WHS Courses Focusing on Student Interest

The Windham High School staff has given its students more control in adopting the annual program of studies, citing student interest and engagement as a big part of that strategy.

According to WHS Principal Tom Murphy, the program will offer 80 classes for next school year, and maybe more. The administration is taking a good hard look at student requests through interest surveys as well as course signup totals to determine what courses will be run.

"Really this year we tried to gauge what our kids were interested in," said Murphy. The higher level of interest the kids have the more successful they will be engaged in the particular classes."

Murphy outlined some of the major changes in this year's plan. He said that technology courses have been broken into semester chunks for students to enable more enrollments.

Murphy also said that there are some new technology courses being offered, specifically engineering design, principals of engineering and digital electronics.

Those additions, according to Murphy, will now make it possible for a student to come in and get "Project Lead the Way" credentials.

Accounting was also changed to make sure it was in line with the national "Academy of Fianance" model.

Assistant Superintendent Amanda Lecaroz said that not all of the courses will be run in the fall. Courses that have no signups or little interest will not happen.

Lecaroz also said that the district is currently in the process of rewriting the English and social studies curicculums. Both will be in line after this year, with science coming next.

She said that the national common course standards need to be released for science before the curicculum can be rewritten, which she anticipates "sometime this school year.

Windham currently requires one more credit than the state in integrated science.

Murphy said that the statewide focus on testing and performance has forced other items, such as human performance, to be "rationed back" in many schools.

"That became the non-focal point," said Murphy.

He also said that he is happy that they are offering a lot of art-related electives since Windham values that as a community.

Starting in January, each student will receive a PDF file on what the program of studies will look like. Murphy said that receiving that document along with meeting with their guidance counselor will give them a sense of what the classes are all about.

"Whatever post-secondary track they are going to take, we want to make sure they are in the best position possible," said Murphy.