Arriving Soon: Next Year's Curriculum Guide

Regarding Course Selection for 2016-2017
 
Although it is barely February we have begin the process of getting students set up for courses next year.  The Curriculum Guide for 2017-2018 will soon be online and will be mailed home as well.  As always, it is full of great options for students.  Recently I have been meetlong with various parent, advisor and student constituencies to be sure I was delivering some common messages about the process.  If you were not in attendance at any of these sessions, I can summarize the following major points:
 
  1. We want students to be excited about our course selections and to look for new ways to challenge themselves every year.  That said, we don’t want them to overload either.  At sign-up time, ambition can get the better part of a student who may think 7 courses in the fall is a great idea.  But I want them to think about how they will feel in October when they have 2 papers due, 3 tests, a soccer game and choir practice.  In other words, it’s always better to think ahead to the worst-case scenario when considering total load.  Advisors have all been trained to look out for kids in this case, and Liza Skipwith, the class deans, and I also review schedule sign-ups.  The college counselors also review schedules for rising seniors.  The bottom line is we want the appropriate level of rigor for every student, and of course that rigor quotient is different for every student.
  2. Please follow the departmental recommendations of the world language and mathematics teachers.  Sometimes students and parents want to move too quickly through these subject areas, and the result is a student who is stretched beyond what is reasonable (see point 1 above).  We give a lot of thought to the recommendations, based on the student’s track record AND past experience with other students. 
  3. There are exciting new electives in the English and social studies departments for rising juniors and seniors.  We ask that all students put their top three choices per trimester.  Because of scheduling constraints, students need to be comfortable with getting their second or third choice, although we certainly try our very best to get them into their first choice options.  We also ask students to think more about the subject matter of these electives, as opposed to choosing based on who will be teaching the course.  While some teachers are very much aligned with particular courses, other electives have traditionally had multiple different teachers involved, so there is no guarantee that taking “Mr. X’s class” will be the same next year as it has been in the past.
  4. We have again expanded our computer science offerings, so I would encourage everyone to look carefully through those options, keeping in mind that all students in the current sophomore and freshman class (and all subsequent classes) have a graduation requirement of at least two trimesters of either computer science or innovations courses.
  5. Similarly, there are many more exciting choices in the arts. Dance offerings can now count as a student's athletic requirement as well. 
 
Students should take the course sign-up process seriously and do the best they can to reflect their intentions for the next year.  That said, we know changes may need to occur.  We can certainly make adjustments later in the spring, or even further down the line if necessary.  Upcoming advisor conferences (March 10) are a great time to review what your student has signed up for and discuss with the advisor the appropriateness of certain selections.  We will also review selections again later in April by which time all math and science recommendations will be in.
 
Please feel free to contact me or the grade level deans in the meantime, or contact your child’s current teachers for other questions about curriculum or future courses.
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