AP Capstone

In July, 2015, Woodstock School became the first and only school in India to offer the AP Capstone Diploma. After considerable research, consultation with our college counselors and Heads of Department, and in my capacity then as Academic Dean, I chose to introduce the Capstone program as a way of increasing the scope for interdisciplinary learning in the school. In fact, we introduced interdisciplinary research projects in Grades 9 and 10, in part as preparation for the Capstone AP Seminar and AP Research courses.

AP Seminar

I have taught AP Seminar for three years, 2016-2019, planting the course within my own approach to learning and education by centering it around the study of networks, nurturing the students' realization of our embeddedness in interconnected systems, and thus our interdependence. Here is my current syllabus.

Below follows a sample map of unit resources.

The highlight of each year's course has been a week-long, themed field trip. In the first year, we went to Jaipur to study traditional hand block printing of textiles as an ecosystem. We visited dyeing villages, wood block carvers, block printers, as well as high-end designers working to preserve and revive this ancient handicraft. The second year, we visited Agra to see two industries--the marble inlay stone for which Agra is famous, and also shoe manufacturers wrestling with the long-distance impact of Brexit. Again, as with Jaipur, in Agra the focus was on craft and trade as large systems. Last year, we visited Dharamshala, the home of the Dalai Lama. After learning about the Tibetan community in exile for a few days, we enjoyed an hour-long private audience with His Holiness, all designed to help students consider the Tibetan community as embedded in larger systems. These have been highly successful trips that become the basis for months of learning as we unpacked all the experiences and connected them with academic reading and research.

AP Research

I taught AP Research for four years, from 2016-2020. As with AP Seminar, I have worked to plant the course within my own approach to learning and teaching by exposing students to academic researchers working in a wide range of fields, each of whom are using their positions as scholars to bring positive change into the world.

My current syllabus is here.

The research topics students have chosen over the last few years demonstrate very well the sense of the course--students have examined the impact of light pollution on the local experience of night, the awareness and impact of bride trafficking, the economic impact of 19th century forced migration from India to Mauritius, the psychological impact on teens of growing up outside their home country, viable methods of addressing local water scarcity, the plight of carpet factory workers in India's Uttar Pradesh state....and the list goes on! Students never fail to select truly significant questions, the answers to which have the potential to make the world a more just, equitable place.

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