Student Work

From MA’s Academic philosophy to course descriptions of every class offered this year, gain a well-rounded sense of the breadth and depth of the MA academic program. (We promise it’s a much more interesting read than it sounds!)

MA Course Catalog

The Marin Academy Research Collaborative (MARC) program is specifically designed to engage a diverse group of students in cutting-edge science and engineering research that is characteristic of college-level courses. In this two year program, students generate a novel research question, conduct a rigorous literature review, collaborate with content-area experts, develop hypotheses, collect and analyze data, and learn how to publicly present, as well as publish their work. Here you can view the research MA students conducted through the MARC program.

Wildcat Colloquium ​​​​​

As explained by UNESCO's International Bureau of Education, transdisciplinary education is defined by "an approach to curriculum integration which dissolves the boundaries between the conventional disciplines and organizes teaching and learning around the construction of meaning in the context of real-world problems or themes." MA’s Transdisciplinary Leadership Program (TLP) empowers students to make connections across and between disciplines to solve challenging dilemmas with no easy answers.

Hear from the first ever TLP teaching team on creating and facilitating a Transdisciplinary course at MA.

• Dive deep into MA’s first Transdisciplinary course: 

Culture Shock: Migration, Exile, and the Refugee Crisis  ​​

• The 20-’21 TLP course “Future Cities” created a website to share their work:

The Future of Cities: Civic Tech and Data Science

Hear from Human Development (Hum Dev, as the students call it) teachers, Sanjai Moses and Nicole Stanton, about the importance of the Hum Dev program at MA and learn why it's so many students’ favorite class.

Check out Jon Bretan's science elective course pages here! Dive deep into what is covered in an upper class Electrical Engineering & Computer Science course and Astrophysics course and see student work from recent years.

Electrical Engineering + Computer Science

Astronomy + Astrophysics

Spanish is one of three languages (in addition to French and Mandarin) taught at MA. Pop into Abby’s Spanish II class as they practice the use of the imperfect past tense - and learn a little more about the students in the class! 

See MA students take on personas within the National Security Council (NSC) in this Model Diplomacy simulation. As the NSC, they give advice to the "President" about a crisis scenario with Russia and Latvia/NATO.

Join KaTrina's Freedom, Choice, and Obligation class as they dive deep into a discussion about philosophers’ theories on pains and pleasures, as well as their own. 

Stagecraft Audio and Video Design: Take a peek behind the curtain at MA’s stagecraft class. Stagecraft offers all the behind the scenes work that goes into putting on a show. Check out a student’s abstract video and an original sound engineering exploration. 

Visual Arts:

• Draw Paint, Photo, Ceramics: Take a "walk" through this 3D museum exhibition of MA student artwork. 
• View an exhibition catalogue featuring work done by introductory visual art students.
• MA Visual Arts Instagram: Follow us at @marinacademyarts to add some creativity to your feed!

Fall Concert: Check out MA’s first ever virtual concert—student bands created music videos to showcase their performances.

Fall Play: The Open Window, a compilation of spooky stories, created or adapted by the cast and director.

Thanksgiving Concert: A mix of students, faculty, and staff.

A Padlet Discussion: This padlet is an example of the Question Formulation Technique (QFT) this English class uses as a way to get students to refine their inquiry skills and approach topics with questions rather than answers. It promotes self-advocacy, modeling, and discovery and allows student curiosity to drive the direction of discussions and exploration.

• In this QFT, students explored how Janie uses and loses her voice in Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God.

Students in "Class, Frames, Metaphors," an interdisciplinary English and Arts course, examine how every aspect of our understanding of the pressing issues of the day—and all discussion of causes, solutions, and complexities; personal, political, social, and scientific—are communicated through stories. They study the myriad competencies of storytelling in a digital age, ultimately partnering with organizations like the California Film Institute and the Community Media Center of Marin to develop proficiency with the technical tools necessary for creating and producing their own stories. Check out some of their projects, in podcast form, here:

•  Title: "United We Stand, Divided We Fall"  |  Topic: U.S. Protest Songs 
• Title: "Today's Politics, Tomorrow's Nostalgia"  |  Topic: Cambridge Analystica's Micro-Targeting Ads During the 2016 Election

History, Culture, and Identity—or HCI as it is more commonly known—is a course that begins with three questions:  How do you know what you know? How do you know who you are? What is culture—and how does culture inform your answer to the first two questions?

What is HCI?

HCI Projects

Freshmen were asked to consider how they could create a memorial about WWI that would help to raise complex questions regarding how we choose to remember the past. We challenge you to ponder the same questions: If a memorial cannot tell the whole story of a war, then what part of the story does it choose to tell? Whose memories, whose points of view, and whose values and perspectives does it represent?

WWI Memorial Projects

MA’s Interdisciplinary World Empires seeks to integrate the distinct subjects of history, art history, and studio art, thereby allowing students to develop a multifaceted, nuanced appreciation for the complexities past civilizations, ancient, medieval, or modern. For each unit, students are asked to do four things: design an original map, give an oral presentation, write a paper, and create an original piece of art related to the Empire they studied. Read one student’s paper on the Minoans.

Fermi Questions: An Investigation into an Outlandish Physics Question

Watch this video of two MA students doing the math to answer ridiculous questions: First, Olivia constructs a video in response to the Fermi question, "Is it possible for a house to fly by the uplift of balloons, like in the movie “Up?" Then, Ally responds to the question, "If every human ran for 10 seconds as fast as possible to the east, by what fraction would they change the Earth's angular velocity around its axis?"

The First Three Minutes

These projects are student-created visual explanations of the most significant concepts presented in  “The First Three Minutes,” which tells the story of how we pieced together our understanding of the universe's evolution, from about 0.01 seconds after the moment of creation to now. 

A Showcase of Chemistry Audio and Video Project

This video by Sebastian ‘22, designed to display his knowledge of chemistry, adds a bit of flavor to science, diving deep into the ingredients of pizza and how, when combined, make this popular dish so tasty. 

In this minicourse led by MA teachers, students learned to build their own guitars, step-by-step, in just one week. Check out photos of their process here. 

Guitar Building Minicourse

Each year, the Conference on Democracy invites local, national, and global luminaries to share their professional and personal experiences and perspectives on political, social, economic, and environmental issues that our communities face. Well-balanced panels, round table discussions, and more debate hot-button topics such as immigration policy, election integrity, and environmental issues. The Conference earned national recognition for Marin Academy seven years ago when the National Association of Independent Schools named MA a Leading Edge School in the category of Equity and Justice.

While MA’s mission statement is often boiled down to the words "think, question, create," it is the second part of our mission —that MA "challenges each person to accept the responsibilities posed by education in a democratic society"—that inspires the Conference On Democracy, now in its 16th year.

2022 Conference on Democracy

2021 Conference on Democracy
 

Even if you’re not a "math person” we highly recommend this popular annual event where you can learn about using math in the real world from our MA students! Students present on topics of their choosing, ranging from how the Instagram algorithm works mathematically to Game Theory.

Math Night