9th Grade Humanities
General Highlights
Reading and Writing Our Selves
Inspired by Alice In Wonderland, students investigated the question of who they are by participating in identity paseos, engaging in constructive listening to one another's stories and interviewing their parents. They then pulled from the parts of themselves they most wanted to investigate to write a personal essay about what it means to have that identity marker to them and what it might mean in the world.
Examining being a child through Demon Copperhead
Throughout our second semester, we spent at least 20 minutes a day reading Demon Copperhead as class. Students engaged deeply with the themems of what it is to be a child, addiction and its causes, the role of parents and who and what make good parents as well as issues of class, power and privilege through seminars and weekly reading reflections.
Writing Nonsense Short Stories
Drawing from their study of nonsense literature, students produced their own nonsense short stories which we published as books.
Projects
Through The Looking Glass
Executed in collaboration with a math and physics teachers, students explore their own identities and examine the various lenses through which they and others see themselves. They explore the ways in which our physical world can be distorted to our desires through various forms of media, data displays, and the use of actual physical objects.
Life on Mars
Students will use Mars as a blank slate for the creation of a new society. Students will explore the use of math to explore the financial systems of society, use principles of engineering and physics in order to build machines, and examine the way past societies or communities were built and what could have been done better. To integrate the math, physics, and humanities of what it takes to create a new society students will look at finances of society, build a rover to assist in further exploration of their new land.