If you’ve recently taken an honors History or English class at Westminster, you may have noticed that the population of students in those honors classes is much higher than that of regular classes. This is because over the past couple years, the number of students taking honors History and English classes at Westminster has been steadily increasing. So what’s with the jump in honors class sizes?

Mr. Gall, Westminster’s Head of Academic Development, was able to shed some light on this phenomenon by looking at it from the perspective of a high school student trying to get accepted into a reputable college: “I also think just to be frank that we have seen something outside of Westminster that the college admissions process has become much more competitive, so students I think feel the pressure sometimes to burnish their resume, if you will, by taking more honors classes for multiple reasons: they feel it looks better to colleges and in addition to that it provides a GPA boost.”

Although there are some students who simply choose to take honors classes for the GPA boost they provide, there are still other students who genuinely value the academic rigor that honors classes offer. 

Audrie Bockman, a sophomore student at Westminster, reasoned that she takes honors classes for the level of discussion they offer: “I like the higher level of discussion being with other people who are also higher level [thinkers]. I enjoy those kinds of conversations where you can talk intellectually with other people. And I enjoy the fast-paced-ness because it’s less likely that I’m going to check out.”  

It’s clear that students appreciate the opportunities they have to take honors classes at Westminster for various reasons, but what effect is the increased number of honors kids in English and History having on the teachers? 

Despite Mr. Knerr’s love of teaching students that are eager to learn and participate in class, the amount of grading he has to do for his sizable classes can often prove to be hard to keep up with, “What [the change in honors class sizes] does effect going from 61 to 71 [honors students] and then with my other section having 91 in total is that I simply can’t keep up with the grading essays. So we do DBQs and we used to do three a semester and after all the grading and then the regrading and the regrading. I can handle 61 but 91, that’s just a little too much. So we’re down to one to two a semester. So that’s where you’d see the most effect is just the amount of writing I can assign and still remain sane.” 

Many other upper school honors teachers, such as Mrs. Thies and Dr. Gall, have also found that having a lot of honors students has a big impact on the amount of assignments they have to grade, especially when it comes to written assessments. This heavy workload often consumes hours of time during their nights, weekends, and off periods. However, despite the amount of time grading extra honors assignments takes, a majority of the honors teachers at Westminster are happy to see the increase in students wanting to join their class. 

Dr. Gall, an AP history teacher at Westminster, personally believes that the influx of Westminster students wanting to take challenging courses is a welcome occurrence, “They want to prepare themselves as much as they can to get into a good college. I’m fine with it, if more students want to take on the challenge I think that’s a good thing. We have to be careful that we don’t dilute the demands of the honors classes or change what we do because there are more students, but I find that students are rising to the occasion.” 

The amount of students desiring to take honors classes is not likely to decrease any time soon due to the difficult college admissions process and the rigorous academic challenges that honors History and English courses Westminster offer. Nevertheless,  despite the extra work brought on by the surge of interest in advanced classes, honors teachers still have the same goals as before, to push their students to do their best and to help them grow in understanding of the subject they teach.