East Palo Alto Academy - EPAA Curriculum

EPAA Curriculum

An integral part of the EPAA experience is the annual exhibition. Exhibitions are a rigorous long term research and presentation project that exemplifies our Five Habits (Personal Responsibility, Social Responsibility, Critical & Creative Thinking, Application of Knowledge and Communication), the Common Core and 21st Century Skills.

Freshmen Exhibition:

The freshmen exhibition is a STEM focused project. The objective is for students to design, build, and analyze a projectile launch mechanism. The students will use computer design software to engineer their launcher, which will then be made by the 3-D printer. The students will then test and modify their launcher in order to have a consistent launch. They can then begin the analysis. This starts with a slow motion filming of the launch, which will be uploaded into a computer program for analysis. Using this data, the students will use their knowledge of physics and their math skills of algebra and computation in order to determine how high and how far the projectile will travel. The students are then challenged to hit multiple targets and show their math skills at problem solving. The exhibition culminates with an oral presentation of the design process, analysis, and findings.

Sophomore Exhibition:

The sophomore exhibition is a cross-curricular project in the Humanities that requires students to explore the topic of genocide in depth, apply their knowledge, and then present and defend their findings in groups.Through historical analysis in World History and the reading of a memoir in English, the project explores the following essential questions: What are the social, political, and economic impacts of genocide? How does genocide affect victims, perpetrators, and the world at large? What are the characteristics of a memoir? How can an author's use of language create a compelling and effective narrative? The project itself consists of four components: a presentation that includes the historical thinking and the literary analysis, an art piece, an essay in English, and a Socratic Seminar in World History.

Junior Exhibition:

The junior exhibition is an in-depth study of a 20th century social movement wherein students will conduct historical research, analyze informational texts, and present their argument for the extent to which the social movement of their choice met its goals. Students will examine how their social movement connects to American society today, including their own lives, and the project culminates in an essay written in their U.S. History class. Through this project, students will learn about the history of resistance in the United States; they will analyze the historical contexts (social, political, and economical) that led up to the social movement, the strategies used by activists, organizations, and individuals both for and opposed to the movement, and ultimately comment on the movement's successes, failures, and next steps for work that remains to be done.

Senior Exhibition:

The Senior Exhibition is a semester-long project that asks students to think critically about their own definitions of compassion and community and how they can improve their community using compassionate measures. The exhibition is designed to give students room to explore their interests and strengths and to empower them to use their creativity. Through this project, students come up with a plan to positively impact their own lives and the lives of those in their community. The goal of the exhibition is to develop a community service project that students will propose, test run and then reflect on in a presentation of their findings to community judges. Students begin by surveying their community's needs, then they create a proposal for their project. Next, they must implement and execute their project with a live audience, and finally they reflect on their work in a presentation. The objective of the presentation is to inform judges of the need in the community for the project. And then students have to convince their judges to fund their projects. Ultimately, the senior exhibition gives students the opportunity to use the skills they have developed in order to create change in their lives, the lives of people in their community, and in the global society.