“Hi, my name’s Reyaan Lakhani, and I’m a 10th grader in CCA. I joined CCA for more fun history and English classes. CCA’s main purpose is for this, and I thought I would have fun with the art assignments I was told would be incorporated into these classes.  I have to say it’s fun making friends in the same family, with the same interests as you. 

The academy doesn’t offer much that’s different from normal classes, but you do take an art elective for a few years here at Irvington, which gets your art requirement done early. If you’re thinking of joining CCA, the teachers don’t incorporate too many artistic elements so it might not be a good idea solely for the art assignments. In my honest opinion, the family does not impact Irvington in a big way. It takes a lot of kids from other families sometimes, to fill up CCA classes.

 That’s why you occasionally hear of kids complaining about being pulled into CCA. The CCA teachers are also pretty hard, but if you really enjoy art, and want to take the art elective in the academy, you should take CCA. If you’re on the fence about joining CCA, you should probably consider how much you want to take an art elective. If you’re joining for choir and drama, just know that you’re probably going to get 2nd period English, so you might want to reconsider. Drama 2 and Choir 2 or 3 are also 2nd period. 

However, it’s also a close-knit family, so it’s easy to make friends, both on Zoom and in-person. So it’s something for both the social and the artistic students here. However, make sure you really enjoy art before you take the class. It’s not for everybody, and I personally think the switching out of my teachers made them harder than they originally were. Other than that, the art elective each year is going to be something that’s difficult to keep up with. If you want to take art electives, and truly enjoy art apart from your other classes, then CCA is the academy for you.”