Starting in the 2016-2017 school year, Advanced Placement Language and Composition will no longer be a semester long course. The teacher of the class, Mrs. Tiffany Joseph, made this decision because she felt that more time was needed to cover all of the elements required by the College Board. She also knows that by extending the course to two semesters instead of one, students will learn more from the class. “I want to give students the chance to grow as writers over the course of the year,” Joseph said.

The current curriculum consists of a combination of reading and writing. “We read three books, many essays, and students write about 7 papers, plus an 8-10 page semester long project, plus about 4 in class essays. It’s pretty intense,” Joseph said.

The goal of the newly designed course is to include those same elements, but spread out over a longer period of time, as well as some new elements. “I also want to add some additional readings. I’m also hoping they’ll get more practice at rhetorical analysis,” Joseph said.

Another change to the current course is that students will no longer be able to take a semester of American Literature, as the Advanced Placement Language Composition class will now take up two semesters. However, the new AP Comp class will incorporate some of the elements from American Literature. Joseph plans to do this by pairing some of the non-fiction material traditionally read in AP Comp with some fiction reading from the American Lit course. “For example, we might look at some of [F. Scott] Fitzgerald’s nonfiction work and pair that with The Great Gatsby,” Joseph said.

The overall goal of the change is to allow students to have more time to develop as writers and thinkers. “I think it will be a lot of fun, but maybe a year of intensity,” Joseph said.