This elective course is for highly motivated Alliance Leichtman-Levine Family Foundation Environmental Science High School students, and it will introduce the major content areas of psychology, which include: the different viewpoints applied in psychology, learning and memory, social psychology, biopsychology, and developmental psychology. We will explore topics such as identity, nature vs. nurture, helping behavior, group dynamics, and brain anatomy to name a few.

This course presents topics that are considered indispensable to a most basic understanding of human psychology and is most pertinent to the lives of high-school students and the period of cognitive and social development they currently inhabit. The course is meant to be an academic introduction to psychology as well as a place to practice academic skills, but it is also meant to encourage students to enhance their own level of self-awareness that they can develop and apply in their immediate lives.

For many students, the study of psychology is very different from other subjects they have explored. Studying psychology requires connections from research to real life. Students should expect research, reading, writing practice, activities and projects throughout the year. Students will be working with online resources, printed documents, and published research articles.  In the Honors section, students will be given more independence and more rigorous timed prompts for assessments than in an introductory class. Students are expected to apply their best abilities in reading, writing, analysis, and discussion.