By Taylor Boggs ’16, Perspectives Section Editor
After making the transition from low-rigor freshman courses to all honors, some honors or no honors courses sophomore year, you are now ready to take on the infamous 11th grade courses—known for their intensity, work load, and extensive time commitments. Whether you are taking College Prep courses or a multitude of Advanced Placements, junior year is known as one of the toughest at CCD. That being said, it is also a year full of interesting content and amazing teachers, which makes it one of the best years of your high school career despite the challenging curriculum.
Relatively speaking, each subject offers two class levels junior year: College Prep and AP. If you are coming out of Mrs. Pat Dunn’s Honors English 10 and you enjoyed reading Jane Austen and only somewhat-despised in-class essays, I recommend that you continue into AP English Literature with Ms. Deborah Floyd. AP English is essentially the second half of Honors English 10: you read more classics, such as Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter and Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn, write more in-class essays, analyze poems by Whitman, and prepare for the AP exam. Ms. Floyd does an excellent job of covering the necessary topics, without teaching directly to the test, making the class more enjoyable than your average AP class. Joe Lou ’16 said “Ms. Floyd made what ordinarily would have been a dull course one of the highlights of my junior year.” On the other hand, if you are not as into writing and analyzing poetry, you are bound to be successful in the College Prep English class. According the Erica Glosby ’17, “it is a very calm and focused environment…a nice class to have among some of the more difficult courses that accompany junior year.”
APUSH is known as one of the most difficult classes taken during junior year due to its requirements of memorization, knowledge of chronology, identifications, and numerous thematic connections as well as learning how to do LEQs, DBQs and short answers for the AP exam. I have heard many great things about Dr. Marygrace Tyrrell’s course this year. “It is as hard as everyone thinks,” Lily Hill ’17 admits, “but Dr. Tyrrell makes it fun. She is really funny.” Likewise, Haley Spaeth ‘17 believes that “if you want a challenge and are interested in history, this is a good class for you…the challenge is worth it.” Many others however are worried about the intensity of the APUSH curriculum and have instead found solace in the CPUSH class. In this course, you learn all of the same material, but at a slower pace, and without the stress of an AP exam looming in your future. Kaitlyn Hoffman ’17 initially was in APUSH, but switched to CPUSH and now she “actually understands what is going on. It is a good class to take if you learn better at a slower pace and do not want the workload of APUSH.”
Honors Pre-Calculus and regular Pre-Calculus tend to be some of the less-intense classes of junior year. The math teachers this year, Ms. Phillips and Ms. Back, are great at helping students to better understand the information and provide help whenever it is needed. As non-AP courses, the math classes are part of the two-step program toward calculus, and thus prepare juniors by covering topics such as the unit circle and trigonometric functions. “Ms. Back does a good job answering questions,” says Anna Beyette ’17, “she also works hard to make sure everyone understands what is going on in Honors Pre-Calculus.” On the other side of the table, like other College Prep course provides a less intense and slower route to senior year math. For Christina Agostino ’17, Pre-Calculus is the only non-honors course she is taking: “The course load is not very heavy at all. Ms. Phillips is a very good teacher. She is always readily available to help with questions. She is also very clear about assessments and providing homework information.”
In my opinion, AP Chemistry is the toughest course of the difficult classes encountered junior year. If you are on the honors science track and took AP Biology sophomore year, this is the class that you should be looking at. However, junior year science starts to get tricky in some places. If you did not take AP Bio but would like to take AP Chem, there is some summer work that you could do to catch up and be placed in the class. Also, depending on your schedule junior year, if you are taking a higher-level math course you may be asked to switch chemistry for physics, and would consequently take chemistry senior year. That being said, AP Chemistry with Ms. Butler is filled with group work, lectures, screencasts, many double bells, hours spent on lab work, and extensive homework. However, it more than prepares you for the AP exam. Maggie Bernish ’16 stated that “AP chemistry is a rigorous course, but well worth it for how much it prepares you for the AP.” If this work load sounds rigorous, I recommend sticking with College Prep chemistry. If you are looking for a chill but educational chemistry experience, Ms. Jenkins’ class is the place to go. According to Megan Campbell ’16, “Ms. Jenkins is cool and the topics are interesting. This is a good course if you are interested in chemistry but do not want to have the rigor of AP chem.”
Last but certainly not least, you have Level III, Pre-AP and AP Language courses. The language courses tend to have different reputations for French and Spanish—the French courses are usually deemed as more rigorous and requiring a greater time commitment, while the Spanish courses are more laid back and less structured. Both French and Spanish classes are known for bringing culture into the classroom, and you can be sure you will celebrate Dia de Los Muertos and talk about current world problems such as immigration with Dr. Jane Kairet. Liz Kellar ’17 thinks that “Sra. Castro is a great Pre-AP Spanish teacher. The work load for the class is not bad at all. We do quite a bit of presentations, but it is a fun class and I have learned a lot.” Similarly, “although the class is an AP, Sra. Robitaille makes the course fun while preparing you extremely well for the AP without the super heavy work load mandated by a lot of the other junior AP classes,” commented Margaret Hodson ’16.
While the difficult courses seem daunting, I encourage you to pick whatever you are interested in and feels right for you. This could be 5 APs, 3 APs, or none. Also, do not be afraid to mix and match your classes. Just because you are taking a higher level course in one subject does not mean you need to take the highest level in other the others. Very much a year about making sure you are not overwhelmed, junior year requires that you think about how much work you can handle. Try not to push yourself too much, but pick the classes that suit your interests. Good luck!
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