Class Expectations

1. How this course works structurally

Three things worth being clear about: the shape of the year you're stepping into.

Eight units, eight defenses

The year is built as 8 units, each running roughly 5 weeks on the AISC 80-minute A/B schedule. Each unit ends with an authentic deliverable + a defense. Defense formats vary, NASA Committee Q&A, Defense Panel, Stakeholder Roundtable, Policy Panel, Regional Planning Board, Op-Ed reading, but they all share the same shape: you put your thinking forward, others push on it, you hold what holds and revise what doesn't. The Defending Your Work page walks through the moves you'll use.

Three-strand grading

Your work is graded on three strands separately, not summed into a single number: Knowledge & Understanding (K/U), Thinking & Transfer (T/T), and Communication (C). Each is scored on an 8-point scale. The strands stay separate because they measure different things. The Rubric Explained has the full breakdown.

AI is required, not optional, and always documented

The course uses AI as a working tool throughout. You will use AI partners for research, drafting, peer-test prep, and defense rehearsal. AI use is NOT optional in the sense that you cannot opt out of engaging with it; it IS optional in the sense that within any given task you choose when and how to use it. Every AI use is documented under the AI Documentation Protocol. The Protocol document is mandatory reading by Block 2.

2. What you commit to: five things

2.1 Show up: physically and intellectually

Be in class. On time. With your materials. With your brain on. The course is built around your active engagement: readings done, drafts in progress, questions ready. If you treat class as a passive experience that happens to you, the course collapses for you. Half the value of any block depends on you bringing your own thinking; the other half depends on you engaging with other people's. Both halves require presence.

If you miss a block for legitimate reasons (illness, family emergency, school-sanctioned absence), you are responsible for catching up. The Block Plans for each unit have everything you need: Learning Intentions, Success Criteria, bell ringer, reflection. Check those first. Then ask a classmate. Then ask me.

2.2 Read the materials. Do the work.

Most blocks have readings or videos assigned ahead of time. The block is designed assuming you have done them. If you have not, you cannot participate substantively, and you will pull the class down. This is not a moral judgment; it is a practical observation about how the room works.

If a reading is genuinely too hard or too long for the time available, tell me. Sometimes I will have miscalibrated. But the default expectation is that you do the assigned work.

2.3 Document your AI use. Every time. Honestly.

The AI Documentation Protocol is the load-bearing trust mechanism of this course. The Protocol asks you to disclose how you used AI in any deliverable: what tools, what prompts, what you accepted, what you rejected, what you'd do differently. It does not punish AI use; it makes AI use legitimate.

2.4 Engage feedback you don't want to hear

Peer review, defense panels, my comments on your drafts, the AI partner's pushback: all of this exists to make your work stronger. The instinct to dismiss feedback that stings is normal. The discipline of HEARING it, considering it, deciding what to act on, and revising deliberately is one of the most important skills the course is trying to develop in you.

2.5 Take perspectives that aren't your default

Several of this year's assessments will ask you to argue from inside a worldview you do not share. A water-rights stakeholder whose interests conflict with your sympathies. A planet whose habitability you genuinely doubt. An engineering trade-off where the choice you'd never make is the defensible one. The discipline of taking those perspectives rigorously, not as caricature, not as straw-man, is part of what science-policy-public scholarship demands.

If a perspective genuinely violates your values, you can talk with me about an accommodation. The default expectation is that you take the assigned perspective seriously.

3. What I commit to: five things

3.1 Timely, substantive feedback

Drafts get substantive comments within a week of submission, never more than two. Final assessment grades go in the gradebook within 10 school days of submission, with strand-level feedback (not just numbers). If I'm running late on a turnaround, I will tell you: silence on my end is my failure, not your problem.

3.2 Honest grading

Your strand scores reflect what you did against the rubric. I will not inflate grades because someone tried hard. I will not deflate grades because someone has a difficult personality. If you ask me why you got a particular score, I can defend the reasoning specifically: what you demonstrated, what the rubric asks for, where the gap is. If I cannot defend a grade clearly, that's a signal to revisit it. Bring those questions; I'd rather hear them than have you stew.

3.3 Respect for your developing thinking

Your ideas will not always be right. They will sometimes be obviously wrong. They will sometimes be more interesting than mine. I will engage them as if they matter, because they do, even when they're wrong, because the way you become a sharper thinker is by being engaged seriously before you fully are one. I will not patronize you. I will also not pretend a weak argument is strong; that is its own kind of disrespect.

3.4 No surprises in assessment

Every assessment in this course is documented in advance: what you will produce, what the rubric measures, what success looks like. I will share rubrics before the work starts, not after. If you submit something that meets the rubric and I score it down, I owe you an explanation, and the explanation has to be about something you could have known. If I'm caught having graded against criteria I never stated, that's my mistake to correct.

3.5 Take responsibility for the room's culture

How peer review goes, how defenses feel, how comfortable students are pushing back on me. These are partly my work, not just yours. If the culture of the room turns sour (dismissive feedback, performative defenses, no one willing to push) I will address it directly rather than blaming the class. Tell me when something feels off. Specific is better than vague.

4. What to do when…

Specific situations and the move that works.

…you're stuck on a draft

1. Re-read the Block Plans + the assessment package + the rubric. Often the structure was clearer than you remembered.
2. Try one of the AI partners: Skeptic to push on your draft, Source Evaluator on your sources, Defense Practice Partner if you're prepping a defense. Document the use.
3. Talk to a peer. Often the act of explaining what you're stuck on unsticks it.
4. Email me with a specific question. Vague "I'm stuck" emails are harder to help with than "I can't figure out how to handle the counter-argument from X: can you point me to an example?"

…you disagree with feedback I gave you

1. Re-read the feedback after a day. Often what felt unfair when fresh reads differently with sleep.
2. Bring the disagreement to me. Specifically: "You said X about my draft. I think Y because Z. Can we talk through it?" I take disagreements seriously when they're specific.
3. If after a conversation I'm still wrong in your view and you have a substantive case, I will revise the grade. If after a conversation my reasoning holds, I will explain why and ask you to consider it. Either is a legitimate outcome.

…you missed a block

1. Check the Block Plans for the missed block. Most blocks are recoverable through the bell ringer, the LI/SC, the assigned reading, and the reflection.
2. Get notes from a classmate (Peer Review has language about strong vs. weak note-sharing).
3. If the missed block was a defense or a peer-test session, schedule a make-up with me within a week. These cannot be rescheduled indefinitely.

…you're overwhelmed by everything in the course

1. Tell me. Specifically, not "I'm overwhelmed" but "the U3 hazard profile + U2 landscape biography in the same week is more than I can handle."
2. We will figure out an extension or a triage. The structure of the year is intentional, but I am not interested in breaking you.
3. If overwhelm becomes persistent, that's worth a longer conversation: possibly involving your counselor. Don't sit on it.

…you suspect you used AI in a way that crossed the line

1. Tell me before submitting. Specifically. "I used AI for X and I'm not sure if that's documented appropriately."
2. Disclosed-and-asked is always better than hidden-and-caught. The first is an honest conversation; the second is an integrity matter.
3. If the answer is that the use was over-the-line, we figure out how to redo or supplement the work. The goal is honest scholarship, not punishment.

5. About the four threads

The year is structured around four threads that show up in every unit. Naming them is part of how we hold ourselves accountable to teaching what we say we teach.

• OPVL and AI Documentation: evaluating sources, including AI, and documenting tool use honestly.
• Systems thinking: Earth as interconnected subsystems where changes propagate.
• Engineering design: designing solutions under multi-criteria constraints with honest tradeoffs.
• Science, policy, and the public: translating scientific work for audiences who must act on it.

Every assessment touches multiple threads. By June, the threads should feel like your own thinking habits rather than rules I imposed.

6. Expectations vs. flexibility

Everything in this document is the default. There is a small set of things I'm not flexible on (the AI Documentation Protocol, the honesty of disclosure, treating peers with respect). There is a much larger set of things where the right answer for you may differ from the default: accommodations for learning differences, EAL adjustments, specific assessment formats, particular AI tool choices, scheduling around outside commitments.

The way we figure out where flexibility applies is by talking. If something in this doc seems wrong for your situation, bring it up. I'd rather have a private conversation about an exception than have you struggle silently against a default that wasn't designed for you.

7. One last thing

This course asks more of you than most science courses you've taken. The amount of writing is more. The amount of defending is more. The amount of perspective-taking is more. The amount of documented AI use is much more. The amount of feedback you'll give and receive is more.

It also gives you more in return. Reps in defending your thinking that almost no high-school student gets. A documented relationship with AI as a tool that will serve you for the rest of your education and career. Skills in source evaluation and stakeholder perspective-taking that translate to almost every adult context that matters. A grade that reflects your actual learning across separate dimensions, not a single number that hides what you're good at and what you need to grow.

The contract is real on both sides. I'm holding up my end. Let's see what happens when we both do.