Eastern High School sees more AP classes, modernized music program
Classes and curriculum are ever-evolving at Eastern Regional High School, and to highlight these changes, Superintendent Harold Melleby Jr. said this year he hopes to have department supervisors regularly address the district’s board of education.
At the board’s most recent meeting, 10th-grade vice principal Steve Young led that charge as he outlined some of the recent changes to the social studies, gifted and talented, and music and art departments he oversees.
Young said there were three main areas he wanted to highlight, the first being how the district’s GT program was helping with its overall goal of getting more students enrolled in Advanced Placement courses.
Through the GT program, Young said an initiative now exists where gifted and talented students will go to classrooms to speak with other students and communicate the realities AP classes, such as the level of homework and workload students can expect if they were to enroll.
Young said he believes the initiative has already had a significant effect just in the areas he supervises, as in the past several years, AP classes for U.S. history II have grown from one section to three, AP psychology has increased to five sections on average each year, and AP oral history has become a class offered every year rather than every other year.
“Again, I would highlight the role that the GT program has played in that because this was all about students talking to students, and who else to better speak with each other than students?” Young said.
The second area Young highlighted was the several-year-long process of updating and modernizing the music and art department’s general music offering formally known as Bach to Rock.
According to Young, students now have the option of a general music class known as music production and technology, through which students can use iPads and the audio program GarageBand to create and produce music.
Young said the class was also able to bring in what are effectively desktop computers to serve as mini sound studios for students to use along with the iPads to create a lab-like effort.
“Students are going to have the opportunity to write, play, record, mix and produce music of their own, and they’re going to be able to collaborate with each other,” Young said. “We’re excited that it’s going to give them hands-on experience.”
Finally, Young said he simply wanted to highlight the influx of several new teachers to the areas he supervises. Although the board had already conducted a meet and greet with new teachers at the beginning of the school year, Young said the early returns of what the teachers have added to the classroom were already positive.
“They’re connecting with students in ways that we really could have only hoped they would have, and they’re doing those things already,” Young said.
