Scheduling for the 2020-2021 school year begins to take place this January, February, and March, which encourages the students to plan out their classes ahead of time. Most of the students at Woodbridge High School have the opportunity to choose newly offered courses.

The school adds a few courses every year to constantly improve the curriculum and to give students a variety of choices for them to explore their interests. When making their schedules, students are currently offered four new classes: IOS Development, Fashion Design/Illustration: Meaning Made Visible, AP Research, and African American Experience.

Ms. Gulics, the World History II teacher and WHS Cheerleading coach, will teach the African American Experience class. She is “excited” that they are finally able to introduce this course to the school. 

The African American Experience is a course for seniors which studies African Americans’ challenges and the role that they played in important events throughout history. It focuses not only on their point of view, but on African Americans that are not normally found in history textbooks. 

“I think that we do a good job at incorporating African American history in our current Social Studies classes, but to have a class that is really dedicated to that gives us an opportunity to explore the topics within the African American community that we don’t get to touch on,” Ms. Gulics said. 

To prepare themselves for the course, Ms. Gulics, along with teachers from JFK and Colonia who are teaching this class, will start their research and meet together to discuss how they would like to structure the curriculum. 

As the head of the Guidance Department, Mr. Kane thinks that the new courses will “broaden the horizon for the students.” These four specific courses were chosen mainly because Woodbridge High School has teachers who have expertise in these topics, but also because there was student interest in them.

Ms. Ferrara has been a guidance counselor at WHS for 11 years. She said, “I think that the new classes will give the students more chances to focus on what they are interested in and teachers the experience of teaching new topics.”

The new course offerings in the 2020-2021 school year at WHS is filled with more opportunities and benefits many. It allows students to choose what they want to study and develops interesting topics for the school.