This year, students can walk into a classroom and experience lessons that have never been taught before at Freedom. Walking into one room, you may hear “N ǐ hǎo,” “What are you reading?” or a lecture on the Civil Rights Movement. These three courses – Mandarin Chinese 1, English Composition, and 1960s – are debuting this year in the Freedom High School curriculum. Mandarin Chinese Chinese, taught by Mrs. Christina McNaughton, is the newest addition to the language department. Almost 40 high school students take Chinese as a language course, and nearly 30 seventh and eighth grade students take it for one nine-week period because “as with all the languages, we want to build them by offering an exploratory base at the middle school,” Dr. Robert Staub said. The only level of Chinese currently available is Chinese 1, but next year, the course should continue to progress to offer a second year. “Yeah, I’m going to take it next year, definitely,” Sophomore Austin Bailey said. As for a Chinese club, one has not yet been created, but one is sure to be fully functional, if not by the end of this year, then by next year. Hopefully, by this time, the students will have gotten the proper foothold to operate the Chinese club because it will be, after all, a student club, Mrs. McNaughton said Gaining this foothold in Chinese is “not difficult at all. She’s teaching us the letters and stuff… and she explains it very well,” Bailey said. In this Chinese course, the students do many different activities in order to appeal to all types of learners – visual, audio, or hands-on. “Trying to approach [teaching] from as many ways as possible,” is the key to success for the students, Mrs. McNaughton said. English Composition The main focus of this college-in-high-school course is to help students improve their writing skills through grammar adjustments, intellectual reading, and, of course, practice. “We’re just doing a whole lot more writing,” senior Meghan Dunbar said. This new English course being offered to Freedom seniors offers them the added bonus of receiving college credit, as well as high school credit. During the first semester, students will earn three college credits for English Composition 101, and during the following semester, students will earn another three college credits for English Composition 102. The requirements of the course are not only of those of Freedom High School, but also those of the community college. “Many of our students can appreciate getting a jump start on college. If they’re on the fence about [going to college], albeit taught by our faculty, they’ll be like ‘Hey, I can do this,’” Dr. Staub said. Earning these college credits will provide that jump start many kids will benefit from. “I think that these students understand the value of being able to take these classes in high school,” Mrs. Rebecca Russell, the teacher of English Composition, said. The requirements of English Composition would be considered “stretch-learning,” Dr. Staub said. This will entail “stretching kids by a more rigorous course.” Despite the intensity of such a curriculum, “[the students] are willing to do what they need to do to meet the requirements,” Mrs. Russell said. 1960s This course, taught by Mr. Steve Tinker, will be taught during the second semester of the school year, following a course about Vietnam. 1960s replaced the previous curriculum of American Foreign Policy. This new class is going to be more interesting than American Foreign Policy for the students to learn because it will be more interesting to teach, Mr. Tinker said. This is because “foreign policy is kind of a dry issue or subject… I think the kids knew it was that way, and I knew it was that way.” The students’ emphasis during this course will be on the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s and the Cold War, Mr. Tinker said. In addition to the increased interest for students, another benefit will be earning three college credits. As for the teaching-style of 1960s, it will be “a combination of project-based learning and the old fashioned, traditional, lecture-notes-test,” Mr. Tinker said. Even though the class has not yet begun, students are already looking forward to taking this course. Jordan Cinderich is excited about the class. “Wanting to be a history major in college, I think 1960s is going to be a very interesting class, seeing as you don’t get too many opportunities to take a class like that in high school, or in sometimes even college. The 1960s is one of those time periods that normally gets passed over in American history because of Vietnam, so being able to talk about the other social aspects will be fun,” he said.