“New Year, New Me” seems to be the motto of the science department these days. Within next couple of years the school will be seeing some positive changes to its science curriculum. To kick off the changes, science department head, Mrs. Elich, will offer biology to freshmen, giving students an opportunity to take more science classes during their junior and senior years. Mrs. Elich and Principal Wargo proposed these changes to the school committee in December, and they have since been approved.
“The big thing to me is giving kids more options as juniors and seniors,” Mrs. Elich said. “It’s important to me that kids get to experience different things and have a chance to take these classes.” The hope is that this will allow students interested in science as a career to get a better idea of what they are interested in before heading off to college. Anatomy and Physiology, which has traditionally been exclusively a senior class, will also be offered to juniors. Opening this course to juniors can help those students who have interest in careers such as nursing or physical therapy: The coursework will help them judge if this is truly something they would want to continue. They could then take additional classes supporting that career choice during their senior year.
These changes could offer a lot of new opportunities for senior students. A new one-semester forensics class will be offered at a college prep level, and a biotech class will be offered at the honors level. These classes will focus on building skills that students can use in college and help expose students to different branches of science that have not previously been introduced at SHS. This year’s senior class includes a large number of students applying to nursing programs. Many of these students would have greatly benefitted from understanding what an anatomy class or AP biology class are like before submitting college applications or making huge decisions regarding their future.
Physics will also become a junior course. The thinking behind this decision comes from the the connection between math and science. As a junior course, students will have a more advanced and diverse mathematical background, especially with calculus ideals. This will help students excel with more complicated physics topics rather than coming off the less developed science background of most freshman.
One of the final changes to the sciences is regarding chemistry. As of now, chemistry is a required sophomore year class, and AP chemistry is offered to juniors and seniors. With the changes, chemistry will be offered to the freshmen class. Junior Aidan McDaid said, “Honestly, I liked physics freshman year, but I think adding classes like forensics and biotech sounds interesting, especially since I want to go into biomedical engineering.”
The changes already seem to be receiving positive feedback from the students. In the coming years, these improvements should help the science department flourish and expand to accommodate many different branches of the department.