courses encourage students to take the lead in their learning process. But what do young inquisitive minds find so compelling about the content? Read on for five hallmarks of what makes these, and other fall courses speak to the heart and mind of gifted students, then check out our page for info on the wonderful instructors who bring home the magic!

Academy classes are outside-the-box and taught by experts.

Hacker Calculus (Ages 12-14) with Joan Horvath and Rich Cameron

Students in this class will take an intuitive approach to calculus with minimal algebra and lots of 3D prints! Students will start off with models the instructors have developed and go beyond by learning to modify them and develop their own.

Siri, What’s Natural Language Processing (Ages 12-14) with Melissa Roemelle

This course will introduce students to the endeavor of using computers to analyze human language. Students will apply techniques in math, logic, and computing to intuitive exercises such as judging whether a word in an essay is misspelled or determining whether a social media post conveys positive or negative emotion.

courses feed students’ curiosity through interdisciplinary discovery.

Math for Future Engineers (Ages 6-9) with Maria Melkumyan.

How do engineers design strong bridges, efficient transportation, and sturdy skyscrapers? Math! This class will explore the foundations of math that relate to engineering and will apply those topics to building projects.

Ka-Pow! Graphic Novels and The Hero’s Journey (Ages 9-12) with Alessandra Santucci.

This course will teach the tools necessary to balance art and language to construct narratives that bring the Hero’s Journey to life, from epic tales of adventure and allies to adversity and triumph! Students will learn and apply elements of creation unique to graphic novels including storyboarding, page layout, panel transitions, text distribution, and more to develop their own characters and stories.

They are collaborative and solution-oriented.

Govern and Sustain Your Own Country: Systems and Sovereignties (Ages 9-12) with Anita Russell.

Students in this class investigate what makes a country prosper and thrive, they will challenge themselves to build a system that will sustain a country of their own design. Through group discussion and creative projects, students will determine what laws their country will need, how will they make sure people follow them, and what will make their country flourish amidst inevitable challenges.

Final Appeal: To Kill a Mockingbird and the First Amendment (Ages 9-12).

This class will follow the award- NAGC curriculum by Dr. Shelagh Gallagher, which incorporates case study and problem-based learning specifically designed for gifted learners. Students will investigate a court case in which a teacher has been fired for using the novel To Kill a Mockingbird in her class and take on the role of members of the court of appeals who must decide the case by diving into the nuances of the First Amendment.

They are student-centered.

Executive Functioning: Training the CEO of Our Brain (Ages 10-14) with Amy Gilbertson.

In this course, students will gain empowering tools on how to approach their academic and personal lives with a sense of purpose, passion, and fulfillment. We will cover topics such as learning styles, motivation styles, time management, stress, effective leadership, communication, and how to break down goals into positive, sustainable action steps.

Active Algebra 2 (Ages 9-12) with Ellen Brown.

In this course, students will supplement mathematical exercises with brain breaks that support concentration, memory, and relaxation. Algebra concepts such as solving inequalities, factoring and building fluency with math symbols will be practiced with puzzles and independent exercises, while breathing techniques and movement exercises will be introduced at optimal intervals to bring body-mind awareness into the equation. Algebra 1 is not a prerequisite for Active Algebra 2, though please see the full description on our Course Description page for recommended background knowledge.

Academy courses encourage building, tinkering, art, experiments, role-playing, debate and in-depth discussion!

STEAM Building (Ages 6-9) with Cynthia Molt.

In this course, students will hone their creative engineering skills by building, testing, and improving upon their original designs for marble runs, bridges, catapults, and more. We will use the engineering design process, integrated with both artistic elements and advanced physics topics to create products that meet specific guidelines.

Secrets of the Snake (Ages 9-12) with Grayson Kent.

Take a lesson from Plato: Courage is knowing what not to fear! In this class, students will learn all about snakes, from their evolution and biodiversity to their locomotion and senses, to their colors and patterns and rightful place in the labyrinth of human history, religion and folklore. Students will have the opportunity to interact with live pet serpents, then build on their experience and knowledge to construct an original serpentarium.

If you and your child are curious to learn more about these or other , please don’t hesitate to call us at (626) 403-8900 or email academy@educationaladvancement.org.

The Fall Academy application deadline is August 26. to learn more and to submit your application today!

By Vinjay Vale, 2013 CDB Scholar

Today’s education system has created a rift between STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) and the humanities. It may seem counterintuitive, butÌýstudying the humanities actually makes you a better scientist. Scholars of literature, philosophy, art, and history develop an understanding and appreciation for what it means to be human. I believe it is vital for scientists to study these fields, especially in a modern world full of rapid technological advances.

Through my own research, I experienced firsthand how the humanities can help scientific research.

My Regeneron STS project was on Artificial Intelligence, specifically teaching computer programs to learn and interpret geometric structures in visual scenes. The current state-of-the-art has poor spatial and compositional understanding; for example, it classifies a leopard-print couch as a leopard despite the furniture’s lack of a head and tail. Understanding how objects are composed of their parts is critical for complex vision tasks like visual reasoning. My approach to the problem deviated from the modern paradigm of neural networks. Believe it or not, I was inspired by a 1987 psychology paper by American vision scientist Irving Biederman on the Recognition By Components theory for human vision. The theory is based on breaking down complex objects into simple spatial elements called geons.

As I worked on my project, I spent multiple weeks outside the lab where I exclusively read books and papers, on subjects ranging from art to artificial intelligence, some suggested by my mentor Kevin Ellis (who I met through theÌý). In philosophy class, meanwhile, I learned about Plato’s Theory of Forms, and realized that I was trying to recreate a similar understanding of the visual world in computers.

Making connections between these diverse fields helped me develop the necessary insights to make headway on my interdisciplinary problem: teaching a computer to learn and interpret visual scenes.

My work falls into an emerging category of AI research calledÌýexplainable AI — that is, building artificial intelligence systems that can articulate their thought processes to humans. This is an important area of AI safety, which merges ethics and philosophy with the more technical side of computer science.

In general, the gray area where ethics and tech meet is ripe for exploration. The underlying digital buzz permeating all aspects of our lives makes human moral judgement all the more essential. Think about social media, big pharma, self-driving cars — scientists who understand ethics have the capacity to make a positive impact on the world.ÌýÌýÌýÌýthat engaging in arts, history, and literature bolsters morality, compassion, and empathy. As a pianist, composer, and avid reader, I’d certainly like to think I’ve benefited in this way.

My study of the humanities also has made me a better collaborator, by helping to sharpen my communication skills and compassion. I know that in the future I want to be part of interdisciplinary teams of scientists that tackle significant real-world problems. There’s no doubt that the interpersonal and collaborative skills that I learn from studying and discussing history, philosophy, and literature will be essential in the future.

Whether we’re talking about clinical trials (where every day human behavior can make or break a drug) or computer science (as in my experience drawn from art and psychology), understanding human nature is fundamental to doing science. When most people think about the future of humanity, they envision a universe where science has propelled our species towards a better tomorrow. But science alone is not enough to solve the world’s problems: that science needs to be done byÌýpeople who understand what it means to be human.

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By Louise Hindle

Louise is ÓÅÃÛÊÓƵ’sÌýProgram Manager. A British import, Louise has 20 years of experience in education as a high school literature teacher, lead teacher, administrator, adviser, and consultant. She is also the parent of three fun and active school-aged children. , mentioned in this post, provides gifted young students in the Pasadena, California area with challenging enrichment classes that focus on exploration and application of knowledge.

As we think about this question, buzz words and phrases spring to mind such as ‘eminence’, ‘appreciation’, ‘revered place of learning’ or in general terms a place where ‘distinguished scholars’ gather and Ìýinteract. We might also reflect on the early articulations of ‘an academy’ as established by Plato and now often cited as the first higher learning institution in the Western world. The evidence suggests Plato’s Academy was a place for informal, academic gatherings; a place which seems not to have had any particular doctrine to teach; rather, Plato, and others great minds, posed problems to be studied and solved through dialogue and reason. The Academy, in its genesis, seems to have been a space where the dialectic process was as respected as the academic content; where the chance to explore, probe and further society’s understandings was deemed an honorable human endeavor.

As we draw the curtain and peek at our 18^th century European counterparts, we can look to The Royal Academy of Arts in London. Founded by King George III to promote and elevate the status of the artist, its mission was achieved through the exhibition of first-rate works of art, exhibitions which set the standard for artistic appreciation and good taste. Again, as we glimpse back, we see leading philosophers, artists and academics gathering together for ‘Discourses’, blissful gatherings of lectures and conversations amongst and between people who care for and held these things precious.

The architecture of The Royal Academy of the Arts in London can still make the mind and soul soar with inspiration; but for me, an academy is more than its physical edifice. An academy should be a place where minds meet; where eager and open conversation is exchanged between peers who are curious, have a thirst for knowledge and are excited to explore ideas. An academy is a place of excellence then, but in the excellent and enthusiastic pursuit of new learning. Its elitism resides only, I suggest, in its celebration of knowledge, and who could ever possibly argue against the acquisition of new knowledge?

Yes, 21^st century school structures in the U.K and the U.S. have ‘re-branded’ their public and private schools offerings as ‘Academies’. The 2010 British initiative was an act of privatization of public provision. Commencing in 2010, British Academies were launched as state-maintained but independently-run schools, with status and financial remuneration being awarded automatically to schools that ranked highest during government inspection. ÌýSo yes, they are, in a sense, bastions of learning with some degree of bureaucratic freedom; but still accountable to nationally determined performance measures.

ÓÅÃÛÊÓƵ’s Academy strives to be a bastion of learning unfettered by the constraints of federal initiative. It upholds ÓÅÃÛÊÓƵ’s mission as a safe place for the curious mind who thirsts for new knowledge, who seeks to examine what they know and to forge new understandings through interactions with peers and remarkable teachers.

Fall Academy has just concluded, and one of our newly appointed teachers remarked: ‘I had a fantastic time teaching Microbial Ecology. The students were all extremely bright, which allowed me to spend more time on content and less time on motivation. Students asked intuitive questions which took us deeper into the subject material than I expected to go with middle schoolers. As a graduate student, it was a fun weekly exercise for me to think about conveying complex material in a manner which could be accessible for young scientists. More than anything else, the infectious enthusiasm of the students made teaching with ÓÅÃÛÊÓƵ a joy — something I looked forward to each week.’

Parents remarked that their child had developed ‘a genuine passion for and love of science’ and that ‘the classes at ÓÅÃÛÊÓƵ are content rich. This is important when you need to feed an intellectually hungry student who thrives on learning’.

And our true experts, the students, commented with joy on the Quantum Physics class because ‘I had to interpret the weirdest real of physics in the universe’, as well as in the chance to have ‘fun’ and ‘learn about subjects we do not talk about in school.’

An Academy does not need a grand auditorium and neither do we need to judge it as a place that excludes. Rather an Academy, ÓÅÃÛÊÓƵ’s Academy, is a welcome home for those gifted young people who need nourishing, who need to feel they belong and who can find acceptance as they begin to realize their potential, through multiple disciplines, with children from many walks of life.

ÓÅÃÛÊÓƵ’s Winter Academy commences on January 11, 2016. Why not sign your child up today to see how we can help serve their needs?

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