Instructor

Course Overview

A full-year capstone science course: Earth read as one interacting system — geosphere, hydrosphere, atmosphere, and biosphere — taught with the studio's standard of evidence, modeling, and craft. Scholars build and defend models, work from data rather than assertion, and finish able to explain how a change in one Earth system propagates through the others.

The course asks four things repeatedly: observe precisely, infer cautiously, model a system, and defend a claim with evidence. The organizing habit is that observation and inference never share a sentence — “the sample scratches glass” is an observation; “the sample is quartz” is an inference, and it owes you the property that decided it. As a Texas laboratory science course, at least 40% of instructional time is laboratory and field investigation, using safe, environmentally appropriate, and ethical practices. Between bench work, the six Visual Labs, and 41 project days, hands-on investigation is the majority of this course.

State assessment: there is no STAAR End-of-Course exam for Earth Systems Science. Mastery is assessed locally — six module assessments, graded lab analyses, and six anchor projects that are built and defended. A senior course without a state exam is not a lighter course; it is one where the evidence of learning has to be produced rather than bubbled.

Course Structure & Pacing

The year runs 144 instructional days — Monday through Thursday, plus six makeup Fridays — divided into six modules. Those days are budgeted as 91 direct-instruction days, 41 project days, 6 module assessments, and 6 flex days for reteach, makeup, and project overflow. Each module is anchored by one multi-day project. Project work compresses varying direct-instruction allocations rather than adding a second layer; it is not a one-project-day-for-one-lecture-day exchange. Published slide resources support both direct instruction and project work. All submissions are digital and are turned in through the Assessment Center.

Adapted and condensed. This course is adapted and condensed from the publisher pacing. The adopted program ships 180 periods; our calendar has 144 days. Forty-eight of those publisher periods are standalone module-opening and module-closing framing, which folds into neighboring instruction, and 40 planned direct-instruction days are compressed into project work across the year. Scholars do not receive every publisher period as written — they receive the standards those periods carry, delivered in fewer days and, for roughly a third of the year, through building and defending rather than listening. The full day-by-day plan is published at drijezie.com/courses/earth-systems-science/pacing.html.

The Studio: Our Learning Environment

Class runs as a working studio, in four working areas: the Briefing Table (direct instruction — the driving question, the model, the vocabulary that earns its keep, and the units we hold ourselves to), the Bench (investigation with samples, instruments, maps, and the six Visual Labs, where data is recorded as it is taken and never reconstructed afterward), the Build Floor (anchor-project work, where teams design, fail, re-engineer, and rehearse the defense — 41 of the 144 days), and the Evidence Wall (claims stay posted with the data that support them, and a claim stays up only as long as its evidence does). Collaboration is expected during build time; assessments are individual. The room, the equipment, and each other get treated with care.

Required Materials

Bring every day:

• Interactive science notebook (composition or spiral) — kept and graded all year
• Pencils, eraser, and colored pencils for diagrams, maps, and cross-sections
• School Chromebook or equivalent, charged, for the Visual Labs, Note Studio, and Assessment Center
• A ruler, graph paper, and a basic scientific calculator (a phone is not a substitute — Beta is a no-cell-phone campus)

Bench and outdoor days: closed-toe shoes, long hair tied back, loose sleeves pushed up or removed; weather-appropriate clothing and water for campus site work. The studio provides goggles and aprons, hand lenses, streak plates and hardness kits, balances, cylinders, sample sets, maps, and every printable this course uses — there is nothing to purchase beyond the daily kit. If any item is a hardship, message me on ParentSquare; it is supplied quietly, and no scholar is graded on what their family could or could not buy.

Lab Safety & Bench Conduct

• Read the whole procedure before touching anything, and goggles stay on from the moment the first container is opened until the last is put away — including for teammates who are only watching.
• Nothing is tasted; nothing unlabeled is used. Materials go where the procedure says, never down the sink by default.
• Know the room: eyewash, first aid, fire blanket, and both exits are located on day one and reviewed before each module's first bench day.
• Report everything — spill, break, burn, cut, or splash — immediately, however small and whoever caused it. Reporting is never punished; hiding is.
• Procedure changes are approved first, then logged in the journal with the reason. Field work stays on campus, in sight, and in pairs: closed-toe shoes, no climbing, no reaching into water, no scholar working alone.
• A scholar who ignores a safety instruction is removed from the bench for that day and completes the equivalent digital investigation, with families notified. It is a safety decision, and it is not negotiable in the moment.

Grading Policy

Grades reflect demonstrated understanding. Assessments 60% — the six module assessments, the six anchor projects, and graded lab analyses. Classwork 40% — field journal entries, bench work and data tables, Visual Lab checkpoints, practice sets, misconception training, and the syllabus check. Scale: A 90–100 · B 80–89 · C 70–79 · F 69 and below, following Beta Academy policy.

How a project is scored. Every anchor project is graded on the same five strands; the weights never change, only what counts as strong evidence in that project.

Late work. All graded work lives in the Assessment Center, and assignments are due when they are due — late work is not accepted. The one exception is a documented, excused absence, which lets a scholar request to complete the work; requesting is not the same as being granted. Journal entries cannot be back-filled; an entry written the night before is not a record of thinking. Mark an absent day “absent” and account for it in the retrospective. There is no paper alternate path, including for late work.

Accommodations. Scholars with an IEP or 504 plan receive every accommodation in that plan, in full and automatically, including extended time applied to the timer before an assessment starts. That is a legal right, not a favor. The rule above applies only after the accommodation has been fully honored; anything past it needs prior arrangement, made before the deadline rather than after.

Retakes and regrades. A module assessment retake is requested in the Assessment Center's Retake tab with a root cause, reflection, and commitment. Standard retakes are limited to one per grading period, an approved retake may carry a score cap, and it replaces the original attempt. A regrade disputes one question's scoring and is limited to one request per question, ever.

Anchor Projects & the Field Journal

Each module ends in a project with a real question attached — not a poster about the module, but work that has to survive being questioned: Site Survey (what is the ground under this campus made of, and how did it get here?), Watershed Forensics (where does our rain end up, and who downstream pays?), Storm Room (with only the 6 a.m. data, what do you tell a coastal city?), Build a Plate Boundary (does your model fail where the real Earth fails?), Deep Time Museum (what does the rock actually license you to claim?), and Mission Brief (what would it take to stand on that world and come home — and which subsystem breaks first?).

The field journal is where the process is graded: one entry per project day plus a closing retrospective, written the day the work happens, in a single Note Studio note titled with the project name. Each entry carries the date and project day, the scholar's team and their own role, what they set out to do, what actually happened including the dead ends, the data or decision that came out of it, and what happens next. Observation and inference stay in separate sentences; when an identification changes, the entry says what evidence forced the change.

Where work is turned in. No paper is accepted in this course. Every deliverable goes to one of three digital surfaces:

The Scholar's Code & Leadership Roles

Come curious — ask the question you think is too simple, because it never is. Argue from evidence, never volume. Treat being wrong as data: a model that failed on day three and was re-engineered on day four is better evidence of understanding than one that worked immediately. Separate what you saw from what you concluded. Respect the room, the equipment, and each other — we critique claims, never people.

Every bench team runs itself, and roles rotate by module so every scholar holds every job at least once: Bench Chief (runs the procedure and calls the stop if anything looks unsafe — the stop is always the right call), Safety Officer (goggles, shoes, and sleeves checked before anything opens; reports incidents immediately), Data Custodian (owns the data table: units on every number, uncertainty recorded, entries made as the measurement happens), Instrument Manager (issues, cleans, and accounts for every lens, balance, cylinder, and sample), Field Lead (organizes campus site work — route, timing, photographs with a scale object in frame), and Briefing Officer (presents the team's claim and evidence at the debrief and takes the first question).

Technology Used in This Course

Scholars use the digital learning applications approved by Beta Academy leadership, together with The Scholar's Ascent Assessment Center — a custom learning platform built and operated by Dr. Ijezie-Desbois — for assessments, practice, and feedback. Full details, including how scholar information is protected and every governing policy, are published at drijezie.com/assessment-center-info.

In practice that is: the Assessment Center (module assessments, project write-ups, and the Studio Turn-In tile for media), Note Studio (the field journal and note templates), the Visual Labs on drijezie.com (six precision labs plus the everyday 3D stories that open each module), the Practice Gym (unlimited self-checking practice), Google Classroom (assignment posting and the first thing to check after an absence), and the publisher's digital text. Devices arrive charged. No submission in this course depends on home internet: if connectivity is a problem at home, say so once and studio time is made available. Scholars sign in under an alias rather than a legal name, which is part of how scholar information is protected here.

Academic Integrity

Data is never adjusted to agree with the expected answer. A result that disagrees with the textbook is a finding — it means the measurement, the model, or an assumption needs examining, and that examination is the work of science. A number invented to agree with the textbook is fabrication, and unlike a missed concept it cannot be recovered by trying again, because what it destroyed was the record. Collaboration is expected on the build floor and at the bench; module assessments are individual. Teams share data, never journal entries. AI tools cannot generate a scholar's claim, journal, or defense; where a tool is permitted it is named in the journal, and sources, maps, datasets, and images are either captured by the team or credited. The test: could you explain every step of this out loud, without notes? Violations are addressed per Beta Academy's student handbook, and families are contacted.

Procedures, Attendance & Missed Work

• A period runs: collect the brief and start the warm-up at the Briefing Table with the journal open; read the whole procedure, Safety Officer clears the team, Instrument Manager draws materials — in that order; the last five minutes belong to the bench, returned as found. The instructor dismisses the class, not the bell. On build-floor days every scholar writes their own journal entry before leaving the room — no entry, no project-day credit.
• The four-day calendar raises the stakes. We meet Monday–Thursday plus six makeup Fridays, which are full instructional days; one missed day carries roughly a day and a quarter of an ordinary schedule.
• After an absence, check Google Classroom first — every assignment is posted there. Late work is not accepted; a documented, excused absence lets a scholar request to complete the work, and I set the date. Missed module assessments are made up by appointment during office hours.
• A missed bench day cannot be re-run. The make-up path is the equivalent Visual Lab plus the team's data, written up as a full analysis — same standard, different route. Project days keep moving: an absent scholar picks up their named share on return and accounts for the missed day in the retrospective.
• Extended absence: message me on ParentSquare early rather than late. A plan built in advance keeps a scholar whole; one built afterward rarely does.

Communication & Parent Involvement

• ParentSquare is the primary channel for announcements, reminders, and direct messages. Beta is a no-cell-phone campus, so ParentSquare and email are the fastest routes to me; the front office is the route in an emergency.
• Six module closes are the natural check-in points — that is when a module assessment and its anchor project are both graded. A short syllabus check is given in the first two weeks; it is open-syllabus and counts in the Classwork category.
• Ask to see the field journal — it is updated every project day and shows the thinking rather than the score — and ask your scholar to explain one Earth system to you out loud. Ask for the evidence, not the answer: “how do you know that?” is the most useful question a family can ask in this course.
• Reach out early. Seniors carry a lot; I would rather adjust in October than repair in April. Conferences by appointment at any point in the year, and recommendation-letter requests are best made early.

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