Summer classes give students a boost

Over past summer, sophomore Samuel Breck took a preview class for Trigonometry/Pre-Calculus in order to get ahead during the school year. He was just one of many students who chose to spend their summer this way.

 “I thought I should do something useful over the summer and since I heard Trig/Pre-Calc was going to be hard, I thought it couldn’t hurt,” Breck said.

 Breck’s class was held at a facility called Spotlight Education. Spotlight has a special summer program that follows the school’s curriculum and gives students a preview of first semester material. It costs around $600 for four weeks of classes.

  Breck said that so far, the summer class has been worth it; his school math class has been easy for him to cope with.

 Another student, sophomore Lipika Sadaram, attended a class at St. Francis to prepare for Chemistry Honors. The class taught students the entire year’s curriculum in six weeks and cost close to $1,000. 

 Sadaram said the assignments were “what you would normally get, but extensive,” because of the amount of information that had to be covered during the sessions. 

 Sadaram said she is hoping that this year she will be able to get through chemistry fairly easily. 

“I can’t say if they have helped or not yet since school just began,” Sadaram said, “but I can say I’ve cut a ton of studying for the future.” 

 Sadaram also said she believes spending her summer studying new subjects was worth it.

 Math teacher Debra Troxell had a different opinion of the preview classes. She says taking classes over the summer is unnecessary.

  “When you try to go too fast and you try to take classes that really are too hard for you your brain’s still not ready for it,” Troxell said. “The math department would far rather a student have a solid math background by just truly understanding [the material].”

 In addition to preview classes offered by companies, school textbooks are also available to students for use over summer. With a payment of $5 per textbook, students can check out textbooks from the library to study with over the summer. According to librarian Kevin Heyman 266 textbooks were loaned out this past summer.

 Some students may think this is unfair because they lack the time or the money to take summer classes. But Sadaram believes this claim to be untrue.

 “You take [the classes] if you need to or want to whether that’s about being ahead during the school year or taking classes because of a failed class,” Sadaram said.

Breck had a similar view of these summer classes.

“You are spending your own time getting ahead,” Breck said. “There is nothing unfair about investing more time in a subject you think you need help in.”