Course Description
Fire up your brain cells and get ready to explore a fascinating microscopic world! Though cells are tiny, they are complex machines with moving parts and unique jobs to do based on their structure. Students will become cell experts through hands-on activities, discussion, and using a microscope to see living cells in action. This class will investigate single-celled organisms such as amoebas and bacteria, animal and plant cells, cellular processes, and even how some of our own uniquely structured cells work together to keep our bodies healthy.
MATERIALS REQUIRED: A $25 materials fee is required.

Course Description
Students in this class will be presented with advanced robot challenges through research, testing and building designs using multi-port Hub motors and actuators. Skills will be higher ordered thinking, group cooperation, and problem solving. Mastery will be demonstrated by the application of the engineering and coding methods in field challenges, and the construction of creative projects.
MATERIALS REQUIRED: A $100 materials fee is required. The materials fee for this class covers the cost of the MakeBot robot kit. Students will be able to take home their completed robot at the end of the course.

Course Description
Take your voice acting skills to the next level in Voice Acting II, guided by esteemed voice actor and instructor, Michael Rivkin. Gain new tools, techniques, and insights to captivate audiences and breathe life into characters. Explore diverse materials and techniques to expand your repertoire, and work with the whole class to put it all together to create an original short film production! Both newcomers and returning actors are welcome to join this course.

Course Description
Music and math may seem like an odd couple, but they actually have a lot in common! This course will allow students to explore the intersection of these two disciplines through creative, hands-on activities that enhance computation, spatial reasoning, and creative problem solving… as well as unleashing musical self-expression! Music topics will include note value, meter, tempo, scale, intervals, harmonics and more. Whether you are a budding musician, or simply interested in new ways to exercise your math chops, music and math will soon be your forte!

Course Description
In this course, students will explore the intricacies of human anatomy and physiology, examining the structure and function of bodily systems such as the respiratory, circulatory, skeletal, digestive, muscular, and nervous systems. Through interactive simulations and modeling activities, students will not only gain a better understanding of each of these systems, but also their harmonious coordination that regulates the human body.
MATERIALS REQUIRED: A $25 materials fee is required.

Course Description
Orbitals, isomers, chirality, valence bonds, benzene rings… organic chemistry is a language all its own! Students will increase their O-Chem fluency by studying the structure, properties, reactions, and mechanisms of organic (or carbon-containing) compounds. This class will expand upon any previous chemistry knowledge of functional groups and Lewis structures to molecular geometry, valence bond theory, and hybridization. By the end of the course, students should be able to predict how various carbon-containing compounds will react or restructure themselves based on the chemicals and conditions present. Mastery will be demonstrated by students’ ability to identify, differentiate, and utilize organic compounds to generate chemical reactions through calculations and laboratory exercises.
MATERIALS REQUIRED: A $35 materials fee is required.

Course Description
Students will travel through time and space starting with the Big Bang theory and take a voyage to the universe and beyond. Using beginning astrophysics, how can we travel more or more often and further into space with our limited resources on Earth? Students will learn new truths about Earth’s atmosphere, the nature of sunlight, and how past missions have unlocked mysteries about our space neighbors. Yet, if we go past our space neighbors, things get really strange. What’s the difference between a void and a vacuum? Can light be a wave and a particle at the same time? We will arrive then on our journey To Infinity and Beyond to learn about parallel worlds, black holes, time travel, and even more in the far reaches of the cosmos!

Course Description
Suspense, excitement, action, and adventure! In this course, students will learn about the captivating world of the mystery genre. Through role-playing activities, students will step into the shoes of characters as they learn about the components of mysteries and explore a diverse range of thrilling tales, search for hidden clues, and adopt the analytical mindset of detectives. Collaboratively, they will also craft their own mysteries, complete with a crime, intriguing suspects, cleverly placed clues, and a satisfying solution. Join us as we embark on the quest to narrow down a list of suspects, uncover the truth behind the mysteries, solve the puzzle, and discover “whodunit!”

Course Description
Are you enthralled with exciting stories, fantastical creatures, and other cultures? You are not alone! Humans have been telling stories for 3,000 years. Prepare to journey around the world, through time, and in and out of reality as you explore the mythology, folklore and fairytales that have shaped cultures and imparted words of wisdom! Students will listen to stories from near and far while interpreting them in different formats like visual art, audio, and poetry. We will culminate the course by crafting personal anthologies, binding our interpretations into unique, handmade books.

Course Description
Even with our modern reliance on computer aids like spell check, strong writing mechanics remain essential for impactful communication. This course is dedicated to refining language usage, delving into nuances such as choosing the correct homophone (e.g., there, they’re, their; to, two, too), ensuring subject-verb agreement, perfecting sentence structure, and mastering punctuation like commas, apostrophes, and colons. We’ll prioritize crafting well-structured paragraphs and enriching our vocabulary. By honing these skills, students will not only become adept writers, but also gain a deeper understanding for the intricacies of language.

Course Description
This course is for students who are eager to dive deeper into the world of mathematics. We will unleash our inner math magicians using an inquiry-based approach and will cover a wide range of topics, from fractions to graphing, measurement to place value, and of course, addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. We’ll even tackle order of operations and explore mathematical reasoning. Get set to be the math whiz you’ve always wanted to be!
MATERIALS REQUIRED: A $10 materials fee is required.

Course Description
For as long as humans have existed, art has been an important part of creative expression, cultural identity, and social movements. In this course, students will learn about the great works of well-known artists from around the world as well as their biographies, explanations of techniques, and what inspired them to make art. This class will have an emphasis on more contemporary artists such as Yayoi Kusama, Takashi Murakami, and Jean-Michel Basquiat. Some of the topics we will explore will be the New York graffiti subculture, the Neo Expressionism movement of the 1980’s as well as Frida Kahlo’s influence on contemporary art. Students will then create their own multi-media works of art inspired by these influential contemporary artists and find their own artistic voice in the process.
MATERIALS REQUIRED: This course requires a $25 materials fee.

Course Description
As we enter an election year, we should understand how our country was designed to work. This nonpartisan course explores how intelligent people with very different beliefs worked together to design a government that was revolutionary for its time. In this class, students will learn about what each branch of government can and cannot do, and why we chose to design it this way. We built in the ability to change our Constitution, and we began to add to it before it was the law of the land. As a class, we will unravel the significance of these alterations both historically and within our contemporary context.

Course Description
Have you ever wondered how your brain actually works? And how is your brain different from another person’s brain? In this class, students will explore neuroscience through an introduction to the basic structures and functions of the brain. Through creative hands-on activities and experiments, students will learn about what neurons are, how they are connected, and investigate how the brain functions to enable vision, auditory processing, memory, motor control, and other modalities.
MATERIALS REQUIRED: A $25 materials fee is required.

Course Description
Welcome to “Carry That Weight: Bridges & Towers,” a hands-on course designed to inspire innovation and engineering creativity. In this class, students will learn about different types of bridges and towers through a series of engaging building challenges. They’ll gain valuable insights into structural integrity, problem-solving, and adaptability as they evaluate the outcome of each design. What worked well, and what didn’t? What insights can be drawn from the experience to make the next challenge even more successful? Whether you aspire to be an engineer, architect, or simply love hands-on learning, this class will broaden your horizons and shape your perspective on design and innovation.
MATERIALS REQUIRED: A $25 materials fee is required.

Course Description
Do you want to be a rocket scientist? Students will create and test 3D printed models of classic wings and analyze them. Then they will start from this base and create and test their own wings for different applications. We also leave the atmosphere to develop models of orbits, gravity wells and gravitational waves, and learn how some simple rules determine how planets and spacecraft fly around our solar system. We even will move out into the galaxy a little farther and find out how scientists know that there are planets around other stars. Students will demonstrate mastery by creating and being able to explain various kinds of physical and software models. Coding experience is helpful but not essential.
MATERIALS REQUIRED: This course has a $25 materials fee.

Course Description
The abilities to observe, recognize, and describe characteristics; distinguish similarities and differences; and identify and complete sequences, classifications, and analogies are the building blocks of critical thinking. This class is designed to introduce younger students to formal and informal logic, making logic studies accessible and relevant to younger learners. Topics throughout the course will allow students to connect language and mathematics to logic as they improve analytical and problem-solving skills. Students will solve mysteries and puzzles, analyze arguments, draw conclusions, and identify logical fallacies. Students will also be introduced to logic gates, truth tables, and Boolean logic – the basis of modern computing! The skills developed and practiced throughout the class will continue to serve students across all academic disciplines.

Course Description
From aluminum to zirconium, the periodic table organizes every element that exists – and those that have yet to be discovered! This class will dive into how elements are different at the atomic level and how those structural distinctions give them physical and chemical properties we can observe. Students will explore the different groups of elements, what gives them different qualities, why they react with one another, and how to interpret the symbols and structure of the periodic table. Mastery will be demonstrated through a project that explores and explains the observable physical and chemical properties of an element or compound.
MATERIALS REQUIRED: A $10 materials fee is required.

Course Description
Extra! Extra! Read all about it! We are looking for reporters to join our team this Spring Session at the Academy Times. In this course, students will learn about the different sections of a newspaper and the different roles in the news office. They will have the opportunity to pitch ideas, investigate, write their own articles, and serve as editors for their peers. Will you be the sports reporter covering this week’s exciting game of tag during break time, or the advice columnist answering questions sent in by our community? Or maybe you’ll write an exposé on the mysterious UFO crash site that students investigated during Fall Session. Our community eagerly awaits the first issue of The Academy Times: Student-Powered Stories, and we want you to join our team!

Course Description
Do you want to learn how to combine LEGOs and Scratch programming to make robots? Students will learn to program LEGO Mindstorms EV3 robots with the widely-used Scratch visual programming language and assemble appropriate combinations of motors and mechanisms to complete different challenges. We will explore how robots work, and ways to use the mechanisms available to perform tasks. Some experience with visual programming will be helpful but is not required. We will dive into some other related robotics topics based on student inquiry and interests!
MATERIALS REQUIRED: A $10 materials fee is required.