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Courses for 2008
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Phone: 401.863.1677
Often, people have big questions on their minds. Questions like: What makes you step up to the plate and do something? Whose stories haven’t been heard in U.S. History? How can the design of living things be explained? Most courses in high school do not address such far-reaching questions. There is not enough time, there is too much material to cover, or it j ust doesn’t fit into one “subject area.” At Brown Summer High School, we focus on
these big questions.Brown Summer High School’s “Essential Questions” courses all begin with a big question that doesn’t necessarily have one right answer. You will have a chance to explore the question by studying it from a variety of perspectives. You will work individually, in small groups, and as a class. At the end of the course, you will have a chance to show others what you have learned, not by taking a test, but more creatively, in a way that you and your teachers design together.
Summer 2008 students will participate in two of the following courses:
- How do stories of individuals challenge us to examine our stereotypes of others?
- How do our genes make us human?
- What impact does war have on the lives and personal histories of young people?
Course content is new,
so feel free to sign up for any class - even if
you've taken it at BSHS before!Courses
How do stories of individuals challenge us to examine our stereotypes of others?
By reading Persepolis, a graphic novel about a family living through the revolution in Iran, we will discuss how graphic representations like cartoons, pictures, and photos, give us a view of the world in a different way than words as well as understand those who are different from us. Using the graphic novel, poetry about Arab-Americans, a short story and a movie, we will bring together different perspectives on Islam in the U.S. and the world. We will examine how freedom of speech can both empower the individual and feel threatening to others. We will also write and perform our own stories and discuss how they relate to broader social and political issues in the U.S. and the world. (English)
How do our genes make us human?
Biology unraveled many of the secrets of human heredity in the last half of the 20th century. Within the last decade the entire human genome has been identified. This new knowledge will make possible advances curing disease, understanding development and aging, and, perhaps, changing the human animal. This course will provide the opportunity to work with DNA, observe inheritance in humans and other organisms, and discuss some of the challenging scientific, social, and ethical issues which our new knowledge raises. (Science)
What impact does war have on the lives and personal histories of young people?
Students will read excerpts from Ishmael Beah’s A Long Way Gone and Jasmina Dervisevic-Cesic’s memoir, The River Runs Salt, Runs Sweet: A Memoir of Visegrad, Bosnia. Throughout the course students will critically analyze each memoir and compare and contrast them to one another and their own lives. Students will have to think like historians, sociologists and geographers and will wrestle with important questions such as: Should world leaders consider the toll that war takes on children when deciding whether or not to go to war? Is it possible for youth to recover form the trauma of war? What can we learn from primary accounts of war that we can’t learn from secondary accounts? (Social Studies/History)
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