Arts Electives Program

In addition to their Arts Integration Classes, all 9th and 10th grade students take a 90-minute Elective Class once a week. These classes offer our students an introduction to a particular art form. Our Electives Program focuses on the themes of Mastery, Identity and Power. Teachers focus on what skills students must master in order to become proficient in their arts discipline. Mastery of those skills gives students a chance to explore their identity and as a community we discuss how strong identities give us power in the world. Elective classes are semester-long and students are given an opportunity to repeat an Elective in the second semester of their sophomore year.

Visual Arts

This course focuses on developing and honing basic drawing skills. Students will become familiar with the techniques, tools, and vocabulary necessary to create drawings which convey spacial relationships and explore themes of identity. They will complete a group grid project in which each student is responsible for one part of the overall piece and an individual self-portrait using a combination of dry media. Works by artists from the past and present who use(d) drawing in a prominent way will be viewed and discussed in class.

Creative Writing

The Introduction to Creative Writing class is grounded in writing as personal narrative and self-exploration. Through poetry, nonfiction, and fiction, students explore questions about who they are, where they come from, systems of belief and how they got them, hopes, fears, ideas. Through readings, research, presentations, and exercises, writers are challenged to consider this art in relation to personal history, broader history, and social change, while exploring the notion of writing as power. Another main objective of the course is to help students further understand the various functions of language, structural choice, and grammatical tools in both reading and storytelling.

Dance

The elective Dance course will focus on the style of jazz dance as a way to explore the big idea of Powerful Bodies. Students will be able to experience dance movement and learn about their own capabilities and capacity for expression, musicality, exertion, coordination, and power. By performing dance combinations and exercises we will make our own definition of what it means to be a powerful dancer. In the process, we will also gain knowledge about the vocabulary and history of dance.

Media Studies

In Media Studies, you will have a chance to experiment with visual language in different ways in order to communicate your own ideas to a viewing audience. You will be expected to complete the camera, visual, and writing exercises in order to develop your technical skills and your ideas. You will have a chance to show your work to your peers and to talk about it. You will be asked to keep a visual journal or sketchbook throughout the year.

You will have the chance throughout the year to work collaboratively with others, to support one another's project goals, to practice the skills of verbal communication, to listen actively, and to reflect about your work and that of your peers.