Letting Students Choose

By: Athena Eyzaguirre, Opinion Reporter

Did you choose art or dance? What AP class did you pick?

These are questions that many high school students across the United States ask each other, but not WJPS students. 

Student choice in classes is when a student simply has a list of options for classes they can take and the counselor coordinates their schedule to what their goals are for the year. This can be done as long as they fulfill graduation requirements.

The College Board states “How to Choose High School Electives” so you can “Make Your High School Electives Stand Out to Colleges.” This is very useful for many American students, however, those in WJPS cannot follow that advice. 

This option may not even be possible due to the limited time and space our school has available. 

WJPS teacher, Mr. Gardner stated, “It is very difficult to offer student choice because we’re such a small school and the number of teachers for each grade are small and for each course too.”

WJPS senior, Kateyln Viglietta said, “We should have some choices because since people are put into AP because of open enrollment it makes them want to strive to stay in them, but sometimes it can be too much so options would be nice.”

As you can see we have to be wary of the difficulty of offering student choice in classes. We would need not only a bigger building but also to find even more teachers, which is no easy task.