Humanities
Humanities is a combination of Language Arts, Philosophy, History, and Social Studies. It is diverse, evolutionary, and interdisciplinary; it encourages intuition and creativity as well as scholarship and criticism; and it promotes awareness of historical, literary, and artistic inheritance. Humanities 1 focuses on the relationship between individuals and societies, particularly as societies develop, using Africa and Europe as case studies. The semester culminates with a unit on nation building, imperialism, and independence with an emphasis on the Holocaust and the Truth and Reconciliation Committee. Humanities 2 focuses on immigration and the building of America. Students study the cultures, struggles, and contributions of the various groups who have come to the United States, from the Native Americans to the present day. Humanities 3 is a philosophical examination of the value of human life. Switching instructors mid-semester, students raise the same questions in two separate units focused on two separate contexts. Students may look at the value of human life through American philosophical values during the Civil Rights Movement; through a comparative study of Eastern and Western philosophies; through Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet; or through the Classical Greek philosophers. Humanities 4 provides students for a critical frame for evaluating art and for understanding how art is evaluated. Students ask, "What is art?" "What is beautiful?" "What is valuable?" and "Who decides?" while exploring the construction of eras of art, such as the Post-modern or Classical era.


Mathematics
Boston Arts Academy has adopted the Interactive Math Program (IMP). IMP was developed out of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics standards and recently received an "Exemplary Award" from the U.S. Department of Education. IMP is a four-year, college-preparatory program that combines concepts from algebra, geometry, trigonometry, logic, probability, and statistics. Students who study IMP have been shown to do as well as, and sometimes better than, students in traditional mathematics course sequences on national achievement tests (such as the SAT). IMP is also context based—students are often surprised to find it is almost exclusively word problems. Finally, IMP is a "spiraling" curriculum, meaning that students return to the same mathematical concepts each year but add a layer of complexity. For example, in IMP 1 students are expected to learn and understand concepts of Algebra such as representation of functions, variables and algebraic expressions, solving basic linear equations, and graphing. In IMP2 students are expected to learn and understand more complex Algebraic concepts: linear equations, linear inequalities, graphing systems of linear inequalities, solving systems of linear equations and inequalities.


Science
Science is a project-based science course that combines elements of chemistry, biology, ecology, and physics. At the end of four years of science, students will have learned foundations of earth science, biology, chemistry, and physics—as well as the relationships among them and connections to present day discoveries. The core science curriculum is a three-year sequence of units that repeats. Each year, ninth, 10th, and 11th grade students study the same integrated units. Past units include Toxicology and Human Physiology, Telecommunications, Light & Vision, and Physiology of Dance. At the end of three years, each group of students will have studied each set of units. A fourth year of Integrated Science is optional for seniors.


World Languages
The Arts Academy offers beginning, intermediate, advanced, and bilingual Spanish. Students advance through a series of well-coordinated steps: linguistics [grammar]; expression [communication, self-expression, daily situations]; listening/viewing [ability to comprehend the modern spoken or signed language]; writing; reading; and culture [Art, History, Politics, customs, and beliefs]. Throughout classes emphasize creative applications of language knowledge. In the past, students have written and interpreted plays based on class reading and presented them to other schools. Students have also used video production as a practical tool to do interviews, present short plays, and write novellas.