Next year, Humanities will no longer be. The joined classes will become separate social studies and English sections.
There are four mods, or periods, in a day. Each mod is 90 minutes long. Under the Humanities set up, the class met everyday. An English teacher and a social studies teacher was assigned to the class, and they divvied up the students in whatever way they wanted.
Some teachers would take half the students for 45 minutes and then switch.
Some pairings would alternate every other day with their sections.
This was not in keeping with the original concept of Humanities. Creators of the course in the ‘90’s envisioned team teaching and theme based units throughout the course. Teachers were trained to work together.
But, over the past several years, there has been a large turnover of veteran teachers and training went by the wayside. Common planning periods and classroom proximity also became issues.
If the English and social studies teachers did not have the same prep period, planning was minimal.
In some pairings the teachers were not even in the same part of the building, let alone on the same floor. This fact also hindered planning and logistics.
Another issue was grading. There was no Humanities grade. Students got their English credits in the fall and social studies’ in the spring. The Humanities grade did not necessarily reflect what the student knew in either course.
For example, a student might have an 80 percent in English and a 100 percent in social. The grade on the report card would be an A- (90%).
Is that a true reflection of his English skills?
The way the new schedule will work is that each student in nine through eleven will have English every other day and social studies every other day. There will be separate grades reported each marking period.
There has been mixed reactions from the student body.
“I can’t go through 90 minutes of social studies [or English],” said one student when they found out about this idea for next year.
Another hopeful student stated, “Well, we’ll have a full 90 minutes to get our work done and might have less classwork that becomes homework.”
----Jenn Baurys ’13 contributed to this article