Private Middle School

Everything Art
This class is designed to expose middle school students to various processes, techniques, and methods to create their own artwork in multiple mediums. We will create multi-dimensional compositions with various materials, including paint, images, found objects, glass and ceramic tile, and textiles. Techniques will include collage, assemblage, and the use of multiple mediums in one piece.

Fashion Upcycling
Upcycling can give new life to old items in your wardrobe and extend the time they are being used. It can also use materials that were destined for the landfill to create fun, wearable art that can start a serious conversation about how clothing choices impact waterways, ocean life, and our natural world. Although upcycling isn’t a new phenomenon, it continues to gain popularity as consumers become increasingly environmentally conscious with their shopping habits. In this class on repurposing and responsible fashion, middle school artists will learn how to turn textile waste into stylish new pieces and accessories.

Character and Culture (Instructor Collaboration)
At Appamada School we assess initiative, perseverance, effort, and participation in our course evaluations. However, we hold the standard of maintaining a safe (physical and emotional), inclusive (gender, race, sexual orientation, age, background of any type), and compassionate culture to a higher standard than we hold our academics. This class for middle and high school embodies this philosophy and gives all of our students the opportunity to consciously curate and evolve the community we are all a part of. Some topics you can expect to study and discuss are integrity, diversity, inclusion, bullying, school policies, creating a safe space, boundaries, human connection, Appamada values, vulnerability, and mindfulness.

Wood Carving
(Admission to this class will require pre-approval by the instructor based on a one-on-one interview before you sign up for classes. Open to middle and high school students. )

For thousands of years, carpenters worldwide have used wood to build shelters, furnishings, and works of art. This class is designed to teach students how to design and create carpentry projects. We will cover various carving techniques for designing, planning, cutting, shaping, and finishing projects during class. Students will work with the instructor to create individual projects to be completed over the course of the semester using the techniques that we have covered.

Soccer
How is it that a country like Croatia, with a population of less than four million, can make the world cup, while a Country like the United States with a population of more than one-hundred times that amount can fail to even qualify? In this class for middle and high students, we’re going to explore the histories and infrastructures of countries that have historically had success at the game of football in an effort to understand what sets them apart. We will also play a lot of soccer, practicing individual skills and drills with the aim of getting better as a team.

Team Games
This course is designed to teach middle and high school students the correct and safe way to play team games. The games played in this class will fall into two main categories: core games and bonus games. The core game units for the semester will be determined by a vote on the first day of class. Options include but are not limited to: Volleyball, Basketball, Ultimate Frisbee, Baseball, Football, and Soccer. Throughout the semester, we will also spend class periods playing bonus games such as Kickball, Capture the Flag, Foursquare, etc. Bonus games will be played as often as the class’s learning progress within our core game units allows.

Writing and Literature A/B/C
The curriculum in Writing & Literature has the purpose of enhancing middle school students’ ability to express their thoughts, feelings, and opinions in an articulate and meaningful manner. Students will practice technical writing in the form of research papers, essays, and critiques of text. They will also practice creative writing by writing personal narratives, poetry, short stories, and plays.

Who Dunnit?
This middle school course will focus on classic crime fiction. It will dip into the subgenres of sci-fi, steampunk, and others as well. The intent is to read and analyze stories with complicated plots, crimes, evidence, and memorable characters, as all intersect to create stories that showcase the best and worst of humanity’s dance with the judicial system.

World Building
This is a two-period class, open to a mix of middle and high school students, in which worlds will be shaped and scoured and realities crafted and challenged. The core idea of creating worlds is the main purpose, but the medium of what that looks like is very much fluid. This course taught by two instructors, one focused on narrative development and the other on rendering the created worlds in 3D models, computer design, and other tech-based means.

Math Fundamentals
In Math Fundamentals, middle school students will be working to improve their number sense and computational skills. This works to help with their mathematical reasoning so students will be ready to learn the fundamental concepts of symbolic reasoning.

Pre-Algebra
In this class for middle schoolers, we will be working to improve their number sense and computational skills while developing their critical thinking and problem-solving strategies.

Math Immersion
The Math Immersion class is designed to prepare middle school math students for high school level math courses. Students are exposed to many of the topics that are covered in high school and work at a challenging pace to establish a foundation for reasoning with unknown values.

Unchained Reactions
This middle school course will introduce students to the 6 simple machines used by many engineers: wedge, screw, lever, wheel and axle, inclined plane, and pulley. Students will be constructing our very own Rube Goldberg machines throughout the semester using any items available to us!

12st Century Music Fan
In this middle school course, we are going to explore what it means to be a music fan in the 21st century. We’ll talk about the different eras of music and some of the hallmark recording techniques that dictated the aesthetics of those specific time periods, cover how apps like TikTok and Spotify have disrupted the music industry and fundamentally changed what people are exposed to and how they form their tastes, changing popularities of different mediums (CDs, vinyl, mp3, etc.) and go over specific methods and avenues of finding more obscure and underground music both of the new and old varieties.

Audio Production
Digital audio workstations have become instruments in themselves, and if you know how to use them effectively, you can bypass a lot of the impediments that formerly prevented bands and artists from being able to make records. To that end, the middle and high school students in this class will become familiar with a DAW, either FL Studio, Reason, or Cubase (if a student wants to use a different program, that’s fine, as long as they have access to it). Using these programs, we will explore different methods of making music, such as: using MIDI, micing real instruments and amplifiers, and sampling.

Guitar, Bass & Ukelele
While it’s not a perfect instrument, the guitar provides just the right amount of harmonic options and complexity while still being intuitive and easy to use. There are many ways to play the guitar, including: tapping, pull-offs, hammer-ons, palm muting, vibrato, and finger picking. Your style on the instrument will be a direct result of how you combine these different techniques to get to that musical pearl that sounds like you. Open to middle and high school students.

Piano Fundamentals
This mixed middle and high school class will go over ways to attack the piano to make its eighty-eight black and white keys less intimidating. We will learn the four basic triads, how to use inversions to maximize efficient voice leading and economy of movement, how to identify notes and rhythmic durations on sheet music, and tricks to help remember the number of sharps and flats in each key.

Intro to Psychology: Sensation & Perception
Have you ever wondered why our brain falls for optical illusions? How about when our brain makes us feel in motion when we could be standing still? Open to both middle and high school students, this course will primarily explore the basic visual processes of perception (and will ultimately introduce students to all of the bases of perception) along with a brief overview of psychology as a whole.

Cultural Chemistry.

What products should we put into and on our bodies? How do we keep our air and water clean? Why are kitchens the most polluted rooms in our homes? These questions, and plenty more, will be explored throughout Cultural Chemistry! This class will involve the study of subatomic particles, atoms, and molecules. Middle school students will learn the personalities and behaviors of these building blocks, then use that understanding to investigate and propose solutions to real-world problems.

Disease Detectives
What are viruses? How do they compare with bacteria? How and why do viruses enter our bodies? What do they do when they get inside? Are they actual living creatures, or just some kind of weird zombie/alien hybrid that hijacks our cells? Middle and high school students will investigate all of those questions in this class!

World Geography
This is a student-suggested course covering the basics of identification and understanding of all the global boundaries of the current world map. Middle school students will learn the key information surrounding each country in each continent. Our focus on the major world players will be basic physical geography, ethnic and religious groups, political structure, and key events in the country’s history.

Mythology
This middle school course is an exploration of the myths of the ancient world. The major focus will be on the mythology of the Greek and Roman civilizations. Other civilizations will also be covered but not as extensively. The students will learn about the stories that have emerged around the gods and goddesses of the ancient world. Conflicts and literature that resulted in the mythological worship of these idols will be analyzed.

Coding in C#
As we venture further into the modern era of technology, computer programming has become an integral part of our everyday lives. From smart devices, to social media, to video games, just about anything you encounter in your day-to-day life runs on code. This entry-level class is for both middle and high school students who want to learn how to code computer programs themselves!

World Crafters
In World Crafters, you’ll bring your very own fantasy worlds into reality! Learn how to harness powerful world creation tools such as Unity, Blender, Minecraft, and more to build out all those breathtaking landscapes and iconic landmarks that dot your virtual world. Middle and high school students not only explore techniques of world creation, but also how to achieve cohesion with the theme and lore of your world. Let your imagination run wild as you bring your out-of-this-world ideas into reality!

Yearbook (MS and HS)
A yearbook is more than just your average novel – it’s an unforgettable story told through a plethora of experiences coming together as one, created through photographs, interviews, projects, and more! In Yearbook, middle and high school students will unite as a team to share our experiences and adapt them all into a piece of art that we will surely remember for years to come.

Improv
A favorite of the school has been Improv, which is the act of spontaneously creating characters and scenes; it is about living in the moment, thinking on your feet, and making gifts for audiences. Over the course of the semester, students hone their skills in creation and teamwork, collectively creating scenes and characters. This class is open to both middle and high school students.

Theatre Tech
Technical theatre is the design of lighting, costume, set, sound, properties, and more. This class is intended to teach core design and build principles middle and high schoolers, as well as to incubate the designs for the high school production and other theatre classes. Per students’ request, the first segment of this class will likely be focused on costumes and makeup. As the semester moves on, we will work to design and build props, set pieces, costumes, and more for the high school show.

Ren Faire, Cosplay, and Other Off-Stage Theatre: A Devising Class
Renaissance Faires, like the Sherwood Forest Faire, are forms of immersive theatre that combine pop culture and imaginative interpretations of history. Cosplay, similarly, seeks to take popular cultural products and make them theatrical. In this Devising Class for middle school students, we will study and create theatrical moments inspired by the kinds of theatre that happen outside of the classroom.

Introductory Spanish
This class brings the study of the Spanish language and culture to new learners. Middle and high school students can expect to understand and use familiar everyday expressions and very basic phrases aimed at satisfying needs of a concrete type.

Intermediate Spanish
In this class, middle and high school students will feel confident using the language more independently. Learners will gain an understanding of familiar matters that are regularly encountered in work, school, leisure, and other environments. Students will deal with the most likely situations to arise while traveling in an area where the language is spoken, and they will produce simple connected texts on topics that are familiar or of personal interest.

Bilingual Worldviews
Culture is something diverse and wonderful where people, beliefs, traditions, language, food, music, education, and politics merge. We are living in the age of Globalization. Gone are the days when people used to stay centric only about their own heritage. If you are a middle or high school student who adores reading and gaining more knowledge regarding the widespread range of cultures all around the globe, then you are in the right spot. So fasten your seat belts because we are all set to take you on a trip to learn about many different societies, civilizations, cultures, and areas of the world.