Starting in the 2024-2025 school year, SHS will be adding two Advanced Placement level classes to the wide range of courses offered to students: AP Comparative Government and AP Seminar.

AP Comparative Government will be offered to juniors and seniors. The addition of this course stemmed from student requests for a greater variety of World History courses, in addition to the current offerings of US history classes. Two other courses were considered: AP World History and AP European History. However, AP Comparative Government was ultimately chosen because it samples the government structures of six different, non-US countries while not overwhelming students with content. 

The Social Studies department chair, Samantha Lesniak, has focused on bringing this opportunity to SHS for close to a year. “I feel that the course will, hopefully, if we do it right, get people interested in news and what’s going on in the world,” said Lesniak. “It will hopefully give students a better foundation of why things happen. I think sometimes we just think things happen. And we don’t understand what caused [them].”

So what about the AP Seminar? AP Seminar is an interdisciplinary, year-long course that teaches students incredibly useful skills that can help beyond their high school experience. The class, open to all grades, is based on projects and research, with an AP exam comprising two parts: a multimedia presentation with a research paper and a short set of multiple-choice questions. 

“Some of my students who I know are going to take [the class] next year have expressed interest in law as a career in the future and so part of [the class] is being able to create arguments that are concrete and you can’t punch holes through.” said SHS Social Studies teacher Kristen Emerson, who will be teaching the class next year. 

Additionally, a third new class will be coming to SHS for the 2025-2026 school year: AP Research. With AP Seminar as its prerequisite, this course will continue teaching lifelong skills and will culminate with a research paper focusing on a topic of the student’s choosing.

If students complete and score well in AP Seminar, AP Research, and four other AP courses, they will be eligible to receive an “AP Capstone Diploma,” signifying that they have completed six complex AP classes, an accomplishment that cannot be understated. Though a difficult and time-consuming achievement, this can be a great asset in college applications, as well as in other possible ventures. “We don’t know how many students will go after that, but we think some definitely will.” said Lesniak.

The SHS Social Studies department is working hard to bring the best educational experience to as many students as possible through these diverse and complex courses.