With the end of the school year, another one approaches with an opportunity to discover more about yourself, explore your interests, grow your passions, and experience new things. The upcoming 2023-2024 school year brings a number of new and resurfaced courses that will allow students to explore topics beyond their standard credit requirements.
Advanced Creative Writing
Creative writing explores the arts of poetry, writing, and literature beyond the technical and essay writing studied in history and English glasses. If you have taken the Creative Writing semester course and are eager for more opportunities to hone your expressive and storytelling skills, consider taking Advanced Creative Writing. This class will develop the skills of passionate writers to compose their own literary works. Students in this course are expected to meet additional responsibilities such as working independently, organizing and running writing groups, participating in the literary magazine, and teaching mini-lessons in small groups or as a class. This course is geared toward students who exhibit writing prowess, high motivation, and are responsible and resourceful.
Journalism and Advanced Journalism
Other equally exciting courses our school will be offering in the ‘23-’24 school year are Journalism and Advanced Journalism. These courses, similar to Creative Writing, are divided by semester. You can take the intro class or challenge yourself with the full-year course. In Journalism, students will learn about the production process of a newspaper and train in a workshop setting, building skills involved in the many phases of the newspaper production process. This involves writing, interviewing, copy editing, proofreading, public relations, and advertising. Advanced Journalism brings on more responsibility and a bit more rigor, which could include developing journalistic practices to plan, edit, and produce The Highland Fling.
African American Literature
In addition to the existing Language Arts electives, African American Literature is a course designed to inform students of the human experience from the voices of African American writers. Students will be exposed to various types of African American literature such as novels, poems, plays, and articles. They will strengthen critical thinking skills by making inferences, interpreting literary symbols and motifs, and identifying themes. In this course, the Black experience is highlighted and explored through literature, and students will have presentations, projects, quizzes, tests, essays, debates, and important discussions related to the African American community.
International Relations and Civics in Modern America
Two new social studies electives will be offered in the upcoming school year: International Relations and Civics in Modern America. These two courses will both examine current issues in our society, though Civics in Modern America will focus more on political debates and issues such as economic challenges, immigration, healthcare, technology, media, and the role America plays in the international community. International Relations will focus on issues at a much larger scale, including economic development, women and families, education, population growth and resource availability, food and energy, production, and nuclear proliferation. In both courses, students will study these events from a contemporary perspective as they gain more knowledge about the world around them.
Math Essentials
Have you ever been in math class and wondered, how am I going to use this in the real world? When will I even need to know this? Math Essentials, a full-year math course that is being reintroduced in the coming school year, will address these questions. Students are given the opportunity to apply mathematical skills and concepts to real-world situations while exploring their interests through math. With the aid of mathematical tools such as Desmos, students can develop online programs such as video games, and students in the college preparation process will have the opportunity to develop strategies for standardized testing and successful college admissions. Topics in statistics and probability as well as the use and collection of data will play a major role in this course. Students taking this course can improve their skills in using data to make decisions and predictions as well as to perform statistical analysis.