Advanced placement classes, or AP for short, are designed to be an optional exciting challenge, but also add a healthy weight to your GPA and transcript.
However, the AP Computer Science Principles class (APCSP) offered at the high school has turned into more of a burden than some can bear.
Unfortunately, the APCSP teacher, Mrs. Gabrielle, has been out for nearly a month for the start of her six month long sabbatical due to a knee surgery.
Last school year, the students taking her Computer Science Essentials (CSE) class, had been made aware of by Mrs. Gabrielle that she would be gone for the first semester of the following school year.
Her sabbatical leave was originally supposed to start on the first day of school, however due to medical reasons, her leave was pushed back by around two weeks.
Mr. Lesisko and the school board has been notified of her surgery, thus it was approved by the board and was official. Things started to take a turn for the worst, though.
Over the summer, a substitute teacher was unable to be found to teach the course in her absence. This has led to us being put in the auditorium, the LGI, or with a standard substitute in her place.
This has put a burden on not only the students taking the course, but teachers and administrators alike.
Some requirements of the class consist of the standard class work, quizzes, and tests. Although, there is also the midterm, final, and the option to pay to take the AP exam; along with the ten hours of class time required for the class project paired with the AP exam.
Since there’s not a qualified substitute to teach the class, most of the time the students are not in her physical classroom, which leaves the class with a lack of resources.
There’s also a lack of paper assignments in this class since our assignments come from websites such as College Board or Project Stem.
With these websites, assignments need to be unlocked and graded by whomever is teaching the course.
With all of that being said, a handful of students in the class not only realized how difficult it would be to teach themselves a college level course for a semester, but they also wanted to try and do something about it.
Daniel Ziolkiewicz, Vanessa Sadler, and Anjali Chiulli had a conversation with Mr. Lesisko during her class and informed him of everything going on with the class.
He later came to our class again and passed around a paper, allowing the students to write their names down in one of two sections: Drop the class or stay in it.
He spent the class period answering any questions we had about the situation and let them decide.
(Writer's Note: I personally chose to leave the class, as I felt there were more cons than pros to staying.)
The vast majority of the people in the class chose to drop. Following him coming to our class, a paper was handed to us that described the situation to parents and the options available to us now.
For her APCSP class specifically, the options given to us were either dropping the class and moving to an elective course for the first and second semester, or remaining in the class and forming a study group to continue learning the course material. Either way, a grade wouldn’t be put in for semester one so nothing would be held against us.
This change has been hard on everyone considering how unique of a situation this is and how unexpected it was. As of right now, some students are still deciding what they want to do whilst others are in the process of getting their schedules changed or are assigned to their new class already.
Staying or leaving are two extremes of this considering how much choosing either option changes a student's school year.
Some people are choosing to stay because of the weight added to their GPA’s or because of their interest in the class. Others left because they felt the task of teaching themselves this difficult of a course was too much, or they would rather take other classes offered in its place.
Regardless of what is chosen, all will go on to be successful in their classes and will try their best to make this year a great one.
-Danielle Harris, Writer
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