Studio Project

The Studio Project adopts a project-based learning method and drives learners to have their own course output or, "artifact," that addresses an issue or challenge. Studio blurs disciplinary boundaries and instead expects learners to gain knowledge and skills of different disciplines while exploring topics and completing challenges that can bew transferred and internalized.

Authentic issues: All learning activities are organized around complex and realistic issues. Teachers guide students to understanding of the core challenges of the course and formulate learning plans for acquisition of new knowledge and skills.

Authentic practice: Authentic practice leads teachers and learners to understanding of challenges and issues through the production of works. Authentic practice is one of the core component of project-based learning.

Authentic participation: An emphasis on authentic participation means that teachers and learners directly participate in their real-world communities overcoming global and local issues. In this component of project-based learning, knowledge and skills accumulate through collaboration together with professional practitioners. Authentic participation often has a high degree of VUCA characteristics, that is, among the states of being "Volatile", "Uncertain", "Complex", and "Ambiguous".

Beijing Stories

This course introduces and makes use of digital tools (audio and video) to research and record an immersive engagement with the city of Beijing. This semester the course focuses on stories of migrants in Beijing, especially stories of the lower class. The preservation and adaptation of migrants raise many issues that are central to contemporary Beijing: social mobility, inequality and urbanization. Through field trips and the eyes of fiction writers, learners will carry out evidence-based discussions and have a chance to create their interaction and observation interview documentary (around 5 mins).

Integrated Social Sciences

Integrated social science offers you chances to explore a variety of disciplines of social science. If you are curious about social science in general and want a taste of the essence of the different disciplines under it, this course is the right place for you. By taking this course, you can select two 8-week long projects/researches within a semester. They are designed by encompassing sociology, journalism, psychology, and psychoanalysis.

Narrative Image: Illustration, Comics and Animation

Before the invention of the camera, painting was used as the primary recording and narrative tool. What about after the invention of the camera? Is a single image considered a comic? What is the difference between Japanese manga and Chinese comic strips? Besides the typical chronological telling of a story, how else can we use images? What are the respective characteristics of illustration, comics, and animation in telling the same story? Welcome to the Narrative Image class to find out.

Installation and Sculpture

The teaching and practice of"Installation and media art" is based on the background of international and contemporary multi-cultural art, relying on the diversity of contemporary art forms and the independence of expression carriers, and paying attention to the knowledge of art principles, this paper explores the law of material media, and summarizes some practical and effective forms of artistic expression and materialized presentation of various possibilities through the transformation, production and experiment of materials in the process of training.

The installation art combines the comprehensive social topic, combines the media to express your own independent artistic language to express your understanding of the self-world as well as the external world understanding and emotional expression.

Through study and research, the students can clearly express their artistic creation theme with any material, comb out the creation theme vein for the work set, and provide more artistic possibilities and new expression ideas.

Fashion Design and Jewelry Design

The teaching and practice of“Fashion Design” is based on the background of contemporary international multi-cultural design and trends, relying on the unique diversity of the history of international brands, and paying attention to the artistic knowledge about fashion behind the history of art, exploring the trend and fashion elements of each era, through the professional creation transformation, production and experiment in the curriculum, summed up some unique and inheritance of the effective form of artistic expression, the materialization of various possibilities. Use your own fashion language to express your understanding of self-world and self-style, and express your feelings and emotions to the outside world through your works. Students can use any material to clearly express their artistic fashion and creative themes.

Graphic Design 1: Design & Life

What is graphic design? It is not only a profession, a creative and academic discipline, but also highly related to everyone’s daily life. From a company’s visual image, a brand’s logo, a movie or an event’s poster, to a business card, a fandom merchandise, or just one slide that you use for a presentation — graphic design is everywhere. Nowadays, graphic design is no longer a skill that only professionals should acquire, but a literacy and ability that everyone should know. After all, don’t you want your PPT to look better and more professional?

In this course, we will emphasize the relationship between design and daily life, understand how design plays a role in society and how it can help us solve problems. We will go through the basic knowledge of graphic design, and eventually use it to solve practical problems. This course does not teach any specific software techniques, but rather focuses on observation, inspiration, analysis, inquiry, and interpretation. It is geared toward Grade 9/10 learners.

Graphic Design 3: Project-Based Practice

This course is a high-level graphic design course, which is for learners who have certain previous design foundations or who want to enter relevant majors and occupations in the future (they need to be reviewed under their grades of the prerequisite course, works portfolio, and interview before entering this course).

Through this course, you will further lay a professional foundation and deepen your understanding and research guided by specific practical creation projects: today's graphic design is no longer a single professional discipline of "making cars behind closed doors", but an open, permeable and adhesive discipline; It is the most powerful tool for exploration, research, and innovation. It crosses the boundaries of different disciplines.

The course will adopt the tutorial teaching method. Each learner will specify corresponding learning plans, evaluation standards, and creative projects according to their own levels. The tutor will provide targeted professional guidance according to the needs and abilities of each learner. The course will place great emphasis on learners' autonomous learning ability, time management ability, and expression ability. Each learner will take mass-produced works as the graduation standard, and will aim to participate in the domestic art market.

High School Band

This is a performance-based course. New students who are interested in taking this course should meet with the teacher to evaluate their level of musical literacy. Learning targets in this course are focused on continuing to refine all aspects of playing an instrument as well as continue to broaden musical understanding through reflection. A successful student in this class will be able to transpose for band instruments, spell basic triads in major keys, perform rhythms in mixed and compound meters, identify all major and minor scales, and be able to adjust tuning, balance, and togetherness while playing. Topics covered in this class include Jazz, Marches, and small group (chamber music) performances. This course may be repeated each year grades 9-12.