Inquiry and Expression 9: Foundations is the required 9th grade course in the Inquiry and Expression sequence. Students will learn that strong writing begins with attentive reading and thoughtful questioning. They will develop foundational skills in analytical writing, narrative expression, and paragraph structure while learning the writing process—drafting, revising, and editing.

A Cultural History of the Modern World explores the development of the modern industrialized military state in the Ages of Exploration and Imperialism, and the subsequent creation of a global economy. The course culminates with the start of the Cold War and its reach into the modern conflicts around the world. Historical interactions of the Abrahamic religions, Confucian ideology, and other religious and cultural traditions are also included.

This course introduces students to the concepts of economics at the micro and macro levels. Students will learn how to think like economists. From September to December, they will study foundational concepts of microeconomics, such as opportunity cost, supply and demand, and economic efficiency. They will learn the basic concepts of market organization (such as monopoly, oligarchy, pure competition), firm decision making (such as production levels, pricing, purchasing, and shut down), market outcomes (such as profit and loss and equilibrium, surplus and shortage), and government influence upon individual markets (such as price controls and subsidies). From January to May students will study the foundational concepts of macroeconomics. They will learn how economists measure economic performance (such as inflation, GDP, unemployment, current account, national debt, and growth) how national economies function (such as the business cycle, the labor to capital ratio, trade, labor force participation, specialization, and environmental damage and protection), how government policy impacts national economic performance (such as tax policy, trade policy, regulation, monetary policy, and spending).

Humanities 11/Honors Humanities 11 explores the debates over rights throughout the American Experience. The course explores the philosophical and historical debates over rights before a United States existed, who determines rights in the United States, major debates concerning rights in the history of the United States, what happens when those rights are denied, and the role citizens play in the conversations around rights in a nation. All along, we will be combining the historical realities of the nation’s history with the complexities of many different voices and stories. A major thematic thread throughout the course will be that the history of the United States has been a continuous conflict between philosophical differences on local versus central control and individual versus societal rights. Understanding the stories of individuals (real and fictitious) and how those stories shape our own understanding of rights as well as the decisions made on rights in the United States is a central part of the course. By the end of the course, the goal will be to help students understand how these stories and decisions continue to shape the collective national identity and impact the ability of present and future generations to enact positive social and political change.