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Course Selection Suggestion
By Abby Martin

        With course selection season upon us, students here at CHS are eagerly filling in their schedule gaps to fill the 7-period rotation. So many factors need to be considered like the difficulty of the course, students’ interests, and graduation requirements. If you are still looking to fill in your schedule and love English, the department has a few exciting classes ready for all of those aspiring writers!

 

Whether you prefer non-fiction journalism or poetry and prose, you should consider taking an English elective next year to improve your writing skills and flex your creative muscle. Two of my favorite classes of all time have been Journalism and Writer’s Workshop and I would highly recommend them as an option for anyone during this course selection process.

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For those who love non-fiction writing or enjoy reading news articles (like this one!) Journalism and Publishing is a class to look into. The course focuses on the art of writing the news like fact-based articles, interviews, and reviews that could potentially get published right here on the Spectrum website. This class will push you to think differently as you begin to question your own beliefs and share your own opinions.

 

Not only will you have a lot of fun thinking creatively, but this class is an excellent way to build foundational skills that you can use in your main English class. The more essays you write, the more comfortable you will be writing them. Practice makes perfect, and you will get one step closer to it with this class under your belt!
 

But non-fiction isn’t for everyone, so the English department also offers Writer’s Workshop which is a class geared towards imaginative students with a love of storytelling! The first part of the semester focuses on narrative writing as you work to retell personal stories creatively. As you share your personal experiences, you infuse metaphors and other literary devices to make stronger papers and engage an audience.

 

During the second half, you will begin to master poetry. I’ll admit, prior to this class, I wasn’t a big poetry fan. In fact, writing poetry at the high school level scared me. However, I love writing poetry after learning more about it in this class. You will get to write poems with motifs, metaphors, and even an abecedarium (my personal favorite-- the lines go in a/b/c/d… order and you need to make the poetry fit into that format. It’s kind of like a puzzle!). This class is a fun and creative way to become more familiar with the language, and it will help you use words to your advantage when writing to write clearly and creatively.

 

Course selection can be an intimidating time. There seem to be a million classes to choose from and as overwhelmed students, we often get frazzled trying to make the picture perfect schedule to set us up for success. However, both Writer’s Workshop and Journalism and Publishing are safe bets when you want to be creative and improve your writing and thinking skills!

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