Naugatuck High School offers many of the courses that come to mind when thinking about course selection: English, Mathematics, Science and Social Studies. The school also offer courses that would fall under the categories of Career and Life, Physical Education, Health, Electives and Language.

Many of these courses are offered for free choice but some, a graduation requirement. Civics, health, three years of science and social studies and four years of English and math are all required in order to graduate according to the state.

Two years of a language are recommended so that it will look better on college resumes.

Sounds like no problem, until taking one look at the classes to be chosen from. The same old classes, year after year, gets repetitive and often skipped over.

Mrs. Saam, principal of Naugatuck High School, walked through almost all of the senior English classes with a clipboard by her side, talking with students and teachers asking their opinions.

Mrs. Saam asked about what classes Naugatuck High School should offer, how students felt about the renovations and things that seniors wish they saw either while walking in the halls or when it came to extra help.

Jotting down many notes, hearing many inputs and voices, and getting a ton of contribution from the student’s making it trouble free and very straightforward to figure out just what Naugatuck High School was missing.

When asked why they decided to take a look at the courses offered by NHS, Mrs. Saam responded with, “After speaking with seniors it was brought to my attention that students did not choose classes using the course descriptions in the Program of Studies.  Instead, students were relying on the title of the course or what a friend may have said about the course, or who the teacher was.”

Mrs. Saam continued to say that with a little help from staff and students that attend Naugatuck High School, it was easier to bring it up to the board.

“We then asked what courses would they recommend we have that we currently don’t have.  I also asked teachers what they might like to teach.  Using all that information, we changed course titles, descriptions, and added some new ones in the hopes that we are better meeting the needs of students.  All the additions, changes, and deletions were then brought to the BoE for approval.”

However, the new eight courses that’ll be offered to the Greyhounds include; pre-algebra, AP U.S. government and politics, introduction to animation, art and culture, painting 1, musical theatre, ECE Italian IV and ECE Latin American studies.

While adding these eight courses, three courses were unfortunately removed. Meteorology, which will be coordinated into other classes, and music theory 1 & 2. Music theory was said to not attract many students.

These new courses will be offered in the Fall of 2017.

Student’s asked to see the principal more often and get to be on a more friendly base and she has given the student’s that. Student’s have asked for different classes, additional school activities and more rewards for our accomplishments.

So far, Mrs. Saam has given the students a senior lounge, RIGHT, eight new courses and tons of new school activities.