The school announced that all one-semester full block classes had to expand and would become full-year classes starting next year. Classes like Criminal Law, Creative Writing and Shakespeare and Our World will move from offering two separate classes in the first and second semesters to becoming single courses that take up a full year. The change will allow students to fit more classes in their schedules, as lining up two separate semester courses on the same block can be difficult to schedule. Students that were interested in taking two one-semester classes often had to just take one, leaving the other semester empty.

However, even with scheduling difficulties, semester classes still could have their place in the school curriculum. Taking a full-year class, while potentially easier to schedule around, is more restrictive and forces you into a subject you might not want to focus on all year long. Sometimes, a quicker and more efficient look at a subject is more beneficial to explore a wider variety of topics. Students who want to explore a broader quantity of subjects rather than focusing more deeply on one subject would find semester classes more appealing.

In some ways, full-year classes may be more appealing to students and teachers who want to expand their knowledge in a subject. As teachers are passionate about anything they teach, they may have a backlog of unused materials or lesson plans that can’t be used because they only have one semester. Some students may also want this more comprehensive view of a subject they decide to take as well, as they may feel that just learning about a topic for one semester isn’t enough to satisfy their interest in said topic. If a student takes one semester of Criminal Law and finds that they wanted to learn more than the material covered in the class, they may wish Criminal Law was a full-year class.

However, since most of the classes that are currently semester classes were elective or Interdisciplinary Studies and Independent Research courses, students are more likely to be less familiar with the subjects being taught and may want a quicker sample experience in case they don’t enjoy the subject. For example, if a student is developing an interest in writing, they may want to just try it out for one semester instead of committing for a whole year to Creative Writing.

Students with special scheduling ideas and requests could use semester classes as more flexible options to get a free block during a semester of their choice. Especially in senior year, the difference in workload between semesters could be vastly different for a student. A student may want to take an elective class in the second semester only and leave a free block open for college applications or catching up on homework. Taking one extra class in the first semester may block time that could be used for those important things and increase said student’s stress. Another student in senior year may be taking a Senior Independent Study that only lasts one semester and wants a class to fill the other semester. However, with the move to all full-year classes, these students doing Independent Study lose out on this opportunity as Senior Independent Study is remaining as a one-semester project. All of these special situations may lead to fewer students actually signing up for the full-year versions of these classes that they would have taken for a semester .

Everyone has a different style of learning and different needs for their school schedule. Semester classes, despite difficulties fitting them into the schedule , still cater to other situations and learning goals that some students may have. To work around the scheduling conflicts, the school could only make semester classes available during a certain set number of blocks and work more around the core class schedules. For example, you can only make one-semester classes available during block 2 in order to ensure that two different one-semester classes can line up in everyone’s schedule. Semester classes could also be set for only one of the two semesters within fixed blocks. Whatever solutions this may entail, don’t give up on semester classes. They still have a place in our learning community.