Upper School
Overview
Upper School Curriculum
It’s no secret that, over the past decades, there has been a widening gulf between high school curricula and the concepts and disciplines students are asked to contend with almost immediately at the college level. SLA’s semester-based offerings model the content, depth, breadth, exploratory demands, and structure of a university course of study—and since implementing our new humanities core several years ago, admissions counselors across the college spectrum continue to remark on how unique and compelling our transcripts and applicants are during the application process.
Humanities core: A Substantive College-Preparatory Education
SLA students start their Upper School Humanities education in the fall semester of their grade nine year by taking two survey courses—Intro to Literary Study and US Government and Politics. These courses introduce the habits, skills, and thematic concerns that will help students complexly engage with the study of literature, culture, and history throughout the SLA Upper School curriculum and beyond. The spring semester then grounds the curriculum in the city of Los Angeles. Literature of Los Angeles and Los Angeles History develop students’ understanding of the historical changes and continuities that made Los Angeles the urban center it is today.
After grade nine, each semester, SLA Upper School students select a pairing of Literature and History courses from a broad array of disciplines, including: Black Studies, Environmental Studies, Latinx Studies, Class Studies, Queer Studies, and European Studies. This provides students substantive choice in their trajectory through Upper School while also providing a firm foundation for their studies. Moreover, the humanities core affirms our commitment to a breadth of study that reflects our student body, our faculty, our city, and our world—as well as our commitment to a truly substantive college-preparatory education.
A Science Core Designed from the Ground Up
The STEM program in the Upper School is designed to cultivate curiosity, scientific wisdom, and a genuine passion for sharing knowledge. Core science and math courses are designed to emphasize project- and inquiry-based learning, embodying a commitment to discovery that drives students to explore complex scientific concepts both inside and outside the classroom. We believe a deep understanding of scientific principles allows them to ask more profound questions about the world. Building on the core competencies of our physics, chemistry, and biology courses, SLA’s rigorous, project-based electives ask students to seek to find the intersections between civics and science in the political and social life of Los Angeles.
Detailed Course Descriptions
Grade Nine
Humanities
LITERATURE 9, FALL SEMESTER
Intro to Literary Study: Monsters and Aliens
Where do “monsters” come from? Are they part of our human nature or do they come from somewhere else? In this year’s Introduction to Literary Study, students will explore depictions of the monstrous and the alien, first tracing the theme of alienation from classical to post-modern European literary traditions. In the second semester, students will apply this critical lens to examine American nonfiction writings, autofiction, essays and poetry on themes of race, class, gender and power in our society. Students will closely read and interpret texts of different genres, while tracing a theme across different historical contexts, and developing tools around generating, discussing and debating original ideas. Students will practice writing college-preparatory argumentative essays that critically examine literary texts, contrast and synthesize differing perspectives, and present persuasive and well supported arguments.
HISTORY 9, FALL SEMESTER
US Government and Politics
What legal, economic, and social systems exist to shape our everyday lives and opportunities? How do we critically engage—and even change—these systems? This course examines how peoples who inhabited the space we now call the United States have developed structures of power and representation, have navigated their lives within them, and have often challenged them. Indeed, at the core of this course is an exploration of how and why political movements emerge as reactions to discontent with “the way things are.” So, while students consider familiar developments like the Constitution and its amendments, the rise of political parties, and presidential administrations, our main interest lies in recovering how everyday people, often far removed from seats of power, questioned timeworn ideas of who gets what in a society and what its members owe each other.
Throughout the semester, we close-read primary sources, including speeches, public art, demonstrations, and manifestos; examine, assess, and discuss scholarly sources; and apply core concepts to current events and contemporary political terminology. As well, students develop a personalized research project that addresses the questions: How can we understand “politics” as central to everyday life? What remains and what changes about political consciousness over time and place? And How can we take a synoptic view of a political concern in the long history of the US without sacrificing the specificity of experience?
LITERATURE 9, SPRING SEMESTER
Literature of Los Angeles
Perhaps no city is more actively imagined or persistently misunderstood than Los Angeles, California. What does it actually mean to be an Angeleno? How does our history inform our present? Where is this “City of Quartz,” as the author Mike Davis has called it, headed? This course takes our hometown as its theme, providing students with the opportunity to see it from a number of perspectives. Carrying over from the first semester’s introduction to high school- and college-level literary study, students use our readings to strengthen their emerging understanding of genre, formal features, and archetypes as they engage in their writing with the diversity of a real city that rattles, hisses, and hums behind the glittering façade presented by marketers and motion-picture impresarios.
The iconic novel, Day of the Locust by Nathaniel West paints a picture of the wild-catting early days of the film industry. Luis Valdez’s play Zoot Suit enacts the themes of pachuquismo, racism, and injustice of the murder at the Sleepy Lagoon, the subsequent trial of a group of Chicanx teenagers and young men, and the WWII-era riots over race, style, and American identity. In the Not Quite Dark, Dana Johnson’s collection of short fiction grapples with matters of race, place, and history. And Tropic of Orange, a novel by Karen Tei Yamashita, presents the complex mosaic of social and political issues that stir the currents and crosscurrents of our present era.
In Literature of Los Angeles, students in grade nine have the opportunity to consolidate their reading and writing skills in the literature classroom, while at the same time acquiring a sophisticated understanding of the city in which they live. The California historian Kevin Starr calls Los Angeles, “the Great Gatsby of American cities”: Literature of Los Angeles is an opportunity for students to assume the Nick Carraway role—to become the “unreliable,” passionate narrators of the story of their own complicated home.
HISTORY 9, SPRING SEMESTER
Los Angeles History
Is Los Angeles, has it ever been, or could it ever be a just city? This course introduces students to key periods, events, figures, and questions in the history of the space we now commonly call “L.A.” Moving from the pre-Columbian era to the early twenty-first century, students develop an understanding of the historical changes and continuities that made Los Angeles the urban center it is today, all the while thinking critically about narratives of “progress” and “development,” and learning how historians construct alternative understandings of how people have existed in this space.
Indeed, in tracing this history from indigenous homeland to Spanish missionary outpost to Mexican pueblo to US state, this course introduces students to basic concepts and vocabulary in the study of cities and communities and encourages a reckoning with the ways in which the city’s present—its demographics, geographies, cultures, and inequities—have been produced by its past and the stories we tell about that past.
These analytical approaches are grounded in a curriculum centered on experiential learning within the city, from visits to the Watts Towers Art Center to “cognitive mappings” of the city blocks surrounding our campus; close readings of primary sources, including folklore, maps, advertisements, and pop music; and a critical engagement with how to read, assess, and discuss scholarly sources. Throughout the semester, students develop a personalized research project that addresses the questions: What do you owe Los Angeles? And what does Los Angeles owe you?
Black
Studies
BLACK LITERATURE
Between Afropessimism(s) and Afrofuturism(s)
How has the black literary tradition evolved and kept pace with all of the radically transformative (as well as dramatically violent) experiences of the 20th and 21st centuries? How has it been able to communicate the solitude of oppression and despair alongside the joys found in experiences of liberation, however fleeting or permanent? In this course we will review different approaches by black authors to capture the wide-ranging complexity of the black experience. A study of the world-classic Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe will allow us to appreciate this nuance in a context different from ours where the central dilemma concerns resistance to colonialism through efforts to keep pre-colonial communal and national traditions alive.
We’ll follow this study with a reading of Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison which captures the plunder brought about by the death of communal traditions and the emergence of race as the central marker of identity for black people in America. Finally, in reviewing selections from contemporary black writers and poets, we will glimpse the kind of futures imaginable today. Key to the course will be an evaluation of irony as it helps dramatize these themes across our readings from different genres (the postcolonial novel, modernist existentialist texts etc.) Our reading of the major texts will culminate in a college level argumentative essay.
BLACK HISTORY, FALL SEMESTER
No Humans Involved: Blackness, Property, and the Making of America, 1619-1877
This course will begin in pre-colonial Africa. This is the place in which the idea of blackness would be formulated and woven into pseudo constructs that will come with real consequences. After the European enslavement of Africans and their exit from the continent through the Door of No Return, the dehumanization process has already begun and will be carried out in the Americas. From this point forward race, gender, class, and identity overall will be enforced through a violent process driven by racial capitalism. Students will critically analyze and reflect on the historical phenomena that will inform frameworks antithetical to the very existence of those deemed Black. These include the creation of the plantation economy, the essential re-enslavement during the Jim Crow era, as well as both past and contemporary resistance to all of the above by those being subjugated. In their critical analysis/reflection, students will think about what it means to be human and what it means to be positioned outside of such classification in society through the lens of the Black experience. This journey will take one semester, beginning on the shores of Africa and leading all the way up to modern events.
This course will include writings and theories by Cedric Robertson (Robertson’s text Black Marxism will be used throughout the semester as main reference), James Baldwin, Toni Morrison, Sadiya Hartman, W. E. B. DuBois, Howard Zinn, Franz Fanon, and more. The students will use these writings and other forms of media for the development of their critical consciousness, as well as furthering their argumentation and research skills within the realm of historical thinking.
Environmental
Studies
ENVIRONMENTAL LITERATURE
Back to Nature or Back to the Future?
Everyone cares about the environment these days, from Central American indigenous activists to billionaire owners of ‘ecologically sustainable’ corporate franchises. Given this wide diversity of ‘environmentalisms’, it becomes important to define with more precision what we mean by the term. To this end, we can benefit from an exploration of what ‘nature’ and the ‘environment’ have meant to us across their representations in literature. Ursula K. Le Guin’s sci-fi classic The Dispossessed will allow us to appreciate the way a text concerned with the environment must wrestle with greater socio-political questions of what kind of world-system we want to create and with what kind of relationship to inanimate and sentient beings. We’ll compare literary representations of nature across eras from romantic views that recognize in non-human nature a sacred place we must ‘return’ to, to more contemporary urbanist writers who view nature as irreversibly interrelated to the human socio-political activity of making and remaking our geography. We will evaluate the role of literary techniques such as personification, and test our ability to make evidence based claims. Our reading of the major texts will culminate in a college level argumentative essay.
ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORY
Agency or Futility?: Unequal Voices and the Global Environmental Crisis
This class is about the interactions between human societies and the natural world. It is often easy to oversimplify both the causes of harm inflicted on the environment and solutions to address such problems. For example, the idea that human societies should reduce overall consumption has on the whole been difficult to achieve, in part, because it runs counter to the exigencies of modern capitalism, and its associated ideological and cultural productions. Thus, to gain insight into the rich complexity of our current relationship with the natural world, this course provides a broad overview of the ways earlier human societies have interacted with the natural world. An emphasis is placed on developing an analytical toolset that students can use to examine complex forms of causation that occur both in the study of history and in discussions of contemporary societies.
The course, on the whole, proceeds from the study of small human societies to larger, more complex ones. Doing so allows us to develop the essential skills and methods to explain the role of various factors in shaping a society’s relationship to the natural world. Thus, we begin by examining the ways in which early economic relations, culture, ideology, religious belief and differing social structures conditioned relationships between semi-sedentary hunter gatherer societies in both the Amazon and the Great Plains. We then apply the skills that we have learned in assessing the conditions that structure relationships with the natural world in more complex agrarian city-states and kingdoms, with a focus on West Africa, Europe during the Middle Ages, and the Mayan city states of the classical period (200 CE – 1,000 CE). Finally, we apply the many lessons we have learned to a study of contemporary societies, shaped by our globalized, capitalist economic system. By the end of the course students will be able to discuss and to analyze our relationship with the natural world, as well as possible solutions to environmental degradation, in nuanced, complex and informed ways.
Latinx
Studies
LATINX LITERATURE, FALL SEMESTER
Magical Realism
This course offers an introduction to Latin American literature in translation. Students engage a broad selection of authors and texts from various countries in Central and South America in order to develop an understanding of socioeconomic, philosophical, literary, and political influences of time and place, with a particular focus on anti-imperialism. Students address a series of questions particular to Latin American literature: How does a body of literature respond to its canonical and imperialist precedents? How does magical realism subvert the post-Enlightenment premium placed on realism? How do these texts affect the world they critique?
The course begins with Boom authors Julio Cortázar, Gabriel García Márquez, Silvina Ocampo, and Jorge Luis Borges before transitioning into more diverse, non-Boom voices like Rosario Castellanos, Clarice Lispector, Julia Alvarez, and Roberto Bolaño. Students engage in discussions about genre, magical realism, political critique, and translation throughout the semester. Students also produce analytical writing, creative writing, and self-guided research.
LATINX HISTORY
Latin America: Identity at the Intersection of Local and Global
Exploring the concept of Latinx History involves confronting Latin America’s complex relationship with the globalizing forces that have shaped it. Using such works as Charles Mann’s 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus, and Martin and Wasserman’s Latin America and its People, we first explore the pre-colonial economies of Latin American, and their systems of authority with an emphasis on the regions of contemporary Mexico and Brazil. Next, we examine the manner in which colonialism and participation in a global economy on highly unequal terms shaped new, fragmented societies and gave birth to forms of rhetoric and nation building discourses such as Brazil’s racial democracy or Mexico’s popular conception of its “mestizo” roots. We will analyze these, and other hegemonic discourses as we explore how global and international forces continue to shape new conceptions of identity and belonging in Brazil, Mexico and the United States.
In the latter stages of the course, we discuss key questions in each country. In Brazil, we ask what it means to be Afro-Brazilian, and whether the promise of racial democracy holds true today. In Mexico, interrogate the precarious existence of indigenous communities, often neglected and semi-autonomous, but who nonetheless have to struggle to maintain their language and identity in the face of growing Spanish monolingualism and increasingly tight ties to diasporic communities in the US where transnationalism is creating new forms of identity and belonging among the youth in particular.
Class
Studies
CLASS LITERATURE, SPRING SEMESTER
Message to the Grass Roots: Literatures of the Dispossessed
The first half of this course begins with a question: What is property? We consider practical questions like how ownership of property is actually constituted and enforced in our daily lives, we look at important moments and trends in the historical formation and practice of private property in the modern era, and we study an array of arguments regarding both the philosophical and legal formation of property, including Proudhon’s claim that “property is theft,” basic Marxist interpretations of class relationships, Cheryl I. Harris’ work on “whiteness as property,” and Rinaldo Walcott’s proposition that “Black people will not be fully able to breathe—a word I do not use lightly—until property itself is abolished.” Students conduct an overview of the concept of “racial capitalism,” examining the historical and social connections between race, class, and property—including works from Cedric Robinson, Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Robin D. G. Kelley, and Dylan Rodriguez. We then study recent theoretical frameworks from Stephano Harney and Fred Moten, which help us think critically about—and beyond—the conditions that make ownership possible and necessary. Finally, through critical, small-group discussions, we consider how schools play a central role in producing and maintaining these conditions—and how this directly affects us.
During the second half of the course, we embark on a review of a wide array of literary forms—memoir, essay, speech, letter, poem, prison writing, and conversation—that have emerged out of what Piven and Cloward term “poor people’s movements” in the US, as well as international anti-colonial struggles, and contemporary anti-gentrification movements in Los Angeles. This includes works by Malcolm X, James Baldwin, George Jackson, Kwame Ture, Amílcar Cabral, Dean Spade, the School of Echoes, and the Los Angeles Tenants Union. Students play a major role in charting the path we take through these course materials—where we linger, where we dig deeper, where we take an unexpected turn. Throughout the semester, students develop, submit, revise, and resubmit an ever-growing glossary of terms—a project which demands a high level of compositional rigor, but also encourages a high level of creativity and collaboration.
CLASS HISTORY, SPRING SEMESTER
The Birth of the Global Market and the Development of Capitalism
The rise of the Western world, with its familiar and easily recognizable political and economic institutions, developed in lockstep with the creation of a truly global economy beginning in the 1500s. This course explores the development of capitalism, the sociopolitical and economic system that first developed in the West in the 1600s, as part of larger global processes. We begin by examining the linkages between forms of merchant capital and the later development of the financial institutions that facilitate the expansion of a capitalist economy. Of particular interest is merchant capital surrounding slavery, and the later establishment of financial institutions by those such as the Barclays brothers or the Lehman brothers who were intricately involved in the slave economy. Students will read classic works such as Adam Smith’s An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, as well as more critical authors, such as Walter Johnson’s River of Dark Dreams: Slavery and Empire in the Cotton Kingdom, and analyze a host of primary-source documents in order to make an informed argument on the relationship between slavery and modern banking.
Next, we explore industrialization in Europe and North America, and the struggles that occurred over such issues as the length of the working day, and the development of approaches to labor management such as Fordism. Finally, we explore the expansion and contraction of industrialization in the Global South, and the tragic legacies of both colonialism and the early global economy. Throughout the course, students are encouraged to engage the subject matter through careful, fact-based analysis via persuasive writing and exercises on research methods. Our goal, ultimately, is to create the necessary historical lenses to understand such contemporary issues as the proliferation of the gig economy through apps such as Uber or Instacart, or the outsourcing of factory production to regions of lower cost labor.
Queer
Studies
QUEER LITERATURE, SPRING SEMESTER, GRADES 10–12
Assimilation or Liberation?
What is the queer lens? What is the difference between queer liberation and queer assimilation? How do race, sexuality, and class intersect? How have queer writers used literature as a “call to action?”
Students engage these questions while developing critical analytical writing skills. Together we unpack writings by working class trans authors like Leslie Feinberg, along with a number of critical essays and poems theorizing the multifaceted struggles and joys of queer life, including anthologies like Sister Outsider by Audre Lorde, and This Bridge Called My Back edited by Cherríe Moraga, Gloria E. Anzaldúa. We will use class discussion, written reflections, and a series of major essays to unpack how these works relate to our everyday lives, regardless of our own identities. We will also examine literature from various queer liberation struggles, with a particular focus on the radical movements for housing, healthcare and harm reduction. Finally, students will work collaboratively to conduct an inquiry around a self-selected theme, to produce a zine using the critical writing, poetic, and investigative skills we have built throughout the semester.
QUEER HISTORY, SPRING SEMESTER
Queer Pasts, Homonational Futures?: Deviance and Punishment from the late 19th Century to the Post-Marriage Era
In the late 1890s, twenty years before the term “queer” was first used to deride gay men in Northeastern cities, the word was employed in Atlanta newspapers to describe another group of perceived deviants: incarcerated Black women. In order to justify the use of imprisoned Black women as free labor in the post-Emancipation South, such women had to be labeled “deviant” and therefore deserving of punishment and policing.
This course turns a critical eye to seemingly natural ideas about what it means to be “normal” and “deviant.” Taking an expansive approach to the concept of queerness—one that defines “queer” in terms of one’s relationship to normativity as opposed to specific sexual identities— students develop an analysis of normalcy, queerness, and deviance that incorporates race, class, and nation alongside gender and sexuality. Using a historical lens to excavate the invention of ruling ideas about “normal” men, women, and families, we ultimately interrogate the myriad consequences of being perceived as deviant: social ostracization, imprisonment, heightened policing, and often premature death.
Focusing specifically on the role that prisons and carceral logics play in shaping and reproducing ideas about deviance, the course draws heavily from the following texts, among others: No Mercy Here: Gender, Punishment and The Making of Jim Crow Modernity by Sarah Haley, Discipline and Punish by Michel Foucault and Captive Genders: Trans Embodiment and the Prison Industrial Complex edited by Eric Stanley and Nat Smith.
European
Studies
EUROPEAN LITERATURE, SPRING SEMESTER
Dissolving Boundaries: Forms of Possession in European Literature
In this course, students engage in a survey of European literature from antiquity to the contemporary, exploring instances in which a character’s sense of agency is “possessed.” These sources of “possession” might show up as will or fate, or perhaps as gods or God. In other instances, the self is possessed by the influence of an intimate relationship, an ancestral energy, an idea, or a “group-mind.” We begin with the contemporary Italian novel My Brilliant Friend, in which author Elena Ferrante employs the concept of “dissolving boundaries” to organize various coming-of-age experiences in the lives of her two protagonists. From there, we go back to antiquity and move forward again, reading texts like Virgil’s Aeneid, Ovid’s Metamorphoses, writings of the Christian mystic Angela de Foligno, Valery’s Monsieur Teste, and Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment.
In a course that covers such a broad swath, students are asked to flex their analytical muscles, creating dialogue across chronologically distant texts to draw conclusions about how the ways people think about God over time reflect the ways they think about the boundaries of the self. The characters’ voluntary reception and resistance to these instances of possession support students in writing comparative literary analysis essays based on questions like: How do instances of possession reveal themselves as helpful or harmful? and, What sorts of conceptions of the human individual and human society do these experiences reflect?
EUROPEAN HISTORY, SPRING SEMESTER
From Absolutism to Uncertainty: Europe from 1648 to 1919
This course is about the creation of modern Europe, and the major social, economic, and political trends that shaped its countries and peoples between 1648 and 1919. It begins with an analysis of the Age of Absolutism; the concentration of centralized political authority that absolutism represents is analyzed against the backdrop of global trade and colonialism. The course next moves on to read the social-political thought that both justified and opposed the idea of monarchy, as well as hinting at later revolutions. We examine excerpts from the work of Nicola Machiavelli, Thomas Hobbes, and John Locke, as well as the revolutionary ideas of Jean Jacques Rousseau. In our third unit, we discuss how these ideas ultimately led to the undoing of absolutism, paying particular attention to England’s Glorious Revolution of 1689 and the French Revolution. We also study how the racialization of the revolution ultimately manifested itself in opposition to Toussaint Louverture’s leadership in Haiti. Finally, the course examines the historical role that conflict has played in European state building, and how such patterns ultimately manifested themselves in the utter destruction of the First World War.
Upper School
Humanities
Electives
HISTORY ELECTIVE, FALL SEMESTER
A People’s History of WWII and the New Deal
In this course, we take scope of the United States from 1933-1945—years which saw unprecedented political, economic, and demographic shifts set in motion by the Great Depression, the New Deal, and the Second World War and the Holocaust. But rather than emphasizing legislation, party politics, and military campaigns, we explore social and cultural changes from the bottom up: How did these developments foster new opportunities for building local, national, and even hemispheric communities? For producing new national narratives and myths? For reconceptualizing the individual’s relationship to the State? And in what ways were these challenges belied by the intransigent forces of capitalist, racist, sexist, and nationalist thinking? We also consider the changes in American thought and activism after the war that were catalyzed by the circulation of images of the Holocaust and the atomic bomb. Touring tenements, Hoovervilles, Japanese-American concentration camps, sharecroppers’ cabins, German-Jewish intellectual enclaves, and construction sites; examining photographs, films, advertisements, and murals; and engaging in writing and experiential learning that emphasizes the built and cultural landscapes of the era, this course traces the contours of everyday experience for everyday people in an era of World Historical upheaval.
HISTORY ELECTIVE, SPRING SEMESTER
Political Populism and Conspiracy Theory
This course provides a systematic examination of populist movements and conspiracy culture, primarily in the United States, from the late 1800s to today. We begin by examining the common thread that ties together disparate movements, oftentimes with radically different ideologies, together in the embrace of populism and conspiracy culture: the rhetorical framework of populism. An understanding of populism as a narrative allows us to conduct a broad survey of populist movements and conspiracy culture from the People’s Party of the 1890s to the populisms of Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump, and contemporary flat earth theories or even more fringe groups who engage in conspiratorial forms of scapegoating and the politics of hate.
After examining the narrative structures of populism and conspiracy culture, we move on to a study of the economic and political roots of populism. We spend time understanding the economic conditions of the Gilded Age, and the Great Depression, before we turn towards an in depth study of the 2008 financial crisis and the efforts to address it on behalf of the US government. Understanding the crisis and its impact serves as a foundation for the final unit, in which students analyze the causes and impacts of contemporary movements such as the Tea Party, Occupy Wall Street, the Qanon conspiracies, the John Birch Society and others.
HISTORY ELECTIVE, SPRING SEMESTER
A Cultural History of Asian Immigration to the U.S.
Drawing from theories of hybridity and representation developed around Asian-American identity in the late-twentieth and early-twenty-first centuries, this course takes scope of the patchwork of experiences of peoples of Asian descent in the United States. We consider how and why different national and ethnic groups arrived in this nation, contended with larger structural forces, and remade the landscape of US culture and politics. Grounding our discussions are two key themes: First, how this diverse group was positioned, and positioned themselves, amidst domestic and international developments; and second, how this diverse group strived for self-representation in a society that rejected, fetishized, and exoticized the “Oriental” other.
Along with cutting-edge scholarship on Asian-American identity from Erika Lee and Jay Caspian Kang, we engage cultural texts such as photographs, poems, and Carlos Bulosan’s 1946 memoir, America Is in the Heart, as we traverse railroad camps and sugar plantations, Chinatowns and internment camps, bachelor hotels and boba shops. Accompanying our historical inquiry are weekly discussions of an article of students’ choosing from the online journal, Hyphen, and a series of visits from Asian-American health and social workers and activists working with Asian-American communities in Southern California.
HISTORY ELECTIVE, SPRING SEMESTER
Race and Popular Culture in the Modern United States
The century from the end of the Civil War to the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s saw the advent of a national mass media that seeped into everyday life through film, radio, records, television, magazines, public leisure spaces, and novels. Yet even as the United States became increasingly integrated in terms of what people consumed, ideas of race in these texts continued to depict a disconnected, unequal nation, reinforcing structural inequalities amidst an official story of increasing democracy, often by emphasizing exoticism.
This course examines popular culture’s role in circulating and reinforcing racial stereotypes in the US; the larger political, economic, and social impacts of these representations; and ways in which artists and activists have used these same media to challenge normative ideas of race as part of freedom struggles. Refracting key moments in modern US history—the end of slavery, the rise of industrial capitalism, immigration, economic fluctuations, and war—through the prism of photographs, novellas, pop songs, television, films, and amusement parks, we ask: What role can culture play in shaping, reinforcing, and challenging how Americans relate to each other?
Key cultural texts emphasize these contested representations in their unique contexts: the Fisk Jubilee Singers during their first tour of the US in 1871, the unveiling of Gabriel Siqueiros’s ironically-titled America Tropical mural at Olvera St. in 1932, and Dorothea Lange’s photographs of Japanese-American concentration camps in 1942, to name just three. We also consider how professional historians have broached this question, and, through a series of short essay assignments, interrogate cultural texts that, though common, are the opposite of trivial.
Upper School
Science
SCIENCE 9
Chemistry
This course exposes students to the mindset and practices of a chemist. The course introduces students to fundamental concepts of chemistry, which are the core ideas of physical and natural sciences. Students create models, participate in lab activities, and gather data to explain interactions occurring at the molecular level. With a focus on phenomena-based learning, students build upon their prior knowledge during the process of inquiry and investigation. Students engage in virtual simulations that model different experiments from Thompson, Rutherford, and Chadwick, showing evidence of the existence of the proton, neutron, and electron within the atom.
To equip students with the 21st Century skills they will need to tackle complex, real-world challenges, this course involves lessons rooted in problem solving and introduces new research and ideas in chemistry. Topics covered include the patterns in the periodic table that help scientists predict how elements and compounds react during a chemical reaction, and how those reactions are important for biological systems and our environment.
SCIENCE 10
Physics
Have you ever wondered how an airplane can simulate zero gravity like astronauts on the international space station experience? Or how airplanes can fly in the first place, with hundreds of passengers and their cargo?
In this course students explore the theoretical and practical applications of the four fundamental forces of nature. Building upon the core concepts learned in previous science courses, as well as the experience with natural phenomena encountered in our daily lives, physicists apply scientific thinking and computational analysis to solve real-life challenges through hands-on experimentation.
This course integrates cross cutting concepts and 21st-Century skills needed to prepare students to think critically in a future of technological advancements and global energy demands. The year focuses on looking at various topics through the lens of energy and how it is conserved. Students use precise equations related to motion, heat, electricity, and waves, and develop their conceptual understanding of how everyday phenomena are the result of the microscopic interactions involving subatomic particles, visualized by models, demonstrations, and experimentation.
SCIENCE 11
Biology
This course focuses on the interconnections of four unifying concepts: structure and function of living systems, transformations of energy and matter, information flow and storage, and evolution.
Students use inquiry and the scientific method to generate and answer questions about current topics in biology. Specific topics are determined by students and may include: the diversity of life, interconnectedness among ecosystems, genetic engineering, infection and response, cancer and stem cell research, and the impacts of trauma on neurotransmitters. We work together to integrate our existing understanding of living systems and acquire new knowledge to explore our beautifully complex, dynamic, living world.
Students also participate in the Biology Sustainability Challenge by identifying the challenges of living sustainably in an urban environment, researching cities that are managing to coexist with nature, exploring environmental injustices in Los Angeles, and finally designing and proposing nature-based solutions and designs that can potentially coexist at SLA.
Upper School
Science Electives
ELECTIVE, FALL SEMESTER
Astronomy
Embark on an outer-worldly journey through this semester elective in Astronomy, where students explore our place in the vastness of the universe. With hundreds of billions of galaxies stretching beyond comprehension, students ponder the mysteries of black holes, potential life on other planets, and the origins of the cosmos.
Throughout the course, students trace the history of observational astronomy, spotlighting the pioneering astronomers, including Galileo, Copernius, and Kepler, who peered through telescopes to study the night sky and allow this to inform our own creation of these magnificent tools. Moving closer to home, students delve into our solar system, comparing the rocky terrestrial planets to the gas giants and venturing beyond. Students will have the opportunity to build their own telescope to view the night sky during a trip to the Griffith Observatory. The course also examines our Sun and its counterparts, students will learn about stars of varying masses and their life cycles, offering insights into the celestial mechanics that govern our universe. In this exploration of the cosmos, where wonder meets scientific inquiry, the mysteries of space come into focus.
ELECTIVE, FALL SEMESTER
Computer Science: JavaScript
The introduction to computer science course teaches the foundations of computer science and basic programming with an emphasis on helping students develop logical thinking and problem solving skills and be able to program in JavaScript. Each unit of the course is broken down into lessons. Lessons consist of video tutorials, classroom instruction, short quizzes, example programs to analyze and modify, and individual written programming exercises, adding up to over 100 hours of hands-on programming practice in total. Each unit ends with a comprehensive unit test to check algorithm, syntax and performance task (*working program) that assesses student mastery of the material from that unit.
ELECTIVE, FALL AND SPRING SEMESTER
Computer Science: Python and Applications in AI
This introduction to computer science course offers a comprehensive understanding of computer science fundamentals and basic programming concepts, with a particular focus on artificial intelligence. Through the Python programming language, students not only develop logical thinking and problem-solving skills but also gain insights into the practical applications and ethical considerations surrounding AI. Each unit consists of a diverse range of lessons, including video tutorials and simulations presented by CodeHs, in-classroom instruction, hands-on analysis and modification of example programs, and individual programming exercises. Additionally, weekly discussions will provide students with the opportunity to learn about the social impact of AI, fostering critical thinking and encouraging ethical reflections. To assess student understanding and proficiency, each unit culminates in a comprehensive assessment project that evaluates student mastery of the unit’s material and serves as a reflection for real-world AI applications, allowing students to bridge the gap between theory and practical implementation.
ELECTIVE, SPRING SEMESTER
Computer Science: Coding Hub
In this dynamic course, students embark on a journey of technology exploration and innovation. As students gain competency in programming languages, frameworks, and design principles, the course places a strong emphasis on skill acquisition. Each unit serves as a checking point for students to remain on track to produce functional prototypes, emphasizing user experience and important functionality. By the end of the semester, the students will have a computational artifact that has been polished, made practical, and put through extensive testing. Students leave this hands-on, group learning experience with the knowledge and attitude needed to succeed in the rapidly changing world of technology.
Upper School
Math
Integrated Mathematics I: Algebra and Introductory Geometry
A student’s journey into advanced mathematics is fundamentally an exploration of detecting, describing, and making conclusions from patterns. In this course, the first in SLA’s Integrated Math Series, students are introduced to foundational skills and ideas in introductory algebra, geometry, and data analysis. We develop a thorough understanding of linear equations, inequalities, and systems, and we explore linear and exponential functions represented with graphs, numbers, and algebraic notation.
Students develop their skills in representations in the coordinate plane, rigid transformations, and compass and straight-edge constructions to create and prove simple theorems in geometry. They investigate how to represent data in one and two variables by using visual, verbal, and numerical measures of center and spread. They also explore bivariate relationships in data with scatter plots, correlation, and linear regression models. Students develop more skills with irrational numbers (square and cube roots) and the Pythagorean Theorem. They use these skills to increase their working knowledge of special right triangles and Pythagorean triples, which are used frequently in future studies of algebra and geometry.
Integrated Mathematics II: Geometry, Probability, and Intermediate Algebra
As students learn to detect and describe patterns with algebra, graphs, tables, and words, they also learn to create more convincing arguments when generalizing from patterns. In this course, students practice methods for rigorously justifying their conclusions in geometry, algebra, and probability. Students begin this journey by exploring ruler-compass constructions—using software such as GeoGebra and Desmos—as well as different frameworks for providing proofs for their conclusions, including two-column, flowcharts, diagrams, proofs by contradiction, and algebraic proofs with coordinate geometry. By exploring new geometric relationships through class challenges, activity-based problems in Desmos, and proof-writing, students learn to make convincing claims about lines, angles, triangles, dilations, and similarity.
Students also further develop their skills in geometric reasoning, algebra, and mathematical modeling as they explore the algebraic and graphical properties of quadratic functions. Through mathematical modeling activities, students explore how the equations of functions they have studied in the abstract can be modified to represent real-world phenomena. Students also examine how conditional probability can help them make wise predictions about random chance events that emerge in large-scale drug and disease testing.
Integrated Mathematics III: Advanced Algebra and Analysis of Functions
In this course, students further develop their skills in solving equations, analyzing graphs of functions, and modeling scenarios with geometry and algebra. All of these skills give students greater power to detect, describe, and generalize from patterns they see in the world around them. By completing rich problem sets, unpacking the arguments of other students, and exploring complex examples through Desmos (dynamic graphing software), students learn to better predict the graphical features of functions based on their equations. Through class investigations, case-study problems, mini-projects, and written assessments, students demonstrate their capacity to solve problems, describe patterns, and justify their reasoning.
We also explore exponential functions across continuous domains, which allows us to develop a deeper understanding of fractional exponents. We introduce logarithms as the inverses of exponentiation, and students explore the properties of logarithms to solve more complex problems with unknown exponents. Students explore the end behavior of polynomials and rational functions, as well as the concept of asymptotes and multiplicities of zeros. Students learn multiple strategies for dividing polynomials and extend their knowledge of graphing parabolas to higher-degree polynomials. Students analyze properties of a library of common functions (linear, quadratic, cubic, hyperbolic, exponential, absolute value, and nth root) and their linear transformations. Lastly, students apply their understanding of geometry and similarity to develop an understanding of radian measure, the Unit Circle, and definitions of trigonometric ratios beyond right triangles. In addition to developing stronger algebra skills, students use Desmos, spreadsheets, and graphing calculators to explore complex functions, automate calculations, and determine solutions for problems that require computational or numerical solution methods.
Precalculus and Trigonometry
How can students precisely model how planets, populations, viruses and earthquakes behave? How do probability, algebra, and geometry give us the tools to develop good models?
In this course, students develop a more sophisticated understanding and analysis of functions and equations. We develop fluency with the following big ideas of precalculus: invertibility of functions and its relationship to domains and range; advanced explorations of rational, polynomial, exponential, and logarithmic functions and their applications; building new functions from existing functions; unit-circle trigonometry, periodic functions, and their applications; statistical variability; arithmetic and geometric series; sigma notation; and an introduction to limits and rates of change.
During this course, students fine tune their algebra skills while diving deeper into concepts covered in previous years. Students also develop an understanding of new topics, which includes familiarity with six trigonometric functions; their inverses, graphs, and applications; trigonometric identities; the law of sines and cosines; introductions to parametric functions; and polar representations of equations and complex numbers. Students use random numbers and simulations as a tool to estimate complex probabilities and are introduced to the concept of a derivative in preparation for future courses in calculus. Lastly, students develop experience using computers and graphing calculators for problems that require computational or numerical solution methods.
Statistics and Probability
The world is awash in variability. How do we make sense of it? How can we detect genuine signals from random noise and make good conclusions about the future?
This course provides an in-depth study of statistics fundamentals: understanding variability in data. Students learn about variability by mastering four foundational components of the statistical process: how to read and summarize data (univariate and bivariate exploratory data analysis); how to produce valuable data (design of samples and experiments); the mathematical behavior of randomness (probability, simulations, the normal model, sampling distributions); and making conclusions from data (statistical inference using simulations, hypothesis tests, and confidence intervals).
Students develop their technical reading and writing skills as they analyze case studies and real data collected from in-class studies and experiments. Students use statistical software and technology to facilitate computational work, and they develop their skills in communicating substantive, correct conclusions with precision, accuracy, and proper context. Students frequently demonstrate their understanding through investigations and case studies on topics of their own choosing.
Calculus 1
This course is designed for students who have successfully completed Precalculus and Trigonometry or have demonstrated calculus readiness in the Math Analysis elective. In this course, students develop fluency with the following core concepts of calculus: limits and continuity, derivatives and rates of change and their applications, integration and accumulation of change and their applications, and differential equations. Throughout the year, students fine tune their proof-writing skills and learn how to use theorems and definitions to make valid conclusions.
Students use limits to determine whether functions are continuous, to determine the instantaneous rate of change of a function, and to evaluate the area under a graph. They explore derivatives and approximate functions using linearization. They gain strategies for modeling problems involving related rates and optimization and can use derivatives and integrals to answer questions about straight-line motion and other applied contexts—for example, determining the dimensions of a soda can that costs the least to manufacture.
Students learn to write integrals as a limit of a Riemann sum and approximate them using rectangles and trapezoids. We solve problems related to volume using cross sections, discs, washers, and cylindrical shells and solve separable differential equations and plot and analyze their slope fields. During class, students regularly collaborate on assignments while they work through these ideas and present their findings to their peers. Small projects involving modeling are interspersed throughout the year. Lastly, students continue to develop experience using computers and graphing calculators for problems that require computational or numerical solution methods.
Calculus 2
In this course, students deepen their understanding of differential and integral calculus with improper integrals, Euler’s method, logistic differential equations, integration with partial fractions, integration by parts, and using integrals to compute arc length. Students develop fluency with the following core concepts of calculus: parametric equations; polar and vector-valued functions; infinite sequences and series; linear algebra; and complex numbers, functions, and roots.
Students are introduced to the algebra of vectors and matrices and use their understanding of pivot positions to answer questions about systems of linear equations, linear independence, and the span of a set of vectors. Students use parametric equations and vector-valued functions to understand the position of a particle moving in a plane, and can calculate velocity, speed, and acceleration of a particle moving along a curve. Students learn to graph and find the areas bounded by polar curves, and we study the algebra of complex numbers in both rectangular and polar form. By understanding the graphs and areas bounded by polar curves, students can, for example, estimate the number of people seated in a music hall the shape of a cardioid.
We dive deep into the use of infinite power series to represent and estimate more complicated functions. Students become fluent with tests to determine the convergence and divergence of infinite series, and can approximate functions with Taylor and Maclaurin polynomials, and provide an error-bound analysis of such approximations. In class, students spend much of their time exploring these ideas in groups and presenting their findings. They are routinely encouraged to question why theorems and formulas are true and demand proofs to justify their use. Lastly, students continue to develop their experience using computers and graphing calculators for problems that require computational or numerical solution methods.
MATHEMATICS ELECTIVE, SPRING SEMESTER
Mathematical Analysis and Functions
Students may elect to take this course simultaneously with Integrated III. Because of the fast pace of the course and its ambitious agenda, enrollment requires Mathematics Department approval and is recommended to students who are interested in substantial work outside of class. This course exposes students to mathematical concepts and topics essential for success in a first-year calculus course, and—in rare cases—students who demonstrate readiness may be approved to advance directly to Calculus I the following year.
Students will explore the following units: 1) Unit Circle Trigonometry and Periodic Functions, 2) Analyzing Functions and Linear Transformations of Functions, 3) Arithmetic and Geometric Series and Sigma Notation, and 4) Exploring Limits through Advanced Polynomial and Rational Functions. Advanced algebraic techniques and sophisticated use of mathematical technology to solve problems are interwoven throughout every lesson.
Upper School
Languages
Spanish I
This is a non-native Spanish course intended to provide a general introduction to the Spanish language. Through practice in and out of class, students work toward meeting the “Novice High” level of proficiency as outlined by the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL). The course focuses on sound system, pronunciation, functional vocabulary related to everyday life, cultural information, and basic grammatical structures that concentrate primarily on the present tense.
Students engage with short readings, films, and recorded conversations on topics like introductions/greetings, the running of the bulls, and dating; students also study music such as “Los pollitos dicen,” “Corre Corre Corazon,” y “Rie y Llora.” The course emphasizes the acquisition of four skills: listening, speaking, reading, and writing. The main objective of the course is to give students the opportunity to carry on simple conversations in Spanish, as well as compare their own culture to that of the Spanish-speaking world.
Spanish II
In this course, through practice in and out of class, students work toward meeting the “Intermediate Low” level of proficiency as outlined by the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL). Students continue the development of all modalities of language: listening, speaking, reading, and writing.
This course includes a greater focus on grammatical structures and verb conjugations (tenses). Having mastered the present tense, students expand their study to the preterite and imperfect tenses. With room for flexibility, we cover topics that include but are not limited to: travel, daily routines, food and restaurants, holidays, social occasions, and media and technology.
Spanish III
Students enrolled in this course develop strong linguistic skills while increasing their understanding of the cultural products, practices, and perspectives of Spanish-speaking peoples. Students develop comfort speaking in several tenses—including the present, the preterite, and the future—and using colloquial expressions at a conversational speed. Students also use their knowledge of vocabulary and grammar to analyze authentic texts, engage in conversation, and write in idiomatic style.
This course allows students to engage in conversation, form opinions, and explore topics that include: how people are educated by different communities, how people individuate themselves, how technology is affecting the world (with sub topics that include how technology affects health care and one’s well-being), and how our society has come to judge beauty and aesthetics. The objective is for students to engage and develop the following domains: interpersonal communication, presentational speaking, presentational writing, interpretive listening, interpretive reading, and cultural comparison.
Spanish IV: Language and Culture
In this course, students speak Spanish almost exclusively. The course provides opportunities for cultural comparisons within the majority of Spanish-speaking countries and Los Angeles at large, while using a variety of instructional materials, including: authentic written materials, music, film, news media, interviews, and literature.
The course provides opportunities for students to practice Spanish in authentic conversations surrounding unit themes. Students make meaning and interpret a variety of material in Spanish and provide their written and oral presentation on several topics. Some of the readings include: La Otra Cara de América by Jorge Ramos, Isabel Allende’s work, and excerpts from Gabriel García Marquez, among many others. The course also provides opportunities for students to write extended essays in Spanish as well as shorter essays, and other various forms of writing.
Spanish V: Literature
This course, conducted exclusively in Spanish, introduces students to the major literary movements in Spain, Latin America, and the United States. Students critically analyze representative works of prose, poetry, and drama, and draw connections between various traditions and contexts. We cover a wide range of literary movements, including Medieval literature, Romanticism, Naturalism, Generation 98 and Modernism, the Latin American Boom, along with contemporary works from the United States and Spain.
Students explore a number of themes across different works, including: societies in contact, gender construction, time and space, the creative process, and interpersonal relationships. Throughout the course, students contribute to individual readings, discussions, projects, dramatizations, letters, posters, essays, and presentations—reflecting on the characteristics of major literary movements and the forces that shaped them. Readings include: Hombres necios que acusáis by Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, La Casa de Bernarda Alba by Federico García Lorca, and La segunda carta de relación by Hernán Cortés.
Upper School
Visual & Performing Arts
VISUAL ART, FALL AND SPRING SEMESTER
Visual Art
This course emphasizes creativity, concept development, and scale using diverse materials and techniques to create unique two-dimensional and three-dimensional forms. Students apply art techniques and expand visual art skills by using a wide range of tools and materials. Students delve on graphite, pen and ink, 3D printing, sculpture, paint, and sculpture. Projects emphasize creative thinking and problem-solving skills to initiate the creative process from concept sketches to finalized polished art pieces. Students work with their peers in order to critique and look at their artwork through a growth mindset. We learn about contemporary and historical artists that range from Kehinde Wiley to John Singer Sargent in order to expand our artist vocabulary and literacy. Students develop an understanding of each material in order to construct a personal portfolio.
VISUAL ART, SPRING SEMESTER
Ceramics
Do you remember drawing a heart on a foggy window, dragging a stick on the beach to spell out your name, doodling on the margins of your paper as your teacher lectures or while on a phone call? As humans we all draw in one way or another, and this course offers the time and space to reconnect with our innate instinct to leave marks on paper and beyond. Students become intimately familiar with line as they develop hand-eye coordination and depict the world around them.
Students respond to journal prompts and engage in class discussions on topics such as the relationship between visual art and everyday life and the relationship between art and social movements. Students work with a range of materials such as inks, markers, and cyanotypes, and study the work of contemporary artists such as Manuel Lopez, Julie Mehretu, and Shizu Saldamando.
VISUAL ART, FALL SEMESTER
Digital Illustration
In this course, students explore illustration in the digital realm with an emphasis on traditional illustration skills: visual problem-solving, rendering, and drawing, while exploring the digital possibilities to execute the artwork. Studio work-time is dedicated to conceptual prompts as well as technical execution, with students learning to render their work using the tablet pen. The primary software utilized for production is Adobe Photoshop, and mixing media is encouraged. Coursework also includes a historical analysis of traditional and contemporary illustration. Students will investigate the works of historical illustrators such as N.C. Wyeth, while also studying contemporary digital illustrators such as James Jean and Tomer Hanuka. Students will also explore how Illustration is used in the real world, and will utilize illustration practices in the work field.
VISUAL ART, SPRING SEMESTER
Graphic Design
This course explores the use of the design process in utilizing both words and images to create meaning and communicate ideas to tackle real world design challenges. Students learn the design process, work with design software, and collaborate with clients and classmates throughout the course. The primary software students will use is Adobe Illustrator as well as Indesign. Students are encouraged to think critically and design for real world users. Students will study historical designers such as Massimo Vignelli, but will also analyze contemporary designers such as Michael Beirut. Students will be able to identify both good and bad design in the world around them, and will see the design world with a critical lens.
VISUAL ART
Portfolio Building
In this year-long course, advanced visual arts students build a portfolio of their strongest visual and conceptual work. Students study modern and contemporary artists and artmaking techniques as they reflect on their own process and history of artmaking. In conversation with visiting artists, students ask: How do artists present themselves? How do artists describe their work? How does an artist build a network?
At the beginning of the course, students write a statement of inquiry, outlining the essential questions they hope to answer through their concentration (a sustained investigation of a theme, medium, element of art, or concept). Throughout the course, students are challenged to develop and diversify their concentration through individual and collaborative art practices. At the culmination of the course, each student produces a portfolio of work and a written artist statement to be exhibited in the spring art show.
THEATRE, SPRING SEMESTER
Playwriting
In this performing arts course, students explore a range of dramatic styles for writing monologues, scenes, and short plays. Studying modern and contemporary playwriting, students read and analyze the work of Katori Hall, Dominique Morisseau, Suzan-Lori Parks, Ntozake Shange, Anna Deavere Smith, Tennesee Williams, and Luis Valdez. Students discuss the impact of playwriting in different cultural and historical contexts, as well as discuss various plays’ production value in the current year.
Crucial to the study of playwriting, students are encouraged to develop their unique voice and style in a workshop environment with consistent feedback from their peers. Workshops are guided by the questions: What draws us into this work? What connections do we make? Where do we want to know more? Students are assessed on their ability to write, workshop, revise, and produce their own original work in a writing portfolio and ten-minute play festival at the culmination of the course.
MUSIC
Band
Are you interested in taking your music making to the next level? This performing arts course is an introductory study of ensemble playing in commercial genres including rock, soul, pop, and country focusing on 1950–2020. Students learn the fundamentals of music through studying band instruments, music notation, ear training, scales, harmony, and rhythm.
Everyone is encouraged to explore multiple instruments and learn the basics of drums, bass, piano, and guitar. The majority of class time is spent working toward a live performance at the end of the term. Additional projects include recording, performance critiques, and album reviews. The class is hands-on and much of the learning takes place via peer-to-peer modeling, with an emphasis on band ethics, personal responsibility, and generosity.
MUSIC
Advanced Band
Do you already know how to play an instrument well? Are you curious about what it feels like to be a bandleader? This performing arts course is designed for those students wanting to take more control of their own musical direction. Designated band leaders choose the repertoire for each group and generate the materials needed for rehearsal, including demo recordings and charts. Teachers act much more as collaborators and offer assistance with recording technology, stage settings, group discussions, and band etiquette.
Music theory, ear training, and instrumental command are expected. The majority of class time is spent working toward a live performance at the end of the term. The class is hands-on and much of the learning takes place via peer-to-peer modeling. Students with exceptional ability are given independent study projects. Teacher approval is required.
MUSIC
Music Production
Music Production offers an engaging exploration of music creation and community building through hands-on experience with Ableton Live and the Ableton Push. Students develop practical skills to produce complete audio works tailored to their own stylistic and genre choices.
Beyond personal creation, the course delves into the rich history of influential music producers, the evolution of music genres, and foundational production styles. Through collaborative group discussions, constructive critiques, and analyses of iconic works, students refine their artistic and technical abilities.
The course culminates with a transition from the studio to the stage, where students showcase their creations in dynamic settings such as “Beats Lunch” and other school-wide concerts, celebrating their growth and fostering our vibrant musical community.
FILM AND PHOTO
Photography
In this photography course students will explore visual storytelling through photography. Students will take a critical approach to photography as they analyze works from the past in an effort to create a new future. What is the story? What is left out of the image?
Throughout the course, students will utilize mobile devices and DSLRs to learn exposure, composition, and storytelling. Students will be presented with a journal that will be used throughout the course to capture ideas and experiences. These journals will serve as inspiration for their photographs as they learn to tell their own visual story.
FILM AND PHOTO
Film
In this introductory film course students will learn about the history and technology of cinema. By focusing on the early days of filmmaking students will learn about the art form in a more critical manner. Students will be presented with filmmakers that have been left out of the conversation as we fill in the gaps in cinema history.
Students will be assessed by written analysis as well as group discussions on different themes throughout the history of cinema.
FILM AND PHOTO
Broadcast Journalism
In this course, students will create a student-run news station that showcases the community around them. As students create and run their news station they will discuss the following questions:
What is the future of broadcasting in a dense information age?
What is news and what is opinion?
How can we become better journalists through the way we ask questions and provide information?
How can we use media as an artifact and capture time through our broadcasts?
Using multiple different forms of technology students will learn how to write, produce and broadcast non-fiction storytelling. Over the duration of the course, students will become journalists broadcasting local stories within the school community and city.
Upper School
Religion, Ethics,
and Philosophy
REP 9, SPRING SEMESTER
New Testament
In Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time, the late biblical scholar Marcus Borg notes that it is useful to refer to the image we create of Jesus as a sketch rather than a picture or portrait because a sketch “suggests broad strokes—a clear outline without much precision” (Borg, 28).
Every student, regardless of their experience with scripture or organized religion, has assumptions about who or what Jesus is or was. Students begin the course by reflecting on the experiences and backgrounds that have influenced the sketch of Jesus they carry around in their head.
Throughout the semester, students examine the history of the library that we call the New Testament and learn the tools that are necessary to read the Gospels in the historical context of Jesus and his first followers. Through close and critical reading of the text, students add to, clarify, and hopefully complicate their understanding of Jesus of Nazareth.
As we do this work, we reflect on the ways understandings of Jesus continue to impact the modern world and we ask big questions, including the following:
Why do our images of Jesus matter?
How did the library of texts we call the New Testament come to exist and why did its authors write it?
Who was Jesus of Nazareth and what can we learn about Jesus from scripture?
Who did Jesus think he was?
How did early Jesus-followers use and adapt existing scripture, symbols, and information technology?
What did Jesus mean when he talked about The Kingdom of God? What might this Kingdom mean for us today?
REP 10, FALL SEMESTER
Encountering God
What do we mean by God/god? What grounds do we have for saying that God exists? What might belief in God mean? And what would make a God worthy of believing in? These questions have taken a distinct turn in Western Christian philosophical discourse in the Modern era, especially in the wakes of the Enlightenment, scientific discoveries, the atrocities of World War II, and the liberation movements of the 20th Century.
Yet while concepts of God have shifted, belief in God has not disappeared—despite many predictions that it would. Even in an age characterized by decreased religious practice, new religious conflict and new understandings of God have surfaced. The purpose of this course is for students to map some of these new questions and understandings in ways that increase religious literacy and generate more light than heat. Through a mix of close reading, analytical writing, personal written reflections, and playful observation, our praxis invites students to consider what it is about the human condition that keeps the God questions alive.
Upper School
Physical Education
Dance
This course will introduce students to the practice of creative movement, dance, musicality, choreography, and self expression. After learning the history of where dance came from, students will learn the basics of a variety of dance styles, including contemporary, modern, jazz, tap, ballet, and hip hop. This course will prompt assignments that require research of the art forms leading icons, choreographers, and founders to better understand its roots, as well as analysis of a dance performance. Students should expect to train physically, improving technique and ability, as well as creatively as they eventually choreograph and produce their own movement scores. Students will also be challenged to memorize and perform choreography, showcasing their hard work at the end of the semester. Overall, this course will strive to be a fun, safe, and inclusive space where individuals can explore, move, and learn something new about dance.
Health and Wellness
This course provides the basis to help students attain and maintain healthy lifelong behaviors. The course is designed to assist students in obtaining accurate information, developing lifelong positive attitudes and behaviors, and making wise decisions related to their personal health. Study includes the following units: 1) the immune system, 2) nutrition and wellness, 3) self-esteem and values, 4) addiction, and 5) careers in health and wellness.
In unit 1, students learn to describe what the immune system is, identify the organs and tissues associated with the immune system, and specify their locations and functions. They also learn to identify and implement healthy living strategies to help strengthen the immune system. In unit 2, students learn the role of nutrients, the principles of a healthy diet, dietary recommendations, the role of nutrition in disease prevention, and strategies for safe and healthy weight management. Students learn the relationship between their choices and their personal wellness along with how to apply the goal-setting process when practicing behavior change to improve. In unit 3, students reflect on who they are and how they can be the best version of themselves. Students learn about topics such as personality, goal-setting, developing healthy habits, self-worth, self-advocacy, and planning for the future. In unit 4, students learn the psychology behind addiction, how families and peers influence decision-making, and preventative techniques to combat the cycle of addiction. Lastly, in unit 5, students conduct research of emerging occupations in the field of health and wellness.
Personal Fitness
This course is designed to give students the tools and knowledge necessary to achieve their fitness goals. The course begins by asking students what they hope to achieve during the semester. Here we are looking for specific goals that will require dedication to achieve. Students are also invited to create their own fitness tests to help measure their progress. The students maintain a weekly plan of workouts including cardiovascular, strength, and sport-specific workouts. Cardiovascular and strength training take place in the SLA fitness room. Students are required to plan sessions that show detailed progression and clear understanding of how the workouts will affect their body and move them towards their goals. Lectures, class discussions, self assessments, and educational handouts are also a valuable component of the overall fitness regimen.
Studio Fitness
The Studio Fitness course at SLA is a combination of three movement systems that are most commonly completed in a studio setting: Pilates, Yoga, and Dance. This course will offer an introduction to each practice, allowing the student to discover new ways to move their body and relieve stress. Each style will bring its own set of movement vocabularies, exercise intentions, and creative practices, while increasing body awareness and improving overall health. So whether the student is improving core stability and alignment in Pilates, flexibility and flow in Yoga, or creativity and collaboration in dance, this course will connect the student with their body and leave them feeling stronger than ever. End of unit challenges for students will include creating personal exercise flows, memorizing anatomical terms throughout the body, as well as choreographing and analyzing dance phrases. Helpful texts will include “Pilates for Everyone: 50 Exercises for every type of body” by Micki Harvard, “Pilates Anatomy” by Rael Isacowits and Karen Clippinger, “Discovering Dance” by Gayle Kassin, “Hatha Yoga Illustrated” by Martin Kirk, Brooke Boon, Daniel DiTuro, and“Yoga for Everybody” by Dianne Bondy. I look forward to creating a safe space for these three Studio Fitness practices at the School of Los Angeles.
Complete Upper School Course List
(f) = Fall semester course || (s) = Spring semester course || (y) = year-long course
Literature
8 semester credits required
Literature 9: Intro to Literary Study (f)
Literature 9: Los Angeles Literature (s)
Literature 10–12: Students select semester courses from the options below; selections are paired with a History course in the same discipline:
Black Literature - Between Afropessism(s) and Afrofuturism(s) (f)
Environmental Literature - Back to Nature or Back to Future? (f)
Latinx Literature - Magical Realism (f)
Class Literature - Message to the Grassroots: Literatures of the Dispossessed (s)
Queer Literature - Assimilation or Liberation? (s)
European Literature - Dissolving Boundaries: Forms of Possession in European Literature (s)
ELECTIVES:
Shakespeare: The Great Tragedies (grades 11–12) (f)
History
8 semester credits required
History 9: US Government and Politics (f)
History 9: Los Angeles History (s)
History 10–12: Students select semester courses from the options below; selections are paired with a Literature course in the same discipline:
Black History - Loving U is Complicated (f)
Environmental History - Agency or Futility?: Unequal Voices and the Global Environmental Crisis (f)
Latinx History - Latin America: Identity at the Intersection of Local and Global (f)
Class History - The Birth of the Global Market and the Development of Capitalism (s)
Queer History - Queer Pasts, Homonational Futures?: Deviance and Punishment from the late 19th Century to the Post-Marriage Era (s)
European History - From Absolutism to Uncertainty: Europe from 1648-1919 (s)
ELECTIVES:
A People’s History of WWII and the New Deal (f)
A Cultural History of Asian Immigration to the US (grades 9–12) (s)
Political Populism and Conspiracy Theory (grades 11–12) (s)
Science
6 semester credits required
Science 9: Chemistry (y)
Science 10: Physics (y)
Science 11: Biology (y)
ELECTIVES:
Astronomy (grades 11-12) (f, s)
Computer Science: Javascript (grades 9–12) (f, s)
Computer Science: Python and AI (grades 11-12) (f, s)
Computer Science: Coding Hub (11-12) (s)
Mathematics
6 semester credits required
Students rising from SLA’s grade eight enter Integrated Math II. The Mathematics Department assesses newly enrolled students and supports them in course placement.
Integrated Mathematics I: Algebra and Introductory Geometry (y)
Integrated Mathematics II: Geometry, Probability, and Intermediate Algebra (y)
Integrated Mathematics III: Advanced Algebra and Analysis of Functions (y)
Precalculus and Trigonometry (y)
Following successful completion of Precalculus and Trigonometry, students may choose to enroll in either Statistics and Probability or Calculus I.
Statistics and Probability (y)
Calculus I (y)
Calculus II (y)
ELECTIVES:
Mathematical Analysis and Functions (s)
Students may elect to take this course simultaneously with Integrated III. This course exposes students to mathematical concepts and topics essential for success in a first-year calculus course, and—in rare cases—students who demonstrate readiness may be approved to advance directly to Calculus I the following year.
Language
6 semester credits required
All students take a yearly Spanish assessment, which helps determine their course placement.
Spanish I (y)
Spanish II (y)
Spanish III (y)
Spanish IV: Language and Culture (y)
Spanish V: Literature (y)
Visual and Performing Arts (VAPA)
4 semester credits required
Visual Arts
Portfolio Building (grades 11–12) (f, s)
Digital Illustration (f)
Visual Art (grades 9-12) (f,s)
Ceramics (grades 9-12) (s)
Theatre
Playwriting (grades 9–12) (s)
Music
Band (grades 9–12) (f, s)
Advanced Band (grades 10–12) (y)
Music Production - Artist in Residence Course (grades 10-12) (f)
Film & Media
Film (grades 9-12) (f, s)
Photography (grades 9-12) (f, s)
Broadcast Journalism (grades 9-12) (f, s)
Religion, Ethics, and Philosophy (REP)
2 semester credits required
REP 9: New Testament (s)
REP 10: Encountering God (f)
Physical Education
2 semester credits required
Health & Wellness (f)
Studio Fitness (f, s)
Dance (s)
Personal Fitness (s)