By Matthew Chan | Opinions Editor
Lack of student interest in certain courses, shortage of available class periods, and increase of Irvington’s student population led to new combined classes at Irvington this year, including Mr. Kumar’s Physics 1 and Multivariable Calculus class, Mrs. Rothfuss’s Calculus AB and BC class, Mr. Albizo’s Internet Engineering 1 and 2 class, and Mme. Cayla’s French 3 and AP class, among others.
Many of the students, parents, and teachers are upset with the chaos caused by the combined classes. The planning errors such as overflowing classes and students getting placed in the wrong classes have caused the annual scheduling predicament to become more confusing and difficult for the students and teachers to handle.
School administrators rescheduled nearly half of Internet Engineering 1 and 2, which had almost 60 students. Students like junior Amarinder Chahal said his schedule was shuffled around unexpectedly just several days into the school year.
“Internet Engineering 1 and 2 weren’t supposed to be in the same class,” said Mr. Albizo. “The other class inevitably gets distracted by what the other class is doing. You also can’t have an advanced curriculum going on simultaneously with those that haven’t had any experience.”
The administration also added many students who didn’t sign up to the Calculus AB and BC combination class, though BC is more difficult than AB.
“Some of the AB students who were randomly placed in here are not ready for the rigor,” said AP Calculus teacher Mrs. Rothfuss. “Some of them would be more suitable in AB or College Prep Calculus and this class will be very stressful for them.”
It’s a lot of hassle and extra time to organize separate grading curves and grade books within one class, she added.
In the French 3 and AP combo class, AP students don’t get enough preparation for the AP test, said senior Brendan Liu. Mme. Cayla teaches French 3, which has a full class size, and gets help from other fluent French-speaking parents.
“I really dislike that they decided to put French 3, 4 and 5 in one class,” a French 5 student said. “Each section really needs their own class so that they have a fluent speaker instructing them. For us, that either means we have to slow down or we have to do a lot of work on our own.”
The Multivariable Calculus students in Mr. Kumar’s Physics 1 and Multivariable Calculus class also have to self-study since Mr. Kumar instructs the Physics 1 students, but Mr. Kumar has found an alternative.
“One of the problems I am facing is I can’t give 100 percent of my time to my Multivariable students,” Mr. Kumar said. “I have, however, requested that all my students be in my tutorial so that they can get extra help from me.”
