This school year, Honors  English 10 is no longer offered as a class to sophomores at any high school in the district, including Granite Bay. Over the years, Honors classes have been replaced by other advanced courses, such as AP and IB, in RJUHSD. 

As Honors and CP English 10 are now combined into one class, new teachers have been added to the available class periods. These teachers are mainly Hayflick and Matt, while Sitterud, Davis, Rossow and Doolittle have also taken over class periods throughout the school year. 

“It’s a district choice to create a course and give it a label like that. It’s also the district’s choice to choose to weight or not weight a course. (…) The interest in calling classes honors has diminished as DE has grown, and then we’ve always been a big AP and IB school on top of that,” GBHS Principal Gregory Sloan said.

Anthony Davis, a long-time GBHS English teacher, taught Honors English 10 as a combined class with AP European History until a couple of years ago, when the two split, as AP Euro is no longer at Granite Bay. 

“It was tailored for the kids who were in the AP European History class,” Davis said.  “There were certain units, things we did in that class that we didn’t do in the CP English 10. For example, the kids have to write what’s called a DBQ, a document-based question, for the AP European History exam. And so in the English class, we would work to teach them how to write that type of essay.”

Honors English 10, among other Honors classes, did not receive a weighted grade bump or affect student class rank at any point during their time at the school.

“It’s a clean slate across the board. Everybody knows where they stand. The kids don’t have to make a choice as an honors to see, because there was no choice to make in terms of actually what’s happening within the classroom. Their perception might have been, oh, it’s going to be this, because it says that.” Davis said. 

Emma Kaplin is a GBHS junior who is currently enrolled in AP Lang and took English 10 during her sophomore year. She expressed that writing and formatting are both important tools used in the AP class that students should be well prepared for. 

“We don’t really do presentations in AP Lang, and we didn’t do that in regular. (…) The format of our essays were pretty much the same for both regular English and AP Lang,” Kaplin said. 

The configured purpose of having honors courses, such as world languages or chemistry, prominently in Granite Bay’s earlier years, was to provide an opportunity for the advanced kids to academically challenge themselves. 

“Over time, it’s like, well, why would we not offer every kid the best course we have to offer?” Sloan said. “What we covered in honors last year is what everybody’s covering this year. We’re just not differentiating a title or a label on the students in the class that they’re in.”