When choosing what classes to take next year, students at Tamalpais High School find many options. There is a diverse selection of Advanced Placement(AP) courses and fun electives, but options for English are limited. There are two AP English classes, Language and Composition and Literature, offered in the Tamalpais Unified School District (TUHSD). However, when you compare that to the number of science courses offered, the difference is huge.
The science courses currently offered at Tam include: Regular or honors physics 1-2, regular or honors physiology 1-2, AP environmental science 1-2, and AP biology 1-2. That’s three more high-level classes when compared to English.
Other schools in the TUHSD, such as Redwood High School, also have only two AP English courses, but some lower level courses that are electives. If you check the AP course guide, you’ll also notice that in general there are only two English courses that are AP.
With data that shows similar interest in both subjects, it can add more conclusion to the reason for more science classes being offered. Barbara Kurita-Ditz, a teacher at Tamalpais High School, expressed her desire to provide honors options for students who take classes like American Literature and others.
Kurtita-Ditz has taught at Tam since 2011 and expressed that she doesn’t think that more students are interested in science, technology, engineering, and math(STEM) classes, but does believe that there are now more jobs available in that field.
“I think that in this day and age, in terms of professional careers, there’s a lot of call for STEM careers. And so I think more people are more interested in sciences and math than maybe they used to…but I don’t think that diminishes people’s sort of interest in thinking about history and culture and literature,” Kurtita-Ditz said.
In the past, Kurita-Ditz has expressed interest to the school in adding an honors option to several of the existing non-AP English courses. The current courses offered at Tam include American literature/world literature, humanities/science-fiction, and short story/creative writing. Currently, there are no honors options offered for these classes, so students would be gaining the typical A, B, C, D points in their GPA.
Kurita-Ditz stated that the idea of not having honors English classes was to create “equity in our heterogeneous classes”.
“However, when we opened the AP classes [and] English classes to not having prerequisites, we thought that that would be in service of equity that low SES, more BIPOC students, more students with 504 and IEPs would feel more comfortable…But our experience has not been that,” Kurtis-Ditz expressed.
Kurita-Ditz explained how she thought having an honors English option for students to take could actually help better prepare them for AP classes. Making them more comfortable with the amount of work that they get in and out of class.
Liz Nadler, a junior at Tam High School, said she primarily enjoys English compared to STEM. She explained that she loved the writing parts of English in her classes because she gets to “express her creativity”. Also through these English classes students get to express their own voice and thoughts.
As a student at Tam, she believes that there are more opportunities for STEM students compared to English. “I think so because there are so many different math [and science classes]. For English they have AP Comp, AP Lit and then that’s kind of it,” Nadler said.
She believes that many other students would also like to have more English classes added to the course guide. Another student at Tam, Olivia Ralston, also shared the same opinion, even though she is geared more towards STEM classes.
“I think we offer a lot more APs revolving around STEM fields and I think there’s only so many English electives…The only English electives I know of are non-fiction and journalism,” Ralston expressed.
Ralston also felt that STEM classes and jobs have become more popular to pursue. According to The National Science Foundation(NSF) 24 percent of the American workforce were in a STEM field in 2021. In contrast, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics(BLS), English major related jobs only account for 3.05 percent of the American workforce.
Popularity may be due to the high-paying jobs that students out of college can go into. CNBC reported that Payscale’s college salary report found that the top 10 most high paying salaries lie in the STEM field, many which require a bachelor degree in STEM.
This represents how much of the American workforce usually shifts toward STEM related jobs, which could translate into the amount of STEM classes that Tam high school has. However, Grace Backer, a teacher at Tam who teaches the living earth 1-2 and honors/regular physiology, believes that the difference in classes lies between how many students are interested in the subject rather than national trends.
Having taught at Tam for over 15 years, Backer has observed that her students are interested in a wide variety of subjects.
“Because I teach physio, which is an elective, those kids seem to really like science and sign up for a lot of science classes…But then in my living earth classes there’s more of a range because everyone is taking that class,” Backer said.
English is an important skill for STEM based students as well, when it helps them write research papers and when they need to communicate with others. She noted how through students work in living earth classes she sees “kids who really like art or kids who really like English”.
When noting how the courses that are offered to students get chosen, Backer expressed how it’s up to student interest and what teachers want to teach.
If a teacher wants to teach a certain subject, they would then have to write the course of study and submit it to the district, followed by the state, to get it approved. This would then get put in the course of study for TUHSD, which gives any future teacher the opportunity to teach that course.
This means that a teacher at Tam would have to show interest in creating an honors course for one of the currently offered English classes, which Kurita-Ditz said she had expressed before. So why would Tam or the TUHSD schools be resistant to applying an honors option to a current English course?
Backer also stated that in order for a class to be offered a certain number of students need to express interest in it.
“I’ve been told that the way it works is [if] 90 kids sign up for physio, the district [will divide that by 30 so] there’s three sections…If 40 kids sign up, they might choose to open up two sections of 20. It has to be at least 20 to open up a section I think,” Backer said.
John Ginsburg, who teaches regular/honors physics and physics in the universe, agreed with Backer on how these classes get chosen and that it’s up to the students, but he feels that that hasn’t been the case in recent years.
For students having a well rounded curriculum it can also mean a difference in their futures and how well prepared they are for a job. According to an article written by Cole Claybourn in American College of Education, an online private college, Claybourn highlights the importance of communication that English teaches.
In a quote he uses from LinkedIn it states, “employers want the people who can understand what others are saying while expressing themselves in a clear and concise manner.” For students to learn this value in their high school classes will help give them a leg up in any future jobs.
Having a strong foundation will also help since the creation of Artificial Intelligence(AI), has been predicted to change the way the workforce will look like by some experts. In an article written by Jessica Stillman in Inc., a publication online that focuses on entrepreneurs and other business type articles, argues that the need of people with majors in humanities will be needed to help improve AI.
This article highlights how Sam Altman from OpenAI and Jensen Huang from Nvidia say the most valuable skills in AI is “making connections and fast flexible learning”. In the article many experts write how AI needs to improve in the social-skills that it will have in the future.
Increasing the amount of English classes that Tam has can help benefit students for a future that looks uncertain. As AI continues its rise in popularity, schools may need to follow and adapt what classes are offered and how they are taught to better prepare students for what the future brings.