Bad Bunny & Board Games: GFS’ J-Term Through the Eyes of a Freshman and a Senior

The courses offered during January Term, the month-long session of ungraded, interdisciplinary learning opportunities in GFS Upper School, run an impressive gamut. A quick scan through the 2026 Course Catalog, packed with over 90 classes, reveals a vibrant quilt of topics, ranging from the familiar (Bookmaking, Sports Statistics and Analysis) to the unexpected (Sneakerheads, Philosophers R Us). 

According to Kasey Henderson, GFS Classics teacher and Director of January Term, the wild array of classes is exactly the point. 

“J-Term courses reveal the wonderfully messy and joyful process of learning in lots of different ways,” she said. “They’re powered by our faculty’s seemingly limitless imagination and talents and our students’ deep curiosity and capacity for asking questions.”

Each student’s journey through J-Term is unique, with schedules uniquely tailored to their passions. To get a peek at this distinctive learning experience through the eyes of GFS students, we tagged along with Jaylen Fountain ’29 and Amelia Swedloff ’26 to see what J-Term is really like.

J-Term First-Timer

For a freshman like Fountain, J-Term offers an onramp into an Upper School experience where inquisitiveness and academic expansiveness is the norm.

Fountain’s first J-Term class of the day was spent hanging out with some of GFS’ youngest learners. Part of the Kids at Play course, taught by Head of the History Department Rob Goldberg and Head of the Health Education Department Maryanne Rawlings, included dropping in on an Early Childhood class for unstructured playtime. 

“I like to make them laugh,” said Fountain as he demonstrated a plastic tiger attempting a showy flip on the bed of a tiny red truck, eliciting bouts of rolling laughter from his new four-year old friends. “Their imaginations are so wild, they can make anything fun.”

Later, back in an Upper School classroom, Fountain dove into a more grown-up topic: Bad Bunny, the Puerto Rican “king of Latin trap.” 

“Despite his rising stardom, students don’t really know much about Bad Bunny,” said Ninth-Grade Dean and Spanish teacher Rachel Bradburd, who co-taught the Bad Bunny 101 class with senior Chloe White-Johnson. “We want to challenge students to apply a critical lens to his contributions to pop music and the political and social ramifications of his work.”

In one particularly competitive activity, the class went racing from their classroom in Main to Hargroves and Wade, where Bradburd had scattered 200 cut-outs of Bad Bunny for teams of students to find and piece together in a timeline of his life and career, showing his evolution as a cultural icon.

In Greek Mythology: Game of Thrones Edition, taught by Julie Marren, Head of the Classic Department, Fountain and his team acted out the birth of Athena dramatically bursting from Zeus’ head. This was part of their case study on an ancient Greek character and preparation for the Medusa Mythology Exam, an opportunity for students worldwide to show off their skills in the arena of Greco-Roman mythology.

A Seasoned Senior

For senior Amelia Swedloff’s last J-Term at GFS, she wanted to put together a slate of courses that spoke to her many hobbies and interests. And, she committed to further challenging herself and growing her leadership skills by co-teaching an art-meets-math course To Infinity and Beyond! with math teachers Jess Zeldes and Kate Jones.

“This class is basically an excuse for us to do any kind of mathematical puzzle or game we’ve stumbled upon,” said Jones. 

Part of Swedloff’s role in planning the class was dreaming up ways to make those puzzles as ambitious and epic as possible. 

“I took this class [during J-Term] in my freshman year,” said Swedloff as she rolled yellow paint onto an L-shaped block. “And last year, for my Junior project, I was on campus a lot and I would stop by this class. This year, I asked if I could help teach it––it’s such an interesting concept and there are so many fun things to do with it.”

On a rare mild afternoon in early January, Swedloff and her class spent a few hours on the Common building and spray painting what looked like jumbo cardboard Tetris pieces. When assembled correctly, they created a massive, colorful cube—just one of the several “megaprojects” that students undertook throughout the month.

In the basement of the All School Commons, Swedloff worked through a different kind of puzzle: how to make the most fabulous drag outfit possible with odds and ends from the GFS Theatre costume closet. This was part of a Drag Race-inspired segment in the Compete in a Reality TV Show J-Term course. 

Designed and hosted by Indy Wink ’26 and Hannah Davidson ’26, this course threw its participants into challenges inspired by Jeopardy, Project Runway, and other well known reality and game shows. During the DIY drag competition, Swedloff and her classmates strutted out in their best ensembles, complete with personas and backstories, to be applauded and/or grilled by faculty guest judges Jake Miller (Head of the GFS Theatre Department), Jess Zeldes (Upper School math), and Caroline Fosnot (Upper School science).

It’s all fun and games for Swedloff in Never be Board, a J-Term course where students bring their board game ideas to life. 

“I’m a very big game person,” said Swedloff. “They’re something I really enjoy in my life and something I really wanted to understand more about—what goes into making a game?”

Together, with classmate Indy Wink ’26, they created a collaborative card game where each player has different abilities. Some players are able to look at others’ cards and some are at liberty to give hints, but ultimately each player is categorized as “good” or “evil.” Those branded as “evil” are tasked with impeding the progression of the game.

January Term serves as a yearly reminder that the most profound education often happens at the intersection of self-exploration and experiential learning. It is a space where a senior can be a mathematician and a drag performer, and a freshman can be a classicist and a Bad Bunny critic. And it proves that when you remove the pressure of grades, what’s left is an open-minded, adventurous community of learners—one that is ready to take that same spirit back into the spring semester.