Holly Santero, News Editor
@SanteroCourant
As students are still winding down from the stress of midterms and preparation for February break, many might forget that it’s already time to start thinking about their classes for next year. Throughout the month of February, students from grades 9 to 11 will begin meeting with their guidance counselors during gym and health periods in order to select courses that they want to take next year.
While many students may not put much time into their course selection, administrators are hoping that students carefully consider the vast amount of options that NCHS has to offer. “The biggest thing I recommend is that students really read the descriptions of our courses,” Assistant Principal, Ari Rothman said. “Students definitely shouldn’t just assume that they know what each course is about.”
With a large range of classes for students to choose from, administrators aim at focusing in on what students are interested in, and are adding new courses each year to further these interests. For next year, the Career and Technology Education department has already added on four new courses; Game Design, 3D Animation, Web Design, and Robotics. “The reason we are bringing these courses in is to be a more forward thinking school in technology education,” CTE Department Head James Zambarano said. “3D Animation is really a graphics course and Gaming is a course that is offered at other schools that is a really fun way of getting into computer science and coding.”
Providing students with opportunities like these has been a main focus of the NCHS administration in the past, leading to successful new course catalogs. “Last year we decided to add on a computer science elective, and this year we have two full classes” Mr. Rothman said.
Along with adding on new electives, next year’s course selection will include different AP classes and courses that offer UCONN and NCC college credits. “One of the programs that NCHS takes part in is the Early College Experience out of UCONN,” Mr. Rothman said. “What we have done is cross referenced some of our own courses with their courses, so we still have UCONN courses being taught here, like Child Development 2, but we have also applied our own NCHS courses to be approved as a part of the ECE.”
With new courses being approved by the ECE in addition to new AP courses such as AP Micro Macroeconomics and AP English Language, next year’s curriculum has been extended to provide students with an education aimed at their own interests. With such an extensive curriculum, many classes, to the dismay of administrators, are unable to obtain enough students. “There’s a whole host of art classes that never get run, like Printmaking for example,” Mr. Rothman said. “So I hope that students will really look into these classes more closely because they can miss out on some really neat opportunities.”
To learn more about course selection for the 2016-2017 school year, students and parents can visit the School Counseling Course Selection portion of the NCHS website. Make sure to stay posted for the full list of classes being offered.
