Practical Psychology could be the most important class you ever take. However you hope to make an impact, you’ll need to understand yourself and others—how to connect, how to reflect, how to get things done. Our classes teach powerful principles from cognitive, positive, clinical, and evolutionary psychology. Guided by grads of top schools like Duke and Yale, you'll learn insights that will be as relevant and applicable ten years from now as they are today.
Kaleidoscope's live virtual seminars and workshops are designed to help you master the skills you need to address the real-world problems you care about. Our two-week, college-style Practical Psychology courses provide the opportunity to pursue a passion while equipping you with transferable skills and applicable knowledge critical to thriving in college environments and in our ever-evolving world. We know you learn best when you actually use the material, and our classes are designed for this.
The Kaleidoscope student experience is, to quote alum Aryan, “just so radically different from other online classes.” Our global classrooms are centered on community, conversation, and collaboration: they are as big as the world but feel as small as your circle of friends. Our students grapple with powerful ideas and valuable skills: in summer 2022, 97% of our students said they were excited to keep learning more about their class topic, and 100% said they learned ideas and skills that mattered to their lives. Finally, we hire students and graduates of America’s top universities (Princeton, Yale, Duke) to bring our classes to life. Our teachers are passionate about their craft, experts in their content areas, and trained to be fluent in the art of facilitating stimulating and collaborative academic conversations online.
PRACTICAL PSYCHOLOGY COURSES FOR SUMMER 2023:
Workshop Offering: Our two-week workshops meet Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays as a full group, and Tuesdays & Thursdays in peer cohorts. The emphasis is on learning practical skills you can put to use—immediately and for the rest of your life! This summer, we’re offering:
- The Cognitive Science of Peak Performance: Do you want to be the next Steve Jobs or Megan Rapinoe? Whether you want to be the best in your field, the best on the field, or simply get more work done with less effort, this cognitive science class will share valuable research-backed insights to help you achieve your goals. Join us to learn the mental habits of high performers: how to efficiently master material, how to build productive routines, and how to manage challenges like anxiety and procrastination.
Discussion Seminar Offerings: Our two-week, small-group discussion seminars meet daily as a full group. The emphasis is on making meaning of psychological research to better understand yourself and others. Classes include:
- Positive Psychology: Wellbeing: What if you could have more control over how you feel? As a leader, you’ll need to be able to cope with stress, challenges, and setbacks with adaptability and resilience. This science-based psychology course will equip you with the ultimate toolkit to cultivate a better quality of life and deeper well-being. Create effective strategies to improve your mental health, and engage with psychology in a way that strongly demonstrates your interest and passion to colleges.
- Psychology of Identity & Prejudice: What makes you you? What’s your story? Everyone wants to know--colleges, potential employers, scholarship committees. Your sense of self is born from the complex interactions among your personality, beliefs, appearance, relationships, and experiences. But human psychology is such that as we form our identities, we can also form prejudices—and understanding how prejudice arises is the only way to effectively address it. This course will inspire rich revelations about who you are and provide tools for reducing prejudice in yourself and others.
- The Science of Social Connection: How would you change the world if you knew that our desire for friendship, understanding, and love is one of our strongest and most important instincts? Humans are wired for connection. It is a need as basic as food and shelter, and it’s the reason that we’ve succeeded as a species. Being a leader is all about interacting with others and creating connections that will build you up and allow you to succeed. Join us to learn insights from social, evolutionary, and clinical psychology about why relationships matter, how to cultivate them, and what to do when they go off track.
- Decision-Making: What if you could make better decisions and be more confident that they were the right ones? In this class, you’ll explore the cognitive science of decision-making, including the factors that affect our decisions—such as emotions, biases, and the environment. By the end of the course, you’ll be able to make more informed decisions in a wide variety of contexts.
How Our Classes Work:
Workshops: On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, we’ll meet as a full group (capped at 50) to learn techniques and workshop examples; on Tuesdays and Thursdays at class time, you’ll meet with peer cohorts (3-5 students) to share feedback and dive deeper into application of class concepts (and get to know each other!). Each day, you’ll submit some piece of work—whether it be a reflection, an action plan, or a group memo. You’ll receive feedback from your teacher and your peer cohort to help you implement what you’re learning in your own life.
Seminars: Each day Monday through Friday, we’ll have a two-hour Zoom session where we discuss rich, carefully chosen materials; learn from each other in a collaborative, challenging environment; and reflect on the implications for our lives and the world. You’ll be assigned reading, videos, and podcasts outside of class to deepen your understanding of the issues & prepare you for an active class session.
In any class you choose, you’ll complete a student-directed project, which gives you the opportunity to apply what you’ve learned and show colleges what matters to you. (Our alumni often tell us they write or talk about their projects as part of college admissions!)
What Our Alumni Say:
"If I hadn't taken this class over the summer, I don't know how I would have gotten through my senior year."
-Ashley, Worcester Academy, Peak Performance Alum
"The things you learn in this class you will use for the rest of your life."
-Ginna, Deep Run High School, The Science of Wellbeing alum
"If you feel that you've ever struggled making connections or understanding your relationships and connections, this class covers all those bases and you come out with this whole new world of knowledge."
-Keara, ACS Cobham International School, Connections & Relationships alum
"All rising seniors should take a class like this. For college applications, you have to write about yourself, and this helps you with the introspection needed for that."
-Colin, Onslow Early College High School graduate, current Columbia University student, and Identity & Prejudice alum
