Cloud Hosting

CHAPLIN A group of students at Parish Hill High School have cracked the code to be successful.

A new course pathway offered at the regional school teaches students computer science, coding and programming.

Parish Hill serves seventh through 12th grades from the regional school district 11 towns of Chaplin, Hampton and Scotland, as well as students tuitioned in from surrounding communities.

The schools newest class is Advanced Placement Computer Science A (AP CSA), which teaches the Java coding language.

This is the latest, newest Advanced Placement offering at Parish Hill, said Karen Abbey, who teaches computer science and mathematics at the school and who was named as an outstanding teacher by the Connecticut Parent Teacher Association in 2020. The requirements are completion of Algebra II and Advanced Placement Computer Science Principles (AP CSP). AP CSP is an introductory course that is part computer programming, and part background of hardware, databases, and the internet. Cybersecurity is a unit in AP CSP. In contrast, AP CSA is just programming. There is a lot of logic and in order to do that, a foundation in mathematical thinking is required.

Abbey teaches both AP CSP and AP CSA, as well as classes in Advanced Placement Calculus and Advanced Placement Statistics, and hopes to have Advanced Placement Precalculus added in Fall 2024 as well. Other Advanced Placement courses offered at Parish Hill High School are in Art, Biology, English, English Literature and Composition, Environmental Science, Spanish and U.S. History.

The newest Advanced Placement course encourages students to work together for the best results.

AP CSA is a technical course that expands upon the ideas taught in the prerequisite course AP CSP, said Nick St. Dennis, a senior taking the class. The course is fairly paced to help students learn the coding language. Seeing as Java is similar to JavaScript, taught in CSP, it enables more focus on the complex vocabulary that students must know for the exam. You interact with your peers to debug code, work on group projects, perform hands-on activities to further understand how code works, and generally assist each other so that everyone succeeds. AP CSA has been thrilling, riveting and exciting.

More:

Parish Hill students now have success 'code' | News | thechronicle.com - The Chronicle