This is an honors-level audition-based course for the serious acting student.

This advanced level course builds on the topics from Biology and Honors Biology with a molecular and structural focus.

In this second-year exploration of advanced chemistry topics, students investigate organic synthesis, drug design and natural products with applications to biochemistry, pharmacology and biotechnology.

In this course, students will build upon the foundation of Chinese IV Honors and will become more deeply immersed into the language and culture of the Chinese-speaking world.

This college-level course establishes a strong understanding of the structure and interpretation of computer programs.

In the Advanced Honors lab sessions, students explore advanced economic concepts such as behavioral economics, Marxism and income inequality.

This course offers the most accomplished seniors advanced literary analysis of representative works of poetry, fiction and drama.

This course is designed for students with highly developed language skills who are interested in continuing to deepen and refine their mastery of French in an advanced seminar format.

Students planning to enroll in this course next year meet with the instructor this spring to select a set of texts they want to explore in Advanced Honors Latin.

This course focuses on differential equations and develops that topic by using techniques from Linear Algebra.

Multivariable Calculus takes the concepts covered in single-variable calculus and extends them to multiple dimensions.

In this course, students begin by studying topics in elementary number theory.

This is the department’s most advanced physics course and explores topics in mechanics, electricity and magnetism from a calculus-based perspective.

This course is designed for students with highly developed language skills who are interested in continuing to deepen and refine their mastery of Spanish in an advanced seminar format.

This course is designed for students with highly developed language skills who are interested in continuing to deepen and refine their mastery of Spanish in an advanced seminar format.

In the class, students continue to refine their oratorical skills as well as prepare for specific extemporaneous and prepared events.

This course is for serious technical theater students who wish to continue their development as theater technicians and artisans.

This course is designed to explore decision making at all levels as students explore how individuals and societies manage scarce resources in an attempt to satisfy unlimited wants.

Using case studies, this course will explore how biological, psychological and social-cultural dynamics intersect and influence the thoughts and actions of individuals and groups.

This is a non-academic leadership group that meets two periods per cycle for the entire school year.

Big History attempts to answer these questions by surveying the entirety of history from the beginning of the universe to the present day and even predictions about the future.

This course provides a thorough introduction to the increasingly important field of biology, covering the core concepts of biochemistry, genetics, natural selection and ecology.

Modern molecular tools have revolutionized the fields of medicine, forensics, agriculture, genetics, evolutionary biology, and anthropology.

This course is an audition-only, advanced orchestral and chamber music class for string, wind and brass players with four or more years of experience on their instrument.

This introductory choral performance group is open to all upper school students who enjoy singing and would like to improve their singing technique.

This course is designed to develop more advanced musical and performance skills through singing choral literature from a variety of periods and musical styles.

This course is an audition-only mixed choral ensemble for the more serious singers who already read music, have had experience with singing in a choral ensemble, and wish to expand their experiences by learning and performing more advanced repertoire.

In this course students will explore limits, derivatives and integrals, and develop the skills necessary to solve problems within these topic areas.

This course is designed for students’ self-expression, using clay as the medium.

This course gives greater freedom to select a personalized program in ceramics.

This course is designed for students who are self-directed and committed to their personal expression in ceramics.

This course is a continuation of a student's artistic and technical development with ceramics.

This course familiarizes students with the underlying principles that govern the chemical reactions in our world

This course is an introduction to Chinese language and culture and, as such, stresses developing Chinese speaking and listening skills in everyday situations.

Building on the skills mastered in Chinese I or Chinese IA and IB, Chinese II is a theme-based course designed to develop students’ communicative skills in handling uncomplicated tasks and predictable transactions in the immediate environment.

This course prepares students to engage and produce paragraph-length discourses on topics relating to the immediate environment and the greater community.

This course continues the work of Chinese III, deepening student’s ability to engage with greater proficiency in each of the three modes of communication (interpersonal, interpretive and presentational).

Students investigate light, waves, motion, forces and energy. 

Students investigate light, waves, motion, forces and energy. 

This class is designed to introduce students to basic construction techniques and elements of costume design.

This course builds on the construction techniques and information learned in Costume Design and Construction I.

Using the Touchstone Anthology of Creative Nonfiction and The New Yorker as its central texts, this writing-intensive course aims to help students sharpen their skills as creative and critical thinkers and writers.

This course focuses on the development of introductory theatrical dance vocabulary.

This is an intermediate level continuation of Dance I.

Digital Media I is an introduction to lens-based media with a focus on both photography and video production.

This course expands on Digital Media I.

This course expands on Digital Media II.

This advanced lens-based media course is designed for students developing their personal portfolio while focusing on an in-depth exploration of photography, filmmaking, or interactive art.

Dramaturgy is defined as the process of in-depth literary, historical, sociocultural and theoretical analysis applied to a range of performance types, in order to facilitate the work of the cast, crew and production team.

This course is designed to explore decision making at all levels.

This course is a hands-on introduction to building and understanding electronic devices.

In this project-based course, students apply knowledge of fundamental principles of physics to a variety of hands-on engineering projects designed to illustrate these principles.

English I is a writing-intensive course that asks students to analyze a variety of literary texts through a writer’s lens.

Building on the skills taught in English I, this course teaches students how to read increasingly complex and challenging texts actively, closely and analytically.

This accelerated, college-level, year-long course offers a survey of American literature organized thematically to assure student exposure to a variety of voices, styles and genres.

English III is an American literature course, with a focus on three overlapping categories: immigrant experiences, stories of self-invention, and dissenting voices.

This semester course will focus on literary works that have been, and in some places, continue to be banned and/or challenged in classrooms.

This semester course is a study of Detective Fiction, a subset of Modern American Crime Narrative.

This course will offer an introduction to the work of the dramaturg for both pre-existing and new works.

This accelerated, college-level, yearlong writing course explores how literature and rhetoric work, collectively and respectively.

Narrative Fiction is a study of short fiction.

This course introduces students to modern and contemporary poetry in all its forms while paying heed to the great poets and poems of the past.

We consider Shakespeare’s plays for their philosophical value, ethical ambiguity, political prescience and the probing of themes such as leadership and loyalty, race and gender, love and friendship.

This semester course delves into environmental issues through a California-centric perspective.

This semester course offers a comprehensive examination of environmental issues through a global lens.

This beginning course in computer science introduces students to the basic computer programming constructs while giving them the fundamental concepts of computer science.

In order to engage in conversations about gender and equality one must be skilled in reading and interpreting the stories that have shaped many of our views on women.

This course attempts to define why food matters to every one of us.

This course introduces students to areas of biology, chemistry, physics and geology that are applied in analyzing evidence found at a crime scene.

French I is a foundational language course.

Building on the skills mastered in French I or French IA and IB, in this course students further develop their proficiency in the three communicative modes (interpersonal, interpretive and presentational).

This course continues to build on the skills acquired in French II.

In this course, students expand on the knowledge acquired in previous courses and incorporate new strategies that improve their skills across all four language modalities (speaking, listening, reading, writing), through a variety of readings, films, writing activities, role play situations, in-class discussions and oral presentations.

This curriculum includes various introductory level activities related to fitness.

The health curriculum is designed to encourage active student involvement in the development of a healthy lifestyle.

This semester-long study of major issues affecting the world today offers students a global overview of political, economic, social and cultural issues that are shaping their future.

This course will consider American foreign policy since 9/11 with an emphasis on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

This course teaches art history through the critical analysis of art movements, theories and works of art.

This course welcomes students who demonstrate an advanced ability to create visual artwork with technical skills and a mature approach to art making.

This course delves into the expanding realm of machine learning and artificial intelligence at various levels.

Students in this course will trace the scientific development of the atomic bomb, begin to understand how its usage and proliferation affected world culture and history, and investigate the role that nuclear weapons continue to play in the 21st century.

This advanced course is rigorous, fast-paced and equivalent to a first-year college biology course and is taught with a college textbook.

This is a college-level course on differential and integral calculus, but not including power series.

This is a college-level course on differential and integral calculus including power series and topics, such as the calculus of polar graphs, that go beyond the scope of the AB syllabus.

This course emphasizes laboratory investigation and making connections between seemingly disparate topics within chemistry, applying our students’ understanding of the physical world formed in physics to chemistry while refining a strong foundation in chemistry for application to biological systems.

This course covers the material of Chinese III in greater depth and at an accelerated pace.

In this course, students expand their proficiency across the three communicative modes (interpersonal, interpretive and presentational).

This course explores the rich diversity of political systems in our world.

This course expands the broad introduction to computer science offered by Software Development and Applied computer science providing a general background for further study in the field.

This course is designed to give the students an opportunity to gain a deeper understanding of the science of decision making.

In this course, students expand their proficiency across the three communicative modes (interpersonal, interpretive and presentational).

In this course, students expand and deepen their ability across the three communicative modes (interpersonal, interpretive, and presentational).

By examining case studies from places such as the Congo, Afghanistan, Cuba and more, this course considers how “cold” the Cold War really was and the extent to which it was a global conflict.

In this course, students study Classical Greek, beginning with the alphabet and ending with reading of authentic and unadapted texts from ancient Greece.

Latin III Honors serves as a bridge course between the textbook-based learning of grammar in Latin II and the extensive reading of ancient texts in Latin IV Honors: Caesar and Vergil.

The primary focus of Latin IV Honors: Caesar and Vergil is the prescribed syllabus for the AP Latin examination.

This course offers students an opportunity to delve deeper into musical understanding through exploring music through the components of reading (sight-singing), writing (composition), analysis and performance.

The questions, “What is God? Does God exist? What does it mean to believe in God?” are investigated against the background of modern philosophy and theology through instruction in a variety of media.

Honors Physics is a challenging, college-level, non-calculus-based physics course which is designed to investigate fundamental principles of physics.

This course offers a more in-depth exploration of protests and social movements within the United States.

This course explores the behavior and mental processes of human beings through the lens of various subfields of psychology.

In this course, students expand their proficiency across the three communicative modes (interpersonal, interpretive and presentational).

In this course, students expand and deepen their ability across the three communicative modes (interpersonal, interpretive and presentational).

This college-level course introduces students to the discipline of statistics as a science of collecting, understanding and analyzing data.

This course examines the constitutional background of the United States government, as well as its institutions, political beliefs, political parties, interest groups and civil rights issues.

This college-level course explores United States history from precolonial times to the modern era with an emphasis on the political, economic, social and cultural forces that have given shape to the nation.

This course will examine the roots of the September 11th terrorist attacks on the United States and place them in a global context.

This course explores the structure and function of the organs and organ systems of the human body.

Introduction to Biblical Literature takes students on an engaging exploration of the many writings that make up the Bible, covering a wide range of topics including politics, public life, popular culture, religious beliefs and practices, spirituality, race, gender, sexuality, social movements and ethics.

In this course, students build critical communication skills through research, preparation and delivery of persuasive speeches.

In this class students perform and improvise over standard repertoire with a focus on scales and rhythmic devices, chord/scale relationships, standard harmonic progressions, and fluency in reading rhythm.

Students with four or more years of experience on saxophone, trumpet, trombone, guitar, piano, bass, drums or strings with an interest in jazz, contemporary repertoire, and improvisation are encouraged to enroll in Jazz III/IV.

In this course, students learn and practice core concepts in journalism: principles, news gathering and reporting.

Regardless of age, year in school or skill set, every student can become more advanced in their personal understanding, decision making and ability to lead others.

This course combines the material covered during the two years of middle school introductory Latin.

This course continues with the introduction to Latin grammar and vocabulary begun in Latin I or Latin IA/IB by building upon student knowledge of nouns and adjectives and adding a core understanding of Latin verb forms and mood constructions.

Latin III extends the foundation laid down in Latin II by completing the survey of Latin verb constructions, with particular focus on the subjunctive mood.

In this course, the Aeneid of Vergil is read in its entirety in English with significant portions read in Latin, particularly those sections not read in the Latin IV Honors: Caesar and Vergil course.

This course provides a basic introduction to the patterns and processes found in marine systems and the relationships between living things and their marine environment.

Students are introduced to functions and function notation as they explore linear equations, inequalities and systems as well as exponential functions both graphically and algebraically.

Math 3E is problem-centered and more demanding, considering a greater number of problem types, moving at a faster pace, and providing less instruction and support before homework on any given topic is assigned.

Math 4 is the second course in the integrated Algebra I/Geometry/Algebra II sequence with introductory work in trigonometry.

Math 4 Core covers most of the topics in Math 4, focusing on the fundamental concepts and working at a more moderate pace.

The unifying subjects for this course of advanced algebra and geometry are straight lines and the figures they produce − polygons and polyhedra.

Math 5 is the third course in the integrated Algebra I/Geometry/Algebra II sequence.

Math 5 Core covers most of the topics in Math 5, focusing on the fundamental concepts and working at a more moderate pace.

This course completes the study of advanced algebra and geometry begun in Mathematics 4 Enriched and prepares the students for Precalculus Honors.

Mock Trial is an activity that gives students the opportunity to develop critical thinking, public speaking and teamwork skills.

This survey course examines the history of Africa, the Americas, Asia and Europe from the 19th century to the present day.

Optimal Performance is an in-depth functional training program.

This is a non-academic activity that meets once per cycle for the entire school year.

This is the most advanced dance class in the program which requires dedication and being open to trying many new styles of dance as the students work with guest teachers and choreographers to further expand their world dance horizons.

Precalculus is a full-year course covering a rich array of concepts and challenging exercises designed to develop problem-solving and reasoning abilities in a wide range of areas.

This course prepares students for the Calculus course by continuing the concepts from Mathematics 5 Core through the study of functions and logarithms

This honors version of Precalculus completes the study of advanced algebra topics begun in Mathematics 5 Enriched

In this course, we will explore the religious and theological foundations of racial categories and racist ideology across various American congregational communities, as well as the role of religion in propagating racist ideas in order to understand debates on American identity and belonging.

This seminar-style course delves into enduring questions surrounding the darkest chapters in human history.

In this course, students will delve into the intricate relationship between scientific claims, discoveries, and their profound impact on shaping societal values, norms and equity.

While science has been making appearances on theatrical stages for hundreds of years, the late 20th century offered a boom in “science playwriting.”

This year-long course provides students with a solid foundation in software development using Python.

Spanish I is a foundational language course.

Building on the skills mastered in Spanish I or Spanish IA and IB, in this course students further develop their proficiency in the three communicative modes (interpersonal, interpretive and presentational).

In this course, students will engage in a thorough review of the fundamentals of Spanish I and II, with the aim of improving their communicative proficiency across a range of time frames (past, present and future) and across all three communicative modes (interpretive, interpersonal and presentational).

In this course, students expand on the knowledge acquired in previous courses and incorporate new strategies that improve their skills across all four language modalities (speaking, listening, reading, writing), with a particular focus on speaking and writing.

This course introduces students to the use of both dry (graphite, pastel, charcoal, etc.) and wet (watercolor, ink and acrylic) media in drawing and painting.

This course builds on the students’ understanding of drawing and painting while challenging the creation of personal works of art.

This course is designed for the student who is committed to the development of their technical skills and mastery of drawing and painting media.

This course enables students to take their artistic expression to the next level in their chosen expression in studio art. 

This performance-based course is a continuation of dance technique work.

The American West will compare the myths and realities of life on the frontier between 1865 and 1920.

A study of the Holocaust focused on the moral and religious dilemmas it raises for Jews and Christians.

This class is an applied philosophy course that uses the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948 as a way of connecting pressing contemporary issues with a broad range of philosophical ideas and controversies, drawn from multiple traditions and many centuries.

This course is the basic requirement for the more advanced high school theater performance courses.

This course builds on the foundation laid in Theater Arts I with additional study of historical periods and cultures.

This course provides an opportunity for students to build upon their knowledge of theater developed in Theater Arts I and II.

In this course, students continue to cultivate the skills learned in previous theater classes.

This course provides an opportunity for students to build upon their knowledge of technical theater developed in Tech I and II.

In this course, students continue to cultivate the skills learned in previous technical theater classes.

This course offers students hands-on training in the behind-the-scenes world of performing arts productions.

This course continues the hands-on element of Theater Production I, with students continuing to further their knowledge and expertise in all areas of theatrical production.

This course examines the political, economic, social, and cultural developments that have shaped our nation.

This year-long course provides an overview of full-stack web development.  

In this largely student-led activity, students produce The Bishop’s School annual, El Miradero.