With end-of-year milestones advancing, Montclair High School students considered the good, the bad and the ugly of the academic term. With new-found wisdom, regrets and life lessons filed away, students reminisced on the 2024-2025 academic year.
Katia Bergstrom-Shaw, a rising sophomore, said the best class she took this year was Music Appreciation. According to the summary in the course syllabus, “Music Appreciation is an introduction to the study of music with focus on the elements of music and their relationships, the musical characteristics of representative works and composers, common musical forms and genres of various western and non-western historical style periods and appropriate listening.” Music Appreciation is an elective open to all grade and experience levels, with no prerequisites. She rated it a 2/10 on the difficulty scale, and a generally “easy” class.
Another rising sophomore, Bethany Jayne-Ford, said that Biology Honors was her favorite class this year.
“The activities that we did, [going to] the creek, the experiments, all hands on material,” she cited as the best parts. Biology H is the basic biology course taken by almost all freshmen. It is the basis for more advanced classes later on in high school.
Finally, Henry Brackenbury, a rising senior, selected AP US History as the best class of the 2024-2025 school year. AP classes are college level courses run by College Board, a non-profit organization dedicated to expanding access to higher education. They are rigorous and fast-paced.
“I really enjoyed learning about modern (post Civil War) U.S. history because I only knew certain parts of it and I find it interesting to see how history influenced the present,” Brackenbury said..
AP US History is an advanced course, as Brackenbury rated it an 8/10 in terms of difficulty, but may be fun for history buffs and students who want to improve their GPA& college admission chances.
As for the worst classes of the school year, Bergstrom-Shaw’s pick was Geometry, or math in general. “When you get it, it’s easy, but when you don’t, it’s impossible,” she lamented.
Ford seconded Bergstrom-Shaw’s assertion, saying Algebra was her worst subject. Math is a mandatory subject, but there are several options at Montclair High School, so you can drop down a level if your current or recommended class seems too advanced for your current skill, Ford said.
Bergstrom-Shaw and Ford agreed on yet another topic: favorite teacher. Both freshmen selected Mr. Moore of the Social Studies Department as the best teacher and both for similar reasons.
“I would recommend him because even if you’ve missed or forgotten to turn in classwork, instead of him being mad at you or just forcing you to do it again, he lets you take your own time and your own pace to do stuff, without taking loads of points off, especially if you’ve been absent because you’ve been sick,” Ford said.
“I found Mr. Meyer to be extremely amusing and a great teacher … He did a really good job of demonstrating the causes and effect of history and making class engaging. I also liked his jokes and bluntness as well as his modern-day connections,” Brackenbury said.
Finally, each student shared a piece of advice they wish they’d known at the start of their grade.
“You are going to have a lot of work and it is going to be really hard,” Brackenbury remarked. “Push through, it’s worth it in the end.”
“Freshman year is not as bad as everyone says it is. Everyone says you can’t make it through freshman year without breaking up with your friends, but that’s propaganda,” according to Bergstrom-Shaw.
“Don’t stress about things too much, even if your grades are coming down, you can still get them up by the time you finish the school year,” Ford finished off.
