In late August, seniors began their Freshman Humanities Colloquium classes and elective courses at Queens College. This year, CUNY has adopted BrightSpace as the new Learning Management System used across all CUNY schools. THHS seniors will use this platform to submit online work in their QC classes. In their THHS classes, they will continue to use Google Classroom and Jupiter Ed.
Administrative staff member of the College High School Preparatory Programs at Queens College (CPP) Joseph Merino said, “Students seem to prefer to look up how they’re doing rather than keeping track of themselves based on the syllabus or asking an instructor for a progress report.”
“[QC classes] are the classes we have been looking forward to since we were ninth graders,” said senior Ellie Teytelman. “It’s really one of the things that sets [THHS] apart from other schools. Being able to be in a college environment while still being in high school is a great experience. However, I am not very happy about Brightspace. We already have Google Classroom and Jupiter. I don’t know how I feel about another one.”
The addition of Brightspace on top of pre-existing platforms such as Google Classroom and Jupiter presents both students and teachers with a new set of technological challenges that they must learn to navigate.
“[Brightspace] is brand new to teachers and students alike, so there is going to be a learning curve,” said English teacher Kevin McDonaugh, co-teacher of sections 03 and 04 of the Humanities Colloquium. “We all get more passwords and platforms to navigate.”
Along with technological challenges, seniors will have to adjust to the way college classes are taught.
Ellie said, “It is not very much like any sort of class that I have had before,” adding that the structure feels less like a rigid course.
Mr. McDonaugh said the humanities seminar offers something that is different from the daily 50 minute lessons high school students get: “ideally, the humanities classes strike a nice balance between high school and college, which is not always so easy to do.”
Regardless of these challenges, students hope that they will be able to learn valuable skills from their humanities seminar classes that will prepare them for college.
“We help students hone their skills in close reading, writing clearly, expressing their reactions to a text / information (verbally and in writing), analyzing those texts and their own reactions to them, and understanding other, related critical theories,” Mr. Merino said.
Senior Daniel Matta said that these classes allow students to get “exposure to a college course in a way [they] never have before.”
Senior Julie Remache said, “I hope it can prepare me for the future. I hope to take away the experience of having an actual college class.”
“[Currently], seniors are wondering where they will be off to. It is all mysterious and filled with ambiguity–but by the end, everything will be answered, and right now we are actually at the beginning of the last lap to the finish line. It is important to just savor this time,” said Mr. McDonaugh.
Since 1984, THHS and Queens College have maintained a partnership administered by the CPP. The CPP coordinates the Bridge Year program for THHS seniors, allowing them to take a year-long Humanities Seminar class taught within QC campus and an additional elective. At the end of the year, the Humanities Seminar classes culminate in the Humanities Symposium—allowing students to present their work from the class in public.
