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FEATURE
New Courses 2022-23 CHS students will have a variety of new course options for the 2022-2023 school year including AP Art History and a variety of new semester English classes for seniors. SEAPHINA CORBO | SENIOR MANAGING EDITOR LILY KLEINHENZ | PHOTO EDITOR ANA MITREVA | SENIOR MANAGING EDITOR
CHS English teacher, Dana Augustine, gives us insight on new classes in the 20222023 school year.
PHOTO BY LILY KLEINHEINZ | PHOTO EDITOR
AP Art History Kamille Chavarin, future AP Art History at Clayton High School gives us some insights to what the class will look like next year, and encourages students to register for it.
Q: What is AP Art History? “AP art history is essentially like a full year of college art history, it includes prehistory, like prehistoric art, like all the way up to present day. So it is the study of art from the very earliest art, which was like 25,000 BC, like cave paintings, and then all the way up to contemporary art, which is like, artists right now.”
Q: What do you think students will gain from this class? “I think studying art history, more than any other type of history, is the study of the human experience. So it will open your mind to people who are different than you and how they communicate. It can really open your eyes to all different types of people, cultures, an religions. It gives you a well-rounded view of people.”
Q: Why is AP Art History important? “Art history is really just history, right? It is the study of the human experience from way before people had a written language, all the way up to now like we communicate visually through art, right? So yeah, 1000s of years before people had a written language they were creating art people have been just like, compelled to create since the beginning of time. And so the course is studying all of that, and studying the relationships people have with each other, how people communicate visually, why art was made, how art was made, what’s the context surrounding it. I would just say, for anyone interested in any career has to do with art, for sure. Anything that has to do with museum studies or being a curator working in an art gallery, those are all the kinds of careers that you would want to have some experience with AP or history or with art history in general”.
Q: Why do you think kids from Clayton would be interested? “When I taught it in Hazelwood, the last year that I taught it, my 10 students who took the class eight of them right now are either
majoring or minoring in art history, in college, and most of them were not planning on doing that until they took this class. So I just think it’s something if I had been exposed to it in high school, I might have pursued things in a different way. I didn’t really know about studying art this way until I got to college. So I just thought it would be a great addition to our program for art kids and non art kids. Because it’s a great way to get your art credit, if you don’t want to draw because this is a whole different way to learn about art.”
Q: What’s your favorite part about teaching AP Art History? “I think the biggest thing is seeing effects of different movements visually in work and seeing how one movement and art affects the next movement and how things like political issues and wars affect art. It’s just really interesting. And you’ll look at for example, art made before World War II and during the war, and it is completely different than the art made after WWII. And that’s partly due to all the things going on in the world that were influencing it.”
