Science Department

Our students will progressively develop scientific skills, knowledge, and conceptual understanding in order to competently evaluate decisions based on numerical and descriptive data and scientific reasoning. Through the art of scientific practice, our students will find continued interest, meaning, and delight in exploration of our physical world. Our graduates will be prepared to achieve success in science courses at the university level. 

Our students develop conceptual models in order to improve the quality of their predictions and basic understanding of the physical world. Through a combination of inductive and deductive reasoning, experimentation, observation, analysis, creative questioning, and inspired guesswork they refine their ideas of how nature behaves. Students are motivated by both the practical and the aesthetic rewards of their investigations. Thus they are encouraged to look for connections to other aspects of human life, be they social, commercial, political, ecological, or other. 

Math Department 

The educational goal of the math department, according to our school's philosophy and standards, must reflect the importance of mathematical literacy. There are five general goals for all students to accomplish by the end of their high school education: (1) that they learn to value mathematics, (2) that they become confident in their ability to do mathematics, (3) that they become mathematical problem solvers, (4) that they learn to communicate mathematically, and (5) that they learn to reason mathematically. These goals imply that students should be exposed to numerous and varied interrelated experiences that encourage them to value the mathematical enterprise, to develop mathematical habits of mind, and to understand and appreciate the role of mathematics in human affairs; that they should be encouraged to explore, to guess, and even to make and correct errors so that they gain confidence in their ability to solve complex problems; that they should read, write, and discuss mathematics; and that they should conjecture, test, and build arguments about conjecture's validity.