Bay Area BlendEd

Bay Area BlendEd was founded by Urban School and four other Bay Area independent schools in 2014. Now comprising seven regional high schools, the consortium brings our students a new level of engaging curriculum that takes advantage of the geography, talent and culture of the Bay Area.

Courses offered by the BlendEd Consortium combine face-to-face and online instruction and help our students prepare for the changing methods of instruction and communication they will see in college and in the workforce, while preserving the core relational culture and values that are at the heart of Urban’s and our partner schools’ educational missions.

BlendEd courses are interactive with significant time working online individually and in small groups, in occasional virtual class meetings, and with a minimum of three to five face-to-face sessions. These sessions will occur outside regular school hours and may occur on weekends. The face-to-face sessions may be held at one of the partner schools or at a specific location relating to the class topic. Three Urban 11th or 12th graders will be given spots for each of the courses. For additional information, please email Urban's BlendEd site coordinator Bethany Hellerich.

Note: most Bay Area BlendEd courses are based on a semester schedule. For Urban students, these courses will overlap portions of your winter or spring terms.

Bay Area BlendEd Consortium - Course Descriptions 2023-24

Summer/Fall 2023

Wilderness Studies

Full Year 2023-24

Multivariable Calculus (honors)

Fall 2023

Applied AI in Python
Astrophysics
Cinematic Storytelling: Fundamentals of Filmmaking
Intro to Comparative Ethnic Studies
Social Psychology

Spring 2024

Black Holes and Einstein’s Theory of Relativity
Cinematic Storytelling: Fundamentals of Filmmaking
Ecological Architecture
Financial Literacy
Food: A History
Gender Studies
Public Health & Vulnerable Populations
Social Psychology

Summer/Fall 2023
Term Dates: July 7 to October 6, 2023

Wilderness Studies
Conservation and Management of Public Lands in the Western United States – A Wilderness Critique

For thousands of years, humans have lived in the wild spaces and landscapes that make up the West. And, for the last 200 years, humans have ravaged many of these spaces. And yet, in 2023, large tracts of wild spaces still exist within the Western United States.

This course will examine the value of “wilderness” and public land in the year 2023. What is the value of these lands (and waters) to the people who use, manage, conserve, appreciate, or have traditionally lived on them? We will use a week-long field experience and a weekend expedition to probe both the historical and current relationships between humans and these wild, largely untamed landscapes. Guiding questions for this course are:

What is the role of humans in managing nature, wildlife, & wilderness?
Who is “wilderness” for? What groups have been historically underrepresented in conversations related to “wilderness”? What effects may these exclusions have on society and the environment? How do we begin to change this story?
How do we balance the preservation of public land with the need for local people to make a livelihood off the land?
What, if any, models can we use to balance the preservation of wildland ecosystems and the current and future use of public land by humans for tourism, recreation, and utilitarian purposes? Can there be any land that humans are not managing or influencing?
How important is collaboration between governments, non-profits, businesses, user groups, and cities in the process of public land conservation?

To answer these questions, students will participate in backpacking and camping trips to immerse themselves in the lands we’re studying while engaging with local experts who approach these landscapes from different ethical and practical approaches. Readings will provide additional knowledge in both the history of these spaces as well as current information and debates surrounding the use and management of the particular wild locations that we visit.

This trimester intensive course will include Zoom group discussions as well as four face-to-face trips including the two intensive field experiences. Field experiences will involve rigorous academic work and will be physically demanding. Students will maintain a cultural and natural history journal throughout the course and engage in weekly readings, discussions, and reflections. Students will be asked to weigh in on current events, science, and legislation throughout the course by considering the significance of “wilderness” and nature from their own personal lens, the field experiences from this course, and their understandings of the cultural, political, ethical, historical, and economic perspectives addressed in the course. Assessments in this course will require that students research and evaluate “wilderness” areas and public lands and, applying their learnings from the class, make recommendations (based on sound research and the understanding of multiple perspectives) regarding the future of the land. Students will create a podcast related to the theme of wilderness as their final project for this course.

For additional information, including FAQs, important dates, and application, please visit: www.blendedconsortium.org/wilderness-studies/

FULL YEAR 2023-24

Multivariable Calculus
This course covers the typical third semester of college Calculus (typically called Calculus III), specifically the extension of differentiation and integration techniques to two or more variables, the study of vector calculus, and the application of these concepts to vector fields. The course wraps up with the "big three" theorems—Green's, Stokes', and Divergence—which are important in the study of fluid dynamics, gravitational fields, and other areas of physics. Throughout the course, we will utilize graphing programs to aid in developing a more thorough understanding of the myriad ways of describing and analyzing properties of multivariate and vector-valued functions.

Emphasis will be placed on students expressing fluency with numerical, algebraic, visual, and verbal interpretations of concepts. Students can expect to collaborate weekly on homework, problem sets, and projects in small groups and in tutorial with their instructor online via Zoom. The face-to-face sessions may include visits with experts in a variety of fields utilizing Calculus techniques in their work as well as hands-on application of concepts at the SFMOMA and other group activities and projects.

Prerequisites: Completion of one full year of Single Variable Calculus AB or BC (or equivalent).

Applied AI in Python
This semester-long course will give students hands-on experience with artificial intelligence (AI) by applying machine learning models and libraries using the Python programming language. The course will explore the construction of algorithms which can learn from and make predictions on real-world data. Students will firstly recap on Python loops, lists and dictionaries and learn how to manage file input and output. They will then learn how to use the Pandas and Numpy libraries to analyze and interpret data. Students will then be introduced to the Tensorflow and Keras frameworks and build machine learning models to analyze images and text. Students will apply their knowledge to implement and refine machine learning models to a data set of their choice and understand the ethical implications. Finally, students will present their findings to an authentic audience. Emphasis will be placed on the project development life cycle and the importance of testing. Students will be expected to conduct independent research in addition to working collaboratively on projects. Weekly Zoom sessions will be used for short presentations, Q&A and discussions. In person sessions will be used to present and discuss project progress with the rest of the class and meet with guest experts. At the end of the course, students will have a basic knowledge of machine learning models and libraries and how to use these tools effectively with real-world data.

Prerequisites: Introduction to Python Programming (B+ and above) or sufficient knowledge of Python.

Astrophysics
In this introductory, project-based class, we will explore the dynamics and evolution of the contents of our universe. We will grapple with a series of essential questions: how do we know what planets and stars are made of? How do stars die? Why do planets form rings? Do other planets support life? Where do black holes come from? How big is the universe? How do we even know all of this?

While astronomy and astrophysics both involve the study of planets, stars, galaxies, and the history and evolution of the universe and its contents, astronomy is more descriptive, with a greater focus on the history and methods of astronomical observation, including telescopes and the apparent motion of objects in the sky. Astrophysics, by contrast, makes greater use of the tools of physics and chemistry, and is more quantitative and computational in nature. That said, because of the differing order in which BlendEd schools offer science courses, no prerequisite study in physics or chemistry is required; we will introduce what we need.

We will spend significant time and energy on the metacognitive processes of learning, with the expectation that the communication and reasoning skills students acquire in this course will be generally useful, even outside of STEM courses.

Students are expected to attend once-per-week, camera-on Zoom sessions at a mutually convenient time after school and to schedule once-per-week project sessions with other small-group members. Students must also attend at least 3 of the 5 planned in-person sessions on weekend evenings to be announced. In-person activities may include visits to local astrophysics research laboratories, scaffolded research project work, and nighttime visits to observatories.

Cinematic Storytelling: Fundamentals of Filmmaking
This beginning filmmaking class is designed to introduce students to the exciting world of filmmaking. Through hands-on experiences, students will develop their original ideas into compelling visual stories and screenplays, learn how to create storyboards to blueprint their films, plan a realistic pre-production schedule, and understand how to shoot cinematic images using available technology. Students will also be introduced to editing software and learn how to distribute their films to an audience through platforms like YouTube and high school film festivals.

In addition, students will acquire strong skills in communicating their ideas through image and sound, as well as gain valuable experience in planning and implementing real-world projects. They will work with the latest technology for filmmaking in the 21st century and collaborate with their peers to create dynamic films.

Our students have a track record of success, with many of their films being featured in film festivals across the country, including some of the largest and most prestigious festivals in the nation. This class is the perfect starting point for any student interested in pursuing a career in filmmaking or just looking to develop their creative and technical skills.

Online meetings with the whole class will take place every other week to discuss projects and share presentations. Students will sometimes be paired together or in small groups during our online meeting time or may occasionally arrange their own meeting times for collaborative activities and projects.

During our 3 to 4 face-to-face sessions we may be meeting filmmakers, visiting cinemas, film festivals and film production studios. Students will need access to a video camera (this can be your smartphone) and be able to upload video to the web. Students should also have access to video editing software and a tripod.

Intro to Comparative Ethnic Studies
As a distinct field of academic study, Ethnic Studies grew out of the U.S. Civil Rights Movement and took shape first in the form of Black Studies and Afro-American Studies departments and programs in California, and later spread to universities across the country. Soon thereafter Asian American Studies, Chican@/Latinx Studies, and American Indian/Native American/Indigenous Studies programs emerged as colleges and universities found institutional space (often begrudgingly) to house intellectuals and activists whose work focused on the historical, social, political, cultural, and economic experiences of marginalized racial and ethnic groups living within the United States. The field of Comparative Ethnic Studies is of more recent origin, as scholars over the last few decades began to see analytical shortcomings and intellectual pitfalls in the narrow cultural nationalisms that drove the work in these earlier fields of study. Social scientists and humanists engaged in the broader project of Ethnic Studies began to think comparatively, and focused their intellectual energy on studying the ways in which the complex histories of race and ethnicity in the greater Americas were formed through cultural cross-pollination and overlapping historical experiences of movement and settlement—experiences that were themselves often forged in the crucible of interethnic and interracial conflict—as well as inflected by issues of gender, region, religion, economics and social class, sexuality, and empire.

Over the course of this term, we will study the origins of Ethnic Studies as a field of inquiry, understand the historical and social conditions that produced its core questions, and follow the field’s development over the course of the late-twentieth and early-twenty-first centuries. In doing so, we will also come to think about race and ethnicity (especially as they intersect with other social locations like gender, class, region, religion, and sexuality) as critical sites of scholarly inquiry, as well as lenses through which we can better understand our current moment.

The course will be framed both chronologically and thematically. We will map the historical trajectory of the field and the processes through which Ethnic Studies’ analytics (i.e., how it sees and interprets its subject matter) became more nuanced and capacious, moving from a narrow focus on the experiences of single racial and ethnic groups (and mostly males within those groups) with the presumption that they could be studied as such, to the more current trend of not only doing comparative work across shared histories of race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, class, religion, and region, but understanding the importance of globalizing processes to the experiences of racial and ethnic minority populations within the U.S.

We will meet as a class on Zoom weekly, or every other week, to discuss readings, participate in small group work, and to give short presentations. Your presence and robust participation in our virtual meetings is an essential component of the course, and will help foster a sense of intellectual community that is essential to doing the rigorous scholarly work of thinking deeply, critically, and intersectionally about race, racism, and ethnicity. We will also meet in-person 3-5 times throughout the course for field trips, to engage with guest speakers, and to work in person on group projects.

Social Psychology
This course is a UC Honors approved G (Interdisciplinary) History/Social Science course.

Social psychology is a course that asks us to be introspective, to learn about ourselves as individuals, and as social creatures. In a period of our history where we feel particularly divided politically, and yet more connected globally than ever before, it is important to strive to understand the ways in which we affect each other. We will focus on two through line questions:

How have I become who I am today?
How do we connect across difference?

As we do deep dives into the introspective questions about who we are in the present, and how we got here, it helps us understand the psychological development of those around us. As we strive to make more meaningful connections with others, and imagine their own introspective journey, in return it helps us better understand ourselves. In this course we will explore the nature of human relations as a whole through three key areas of study: social thinking, social influence, and social relations. We will apply social psychology in the real world in a variety of settings, engage in discussion, conduct research, and explore scientific communication.

This class will hold virtual meetings on a weekly or every other weekly basis to discuss, debate, and present new ideas. Students’ preparation for and participation in virtual meetings is essential to creating a sense of community and enriching the learning experience of all. Students will be responsible for leading discussions around articles assigned, or debating theories or findings either solo or in groups.

There will be 4 to 5 face-to-face (F2F) meetings over the course of the semester. Dates and locations are subject to guest and host availability and will be announced as available.

Spring 2024

Black Holes and Einstein’s Theory of Relativity
Have you ever contemplated the reality of a black hole? How long does it take to create a black hole, or how much matter does it take, or how do you calculate its mass? Will our galaxy be consumed by a black hole? What would happen if you fell into a black hole? If you would like to know the answers to these questions, then this is the class for you.

This class is concerned with studying the effects that gravity has on the structure of spacetime, from length-scales starting around 10−13 cm (the radius of an elementary particle) up to around 1028 cm (the radius of the universe). In order to understand these effects, we will use Einstein’s theory of relativity. Playing a fundamental role in our course will be the concept of a spacetime
singularity—more precisely, a black hole. Thus, more precisely stated, this course will provide a direct examination of general relativity and black holes. However, instead of the typical approach, where one first learns the principles of relativity then, using them, proves the singularity theorems of Penrose and Hawking, we will go in the opposite direction. We will assume their existence and then, using the properties of non-spinning and spinning black holes, introduce Einstein’s theory.

Along the way, we will learn about the physics of flat spacetime (the special theory), curvature, metrics, tests of the general theory, the physics of black holes, cosmology, and gravitational waves, with other fascinating topics sprinkled throughout.

Throughout our development of the theory and its consequences, we will use only calculus and algebra, and require only the basics of introductory physics in order to achieve our goals. Class activities will consist of working through problems related to selected readings, discussions, and question/answer sessions. We will also be treated to a few video simulations, expressing the marvels of Einstein's theory.

This class will have weekly meetings via Zoom. These virtual assemblies will be used as a time for discussion of the topics from the readings, along with highlighting the problems and debating their solutions, as well as Q&A sessions.

In-person sessions will be used as time for students to present projects that they have worked through, guest presenters (on occasion), and ‘verification’ of the models to describe large-scale spacetime that we are learning about. In addition, we are hoping to be able to visit a nearby observatory where we can see the theories in action.

Prerequisites: Mathematically speaking, if you are ready for the AP AB Calculus exam, you are ready for this course.

Cinematic Storytelling: Fundamentals of Filmmaking
This beginning filmmaking class is designed to introduce students to the exciting world of filmmaking. Through hands-on experiences, students will develop their original ideas into compelling visual stories and screenplays, learn how to create storyboards to blueprint their films, plan a realistic pre-production schedule, and understand how to shoot cinematic images using available technology. Students will also be introduced to editing software and learn how to distribute their films to an audience through platforms like YouTube and high school film festivals.

Ecological Architecture
Ecological Architecture is a course that seeks to help students understand the necessity of sustainable architecture and the effect of our cities on the environment and climate. As our climate rapidly changes, it is vital that our use of materials, techniques, and designs meet the urgency of the climate and environmental challenges facing our world. Ecological architecture marries an understanding of ecology (the relationship of organisms to each other and the environment around them) and architectural design (the planning, design, and implementation of physical structures) to create a better, more sustainable world.

We will meet once per week on Zoom to study fundamental concepts, learn physical and CAD modeling techniques, and complete designs of our own. Students will be provided with tools and materials at the beginning of the course that they will use throughout the term to complete their projects. Zoom will also be used for 1:1 help, group work, and teacher office hours.

Our face-to-face meetings will include visits to local Architecture firms, buildings, and construction sites that are incorporating sustainable and eco-architectural concepts and fundamentals in their designs. We will also hear from local and international architects who are committed to sustainability and ecological design throughout the term, and work with real-world problems in our own projects.

Financial Literacy
What financial skills do you need for life? How can you make financial decisions while understanding the impact on yourself and others? What financial decisions are made for us by the institutions and structures that, for better or for worse, exist today? What is our role in creating a more equitable financial world in the future?

This interdisciplinary mathematics, economics, and social science course will be organized around case studies chosen from all walks of life, circumstances, and backgrounds. We will consider the mathematics of budgeting, personal banking, credit & borrowing, renting or owning a home, taxes and insurance while discussing the tough decisions people make along the way. We will keep an eye on the ways in which these discussions are shaped by the particular economic distortions we see in the Bay Area. Students will do weekly readings, engage in regular course discussions, attend field trips to gain real-life experience, and complete collaborative projects and/or presentations for each unit.

We will meet virtually as a class every Sunday evening via Zoom video conferencing for student discussions, presentations and meetings with guest experts.

Example field trip/in-person meetings:

Welcome meeting + team building and group formation
Walking tour of SF Financial District
Visit to local financial institution

In-person class using stock market simulator

Food: A History
Apple pie, California roll, fortune cookies, cioppino, enchilada and chicken bog. Momo, pasty, empanada and pierogi. The food we eat is the story of religion, culture, race and identity. It is the story of the agricultural revolution, the Silk Road, Columbian Exchange, economic hardships, imperialism, immigration... and Instagram and YouTube.

In this course, we will tackle the topic of food by studying its history, by reading works from chefs, food historians and food critics, and by diving into the world of food television and documentaries. Finally, we will explore our own histories with food and how food has affected our lives and our families’ stories.

Face-to-face sessions include a group meal at a Bay Area restaurant, visit(s) to a local farm, ranch and/or dairy, and an end-of-semester potluck featuring beloved family dishes.The course will culminate in a research project based on a historical menu from a wide selection of time periods and geographical locations.

Gender Studies
In this course, students will investigate, explore, challenge and develop an understanding of the role gender plays in both history and our modern society. Using an interdisciplinary approach students will examine ideas related to gender through an intersectional lens that includes historical, feminist, queer, ethnic, sociological, and cultural perspectives. We will take deep dives into historical moments or events using scholarly texts, primary sources, and popular media with the goal of developing a critical perspective on the role of gender in society. Students will then have an opportunity to develop their own research topic, using the skills we have practiced as a class.

The capstone project will allow students to pursue their own research interest connected to gender studies in a format of their choosing (traditional research paper, blog, podcast, oral histories, art, etc.) and share their research with their classmates and peers. Collaboration with other students on projects will be encouraged.

Our face-to-face meetings will be to connect with guest presenters, visit local area organizations or museums, and work on collaborative projects. Weekly virtual classes may include guest speakers, class discussions, virtual field trips, and small group research check-ins.

Public Health & Vulnerable Populations
The San Francisco Bay Area is rapidly becoming one of the most inequitable places to live in the nation. Taking a casual BART ride can reveal the environmental disparities that exist between places like the affluent suburb of Pleasanton and an industrialized community like West Oakland. The lack of income and environmental equality is obvious, but the disparities run much deeper. A short ride between BART stations can mean an 11-year difference in life expectancy. Folks getting off the train and living in neighborhoods near BART’s Walnut Creek station live on average 84 years, while folks that exit at and live near the Oakland City Center station live on average only 73 years. In other words, living just 16 miles apart can mean the difference between living more than a decade longer. Why does such a health disparity exist? This course will dissect the factors that influence this social gradient of health.

There will be three face-to-face sessions and at least one off-campus face-to-face meeting with a teammate. During one of the first Saturdays in September, we will do a neighborhood health assessment of the Bayview-Hunters Point neighborhood in San Francisco. In mid-October, we will volunteer in the native plant nursery at the Literacy for Environmental Justice in the Candlestick Point State Park Recreational Area. Our final face-to-face trip will be to the Social Emergency Medicine Department at Highland Hospital in Oakland during the first week of December. Students will also be expected to attend one virtual meeting roughly every other week, outside of school hours.

Social Psychology
This course is a UC Honors approved G (Interdisciplinary) History/Social Science course.

There will be 4 to 5 face-to-face (F2F) meetings over the course of the semester. Dates and locations are subject to guest and host availability and will be announced as available.

EVENTS

ATHLETICS

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