MHS students have been taking some required courses over the summer at community colleges in order to not have to take the courses at MHS, resulting in smaller class sizes, social studies teacher Ben Ravey said.
Taking summer courses not only reduces class sizes but also causes problems for teachers, Ravey added.
“It (Students taking class over the summer) risks the employment for high school teachers,” Ravey said. “With not as many people taking the course, we don’t need as many teachers.”
Class sizes for juniors taking U.S. history has decreased in Ravey’s five years of teaching at MHS, he said. He also teaches at West Valley Community College and knows how the summer U.S. history course is designed, Ravey added.
“(The course at the college) is designed to be very quick and very light,” Ravey said. “At the college, it is really two U.S. History courses, U.S. History 17A and 17B, and the students are only taking one, but they’re getting credit for both,” he added.
These courses also give a boost to students’ GPAs, which allow the students’ transcripts to look more impressive, Ravey explained.
“I do think that the GPA boost is unfair as it gives a reward for doing less work and effort,” Ravey said in an email interview.
On the other hand, taking summer courses allows students to free up space in their schedules and instead take courses at MHS that could relate to their potential major, Junior Om Phadke said.
“There’s a lot of students now — their objective is STEM related,” Phadke said. “Doing courses like social sciences and literary art and cultural history does not intrigue them as much.”
Many students are aware about the option to take summer classes and are encouraged to do so by other students, Phadke said. Students who had already taken the class also let incoming students know which teachers tend to have the easiest workload, Phadke added.
“I knew some people who actually took this course (U.S. history) in the summer,” Phadke said. “They told me the desired instructor (the easiest) and the course load was very light after that.”
The course load consisted of a document where students would watch videos and write notes, Phadke said. There were many articles that had more information than the provided videos and the tests had answers online, Phadke added.
Teachers are also not given insight into how these summer courses are designed, social studies teacher Danilo Escobar said.
“We (teachers) don’t see what’s happening there (at the community college courses),” Escobar said. “So I don’t know what students know … it asks a lot of questions as to what they are actually taking away from there (college course).”
Many teachers are concerned about the summer courses because many of them are online, social studies teacher Michael Cummins said. He attended a summer course himself to brush up on historical skills and saw firsthand that the course was easier than courses he took in person at community colleges previously, he said.
“I remember the lectures, and I remember the discussions,“ Cummins said. “I remember taking tests like with paper and a ScanTron. No cutting and pasting, no finding a Quizlet. I’m mostly not happy with the fact that they (the courses) are online.”
These summer courses also condense the information of an entire year’s worth of learning into the span of two months, along with being online, Cummins said.
“Weeks of Mission (a community college) equals 180 days of an AP teacher,” Cummins said. “When no one can be next to each other, it isn’t the same kind of learning … there are no bouncing ideas off people.”
Yet, students argue that taking classes that do not interest them over the summer is completely alright, Phadke said.
“You either take an AP class to challenge yourself or if you’re actually passionate about something,” Phadke said. “So adding a course that probably has notes and tests you have to worry about during the school year — I don’t think is worth it.”
Students deciding to take classes over the summer to create more opportunities in their schedule is perfectly fine but does not provide benefits when students use summer classes to provide open periods during their senior year, Escobar said.
“If you are taking a challenging class here (MHS) and at the junior colleges, that’s great,” Escobar explained. “But if we explain to students that if you take a course at the SJCC, and you’re only taking easy classes here, that’s not really portraying you as a strong person that is open to challenge.”
Ultimately, humans work off of incentives and to do the least amount of work possible for the biggest reward, Cummins said.
“We (humans) want to save our brain power and get the most reward back,” Cummins said. “Having said that, it is incredibly disappointing that we are not only competing with other classes on this campus but we are also competing with classes off campus.”