August 5, 6 & 7 | 12:45 pm - 2:45 pm

History moves in waves, and AP World History asks you to surf all of them at once. We will tackle the opening chapters with added storytelling and dramatics, address those first assignments with more depth, develop persuasive written pieces you'll apply in those first weeks, and draw on real AP test questions and scored student responses for modeling and exposure to academic writing.

800 years, 6 continents. AP World is a course of staggering breadth that also introduces students to the craft of history writing, document analysis, and thesis formation. It is where you learn to argue about the massive forces underlying world events and piece together the continuities linking us to events a half world and multiple centuries away.

The two great challenges are digesting an enormous amount of material efficiently and writing a compelling historical essay under time pressure. This course gives students the writing practice they need to avoid first quarter essay grade shock, while covering the first three weeks of content and showing ways to tame the mass of detail. We'll focus on the 11th through 13th centuries, the bedrock of AP World where the ideas of Empire, Trade, and Religion that echo throughout the course had much of their modern origins.

The series concludes with two writing assignments applicable to the ones students will face in the fall. Students will also meet individually with Dale for a private Document Based Question to sharpen their analysis of primary document readings and essay introductions before the course begins.

Course text and sample AP prompts and essays provided.

August 5, 6 & 7 | 10:30 am - 12:30 pm

You have survived AP World. You know how to build a thesis, contextualize an argument, and write under pressure. AP US History will ask all of that of you again, but this time the detail is relentless, the timeline is compressed, and the material is closer to home, which means the expectations are higher.

This course takes a deeper dive into the pre-colonial and colonial history that is so often rushed in standard US History classes racing to reach the 1990s by early April. We will slow down where it matters: early Native American societies, their complex interactions with Europeans, the colonial economy, and how geography and trade shaped the wildly different political cultures that would eventually collide on the road to revolution. Understanding this foundation is what separates the student who merely knows the story from the one who can argue about it.

The writing challenge in AP US is not starting from scratch. It is managing the avalanche. There is simply too much to memorize, too many dates, acts, movements, and figures competing for space. We will work on strategies for organizing that detail and deploying it efficiently in essays, so that students walk into the first week of school with a framework that makes the flood manageable and a writing toolkit sharp enough to handle whatever the exam throws at them.

The series concludes with two writing assignments tied directly to the assignments students will face at the start of school. Students will also meet individually with Dale for a private writing session to sharpen their skills before the course begins.

Course text and sample AP prompts and essays included.

August 5, 6 & 7 | 12:45 pm - 2:45 pm

Calculus has a reputation, and not always a fair one. Much of what stops students cold in the first weeks is not calculus at all — it is algebra they once knew and have not had reason to use. We will reacquaint students with those skills, then master the tricky concept of evaluating limits, which occupies the first weeks of the regular course, giving students a running start before turning to the concept of the derivative and ways to simplify its trickier aspects. Focus will be on calculator literacy, problem type recognition, and emergency methods to employ when All Else Fails.

The series concludes with two assignments tied directly to start-of-school work. Students will also meet individually with Dale for a private one-on-one follow-up session.

Course text and sample AP prompts included.

June 9, 10 & 11 | 12:45 pm - 2:45 pm

No course in high school mathematics has a bigger gap between its name and its contents than Precalculus. Stuffed with dozens of topics that bear little relation to one another and only occasionally to calculus itself, it requires a solid organizational plan for handling that diversity, and a head start so the opening salvo of Function Theory doesn't catch students by surprise. We'll work through the opening topics, explore how calculator literacy can make the course far more manageable, and tackle the larger topics students traditionally find most challenging, so that on Day One every student is ready to do mathematical battle.

The series concludes with two assignments tied directly to start-of-school work and review exercises to increase confidence. Students will also meet individually with Dale for a private session to sharpen their skills before or after the school year begins.

Course text and sample problems included.

June 16, 17 & 18 | 12:45 pm - 2:45 pm

The geometry year is wonderful — and quietly destructive to the algebra skills students spent years building. The rules for handling fractions within fractions, when to cancel and when to distribute, learned back in Algebra 1, tend to fade during the geometric interval and need some sprucing up before heading into a second algebraic year. This course does exactly that, getting algebra skills back up to scratch while preparing students for their first month by diving into polynomial and function theory and how to manage the sometimes intimidating detail those subjects involve. Students will also receive a party pack of animated notes, annotated problem sets, and more.

The series concludes with two assignments tied directly to start-of-school work. Students will also meet individually with Dale for a private session before or after the school year begins.

Course materials included.

TBD

Engineering is everywhere — in the bridge you cross, the phone in your pocket, and the algorithms that shape your day — but what does it actually mean to think like an engineer? This course is designed for high school students curious about whether engineering might be their path, and gives them a genuine taste of what college engineering looks and feels like before they arrive.

Over three hands-on sessions, we will explore the core disciplines of engineering, the kinds of problems engineers are hired to solve, and the creative and analytical thinking that separates a good engineer from a great one. Through real activities and challenges, students will get their hands on the kinds of problems they will encounter in their first year of college — and discover which flavor of engineering lights them up most.

Just as importantly, this course gives students something genuinely compelling to talk about on their college applications. Not another club membership or volunteer hour, but real engagement with engineering thinking, real problems tackled, and a clearer, more confident answer to the question every admissions essay eventually asks: why this field, and why you?

Course materials and all hands-on activity supplies included.

Each student will also meet individually with Jackson for a private follow-up session to continue exploring their interests before the school year begins.

June 23, 24 & 25 | 10:30 am - 12:30 pm

One of the major difficulties AP Chemistry students face is mastering areas not directly dependent on mathematical algorithms. Students who might be brilliant at calculating equilibrium constants or buffer pH values can get caught flat footed when it comes to explaining how different reactions ought to happen, or why a particular concept makes sense from a theoretical or physical point of view.

Our sessions will look at the main computation topics of the first month of AP Chemistry and the calculator literacy that can make that time go more smoothly, but the real focus will be on how to explain chemistry concepts in words, and particularly reaction types. When the massive theoretical and reaction sections hit, students will not be madly scrambling to cover a mass of seemingly unconnected material. They will have the most important concepts at hand to guide and anchor their explanations.

The series concludes with two assignments tied directly to the work students will face at the start of school. Students will also meet individually with Dale for a private session to sharpen their skills before the course begins.

Students have the option to continue weekly AP Chemistry meetings fall and spring semesters.

Course text and sample AP prompts and essays included.

June 23, 24 & 25 | 12:45 pm - 2:45 pm

Physics begins with motion graphs and kinematics which, while perfectly clear to a student who has had AP Calculus, can be quite intimidating to those coming from Precalculus or Algebra 2. We will start the year with a series of sessions that ease students into these crucial concepts so they can hit AP Physics with the confidence to carry them through the first, often difficult, month.

We will focus on calculator literacy, position, velocity, and acceleration graphs, kinematic equations and their applications, and get a solid start on Newton's Laws of Motion.

The series concludes with two assignments tied directly to the work students will face at the start of school. Students will also meet individually with Dale for a private session to sharpen their skills before the course begins.

Students have the option to continue weekly AP Physics meetings fall and spring semesters.

Course text and sample AP prompts included.

June 23, 25, & 26 | 5:00 pm - 7:00 pm

Several date / time offerings - please inquire

Even if you are not planning on taking AP English Language next year, this course is a fantastic way to improve your confidence and skill in close reading, thinking, and writing. Some public high schools allow students to sit for the May exam without taking the course at school, and many students do exceptionally well with an introductory summer approach and several follow-up sessions spaced throughout the year.

AP English Language is the most useful college preparatory class around, offering short nonfiction pieces, speeches, humorous articles from The Onion, perspectives from TED Talk thinkers, heads of state, artists, and inventors. The ideas are a blast. Students will gain a comprehensive understanding of the synthesis, rhetorical, and free response essays through engaging samples, discussions, and templates that make the whole course year so much easier. Instructors ask just the right questions to bring out the best in every student.

The series concludes with two writing assignments tied directly to the work students will face at the start of school. Students will also meet individually with Christy for a private writing session on their own synthesis and rhetorical essays before or after the school year begins.

Course text and sample AP prompts and essays included.

August 5, 6 & 7 | 10:00 am - 12:00 pm

You may have enjoyed AP English Language and sharpened your skills as an arguer and analyst — now it is time to trade the op-ed for the poem, the speech for the novel, and discover what language does when it stops making points and starts making art. We will dive headfirst into the art of reading closely, writing boldly, and finding the voice that will carry you through one of the most rewarding courses in your high school career. Poetry, prose, and drama await — and with them, the tools to unlock what writers are really doing beneath the surface of the words on the page.

The great challenge of AP English Literature is not simply understanding what you read, but learning to argue about it with confidence and style. We will work on developing that voice — the one that knows how to build a thesis with conviction, support it with textual evidence, and carry a reader from first line to last with purpose and authority. Through close reading of poems and prose passages, students will practice the particular writing moves that AP graders reward, and discover that literary analysis can be as thrilling as the works it examines.

The series concludes with two writing assignments tied directly to the work students will face at the start of school. Students will also meet individually with Donna for a private writing session before or after the school year begins.

Course texts and sample AP prompts and essays included.