While the shift to a block schedule has impacted all students, sophomores have also been dealing with a change specific to them this school year. The AUHSD now requires a semester of health education for 10th graders.  This has necessitated the development and offering of additional semester-long courses in science, psychology, world art, and yoga.

Sophomore Riley Schmidt, who took health during that 1st semester has just made the transition to computer science for her spring term. “I do like the semester classes because then you get to do more classes and you can try new things. But if you don’t like the class you don’t have to do it for very long… I don’t think health is any difficult because the way they used to do it it was more spread out and now you just do it all at once,” she explained.

The number of semester course options was a disappointment for sophomore Zoe Crews. “I think they could have done a better job of offering a more broad range of semester classes just ’cause I know a lot of people who signed up for intro to psych and got placed in other classes like world art or yoga, which they didn’t necessarily want,” she said.

Sophomore Michael Evans said, “I think there should be more options for the semester classes because it seems more confined to this or that. It’s confined to psychology, [computer science], or art.”

Yet Crews does like the opportunity to sample subjects over a semester rather than making a commitment to the whole year. “I think it’s good that it’s broken up because now I can go onto AP psych next year if I like it… I think this works well, I like it.”

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