Every year, ninth-graders at GDS register for their classes for the next year. For some subjects, choosing what class to take is straightforward—take the next logical level or the next mandatory class. But for other subjects, deciding what class to take can be difficult and have a big impact on students’ high school experience.
While GDS tries to help students make decisions regarding course registration, I have found that the resources GDS provides are not always helpful enough. Furthermore, some parts of the process seem confusing and redundant. GDS should try to make the course registration process clearer and give students more resources to help us make more informed decisions.
Though there are not many choices available for rising 10th-graders, the classes we will take are still very important. Decisions about what levels to take in math and science or what new subject to pursue can affect the subsequent years of high school.
For many ninth-graders, which history class to take is one of the harder choices we make, and students get to choose between studying European, Latin American, Asian, African or world history. “I think GDS has given me a lot of resources for math and science,” freshman Eli Benveniste said. Benveniste said he thought there wasn’t enough information about what specific aspects of history each history class focuses on throughout the year.
There should be additional resources available to learn about the courses. A great way to give students a good sense of what each class is like would be for teachers of 10th grade classes to show texts students have read or projects that students have previously done in the class.
GDS should provide a time for the teachers of 10th-grade classes to come talk to students about their classes and answer any questions students have. Meeting the teachers would give students a good sense of the teaching style of each class because students can learn from the teachers themselves about how they teach the class instead of hearing about it from other students. Meeting with teachers would also help students decide if they’re interested in the content the teacher includes in the curriculum.
“I’d improve [the course selection process] by having a panel of other students who took the class, or some type of panel during class meetings just explaining all the courses and what you learn,” Benveniste said.
During the ninth-grade orientation, a panel of seniors and juniors answered incoming ninth-graders’ questions about the high school experience. For me, the panel was one of the most helpful parts of the ninth-grade orientation because I was learning from students who had already experienced ninth-grade and could answer questions about how to be successful in high school. By doing something similar with course registration, GDS would not only help students select classes that they will enjoy taking, but also encourage building relationships between under- and upperclassmen.
One thing that could also be improved are the forms students fill out for registration. Throughout the course registration process, we filled out forms for various individual teachers, our advisor and another process online, which then needed to be approved by our advisor.
“It’s not clear which one is your actual form,” freshman Ben Altschuler said. When I filled out the form to determine which level of math I wanted to take, I gave the form to my advisor only to find out that I needed to submit it to my math teacher instead. All the forms submitted at different times to different people made the whole course registration process unnecessarily confusing. GDS should work to make the course registration process more streamlined and to give students opportunities to make their decisions more informed.