Should I take AP US History? Is it better to double up on Algebra and Geometry next year? Should I really be taking this honors class?
Am I making the right decision?
Every year, in March, each non-graduating student sets the trajectory of their next school year. From the opening of the course selection window to its closing, the process takes some two weeks.
Students look over the classes available to them, make their decisions and finalize them in a conference with their advisor.
By the end, most people get what they want. But requirements on graduation credits and the six-course restriction put limits on what students can do with their days.
To some, it’s perfectly fine. To others, it’s frustrating. To the school, it’s just the way things are. But the reasons beneath the surface tells more about why these rules exist and what might change in the future.
For Director of Academic Information Systems Paul Mlakar, it’s up to him to enforce the rules — and deal with the complaints and questions that follow.
Specifically, a source of many gripes has been the six-course limit, putting a cap on students who wish to take extra courses to supplement their learning experience. The limit, though, was intentionally maintained with the new school schedule implemented in August of 2020 — one specifically designed to lessen students’ workload.
“We knew that our kids were exhausted,” Mlakar said. “We had kids coming back from college saying that Upper School was just really, really hard because of the way our schedule worked and the fact that classes met every day and how much work they were getting in those classes every day. We saw that something needed to change for the health and wellness of our kids.”
For the Upper School students that have lived with the new schedule for their entire tenure, the change has just become normal. The school, however, continues to stand by the original purpose intended with the change.
In addition, the overhaul of the schedule led to some alterations of credit requirements. With physical education, under the old system, which operated by trimesters, students had to participate in a sport or P.E. every trimester, or otherwise seek a tutorial to earn their credit outside of school.
The implementation of the cumulative requirement of five credits over the course of all four years in Upper School thus gave students notably more freedom with how they could approach physical education.
Other changes have been made as a result of shifting priorities regarding curriculum. According to Mlakar, the addition of a middle school computer science credit requirement was the result of a goal set for learning standards.
“(Computer science) is also a continued goal for Upper School, but it’s not yet a graduation requirement,” Mlakar said. “Something that’s always on the forefront of our minds is, ‘are our graduation requirements meeting the needs of our students?’”
According to Mlakar, the school reevaluates the graduation requirements for Upper School students every 10 years. One particular priority is ensuring that each and every student can be well-rounded, while still giving students enough freedom to choose.
“If you look at the graduation requirements, by the time you reach junior year, you’ve got a lot more flexibility in your schedule, and by senior year, the only requirement for senior year is really your English 12 classes, so the other four to five classes that students choose to take is really completely up to them,” Mlakar said. “So we do have the flexibility to let people, if they want to, to ‘specialize.’”
But one common phenomenon has risen from these tight credit requirements. Occasionally, students will take courses during their senior year simply to earn a credit to meet their graduation needs.
Senior Asher Babilla is one of the many seniors who are taking Acting I, normally a class for freshmen, their senior year in order to earn a fine arts credit. Because participation in the journalism program does not count towards the fine arts credit, Babilla was unable to take economics like he had hoped. In light of the stresses of senior year, however, he ultimately believes that acting was the better decision.
“I think it would have looked better to whatever colleges I applied to if I had AP Macroeconomics or AP Microeconomics on my transcript instead of freshman acting on it,” Babilla said. “But for actual enjoyment of the year, (acting)’s a stress reliever compared to other classes. It’s not a free period where I feel like I need to be getting all my homework done, but I’m not sitting in the middle of math class taking notes. I’ll be glad that I took it.”
