Each year a handful of academically-driven students make the conscious choice to move up a level in one or more of their courses. Whether it be moving from Spanish III to AP Spanish
IV or from Chemistry to Physics Honors, students aspire to challenge themselves with harder classes. Most of the time, these very same students have already shown success in the standard-level course and therefore receive encouragement from their previous teachers.
Although moving up may be a big step, these students believe they can handle and thrive in a more challenging environment. However, these students often find themselves at a loss over the summer when they have to wade through a year-long syllabus to move from Geometry Advanced to Precalculus AB Honors. Or they struggle disproportionately during the first few weeks of the higher-level course they are taking.
There are ways these students could be better supported in realizing their goals.
The solution is a user-friendly Canvas page for students looking to move up a course level. The real benefit of this program would be that it would offer a unified and consistent curriculum, with plenty of videos and lessons for students who wish to move up in a course.
Rather than sending students to scour the internet for what an inverse trig function is, the math department could set up a Canvas page that helps students fill in the gaps between their standard-level course and the honors one. Other departments could follow suit, posting targeted resources for students to make up the difference between their lower-level course and the advanced course. This way students can feel fully prepared for their challenging course and set up for success in it.
