Curriculum
Northern Highlands has a four-day rotating schedule; days are lettered with A through D. Students are scheduled for eight courses, six of which meet daily. This schedule provides longer segments of time (57 minute periods) to engage in higher-order thinking and performance-based learning. To receive a Northern Highlands Regional High School diploma, all students must pass the New Jersey High School Proficiency Assessment (HSPA), and earn a minimum of 125 credits including: 4 years of English and a Freshman Rhetoric course for one semester; 1 year of World History / Cultures; 2 years of United States History; 3 years of Mathematics; 3 years of Science; 2 years of World Languages; 2 years of Career Education & Consumer, Family, and Life Skills, one semester of which is Contemporary Business Technology, one semester of a Financial Literacy course; 2 years of Visual and Performing Arts; and a year of Physical Education and/or Health for each year a student is in attendance at Northern Highlands.
Elective offerings in Visual and Performing Arts include: all art and music classes, Acting I, Actors’ Workshop, Creative Writing I and II, Journalism, TV Production I and II, and Film Studies. Semester courses include: Digital Multimedia and Web Page Design, as well as Mass Communications, Introduction to TV and Film, and Public Speaking. Elective offerings in Family and Life Skills include: Business, Computer classes, Industrial Technology, Family and Consumer Sciences, Music and Fine Arts. Semester courses include Digital Multimedia and Web Page Design which may apply either to Visual and Performing Arts requirements OR Family and Life Skills, and Personal Finance and Investment, Entrepreneurship, Financial Management and Accounting, and Sports and Entertainment Marketing. Engineering courses are offered and rapidly growing in popularity.
Presently, there are 37 Honors courses — two of which are Syracuse University Honors Project Advance classes in Forensic Science and Writing Studio I/ Reading Interpretation — and 19 Advanced Placement courses, in AP English Language and Composition, AP English Literature and Composition, AP United States History, AP European History, AP Calculus AB, AP Calculus BC, AP Statistics, AP Biology, AP Chemistry, AP Physics, AP French Language, AP Spanish Language, AP Latin Literature, AP Macroeconomics, AP Art History, AP Studio Art, AP United States Government and Politics, AP Computer Science and AP Music Theory. AP courses are available to juniors and seniors and sophomores, although sophomores are only allowed one. Although very few Highlanders take a study, those students who take two lab sciences must have a study.
The Northern Highlands Regiment, the high school marching band under the direction of Theodora Sotiropoulos, is a top program in the region, having won the New Jersey Division 4A State Championship in 2004 and 2010. The band often places first or in the top three at local competitions throughout the fall season.
Read more about this topic: Northern Highlands Regional High School
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“If we focus exclusively on teaching our children to read, write, spell, and count in their first years of life, we turn our homes into extensions of school and turn bringing up a child into an exercise in curriculum development. We should be parents first and teachers of academic skills second.”
—Neil Kurshan (20th century)