Curriculum Overview

Bay’s curriculum and course offerings reflect our commitment to depth over breadth and finding the balance between learning content and developing skills. Students build a foundation for deep learning in 9th and 10th grades. Starting in 11th grade, students practice more independence in their learning and have more choice points in their pathway through Bay. By 12th grade, Bay students are deep in their learning journeys, exploring areas of passion and interest in all subject areas. Every Bay graduate exceeds the admission requirements for the University of California and graduates with a transcript that tells a story about who they are as a student and where their academic interests lie.

The school year is divided into four terms: fall semester, winter Immersive, spring semester, and spring Immersive. During semesters, students take five classes and participate in Activities (our version of PE); during Immersive terms, students take one intensive class for three weeks. Click on the images below to download detailed information.

Honors Courses

Honors courses, typically open to 11th and 12th graders, allow students who are academically ready for college-level work to pursue particular areas of interest. These classes require students to engage in high-level reasoning, research, analysis, and extensive writing or, in the visual arts, documentation of their work. The goal of our honors pathways is that students can stretch themselves to their intellectual peak, whether that is in a STEM pairing of Linear Algebra and Quantum Mechanics or a humanities focus with Existentialism and U.S. Foreign Policy or Advanced Drawing and Painting.

To take honors courses, students need approval from previous subject-area teachers. Honors courses earn their designation from the University of California’s course review process. In the 2024–2025 school year, we are offering 25 honors courses across all disciplines, and the arts courses, such as Jazz 2, may be repeated for credit. 

Bay Requirements

Beyond the core classes in math, science, humanities, arts, and world language, Bay students also take a number of specific courses on the path to earning a Bay diploma. These additional requirements are in alignment with our mission to “see students unlock their individual and collective potential so they begin to realize their roles in a dynamic world.” These courses include:

• Creative Process: All 9th graders take a semester of Creative Process in the fall, in which they learn how to generate ideas and iterate solutions through research, feedback, and prototyping. They experience the value of failure and learn how to think their way out of problems. This course is the start of a four-year project arc.
• Civics: All 10th graders take a semester of Civics to better understand their individual agency and responsibilities, with particular emphasis on media literacy and becoming critical consumers of information. Civics is also part of the four-year project arc.
• Religion or philosophy: In 11th or 12th grade, all students take one semester or one Immersive in religion or philosophy in order to better understand their connections to oneself as well as the broader institutions in society. 
• Ethnic studies: New for the Class of 2026, all students must fulfill the Ethnic Studies graduation requirement, for which students can choose from a menu of classes, including semester courses like Latin American Studies and African-American Literature or Immersives like Civil Rights in the American South. The goal of this requirement is for all Bay graduates to develop and then practice the skills of engaging in complex conversations around race, ethnicity, and identity.
• Senior Projects: Seniors design and complete their Senior Project over two semesters. This course is the culmination of the project arc begun in Creative Process. From proposal to final product, students apply the problem-solving and project-management skills they’ve developed over their time at Bay.

Teaching and Learning 

There are two modes to the Bay academic year: semester and Immersive. In both, we stress students’ mastery of content and skills through the consistent application of learning.

In a semester-term literature class, this might look like a panel discussion in which audience members select topics and the students address relevant themes within the works they’ve studied. Conceptual Physics, required for all 9th graders, begins with first-person experimentation in collaborative lab work. From this direct experience, they learn to describe their observations, collect empirical data, and make predictions. Finally, they will learn to convert what they’ve seen into algebraic formulas and learn the scientific vocabulary to describe it. 

During Immersive terms students dig more deeply into quick iterative learning and the practice of transferable skills. The singular focus for three weeks and full-day class blocks allow for multifaceted teaching and learning. Our project-driven approach is seen in the culminating exhibition, during which each class publicly presents their final projects to the community. These projects range from short films to presentations of scientific findings to an adaptation of a Shakespeare play. 

Transferable Skills