Sample Projects and Curriculum
Our Lower and Middle School curriculum is guided by the principal qualities that distinguish us as an Episcopal School. Our Baptismal Covenant upholds us, and Episcopal Schools are created to “strive for justice and peace among all people and to respect the dignity of every human being.”
Kindergarten: A few grade-level outcomes might include knowing when people are treated unfairly and joining with classmates to make our classroom fair for everyone.
First Grade: A few grade-level outcomes might include feeling good about themselves without being mean and seeing that the way their family does things is both the same as and different from how other families do things.
Second Grade:A few grade-level outcomes might include knowing that groups of people believe different things and live their daily lives in different ways and being around people who are like themselves and different from themselves and being friendly to everyone.
Third Grade: A few grade-level outcomes might include feeling good about one’s own identity without making someone else feel badly about who they are and knowing people who are like me and different from me, and I treat each person with respect.
4th Grade: A few grade-level outcomes might include knowing how to advocate for what is right and just in our world and learning to ask questions respectfully while actively listening.
5th Grade: Project Impact is a year-long band that studies different aspects of global issues and encourages students to develop some ideas and solutions to them. A few grade level outcomes are leaning into difficult challenges and learning from failure as well as engaging in creative problem solving.
6th - 8th Grade: Through advisory, our Middle School students engage in monthly programming around diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging. For example, a topic explored might be Combating Antisemitism. The 6th graders might discuss different forms of antisemitism, 7th graders might engage in role-playing to think through recent incidents of antisemitism, and 8th graders might read through recent incidents and statistics of antisemitism and discuss ways that they can make a positive impact on their own community.
9th Grade: Courageous Conversation training (with ongoing practice in the Freshman Seminar class)
10th & 11th Grade English: Examples of books that make up the SAS canon include, but are not limited to, Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe, The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison, God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy, One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez, and Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro.
11th Grade Data Project: Examples of investigated topics include everything from The Rodney King Trial to The Evolution of Birth Control; from The Effects of Desegregation in Texas to The Protests of the Miss America Beauty Pageant by Women of Color.
12th Grade Senior Project: Previous examples of senior projects with a DEIB theme include, but are not limited to, Project DOC (Diversity of Campus); The Young Black Male Mental State: An Interview Series; Ramadan: A children’s book written and illustrated for youth at the Islamic Center of Lake Travis; and Faith Through A Lens: Using photography to capture the overlaps and variances of multiple belief systems.
