For many students with sports and extracurriculars, Northwood’s elective and schedule guidelines can limit the kind of classes they take, especially when certain classes are not available. To provide more diverse course offerings, Northwood hosts classes through IVC’s College and Career Access Pathways, allowing high schoolers to earn college credit at almost no cost.
Northwood currently offers MATH 5, CS 38, BIOT 70 and BIOT 70L during the fall semester. MATH 5, an online course, focuses on set theory, sequences, series, statistics and finances. Through CS 38, students can learn basic java skills, including loops, controls and algorithms. BIOT 70 and BIOT 70L also provide lab experience, practicing biotechnology skills like genetic engineering and antibody methods. Northwood administrators hope to expand CCAP course offerings in the future.
“We really want to offer more non-traditional courses that students don’t have access to but are still interested in, like kinesthesiology for athletes or communication for kids who like public speaking. It helps them refine their skills,” assistant principal Kourtney Tambara said. “It’s a lot of work, but it can also help students discover new things and grow into their passions.”
To align CCAP courses with student interests, Northwood polled students during last spring’s student forum survey, which asked what topics students would be most interested in learning about at IVC. After students showed a high interest in math, communication and science classes during the survey, admin collaborated with IVC to arrange similar courses at Northwood, expanding students’ learning beyond the standard curriculum.
“Biotech was a blast since we were getting college education with classmates our age and could participate in labs with materials shipped from IVC directly to Northwood,” senior Zeynep Arat said. “We got to learn a lot of stuff we didn’t know, that were also expanded on and related to things from IS1 and 2.”
Students can also take general classes by the college not offered by CCAP. For example, students can opt to complete A-G requirements such as language for UC schools at IVC, which offers ASL, Chinese, French, Japanese and Spanish. While courses taken through IVC will not count towards graduation requirements at Northwood, this also frees up more of students’ Northwood schedule to take non-open elective courses and other extracurriculars.
“I really wanted to learn Chinese to be connected with my family, so having Chinese at IVC really helped me with that since Northwood doesn’t offer it, and AP Chinese at IVA conflicts with my sports schedule,” sophomore Audrey Nguyen said. “It’s self-paced too, so it also holds you accountable and is a great introduction for anything you want to learn.”
Northwood will be adding an entrepreneurship course for dual enrollment students in the spring, alongside existing offerings. Students who expressed interest in this course and others through the student forum survey will be contacted later to enroll in CCAP.
If interested in Northwood’s IVC course offerings, students can contact their counselor for more information. Students interested in being added to next year’s interest list can also sign up during Elective Expo or through this spring’s student forum survey as well.
