The language arts department is allowing for more student choice by changing the structure of the curriculum. Eventually, juniors and seniors will have four reading and four writing courses to choose from; one from each category is required each year.

“About every seven years, our state has requirements where they re-examine standards and make adjustments to them. So they’ll revise those, and then once we get those, we take them in as a district and we go through something called a curriculum review process,” Ankeny Community School District’s Director of Curriculum and Instruction, Emily Rash, said.

Currently, at Ankeny High School (AHS), juniors will choose between two classes for their English credit: English 11 or Advanced Placement (AP) Literature and Composition. Seniors have a bit more freedom because they can choose Literature 12 for reading credit, and Communications Skills or Composition 12 for writing credit. They also have the option to take AP Language and Composition, which is a year-long option that covers both reading and writing credits.

The 2024 Revision of Iowa Academic Standards for English Language Arts – Executive Summary has the standards for both 11th and 12th grades grouped, so the need for classes to be separated by grade is unnecessary, according to district staff.

The district also looked at data from the Iowa Statewide Assessment of Student Progress (ISASP) testing, enrollment statistics, post-secondary plans, and grades across the classes. They used this information to determine the changes they wanted to implement, along with the minor revisions from the state.

“We have constantly heard, as English teachers, ‘I won’t need to do this again,’ ‘I don’t want to go to college,’ ‘I want more to do a trade,’ or ‘I don’t know what I want to do.’ [Students] just didn’t feel like English made sense to what their life goals are, and we’re completely empathetic to that,” AHS English teacher, Emina Kovacevic, said.

The new literature courses include American Perspectives, Realistic Narratives for the Teenage Reader, Crime and Mystery, or Science Fiction and Fantasy. The new writing courses are Writing in the Digital Age, Creative Writing, Critical Thinking and Persuasion, and Career and College Communication.

“[The current curriculum] doesn’t give seniors a chance to do stuff that [they] actually want to do,” senior Cloe Bonwell said.

Planning to major in English or Creative Writing, Bonwell found it frustrating that she couldn’t choose when to take AP Literature and Composition. The English department is one of the only ones that doesn’t have mixed junior and senior classes.

“They have Physics and Chemistry [and] you can vary when you want to take that. I took it last year, but my friend is taking it this year,” Bonwell said.

These specific courses are going to become choices for what students can take to fulfill their English credits for all students in 11th and 12th grade. More in-depth descriptions can be found on the ACSD Course Description Guide.

“We are a really large system, so we’re doing it in phases so that our system can grow with the changes,” Rash said. “When we have really large changes, because of the number of people it impacts, we have to allow our system time to grow and expand with that.”

The realization that the school could offer the same courses to juniors and seniors will complicate the scheduling program. Creative Writing and Career and College Communication, currently known as Communication Skills, are both courses that existed partially before this change. Aside from those classes, this change is creating all new classes for teachers to organize and instruct.

“The curriculum is changing, and with that, teachers have to figure out how they can navigate change without having to start from scratch,” Kovacevic said.

After three years of English curriculum conversation and working out the logistics, teachers are able to make these changes to their classrooms. The reading courses may be more interesting to students because they would teach reading skills through a specific genre.

“With changes comes complexity, so we have to really plan for those pieces. I would say the group of teachers, the feedback from the literacy [English teachers, librarians, etc.] group, and the teachers in general has been really fantastic,” Rash said.

Many teachers support the integration of choice so students can best support their futures. The Career and College Communication class prepares students for college-style writing and how to write resumes. As the new changes make their gradual debut, Ankeny staff hope to offer more relevant and helpful courses to the students.

“I hope it will help students feel empowered,” Rash said. “I think anytime you can have choices in your selections, it feels good whether you’re a student or whether you’re an adult.”