AIM Forward

Pursue your passions while exploring who you are and how you learn.

Taught by our college counselor and school psychologist, this course exposes students to passionate experts in a variety of fields and helps them understand who they are as learners. This lets the class incorporate a strong executive functioning component, designed to teach students how to effectively manage their own time and how to navigate online learning. Throughout the year, the students investigate professionals in a variety of files within 4 Threads, and explore their own interests in each of these Threads. The non-academic portion of the 4 Threads class is focused on skills and information that support our students outside the classroom and are transferable to their future lives.

Threads: Entrepreneurship, Arts & Design, Global Competency and Sustainability, Science and Engineering

Become a better citizen, a stronger ally, and develop a deeper social awareness.

In order to engage with the world on a local or global level and to move fluidly between the two, it is essential to understand the concept of culture and citizenship. Students consider the beliefs, behaviors, perspectives and concentric circles of community that shape our world and influence global change. This course takes an interdisciplinary, experiential approach to understanding contemporary global issues on a local and international scales. Through the study of current events, systems, culture, and society, combined with discussion, action-based research, and visual based projects, students will be given the tools they need to think critically about addressing global issues that are relevant to them.

Prepare for all aspects of the college process.

This course is designed to research, discuss, and prepare students for all aspects of the college process. From admissions to standardized testing, and demonstrated interest-to-interest exploration, students navigate the most common stress-inducing aspects of college preparation. Students also take an extensive series of self-assessments, and start to uncover some potential areas of interests and/or careers that they might have for their future. As the course progresses, students narrow their individual college-lists and, in collaboration with their assigned college counselor, plan for college visits during the summer after their junior year. During the second and fourth quarters, as students prepare to take the ACT exam, students use their College 101 time to engage in ACT prep classes, taught by qualified ACT-preparation tutors familiar with AIM student profiles.

We have found that in order to be best prepared for college, students should actually experience a college class. In addition to their class work at AIM, all AIM seniors dually enroll in two (one fall, one spring) college courses at one of AIM’s partner schools. AIM faculty attend college classes with students. They support the student work as a way to introduce them to the demands of college and the advocacy skills required to succeed. Students are graded by their professor, eligible for learning services, and take their classes with college students. They earn credits and can transfer them on the days they’re on our campus, students come to AIM for a college skills course that helps students navigate their college course, work on higher level study, reading, and writing skills, and use all the supports the college has available to students with learning differences.

Subjects have included:

• US History
• Composition
• Sociology
• Psychology
• Introduction to Entrepreneurship 

These are just some of the courses our seniors took this year: 

• Intro to Film at Arcadia 
• Intro to Psychology 
• Calculus II at Cabrini 
• Intro to Criminal Justice
• Programming for Everyone at Montgomery County Community College 
• History of the US to 1877 
• Youth Cultures at Temple 
• Data Science 
• Entrepreneurship at Drexel