Imagine you sit down in English class like any other day. Suddenly, you are handed a piece of brightly colored paper with a checklist of some sort — it is your course selection sheet. White Station High School often prides itself on its seemingly endless list of courses that its students can take next year ranging from traditional to honor to Dual Enrollment to Advanced Placement (AP) courses. Now, which will be the lucky seven to fill your schedule? Choose wisely.
When it comes to picking next year’s courses, most students focus on fulfilling the standard graduation requirements: four credits in math and English, and three credits in sciences and history. Therefore, courses that have a focus on the liberal arts such as AP French, AP Music Theory and AP Art History often risk being removed from next year’s course catalog because students would not be able to fulfill any specific category of a student’s graduation requirements with them.
“I think that both [AP Art History and AP Music Theory cover] super niche [topics, and] to the general public that takes AP sciences or AP histories … I don’t think, you know, either one of those topics would interest them,” Mollie Coates (12) said. “Also, neither of them are totally useful in college or out in the real world unless you want to go down those specific paths. So, I think that’s probably why [these courses] would disappear because no one wants to take them.”
To teach an AP course, educators must also meet certain qualifications set by CollegeBoard, the organization in charge of overseeing the AP curriculum, to teach a specific course. For example, a teacher certified to teach AP Environmental Science would have to undergo a different certification process to teach AP Biology. While it is important to have qualified teachers to teach AP courses, when AP-certified teachers leave White Station, students may have to pivot and opt to take a different course than had they originally planned to.
“Initially, it was supposed to be Madame [Stephanie] Altman [teaching AP French], but she switched schools and that’s why we no longer had AP French,” Faith Gbeneneh (12) said. “So we had to wait for Mr. [N’koumitcha] Tassa to get certified and trained.”
Because students are not being enrolled in these classes at a higher rate, these courses also have smaller class sizes ranging from four to 11 students. Compared to other courses which have class sizes ranging from 20 to 30, smaller courses offer a different learning environment where students are able to interact and ask questions to one another.
“I think it’s much easier to study art and music when you can talk about it with your whole class, and it’s a lot easier to deliver content like that because people are gonna have specific questions because both of those things are kind of impressionable — like subjective,” Coates said.
Like many AP classes such as Music Theory, French and Art History, students have to take a subsequent end of the year in May — known as the AP exams. However, due to the nature of these courses having small class sizes, students may feel more prepared as they are able to a potentially closer relationship with the teacher.
“I would say that I really do enjoy smaller class sizes,” Gbeneneh said. “I was in the bigger [physics honors class] at first, [but] because of arranging classes, I ended up in the smaller one. I do find that it is easier to go to [the teacher] and ask … questions … because 20 people aren’t going to go ask the teacher a question and 20 people aren’t raising their hand. The teacher is able to focus on you and can look at you and see when you’re confused.”
With the possible disappearance of AP liberal art classes from course selection, it is important to look into different ways to increase the duration of these classes. Low enrollment does not have to be a permanent feature to these AP courses. Increased enrollment can come from promoting these classes like AP French to potential students currently learning French.
“I think advertising both [AP Art History and AP Music Theory], for sure, [would increase class sizes],” Coates said. “Like [advertising in] band and orchestra, like how useful music theory really is with your playing. For AP Art History, I think that if people advertised just like art, or just the fact that we had [AP Art History], people would want to take it because I don’t think I really heard about it unless my teacher recommended it to me.”
Although there is no one solution to increase the enrollment and longevity of these classes, for prospective and current students in smaller classes, it is important for the students to be active learners.
“If you wanna continue your French, yes, [I would recommend this class to others,” Gbeneneh said. “If you want to take this class next year, depend upon yourself and don’t blame the teacher for your lack of learning because everything is on Google and your teachers are supplements.”
