Chamber Singers

This ensemble is for students wishing to expand their choral experience in an intensive class that focuses on vocal agility, blend, and overall musicianship. A variety of choral music will be studied and select pieces will be presented at the spring music concert.

Choreographer’s Workshop

This course is designed to provide students the time and space to experiment and explore the art of choreography. During the first part of the course, students will learn the basic principles of choreography, including theme and variation, motif and repetition; in addition, we will practice manipulating time and space. The remainder of the course will be more open in order to allow the students to experiment with the ideas that interest them. Students will be expected to improvise, create and perform in every class. We will also watch video recordings of different choreographer’s masterworks to analyze and enjoy. For students 11 years old and up.

Computer Science

This course introduces the fundamental concepts of computer science by using the Scheme programming language. After covering basic expressions and control structures, we move on to a thorough study of recursion, principles of data abstraction, and the notion of encapsulation. The students then learn how to use the imperative style. Throughout the year, projects addressing topics like sorting, benchmarking, Huffman and Hamming codes, and games will be assigned. After these foundations have been laid, the course will cover advanced topics, e.g., syntactic extension, exceptions, and continuations. Students are expected to have completed Algebra I.

Egyptian Hieroglyphs III

This course continues the material covered in the past year. We will read selections from classical Middle Egyptian literature, beginning with The Tale of Sinuhe.

Poetry Seminar

This is a once-a-week course for middle and high school students interested in writing poetry. Students encounter an array of poetry and poetic ideas, and work on weekly assignments to explore these ideas in their own work. In addition to reading the work of established poets, students share their work with one another, learning how to think about and critique their own poems and those of their peers. Assignments focus on various poetic elements and modes of construction, ranging from couplets to sestinas.

Previous Offerings

Costume Design (2008 – 2009)

In Costume Design the students learn many of the fundamental ideas behind visual design. The course begins with a brief history of modern fashion, ranging from the Elizabethan era to present day. We look at classic costume images and examine how these images create or support a narrative. Each semester, the students read a play, learning to glean important information about characters that will inform their individual designs. The students then learn how to do visual research, gathering images that articulate their vision for the play. The goal of this course is to help the students develop a visual vocabulary for expressing ideas about drama, film, and dance. Previous plays examined: A Midsummer Night’s Dream, A Doll’s House.