New Class Offerings Challenge Students’ Leadership, Learning Capacities

Among the visions we pursue here at Eagle Rock School and Professional Development Center is for each of our nation’s students to become meaningfully engaged in his or her own education. That objective sounds good on paper, but where it differs from other schools is that our own students — students here at Eagle Rock School — actually learn in part by engaging.

What is standard practice here at Eagle Rock — and what we have made available to our students for more than two decades — are both traditional and nontraditional classroom offerings that ignite the imagination, encourage curiosity, and prepare young minds for the real world.

Classes

With that in mind, we have just introduced seven new classes to the curriculum for this, the second half of our first trimester at Eagle Rock for 2018. These five-week classes join three 10-week classes that began in January and are still underway.

Those 10-week classes include Data Analysis, where students continue to use statistics to look for patterns to self-generated questions. A second 10-week class — Neuroscience — has students examining not only the physical makeup of the brain, but the physiology, or habits, of the human nervous system. And in Exposure, the third 10-week class, students have been mastering black & white photography, processing their film in a darkroom, and are now preparing their photographs for a public exhibition in just a few weeks.

Below is a brief description of the new classes at Eagle Rock that got underway just this week: Continue reading…

Personal Reflection Plays A Significant Role in Our Latest Class Offerings

As we reach the midpoint in in our winter/spring trimester, Eagle Rock School students find themselves wrapped up in unique classroom experiences that we believe will affect and influence the rest of their lives. What we offer here is the second installment of descriptions about the latest lineup of five- and 10-week classes, many of which offer Eagle Rock School students unmatched opportunities to reflect on who they are and what they stand for.

Eagle Rock Classes Graphic

The People’s History: In The People’s History, students are examining U.S. history through African American, American Indian, Asian American and Latino American points of view. Students are looking at individuals and groups that had an impact on history and their styles of change and leadership. A strong focus is on the importance of change as outside groups stepped in and collaborated in change efforts. By using perspectives on the past, we students are being encouraged to explore and construct ideas and or ways they can have an impact today and in the future through our own leadership for change.

Human Sexuality: While this class includes students exploring sex and sexual health from many different perspectives, this is definitely not your normal sex-education class. Students are looking closely at sexuality through different media, including newspapers, magazines, websites, documentaries, film, fiction and non-fiction and are improving their reading, writing and thinking skills in the process. The focus is on understanding data about sex and sexuality as we use that data to think about our future sexual health. In addition to working toward the creating and making healthy life choices power standard and distribution credit, students also receive human sexuality required experience credit.

Five-week classes for the second half of this trimester include:

Storytelling & Animation: Here, Eagle Rock School students are being introduced to various techniques of storytelling and stop-motion animation. As a result, they are engaged in a process that has them looking toward other methods of storytelling, including radio drama, long-form journalism and folk stories. In addition, they are learning techniques of Continue reading…