if things go badly for us). At the same time, we depend on "domesticated" microbes to process nutrients and help defend against less friendly sorts. Besides which, without microbes, there would be no chance for us (or anyone else), because all the Earth's resources would be stuck inside corpses that could never rot. In other words, these little guys are a very big deal. If you want to know more, and experiment on them for yourself, then this is the class for you. It's not easy figuring things out about creatures that are too small to see, so expect a challenge if you sign up.

Corequisite: Algebra 1

In this course, we will study South Africa's colonial past to understand the roots of the racial discrimination system known as apartheid. Through historical texts, films, speeches and memoirs, we will examine questions such as: What was apartheid? How was a small group of white South Africans able to impose and enforce a system of racial discrimination for so long? How did different South Africans organize against this oppression? How was it finally dismantled (or was it?)? Lastly, we will look at what life has been like in post-apartheid South Africa and how this country is attempting to recover from and reconcile its past.

In this course you will:
Choose what you read
Decide whether you like it
Give and take recommendations about what to read from your classmates
Discuss issues and ideas that can be found in novels
Learn what you like to read

An after school lab from 315-515 is required.

In this photography class, you will print and edit your photographs into a visual narrative through a combination of assigned and independent projects. You will have the chance to take pictures of many different people and places of your choice in order to tell a story. This "storytelling" can take many forms and you will have the opportunity to experiment with different ways of printing and displaying your photos. Why, for example, do some photographers interview their subjects and include text with their images, while others decide to narrow down a final exhibit to just three very large prints? At different points during your projects, you will present your images to the class for critiquing.

There is a mandatory after school lab for this course every Thursday from 3:15 to 5:15.

***This course is open to students both with and without prior experience in photography.

Questions we will consider include: What gives governments the right to make laws? Is it true that all people are equal? In what way? Are laws really necessary? Are humans naturally cooperative or aggressive? What, if anything, sets humans apart from other animals?

Weekly reading and writing assignments are an essential part of the course and form the basis for all class discussions.

Solving puzzles and playing games are the basic procedures of the class and you will work mainly in small groups. Your job, as usual, is to figure things out and explain how you did the work.

Prerequisite: Teacher's recommendation

In addition, you'll learn how to make climbing harnesses, tie knots and set up a belay system.

You do not need any previous experience or any great strength to take this course, only the willingness to try new things and push yourself.

We will be focusing on strength and flexibility as well as becoming more aware of our bodies. We'll be exploring movement through learning specific choreography as well as experimenting with movement improvisation. You'll need comfortable clothes . Expect to sweat. In addition we'll be viewing a variety of dance styles on film.

Student's will be responsible for:
weekly shooting assignments
participation in presentations and critiques
attendance from 3:15-5:15, weekly at a mandatory photography lab

A passing grade will only be given upon the completion of an individual project.

We welcome the participation of students who like to challenge themselves and want to know they have achieved something by the end of the course. We also hope each student will work hard and enjoy the class.

This term the paper continues. As the staff of the newspaper, students will work together to decide what the paper should look like and include. Students will act as journalists, artists and editors, writing and revising articles, taking photographs, laying out the paper etc. We hope to publish 3 or 4 issues this term.

Note: Students who were on the paper last term are welcome to sign up again.

Prerequisite - Teacher recommendation

Everyone in this physical fitness class does the same workout every class period. We use low weights, so everyone can do the workout. You don't need to be a weightlifter to join this class. But you do have to come on time, ready to participate every class period. We meet first period three times a week. Start your day right!