New Classes

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.”

“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.”

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”. 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: 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

Q: What’s your favorite part about teaching AP Art History?

English

Deana Tennill, Department Chair for the CHS English department, gives us some more information about what new english classes will be offered for the 2023 school year to seniors. Social issues in literature: “This course gives the teacher a lot of autonomy in looking at a variety of contemporary social issues, and also looking at how communication can be used to highlight those social concerns and help to create change and bring awareness.”

Black science fiction writers: “Students will explore the style and themes of black science fiction literature from famous authors such as Octavia Butler.” Social issues and art: “This course covers film, music, visual art and literature to look at how this range of expression is used to bring attention to social issues.”

Senior capstone: “This is primarily a research class that teaches students how research and communication can be used to create an argument. It’s a way of perfecting research and writing skills before heading off to college.”

Q: What new courses will be offered first semester?

Myth of the Model Minority: “This course originally started as an Asian American-Pacific Islander course, but it sort of morphed into a course that uses literature to dismantle the myth of the model minority, which is a persistent problem with the way people are viewed.”

Writing Across the Genres: “This course is a split between creative writing and expository writing with a focus on a lot of work-shopping.”

Action and Adventure tales: “This course looks at the classic hero stories of romance literature and we look at how the hero cycle has become an archetype for action and adventure tales throughout history. It look at both non-western and more modern adventure tales.” LGBTQ literature: “This course examines how people in the LGBTQ community are viewed and how literature brings attention to the issues faced by them and also how literature can be used to change perceptions and policy.”

The Western: “This course will look at the traditional western genre from a different perspective. We will look at what the role of women and African Americans and other non-white contributors to that story.”

Time travel through literature: “Students will study a specific time period in literature by pulling in lots of different readings. For example, you might look at primary texts from newspapers and novels.”

Q: What new courses will be offered second semester?

Q: How was the curriculum developed?

“We started talking about expanding at the beginning of the pandemic, and we started exploring some ideas that were put aside for a while, and then we came back to it last Spring, really intently thinking about the courses that we offer. One of the first things we did was survey the seniors and sophomores from last year. We looked at what is being taught at other school districts and at the collegiate level. We took that feedback and narrowed it down to ten options that students seemed to have interest in. A few of us that were interested in teaching the senior course took three days over the summer to flesh out what those courses would look like.”

“Several years ago, we initially changed from having semester classes that were focused on specified ideas and decided to collapse them into a single college prep course. We did that not necessarily because we wanted to reduce options for seniors, but it impacted planning for teachers and affected our overall course load because some classes were more popular than others, This year we hope to make it more balanced and effective for all.”

“My biggest hopes for these classes is that students are going to find something that really hists their passions.”

- Deana Tennill

Q: How did semester classes used to work?