For sophomore Jordan Seigel, the COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting hybrid schedule brought some changes to his AP Seminar class.

“For virtual days we’re just told to read some articles and then write some stuff about them most of the time,” Seigel said via email.

Seigel said he believed having half the in-person time normally allotted for the class limited the amount of interactiveness of the assignments.

On a non-COVID-related note, the English department continues to prepare for the new English courses they will offer next year.

As per English department chairperson Kim Walker, there is a step-by-step process for course approvals that AP Seminar as well as the new English courses for next year went through.

“The first step is that they go through our Carmel High School Curriculum Advisory council; it’s a wide representation of teachers, administrators, counselors,” she said. “When the department chairs come in, they are able to ask a lot of questions, keeping student interests in mind and really poking holes as to why we should offer this course. The courses are then taken to the school board for final approval, and once they are approved it means they can go into our Program of Studies and we can actually offer them to our students and start building curriculum.”

The new courses offered for the 2021-22 school year are Ethnic Literature, Linguistics, Genres of Literature: Psychological Thriller, Genres of Literature: Short Stories, Themes in Literature: Heroes & Villains and Themes in Literature: Humor.