Advanced Curriculum

Blair currently offers two types of advanced curriculum courses: 

• Advanced Survey classes designed to align with first-year college courses in core subjects like Calculus, Economics, Java, Biology or U.S. History, for example, will introduce students to these disciplines at the equivalent level of first-year college courses. 

• Advanced Seminar courses that take a deep dive into a particular theme, skill or discipline along the same lines as Blair’s current Integrated Science Research (ISR) program. These courses have been developed by the Blair faculty members who know our students well and are uniquely prepared to challenge them. This catalog will also update regularly to reflect the ideas and concepts most relevant and essential to our students.

We are intentionally and strategically expanding students’ access to advanced curriculum and increasing the number of subjects, experiences and skills in our courses that deserve “advanced curriculum” credentialing. We believe students should have more tangible evidence of their learning to encourage the transfer of knowledge to their future pursuits, and we are fortunate to have put the mechanisms and resources in place to do so while maintaining quality and rigor. 

There are two types of offerings: 

• Advanced survey courses that align with what is taught in introductory college courses (for example, in Calculus, Economics, Java, Biology and History); and 

• Advanced seminars that dive deeply into a particular theme or skill and extend study of a particular discipline (for example, in ISR and Pharmacology).

For specific advanced courses, please review the course catalog. 

In our materials, we have made sure that prospective families and colleges understand our curricular sequence, our most rigorous offerings, and student investment and outcomes. We also continue turning to our advisory board of eight colleges and universities who have partnered with us and helped guide the move to the current advanced curriculum. Those institutions of higher learning are:

• Brown University
• Chapman University
• Grinnell College
• Middlebury College
• Northeastern University
• Stevens Institute of Technology
• University of California @ Berkeley
• University of Miami

In collaboration with the Independent Curriculum Group, advanced course teachers at Blair established a set of standardized curriculum principles that all current and future advanced courses meet. Advanced survey courses take advantage of available information from universities to align skills and content taught in our courses with similar introductory offerings. Working with our college counseling advisory board, we gather feedback about the design and impact of our new advanced courses, which are reviewed twice annually to ensure student learning targets are being met. Students taking these courses maintain and reflect upon the work they’ve done to understand their own growth in these subjects.

As with all Blair courses, we have established standard curriculum principles and discipline-specific student outcomes that all advanced courses must meet. Our academic and college counseling offices routinely reach out to colleges and peer schools, and, working with our college counseling advisory board, ensure admission officers understand the rigor and quality of courses at Blair. We also regularly review our course proposal process, which has been redesigned for the current advanced curriculum. Student portfolio reviews are also important.