by Karina Correa | staff writer

This year’s course selection week will be different since we have students split between virtual and on-campus, the course fair will be virtual. Here are some things you should know before choosing your classes.

“Johnson Virtual Course Fair – This is a helpful resource for students and parents to explore all the awesome elective and extracurricular options at Johnson and have an opportunity to submit questions to the various program leaders,” Head counselor Courtney Tarbox said. “Reviewing this information with your students helps make informative decisions about the programs and activities they might be interested in pursuing.”

With students, counselors review a set of requirements for graduation to help them select courses to stay on track. The video shown on the Johnson Virtual Course Fair shows the graduation requirements; they are listed on the Course Selection Website as well.

“Some new courses will be offered next year – College Algebra OnRamps (H327), Mexican American Studies (H4222), AP European History (H4223), African American Studies (H4223), Sci. Research & Design (H8259), SAT prep (H1677),” Tarbox said.

Many students find themselves debating whether they should take an advanced class or not. Honor classes help students prepare for Advanced Placement and/or Dual Credit Classes, enhance student’s resumes and applications, and they also offer a weighted grade system. For Honors, PreAP, GT non-AP, and Dual Credit non-AP the rank factor is 1.15, and for AP, and Dual Credit AP is 1.29.

“[If students don’t have any space on their schedule for the rest of the grade they] can take classes in summer school and should contact their counselor with any questions on planning their courses.  The summer school registration is usually available in late March after spring break,” said Mrs. Tarbox.

Course cards won’t be collected this year; instructions will be given to students to use their course cards for entering their course requests in Skyward on Friday, January 29th.  The course requests in Skyward will be open until February 19th, so they can still make changes until then. Virtual students can access the course card on the Course Selection & Endorsements webpage.

“Counselors will meet with in-person and virtual students individually through English classes to review and advise course selections and ensure they are entered in Skyward. [In] February 1st – 5th counselors will meet with 11th grade students, February 8th – 12th with 10th grade, [and] February 15th – 19th with 9th grade,” said Mrs. Tarbox. “The deadline to make changes to course selections is the last day of school, May 28th.  After Feb. 19th, students will need to contact their assigned counselor to make changes. Students and parents can also email or call their assigned counselor with any questions.  Contact information for counselors is on our webpage,”