Students will have an opportunity this year to study topics never before available at JDS as a result of new electives and curriculum changes.

Romance Language
The Romance Language department will be offering Introduction to Latin for the first time in many years at JDS.

According to Department Chair June Graff, the department has tried to offer such a course for several years but never received the minimum requirement of ten students.

The course will be taught by Esther Bergman, who learned the language by studying it for seven hours a week while in high school.

According to Graff, the 20 sophomores enrolled will receive one-half of a language credit upon completing the course, in place of the typical full credit accompanied by the completion of a full-year course.

“What I am going to try to do is have an accelerated semester course, so that we can go as far as a public high school would do in a whole year,” said Bergman.

There is a lot of excitement for the class, which begins second semester, and possible hopes for more advanced Latin curricula in the future.

“We are hoping that kids will get excited about it and perhaps take Latin II in the following year,” said Graff.

English
According to English Department Chair Dr. David Solomon, the popular music class called “Bob Dylan to Radiohead,” taught by English teacher Nicole Gharda, is “a survey of contemporary music. The students are studying music as literature and also are looking at it from a cultural standpoint.”

Solomon is teaching a course on Shakespeare which is looking into four or five plays this year as performances. “The goal of the class is to look at Shakespeare’s plays from a different angle,” he said.

Myths and Legends, which is taught by English teacher Megan Daum, will look at fairy tales, urban legends, and classical mythology. “There is great value in the oral lore of storytelling,” Daum said.

English teacher Ellen Bresnick’s American musical theater class is starting with The Producers and will continue to study American theater and other literature.

Solomon is teaching the new “Shund to Seinfeld” class about Jewish entertainers.

“My dissertation was on American Jewish Theater and the course ‘Shund to Seinfeld’ came out of it,” he said.

“We tried to go for electives that would cover a range of topics in which the students would be interested,” said Solomon.

History
The History Department is also offering two new electives.

History teacher Michael Connell, who has taught at West Point, is offering a course to seniors in military history.

In addition, History teacher Mark Buckley is offering a course called “Politics of the Presidency.”

“We are trying to give students a context of the presidency,” said Buckley. “We are using the current election as a means to look back and figure out what the presidency really is and explore its intricacies.”

The two classes had previously not fit into established curricula, but popularity caused the department to make changes.

“While students have a passion for History, they also wanted current events and political discussions in class,” said Buckley.