Students pressured to take AP classes during course selection

Tierney Kugel '22, Paper Arts Edtior

March 16, 2020

As the task of course selection looms over students in March, peer pressure to add more advanced classes to next year’s schedule increases. Many students make it a personal goal to top their previous schedule in terms of workload and class difficulty, rashly adding AP classes to their already packed schedu...

Course selection results in unnecessary stress

Maria Krug '22, Staff Writer

March 5, 2020

“You are only taking four APs?” says one student. “You weren’t recommended for AP Stat?” replies the other. “You should take at least two more APs senior year than you did junior year,” someone adds. These are common interactions between Staples students once course selection starts to...

Rising upperclassmen select elective English courses for next year

Carly Kaplowitz '21 and Emma Dantas '21

January 31, 2020

Early scheduling for 2020-2021 school year proves to be premature, causes unnecessary stress

Lucy Arrow, Paper Features Editor

January 2, 2020

On Dec. 12, just like any other day, I walked into my weekly “Connections” meeting hoping to have the traditional 20 minutes of time. Despite my wanting to simply communicate and relax before the day proceeded, I was struck with the stressful news that we would be discussing our schedules for th...

Administration enacts new course selection policy, withholds finalized schedules until August

Kaela Dockray '20

January 24, 2019

    The Staples administration and guidance department have implemented changes to the course selection and scheduling process, requiring that students wait until August of the upcoming school year to view the names of their teachers and the periods they have for each class. In June, s...

Homework volume does not correlate with rigor

Sophie Driscoll ’19

January 16, 2019

At higher levels of certain courses, difficulty of content increases slightly but volume of homework increases dramatically. However, homework quantity does not correlate with academic rigor. Of course, some students override into high-level classes without the necessary  foundation for success...

Damico reassures unsettled future Accelerated Science teachers

June 18, 2017

By: Kaya Leitner '19 Accelerated Science is a new course designed to compact three years of curriculum into a two-year science course. Eight sections of the pilot course are anticipated to run for this upcoming school year, and freshman demonstrated great interest in the newly pitched Accelerated Scienc...