New schools, new teachers, new courses! The start of a new school year comes with many exciting decisions for you to make. Sahuaro is a top 10 school in TUSD due to its impeccable fine arts, CTE, honors/AP classes, and sports.

Taught by Mr. Brown, an Avid 1/2 class will be available as well. Avid is an elective course focused on preparing students for applying, entering, and succeeding in college.

You’ve got double the options for your English credit now! 9th and 10th graders will now be able to study Mexican or African culturally relevant English. In these English courses, students will focus on understanding and interpreting the cultural, ethnic, social, and political dynamics of Mexican or African cultures.

Next school year, Robotics and Pharmacy Tech will both begin accepting freshmen. In Robotics, students will build, engineer, and code bots to make certain moves required to compete in tournaments set by VEX guidelines.  Underclassmen (9th & 10th) will also now be able to join Pharmacy Tech, though students cannot complete their certification until they’re 18. Pharmacy students learn pharmacy assisting, calculations and measurements, pharmacy law, pharmacology, medical terminology and abbreviations, medicinal drugs, sterile techniques, maintenance of inventory, patient record systems, and data processing. These subjects set students up to be employed as a Pharmacy Technician straight out of high school.

11th and 12th graders will now be able to take either Shakespeare (Mr. Smith) or Creative Writing (Ms. Lange) for an English or elective credit. Shakespeare will focus on the reading, discussion, analysis, and performance of his plays. Ms. Lange taught creative writing for around a decade before it was removed from our school, and she is ecstatic to bring it back! She plans to “…unleash students creativity by writing short stories, personal narratives, spoken word, and we will also be looking at script writing.”

For upperclassmen (11th & 12th), AP African American studies will open. This class covers everything starting from early African kingdoms to their ongoing challenges as a race in the modern world. An AP course must have a certain amount of students to run, but when students drop out of courses when the school year starts, AP classes get dropped due to class size. So to prevent this, Sahuaro instated a new policy: When signing up for AP classes this next year, you’ll be required to stay in that class; yes, even during the first 2 weeks of school.

Following in the footsteps of Rincon and Sabino, we’re adding a yoga class! Students in grades 10-12 will be able to participate for their P.E. credit. Although we were supposed to start it up this year with Mr. Rutherford, his departure from our Cougar family delayed the process. Our yoga course will focus on breath, movement, and mindfulness during physically challenging postures and strength-enhancing exercises. Students will also discuss how yoga benefits them in their daily lives.

Some courses will also be getting new/additional teachers. “…if there’s a conflict with the teacher for whatever reason, whether it’s the teacher or the student, we’re able to you know, flip-flop them,” Mrs. Rodriguez comments.

The beginning of a new school year can be stressful, especially with schedule conflicts; adding these new courses will open doors to new interests and hopefully take away some of the stress that comes with not getting the classes you desire!