Excursion 2023 Course Catalog/Virtual Tour

Animating Movement

Cara Lavallee & Maria Paola Jimenez

Rotoscoping is an animation technique used in the film industry to trace over motion footage, frame by frame, to reproduce realistic actions. In this excursion you will take inspiration from the Rotoscope -a film making device- to create outlines of people in motion and create animations that interact with them in an augmented reality environment. You will dive deep into movement creation and curation by designing your own movement sequence (dance, sports highlights, and other hobbies) that we will then pair with the technology of 2d animation. We will develop our skill with this technology with a visit to SCAD in Savannah. These videos will be produced for various outlets such as local businesses, social media content, student portfolios, Galloway promotional materials or even your own video game.

El sabor de Costa Rica (A taste of Costa Rica)

Kelli Flicek & Jesus Martinez-Saldana

From white sand beaches to misty cloud forests, from towering volcanoes to beautiful rivers that cut through tropical canyons, and to hospitable, friendly communities, Costa Rica has it all. Having abolished its military over 50 years ago, this tiny democratic republic has long been known for its pacifism, commitment to environmental protection, and its status as a tourist destination for those seeking safe yet exciting adventure travel set against breathtaking scenery. Our program offers unique access to Costa Rica’s best-kept secrets and friendliest communities. We are confident you will love the land of Pura Vida as much as we do!

Travel Dates: Sunday, February 19th - Monday, February 27th

Cost: $3780 ($500 deposit)

Open to Spanish III - AP Spanish students

England and Scotland: From Monarchy to Democracy

Katie Crowell and Sam Biglari

Calling all Anglophiles! Are you fascinated by the British monarchy? Are you interested in UK politics and literature? Did you know there’s a new Prime Minister? Then we have got the excursion for you! In this excursion, you will travel to the UK to develop a deeper understanding of the government, its monarchical roots, and the ways in which writers like William Shakespeare interacted with and influenced the political situation in their time. With the recent death of Queen Elizabeth II, the effects of Brexit still playing out, and the ongoing shake-up in the UK parliament, you will seek to understand the present and look to the future by first developing an understanding of the UK’s past. By engaging in this excursion, you will develop a global consciousness, learning more about the world and yourself. Your perspective will shift as your world expands.

Travel Dates: Sunday, February 19th - Tuesday, February 28th

Cost: approximately $4200

Open to 11th & 12th grade students

“Je me souviens” – Travel through Quebecois History

Claire Duggan & Chris Curtis

Are you ready to escape to a destination booming with great places to eat, interesting people to meet, a compelling history to explore, and unique experiences never before offered here at Galloway? Do you want to immerse yourself completely in the French language and practice what you’ve been learning in the classroom? Are you interested in creating your own graffiti, trying your hand at curling, exploring an underground city, learning about indigenous cultures past and present, seeing a hockey game, or even stepping foot in one of the few ice hotels in the world today? Then join us as we explore the French language and culture outside of France and travel to the beautiful Canadian province of Quebec. From the trendy neighborhoods and vibrant social scene of Montreal to the welcoming charm and rich history of Quebec City (the first fortified city in North America), students will immerse themselves for 9 days in the world of French Canada. This excursion is sure to leave each student with amazing, one-of-a-kind experiences, stronger proficiencies in the spoken and written French language, bellies full of deliciously authentic Quebecois cuisine, and most importantly, a deeper and richer appreciation for the Francophone culture and people of Canada.

Travel Dates: Monday, February 20th - Tuesday, February 28th

Cost: $3460 ($350 deposit)

Open to French students

Here to Slay, Y’all: Queer History and Culture in the South

Stephen Fleming-Cooper, Joe Medeiros & Margaret Montgomery

Students will take a deep dive into the history and culture of the LGBTQ+ population in the American South. Students will view historical collections, converse with pivotal figures, and look to the history of the LGBTQ+ movement for ways to inform current activism. Some major activities will be exploring Atlanta as a backyard for queer history and current queer culture and a trip to New Orleans. Students will explore different popular aspects of queer culture. We will explore the different artistic responses to queer life, including protest art and drag culture. Students will also engage in service learning with queer-oriented organizations, specifically those in the Atlanta and New Orleans area. At the end of the course, students will be able to connect past to present to future in a way that helps them understand the protected (or unprotected) rights of Queer Southerners and where the community could go to solidify their rights as Americans.

Potential Student Cost: $500

Independent Study

Danielle Reed

The independent study Excursion program offers students an opportunity to pursue an area of interest or passion in an experiential mode and to become better prepared to be positive, active citizens of the world. While students pursue individual interests, all independent studies share a few common characteristics. Each student networks to find an appropriate mentor. Each student proposes a set of learning goals unique to the particular project. Every student participates actively in a planned schedule of interactions with a mentor and others related to the subject area throughout the Excursion period, and they all create concrete outcomes of these experiences, such as work produced “on the job,” research conducted, or project results achieved. All students reflect and write about their experiences and learning in the form of a blog, and they all present what they have learned to the Galloway community.

Independent Study is reserved for 11th and 12th graders, and proposals must take into consideration safety protocols which could limit a student's access to a professional setting. For example, if a student wishes to explore occupational therapy for three year-olds in a school setting, the student would need to be able to conform to the school's policy regarding visitors on campus and gain approval for presence on the campus.

Learning to Love and Accept Me

Denny Beatty & Ayesha Fakhrid-Deen

The Learning to Love and Accept Me excursion explores identifying who we are and the belief that life masks our core identity. We will look at how media, friends, and images create who we should be, how we should act, and what we should like. We will identify, without catalysts, who we are, what we like and what determines our happiness. By restricting constant connection to the world and slowing down an overly active brain, we can access thoughts and feelings buried beneath. The separation from the world and relationship with yourself will open new pathways to learning more about your core identity. We will explore our willingness to be vulnerable and activities that put us in a state of vulnerability. These activities can include, but are not limited to, trust based activities, burden bearing activities, isolated activities and self awareness activities. We will culminate the excursion by having fun traditionally: physically, at the moment, and trying new things such as hiking, horseback riding, high ropes course, yoga, tai chi and rock climbing.

Look, Listen, Create: A Desert Excursion

Betsy Qualls & Lore Ruttan

What is a desert and how might you relate to it? In this excursion, you will explore this question by spending a week in Southern California deserts, and spending another week working in the studio developing an individual project. The desert experience will include four nights of camping in the Joshua Tree National Park, a remote area with limited conveniences and comforts, e.g. no showers. You should be ready to do strenuous activities like rock climbing and hiking, as well as mindfulness training, star gazing, botanizing, journaling and sketching. You will also have the opportunity to see a different type of desert when we travel between Joshua Tree and San Diego, our final destination. We will depart on Monday February 20.

Back in Atlanta, you will use this experience as fodder for a substantial individual project in which you further explore your experience and relationship with the desert. This may take the form of a piece of visual art, performance art, music, creative writing, or even scientific inquiry. We want you to dig deep, to dive deep into the proverbial rabbit hole, and to engage your whole self. On the last day of Excursion, we will share our experiences. Attendance is mandatory for full credit.

Travel Dates: Monday, February 20th - Monday, February 27th

Cost: approximately $3000 ($500 deposit)

Making Art/Making Memory

Kerren Berz & Daniel Solammon

How does music, movement, theater, and visual art help us remember, both personally and collectively? There are examples of this all around us. You will attend live performances of music and dance, visit art exhibits, hear speakers, work with a Grammy nominated songwriter, do some guided body movement, and have a tour of art on the beltline ending in spray painting your created tag in the Krog Street Tunnel. You will also save your own memories through creating a final project combining 2 or more art forms we have experienced.

Structure and Experience: "The Science of 'Good' Music"

Carla Rascoe& Lordserious Watson

During ``The Science of 'Good' Music" excursion, you will have the opportunity to visit and interact with producers, engineers, artists and musicians around Atlanta. You will gain an in depth view into the math and physics involved in producing a modern recording or live performance. By observing the production of sound in a variety of roles and functions, you will inquire and analyze as to scientifically observed properties which are featured when you are listening to your favorite music. Is there a science behind the relationship between what pleases the human ear and physical properties of sound?

As a result of this experience, you will connect and expand your perspective of music on a larger scale - our familiar American traditions, as well as world communities. The appreciation and production of music may have more in common - even in genres and cultures less familiar - than you may have first thought. This will allow students a variety of perspectives from which to analyze the science of sound, including history, geography and culture. You will enjoy a multi dimensional series of discussion, demonstrations and creation in the distinctly diverse creative epicenter of Atlanta.

The Adriatic: Tracing Cultural Influence in the Melting Pot of Europe (Venice + Croatia)

Anne Broderick & Lauren Holt

What marks does political occupation leave? How long can they be traced? In a country repeatedly shaped and reshaped by invasion and upheaval, how does one tell the story of that place or its people? How will you?

Throughout their histories, the countries around the Adriatic Sea have vied with one another and with forces much further afield for political, economic, religious, and cultural influence. The Roman, Frankish, Byzantine, Venetian, Ottoman, and Austro-Hungarian Empires all have conquered and controlled the region at various moments in history, pushing Croat and Slavic tribes to migrate to the Adriatic’s eastern coast. After WWI, Yugoslavia was established, politically unifying, for a time, the countries we now know as Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Slovenia and Serbia. Yugoslavia broke up in the late-1980s and early 1990s, as, one-by-one, these countries declared their independence, ushering in the Yugoslav and Bosnian Wars, ethnic battles considered the bloodiest events in Europe since WWII. It wouldn’t be too great a stretch to say that the countries that make up the eastern Adriatic have been caught up in a perpetual identity crisis, claiming their place among the European heavy-hitters while simultaneously wanting to retain the Balkan individualism that marks them as unique. The simple fact is that Croatia is stuck between the East and the West, geographically, ideologically, spiritually, and culturally.

This Excursion will foster both self-awareness and also social awareness as you engage with the Balkan culture – its architecture, foods, people, artistic media, and artifacts – formed from centuries of occupation and having to fight for national existence. It will also call upon and hone your skills as thoughtful, empathetic, honest storytellers, whether you’re composing your stories through word, image, sound, or film.

You should join us if you enjoy:

Exploring the tensions – both terrible and beautiful – that arise from millenia of multiculturalism and imperial power struggles

Thinking about how power manifests itself through architecture, art, geography, literature, politics, and religion

Thinking about how cultural identity is formed and protected through architecture, art, geography, literature, politics, and religion

Crafting and telling stories yourself about any of the above

Travel Dates: Friday, February 17th - Wednesday, March 1st

Cost: $3200 ($500 deposit)

Open to 10th - 12th graders, Priority given to 11th & 12th

The Chemistry of Photography

Julie Whitehead and Mary Stuart Hall

Have you ever seen a photograph of someone and wondered what they were thinking? Who took the picture and why? The relationship between the photographer and the subject and the chemistry between them? Have you ever wondered about the actual chemical reactions that occur to create a photograph? In this course we will explore the chemistry of photography that happens in both the artistic and technical creation of an image. Students will learn how to create pinhole cameras and experiment with different printing processes to alter their images. We will explore the role of light and oxidation-reduction reactions in creating an image on paper. We will also explore the relationship between the photographer and their subject. Using portraiture as our primary style of photography, students will be asked to think deeply about their role in creating an image of another person. Photography requires both a scientific and artistic ability and students will have the opportunity to delve deep into both in this Excursion.

The Golden Isles : Culture and Ecology

Stephanie Strickland

During our excursion, students will discover the natural and human history of Georgia’s barrier islands, a largely undeveloped area with extensive protected wilderness areas. Students will study the landscape, flora, fauna, and wildlife of these protected areas as well as the cultural environment of the Gullah and Geechee people in the region, whose culture has grown and evolved in the barrier islands for 300 years. We will engage with challenges of sustainability and eco-tourism and immerse ourselves in the journey of the landscape, creatures, and people of this state treasure.

Potential Student Cost - $400

Preference to 11th/12th graders

The Mind-Body Problem: The Study of Consciousness and the Future of Human Knowledge

Ed Clark & Alex Diaz Williamson

Utilizing insights and approaches from a variety of different academic disciplines (including neuroscience, cognitive psychology, cultural anthropology, philosophy and religious studies), this excursion aims to examine fundamental questions about the nature of human consciousness and cognition. Many of these questions have philosophical or religious roots that extend deep into antiquity, but recent advances in cognitive neuroscience, behavioral biology and artificial intelligence have the potential to profoundly change the nature of the conversation. In this course we will contemplate a series of questions, including:

What is the nature of the human mind and what is its relationship to the physical body?

What brain mechanisms underlie cognition, emotion, and intelligence and how did these abilities evolve?

How is human consciousness both shaped by and an expression of human culture?

Is “consciousness” or “mind” limited to human beings, or does it exist elsewhere?

How should we evaluate the rapid advancements in “machine learning” or “artificial intelligence” in recent years?

How should we understand the various practices, techniques and disciplines humans have developed over millennia to change their “minds,” i.e. alter their conscious experience?

The study of consciousness (“human” or otherwise!) is one of the most exhilarating and challenging fields of inquiry currently underway in the academy. Even as it threatens to upend many of our most cherished notions of human personhood and identity, the study of the human “mind” also points forward to a new and more hopeful synthesis between the “sciences” and the “humanities”. By the end of our time together, we hope to come to a deeper appreciation of the complex nature of life and intelligence, and so perhaps to experience for ourselves the kind of “change of mind” about which we’ve been studying.

The Science and Culture of Death

Dr. Cassie Mattox & Antonia Fairchild

What happens to our bodies when we die? How are our lives celebrated? You will take a dive into the world of science and culture through the lens of death and celebration of life. We will look at the various ways bodies are handed post-mortem and how various cultures around the world honor the lives lived. A focus will be on burials, cremations, and preservations. You will visit: the Carlos Museum, a cadaver lab, a mortuary, a local graveyard, and a “green” graveyard. Part of the school’s strategic plan is to foster students’ cultural competence and embrace an accepting and open-mind. What better way to self-reflect on our thoughts/feelings/knowledge about death than taking a look at what actually happens, and how many different cultures celebrate life.

(un)Civil Discourse: Communicating ideas in the digital age

David Morgan and Elizabeth Sanders

What kinds of media do you consume, and how does that affect what you learn, what you believe, what choices you make, who you know and love, and how you (will) vote? How does the changing landscape of media affect the kind of society you live in and will inherit? Can you choose and use the kinds of media that effectively communicate things that matter to you? How does that choice affect the ideas themselves?

In this excursion, we will take a critical look at how different mediums of communication change public discourse. We will explore the types of media as they branch out from typography, into radio and television, internet and social media. We will delve deep into how each form of media affects what we say and how we say it, and the impact that has on society.

We will read, Neil Postman’s groundbreaking Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business, which will give a theoretical framework for our discussions. We will visit media producers (possibly CNN, The Weather Channel, Turner), consume ample servings of different media including movies, radio, magazines, TV, TikToks, tweets, and everything in between. We will assess what they are good (and not good) for and build skills in making them ourselves. You’ll leave the class with awareness and skills to get your ideas across, navigate the world, and contribute to the crazy, diverse, delicious media world we live in as media consumers and creators.

UnderstHAND - Breaking down and synthesizing aspects of one word

Heidi Gruber & Sally Harvey

In our daily lives, we take so many evolutionary advantages for granted! This excursion will take a singular, specific thing (the hand) and pursue over a dozen aspects and interpretations of this appendage. What are the physical and biological capabilities of this body part? What are the ways the hand has been depicted in art, music, and popular culture? How do we use our hands to communicate with one another? To grip a steering wheel? To climb a rock? To play the piano? Not only will we break down this singular concept into its many parts including language, art, biology, myth and service, but we will also synthesize these seemingly detached parts into a new whole to create some new meaning. This excursion will travel locally, ideally to go rock climbing, do palm readings, meet a hand surgeon, learn sign language, study fingerprinting, create a casting of the hand, and much more. Students will build a final project to showcase a synthesis of multiple aspects of the hand.