Immersive Exhibition

Welcome to the winter Immersive Exhibition. During this culminating event for the term, our students will showcase their learning from the past three weeks. Schedules for grade-level presentations are below. Thank you for joining us! 

9th Grade Presentations

Assembling San Francisco: Geology of the Greater Bay Region | Library | 9-9:40 | 10:30-11:10
This immersive course is a field-based physical geology course focused on student-centered activities exploring the rocks, hills, and waters of the greater San Francisco area. At each locale, essential observations will progress from the micro of rock identification to the macro of formation type and forces, guided by the questions: What is the story of this rock? What is the story of this place?

Exhibition: Students in this course invite you to view their final posters, each about a topic of their choosing related to the geology of the Bay Area.

How Can We All Get Along? | Rooms 233 & 234 | 9:45-10:25 | 11:15-11:55
How many times have we mistrusted, ignored, judged, or made assumptions about someone because we don’t understand their culture or background? Students in this course practice challenging assumptions about other cultures and formulate possible solutions supported by informed and responsible decision-making. 

Exhibition: Students have each created a visual piece in observance of the International Day of Tolerance. Through this activity, students answer the essential question, Can We All Get Along? and examine what we can do to contribute positively to human diversity.

The Mathematics of Digital Animation | Rooms 227 & 230 | 9-9:40 | 11:15-11:55
How can mathematics help us to model characteristics and phenomena we observe (or imagine)? Using Pixar films as a starting point, students learn about the stages of the digital animation process, from character development to fine-tuning the details. 

Exhibition: Students will each highlight a particular aspect of animation, including lighting, effects, character modeling, movement, timing, and more! Each presentation will introduce principles of animation, showcase student work, and make connections to students’ own character ideas.

Session 1

Session 2

10th Grade Presentations

Fiction on the Page and Stage | Rooms 225 & 228 
This workshop-style class explores the twofold nature of authorship: writing is both a solitary pursuit and a deeply collaborative process. Students produce and revise original works of fiction—both stories and scripts—while analyzing works of short fiction, participating in lively critiques, and interviewing an award-winning author.  

Exhibition: Please join us for a live taping! At exhibition, students will perform and record radio plays that were ideated, written, staged, and produced by students over three days.

Negotiation, Legislation, and Diplomacy | Room 103 (Breakers) | 9:45-10:25 | 10:30-11:10
In this course, students learned basic negotiation and policy-making skills and applied these skills in multiple simulations wherein they assumed the role of elected representatives and leaders of fictitious nations. Students practiced speaking persuasively, drafting policy papers, debating, cooperating, legislating, and brokering compromises to reach solutions on various domestic and international issues (both real and imagined) at the Harvard Model Congress, a student-run simulation in downtown San Francisco. 

Exhibition: Students will embody senators on the Senate Judiciary Committee to debate and amend a proposed gun control bill.

Shakespeare Unbound | Drama Room | 9:45-10:25 | 11:15-11:55
This 10th-grade core Humanities course seeks to answer this essential question: Why do we still read Shakespeare? Steeped in Shakespeare’s language and style, students examine various adaptations of Shakespeare’s plays, from classic, true-to-the-original interpretations to those loose adaptations that permeate contemporary pop culture.

Exhibition: Groups of 10th grade students will perform live adaptations of scenes from The Tempest. These scenes were ideated, written, directed, and produced by students over six days.

Speech and Communication | Rooms 218 & 219 | 10:30-11:10 | 11:15-11:55
This course offered students a variety of opportunities to develop practical communication skills and gain speech-making experience. Students practiced key interpersonal communication techniques as well as a range of speech modes, including expository, persuasive, and improvisational speaking. The course also placed strong emphasis on the mechanics of speech and performance—volume, tone, gesture, and eye contact.

Exhibition: Students will present their original persuasive speeches (7-8 minutes in length) on a topic that they are passionate about. Using visual images and motivational messaging, students will aim to evoke a call to action from their audience. 

Spoken Word Poetry | Rooms 207 & 208 | 9-9:40 | 9:45-10:25
Students in this course studied the emergence of Spoken Word Poetry as a powerful, genre-bending, political, personal, collective, adrenaline-fueled, and often revolution-centered art form. Students learned from a range of poets and writers, from early ancient poets to Walt Whitman, Malcolm X, Gwendolyn Brooks, Maya Angelou, Saul Williams, Beau Sia, Sarah Kay, Mahogany Brown, Joshua Bennett, and hundreds of youth poets across the United States; from which students will memorize and perform a published poem. The course culminated in a final Poetry Slam, where students performed an original poem addressing their own calls for social change.

Exhibition: Students will present their final spoken word poems. We will close our course with a reflection and appreciation circle.  

11th & 12th Grade Presentations

Astronomy: Observatory | Room 304
What mysteries are hidden in and beyond our solar system? Over the course of three weeks, students devise a guiding question, select objects in the night sky to observe, execute, and write about their research project. Students use telescopes around the world to search for exoplanets, to find the behavior of variable stars, analyze the spectra of stars, and more. From researching their topic, to analyzing their data and purchasing telescope time, the students take ownership of their research and gain a greater understanding of the challenges and joys of being a scientist. 

Exhibition: Students in this course will present the results of their research. You will get to learn more about celestial objects as well as the students’ challenges and successes in their self-directed research projects. Prepare yourself for some pretty mind-blowing space photos.

Better Cooking Through Chemistry | Rooms 300 & 301
In this course, students step into a laboratory-kitchen to explore the scientific principles underpinning a variety of dishes, including exploring thermal energy transfer in ice cream, identifying the intermolecular forces involved in the creation of emulsions and infusions, marveling at the complex chemical reactions underlying cheese-making and egg dishes, to investigating the role of solubility in preparing candy. 

Exhibition: Students invite you to a live cooking demonstration, during which they will prepare a dish, walk you through the cooking process, and explain the science behind the dish!

Biotechnology | Rooms 243 & 245
Welcome to the Bay Biotechnology Laboratory! Students in this course undertake a deep investigation into molecular biology and into the professional skills required to work in the technical field; they have performed DNA extractions, PCR, cultured living cells, and performed enzymatic assays to explore the efficacy of biofuel-generating enzymes in the context of global efforts to reduce fossil fuel consumption. 

Exhibition: Students will be presenting their research, experimental design, and results. They will also share the work completed in their lab notebooks. Visitors will also get a tour of the lab space and introduction to the lab equipment used. 

Buddhism | 4th Floor | 1-1:40 | 1:45-2:25 
The essence of Buddhism is to awaken, to be free in the midst of this changing world. Buddhist thought and practice strive to liberate its followers from clinging to notions and unwholesome states, and instead, experience happiness through skillful action and awareness of life as it is.  In this course, students study the teachings of Buddhism and practice connecting these teachings to their own lived experience and to Bay’s values.

Exhibition: Students will lead a short meditation and share their pecha kuchas, or chit-chat presentations, on a Buddhist topic of their choice. This will be an interactive exhibit where viewers can put on headphones and check out several of these presentations and ask the presenter questions about their project and experience with Buddhism in the last three weeks. 

Construction Techniques | Lower Courtyard | 2:30-3:10 | 3:10-3:50 
Students will use conventional measurements techniques, safely use hand and power tools, understand the necessary calculations and characteristics of typical building materials, learn basic carpentry and framing, and be introduced to electrical wiring and plumbing. Students will learn about basic blueprints, plan reading, construction careers and the role of unions in the construction industry. The culminating project will be a house design project: scale modeling, sketches, rough blueprints, materials lists and pricing, personnel needed, and in-class presentation.

Exhibition: Students will present their capstone projects: A set of construction documents for their dream home, which must include a floor plan, a front elevation plan, and a schedule of finishes. Over the course of the three weeks in the course, the students have studied various construction documents as models theirs after, and spent time constructing a small shed-type building, which will be on display. They will be able to discuss and demonstrate all facets of the project, including framing the structure, installation of plumbing and electrical work, insulation and drywall, and roofing.

Cybersecurity and Ethical Hacking | Room 325 | 1-1:40 | 3:10-3:50
How do we protect our data, our systems, and ourselves in a world where danger is only a click away? This course covered cybersecurity fundamentals, security awareness essentials, how to prepare for a career in the cyber industry, representation of hacking in media, and the hacker ethos, ethics, and law. Students will be assessed on completing hacking puzzles, competing in wargames, and preparing write-ups on their work. At the end of the course, students put their new skills to the test in a series of individual and team capture-the-flag challenges.

Exhibition: After presenting a short overview of offensive and defensive cybersecurity measures, students will engage in a live team-on-team hacking challenge. All students are involved in both sessions.

Essential Questions through Film | Rooms 227 & 230
Poet Rainer Maria Rilke encouraged readers to “be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves…Live the questions.” This course will explore film as a 20th- and 21st-century medium to love and live timeless questions. Students will view, write about, and discuss a selection of narrative films, analyzing the techniques that filmmakers use to tell their stories through sight and sound. Students will ultimately produce a brief video essay in which they describe how filmic techniques advance inquiry of an essential question in a film of their choosing. 

Exhibition: Students will exhibit their video essays in a festival format organized by thematic groupings. Can’t make it? Need a movie recommendation from the students in the course? Check out a Letterboxd list of films studied, open this link, and click Read Notes.

Futures Past and Present | Room 310 & 317 | 1-1:40 | 3:10-3:50
How did people in the past imagine the future? This class explores the history of the future through literature and film; examines the connections that link technologies like the wine press, loom, printed book, and computer; and engages in the process of “strategic foresight” to make our own predictions about the year 2058 and beyond.

Exhibition: Students in this course invite you to join them for conversation about  their final prediction projects, and to hear their predictions  for the next 33 years along with what they’ve decided to include in our time capsule for the year 2058. We will hold a small time-capsule sealing ceremony outside room 230 at 3:30.

Immersive Art Studio | Southside Theatre at Fort Mason | SHUTTLE AVAILABLE 10:30-noon
What is it like to live the day-to-day life of an artist, working feverishly in one’s own studio, gradually assembling a body of artwork for a gallery exhibition? Rather than placing emphasis on the “how-to,” this advanced studio course encourages students to dig deeply into their own art—experimenting, refining, assessing, reworking, and then fine-tuning, while working toward a culminating exhibition. 

Exhibition: The artists in this course will exhibit their final art installations at Fort Mason in the Southside Theater.

Bay community members can visit the exhibit in person from 10:30 to 12:00 p.m. by catching the shuttle to and from Bay’s upper courtyard.

Marine Biology: San Francisco Bay and The Pacific Ocean | Rooms 335 & 331 
Students have learned about the abiotic (non-living), biotic (living), and anthropogenic (human impacts) aspects of the SF Bay Estuary and the Bay Area marine ecosystems. Students also learned about organisms that reside in the Bay, the ocean, and several other marine habitats, along with the varied processes of the oceans, spanning the intertidal to the deep sea. Beginning with the smallest organisms, students investigated the life cycles and evolutionary connections among different phyla of marine organisms, including humans.

Essential questions framing our study include: What are the varied communities that comprise marine ecosystems? How are marine ecosystems connected to human communities (resources, economic, medicine)? 

Exhibition: Students in this course invite you to view their presentations on all things marine biology. In addition, students will show off their field notebooks, which catalog their takeaways from the many days spent in the field over the course.
 

Session 1: 1-1:40 p.m.

Session 2: 1:45-2:25 p.m.

The Mathematics of Democracy | Rooms 218 & 219  
In this interdisciplinary (math and social studies) course, students explore voting and representation, the fundamental features of democratic government, through a mathematical lens. Students learn about the history of representational government as well as analyze current election and representation systems. In addition to democratic systems themselves, students learn how representation is distributed to each state and how changes in the creation of districts may influence the outcome of elections. Essential questions guiding our study include: What is the function of representation in a democracy? How can/should groups of people make decisions? How can an individual make an impact on policy?

Exhibition: What actions can informed citizens take to make a difference in public policy and move the needle on issues they care about? Students invite you to a series of informal presentations and activities where each will share an important topic they feel is worthy of public action. Students will explain their activism/advocacy goal and invite participants to engage in actions to support their efforts. 

Modern American Family | Rooms 311 & 324 | 1-1:40 | 2:30-3:10 
How do various representations of family structures/dynamics help us understand our own definition of family and our role in it? This course examines different family structures and dynamics through American visual art, literature, television, film, and various forms of nonfiction. Exposure to the different interpretations of family encourages students to understand their own family makeup and their place in it. 

Exhibition: Students in this course invite you to group presentations that each examine a different thread of the course, encouraging the audience to be involved in the dialogue and reflection.

Stories of San Francisco’s Ethnic and Nonconformist Communities | 36 Lincoln, Rooms 152 & 154 | 1-1:40 | 2:30-3:10
Using local literature as a vehicle for exploration into San Francisco’s diverse ethnic and nonconformist communities, students in this course compose a series of fictional short stories that construct creative counter-narratives to develop a more complex understanding of the human experience in San Francisco. From Chinatown to the Mission District, from Haight-Ashbury to the Castro, students explore the places they are reading about, as they read them, in order to literally walk in the shoes of a story’s characters. Likewise, the story each student decides to share for Exhibition immerses audiences in the city setting by blending in an-audio-visual component that is an excerpt of their story. Essential questions include: What impact does the setting of San Francisco have on local writers’ narrative storytelling and how can we learn to contribute to that genre? How can we engage our readers to think critically about the city they study in? 

Exhibition: Students have read novels set in the five neighborhoods (Castro, Mission, Chinatown, Haight-Ashbury, North Beach) and have visited all five neighborhoods. The exhibition is the opportunity for the students to express their love and appreciation of the neighborhoods via their creative writing short stories set in each neighborhood. After an introduction by the teachers, students will be in a “symposium”-style booth setup, reading vital excerpts from their stories and having a visual component (slides, artifacts, posters, etc.) to immerse their audience into their stories. The exhibition will conclude with a Q&A for the students to explain their journeys, reflections, and thought-processes during this immersive.

Wilderness First Responder | 36 Lincoln, Room 150 | 2:30-3:10 | 3:10-3:50
In this course, students will learn the techniques of wilderness medicine to help patients in a remote setting until EMS can arrive. After successful completion of the course, students will be certified as a Wilderness First Responder (WFR), the industry standard certification for professional guides, trip leaders, and search and rescue team members. The curriculum for this course is determined by NOLS, the National Outdoor Leadership School and the certification is valid for two years and can then be renewed with a shorter course. 

Exhibition: Students will present demonstrations on a variety of wilderness medicine topics, which could include CPR, epinephrine administration, patient assessment, splint building, etc.