Acalanes Begins Offering Several New Courses

Gwyneth Lee, Audrey Tugade, Mika Katznelson, and Natalie Pecci, Print Feature Section Editors and Online Editors 

   From cameras to calculators, Acalanes' new courses offer a wide range of opportunities for students to explore their different interests.

   For the upcoming 2025-2026 school year, Acalanes is adding three new courses to its offerings. These courses are Beginner Guitar, Broadcast Journalism, and Introduction to Business with Business Law. In addition, the current Math Analysis class is being transformed into Precalculus. 

    Beginning Guitar is a response to growing interest in less traditional music classes. It is a class that allows students regardless of their musical background to learn a new instrument or improve their skills. 

   “It's a great way to get deeper into musical learning at school” music teacher Edwin Cordoba said. ”I like that it's open to all skill levels and is something outside of band and orchestra classes, which might seem intimidating to students who haven't had the chance to explore the performing arts at Acalanes”    Some students who play guitar are excited for the class to provide opportunities for others to learn about the guitar.

   “I hope students who take Beginning Guitar can learn to share my love for music and are inspired to keep learning about how to play songs, but also to think about the theory behind songs and songwriting, because that part of playing guitar is so interesting to me!” junior Daphne Dale said.

   After the Acalanes Broadcast Club grew in popularity, some pushed to turn it into a class at Acalanes. This class will allow students to cover campus events and share there passion for videography.

   “They used to have a very robust broadcast journalism class here at Acalanes a long time ago,” Broadcast Club advisor and Photography and Yearbook teacher John Rodgers said. “The studio that is part of room 102, that used to be the broadcast studio, where they would have anchors that would say the news, and then they would create news packages about events and what's going on at the school. They would also cover sports, they would do sports highlights, and that's what we're hoping to do next year.”

   The curriculum will focus on blending journalism and video production, along with learning technical skills to produce informative content for the community.

   “[Students] would get to know how to shoot video, they would learn how to edit video, they would learn lighting,” Rodgers said. “They would learn studio video, which would be, say for example, if we had two anchors sitting behind an anchor desk, we would need a cameraman for each camera.”

   The third new class being offered is Introduction to Business class and Business Law. The class has two classes, one per semester. This class is a partnership with Diablo Valley College (DVC) and will be held at Las Lomas High School. This will mark the first time the Acalanes Union High School District (AUHSD) is partnering with DVC to offer students dual enrollment. 

   “Its first semester is Intro to Business, and second semester it would be Business Law,” Acalanes Principal Eric Shawn said. “Those 2 courses are taught 7th period by an Acalanes Union High School District, so a Las Lomas teacher and a DVC instructor at Las Lomas. You'd have to travel to take that course there.”

   With the class being offered for one period of the school day at a different AUHSD campus, some challenges and limitations follow.

   “The logistics of [the business class] have not fully been fleshed out,” Shawn said. “It does seem to be logical that the course would be offered 7th period so that you could do an off-campus 6th and then travel on Mondays to the class ... There's a limitation to how many will be able to take it. It will be like 15 students from Acalanes. So it's a really small pilot year for this particular course.

   Acalanes’ new Pre-Calculus class will replace Math Analysis, a current similar math class. The new class will allow students to take a non-honors Pre-Calculus class. 

   “Different schools have used math analysis for different purposes. For ours, it is basically a pre-calculus class already, just not taught at the honors level. We just decided to go with AP Pre-calculus for what was previously our pre-calculus honors class, and then have math analysis rebranded and altered around the edges to be a non-AP pre-calculus class,” Buchel said. 

   The newly named Pre-Calculus course was intended to provide clarity to institutions about what the course actually is.

   “We are responding to the issue that students have voiced concern about our math analysis course, which is really a bridger class from Algebra 2 and Pre-calculus. It is unclear to some universities what that class really is,” Board Head and math teacher Buchel said. 

   As the Acalanes community grows, the administration continues to welcome and foster students’ interests and provide electives students are interested in taking.

   “[We are trying to] ensure that we're offering the types of classes that students are interested in taking. I believe that these two electives fit within our schedule and that there should be enough for a section of guitar or a section of broadcast journalism that shouldn't take away from other electives,” Shawn said.