Curriculum

Level	Curriculum Focus
G2–G5	Foundations of Reading & Writing Develop strong reading comprehension, sentence-building skills, and the ability to express ideas through clear paragraphs and short essays. Emphasize curiosity, logical thinking, and storytelling as a bridge to analytical writing.
G6–G8	Analytical Writing & Inquiry Engage in deeper reading, build habits of questioning, and practice writing clear and thoughtful arguments.
G9–G12	Advanced Essay & Critical Writing Strengthen academic writing and reasoning skills, and develop a unique and sincere intellectual voice.
College Essay	Writing the Self: Personal Essays & Reflection Guide students to craft honest, in-depth personal statements and supplemental essays that reflect real experience.

The Stuff We Read and Discuss

“We read to sharpen our thinking, deepen our understanding, and discover new ways of seeing and writing about the world.”

Popular / General Nonfiction

• Sapiens – Yuval Noah Harari
• Homo Deus – Yuval Noah Harari
• Outliers – Malcolm Gladwell
• Guns, Germs, and Steel – Jared Diamond
• Freakonomics – Steven Levitt & Stephen Dubner
• What It Takes – Stephen A. Schwarzman
• The Black Swan – Nassim Nicholas Taleb
• Antifragile – Nassim Nicholas Taleb
• Skin in the Game – Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Classic & Modern Literature

• The Catcher in the Rye – J.D. Salinger
• Demian – Hermann Hesse
• Siddhartha – Hermann Hesse
• Steppenwolf – Hermann Hesse
• Norwegian Wood – Haruki Murakami
• Blindness – José Saramago
• The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro
• The Brothers Karamazov – Fyodor Dostoevsky
• Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoevsky
• Notes from Underground – Fyodor Dostoevsky
• Love in the Time of Cholera – Gabriel García Márquez
• One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel García Márquez
• East of Eden – John Steinbeck
• Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck

Modern Philosophy & Critical Theory

• Immortality – Milan Kundera
• The Unbearable Lightness of Being – Milan Kundera
• Being and Nothingness – Jean-Paul Sartre
• Nausea – Jean-Paul Sartre
• The Outsider – Colin Wilson
• Discipline and Punish – Michel Foucault
• Meditations on First Philosophy – René Descartes

Inspirational / Personal Growth

• Zen in the Art of Archery – Eugen Herrigel
• Man’s Search for Meaning – Viktor Frankl
• The Design of Everyday Things – Don Norman
• The Existential Pleasures of Engineering – Samuel C. Florman
• The Righteous Mind – Jonathan Haidt

Classic Dystopian & Political Fiction

• Brave New World – Aldous Huxley
• 1984 – George Orwell
• Animal Farm – George Orwell
• Fahrenheit 451 – Ray Bradbury

Classic Dystopian & Political Fiction

• The Art of War – Sun Tzu
• Meditations – Marcus Aurelius
• Letters from a Stoic – Seneca
• The Myth of Sisyphus – Albert Camus
• The Stranger – Albert Camus
• Thus Spoke Zarathustra – Friedrich Nietzsche
• The Republic – Plato

Political Theory & Economics

• The Prince – Niccolò Machiavelli
• Leviathan – Thomas Hobbes
• Second Treatise of Government – John Locke
• The Social Contract – Jean-Jacques Rousseau
• Discourse on the Origin of Inequality – Jean-Jacques Rousseau
• Émile, or On Education – Jean-Jacques Rousseau
• The Wealth of Nations – Adam Smith
• The Theory of Moral Sentiments – Adam Smith
• An Essay on the Principle of Population – Thomas Robert Malthus
• Principles of Morals and Legislation – Jeremy Bentham
• On Liberty – John Stuart Mill
• The Subjection of Women – John Stuart Mill
• The Theory of the Leisure Class – Thorstein Veblen
• The Great Transformation – Karl Polanyi