The Social Studies Department at LHS is currently working on instituting two new AP courses that will be offered in several years to freshmen and sophomores: AP Human Geography and AP World History.
The new classes, which are higher-level variants of the two social studies courses offered to freshmen right now, will likely be offered first during the 2016-17 school year, according to Mr. Shawn McCusker, the Social Studies Department Supervisor at LHS. As of now, though, neither course has yet to even be approved. The classes are still very much in development; curricula, textbooks, teachers, and a plethora of other facets have yet to be decided upon, and many details may not finalized for some time.
“We’re in the process of applying to create those classes right now. So it [will take] a while, and there’s a lot of figuring out the textbook and finding the curriculum, and figuring out… Look, any AP program, there’s a very structured way that it [needs to be] taught to meet the test,” said Mr. McCusker.
Though little has been settled upon yet, both courses have made it through arguably the toughest phase of approval: community acceptance.
“Before you do something like this (You don’t just say, ‘Hey, let’s do these classes’) you have to ask, is it right? Does the community want it? AP classes are hard, and you have to have students who want to do it and parents who support it,” Mr. McCusker asserted. “When you get done here, your senior year, it shouldn’t just be like, ‘Hey, I took another AP class.’ It should have improved your ability to take AP classes. It should have given you more and made you more ready for college. So, we have a lot of discussions, we talk to teachers and parents to see if this is the right thing, and we’re moving past that, and we feel it’s a direction we’d like to go in.”
Suraj Rajendran, a freshman who plans to take AP European History and AP Chemistry next year, added, “I hope LHS standards change; I would have taken so many [AP classes this year]. I mean, who wouldn’t want to do it?”
Still, the notion of offering AP classes to freshmen has been met with anxiety, as freshmen often tend to struggle with the challenge of such courses.
“There are split results as to how well freshmen do on AP courses. Typically, on some AP classes that students as young as freshmen can take, their scores aren’t the best,” said Mr. Ray Albin, an assistant principal and the director of LHS’s Advanced Placement program. “I mean, AP is AP because it’s a college-entry level course. It would take a pretty special freshman to understand the rigors of a college-entry level course when they’re 14, 15 years old. Not to say that it can’t be done, but that consideration goes in as well. Students may want to take it, but ultimately are they going to succeed? Are we putting them into the best position to succeed? And there’s some good evidence out there that that may not be putting someone in the best position to succeed.”
Nevertheless, these courses might be on their way to becoming available at LHS, whose course offerings might soon begin to resemble those of other schools like Mundelein High School, which offers AP World History to freshmen.
“Because our world is moving, because AP is growing, because the quality of students here is so good, it makes sense to provide a greater challenge for the students who want that greater challenge, and it’s a way for them to dive deep into subjects they like,” Mr. McCusker contended. “If you love social studies and you’re taking AP classes, that’s awesome. Plus, taking AP classes helps you to do better at taking AP classes. So, if you’re a high-achieving freshman and you feel like you can do it, and you support it and your parents support it, then why not create the right class?”
