In the 2026-2027 school year, Westview will offer AP Seminar as an English course option for sophomores. This AP course is highly research and project-based. Students learn to interact with sources through various lenses such as historical, scientific, political, and futuristic, as the coursework involves learning the fundamentals of inquiry, investigation, and presentation. Unlike most AP courses, the AP score for Seminar is derived from a team project, an individual research-based essay and presentation, and a final exam. In both collaborative and individual settings, students have the opportunity to select topics that they personally resonate with. The team project addresses real-world issues that students deem pertinent while the individual essay and presentation can answer a research question of any subject.
At Westview, the course will be year-long, linked with Honors Humanities. English Department Cadre leader Jose Lucero said offering year-long English course options at Westview is important for building community and supporting academics.
“[The benefit] is that it builds deeper connections with teachers,” Lucero said. “I teach AVID year-long, and I see it as a benefit in the sense that I have the students for the whole year. It helps me get to know them on a deeper level. Secondly, there is academic continuity, meaning you can delve deeper into topics and explore different concepts.”
Westview isn’t the first PUSD school to offer AP Seminar. Last year, Del Norte began teaching the course and currently offers nine sections of AP Seminar in a school year. Hall said AP Seminar can be a strong foundational course for going into higher-level academics because of its focus on research.
“The class teaches students a lot of research skills that they’ll be able to use for a long time,” he said. “It has a lot of the same skills you would apply to [AP English Language], so it’s a good way to introduce students to some of the things that they’ll be doing later on. For any AP courses that have written exams, [AP Seminar] teaches writing in a way that is beneficial. It’s a good spot for sophomores because it gives them a lot of those skills before they get into those bigger classes.”
When introducing the course, Hall said it was important for teachers to emphasize the difference between AP Seminar and other English classes so students could make informed decisions on which course to take.
“At first, students didn’t really know the difference between AP Seminar and other English choices,” Hall said. “A lot of times, students think about [course decisions] through college applications, so they see [AP Seminar] as a 5.0 class. We’ve had to make it more of an emphasis that you’re taking classes based on your interests, not based on the credit. You need to think about what’s the best class for you and what’s going to be the class that’s most helpful for you.”
Beyond just academics, Hall said the demanding nature of the course can lead to personal growth.
“[AP Seminar] places a lot of emphasis on students,” he said. “A lot of the assignments are things they have to do on their own. So, it creates understanding on how to manage your schedule, how to organize yourself, and how to be responsible, which I think is really important to learn early on.”
At Westview, Lucero said he is excited to see how students will be able to make real-life connections through the course.
“It’s always powerful when you can make personal connections and real-life applications with the content you learn,” Lucero said. “With AP Seminar specifically, I think it’s going to help students to explore different paths. It’ll encourage them to make current connections and inspire students to reflect a little deeper. They’ll be able to think about the world in a more complex way.”
By offering this course, Westview will be able to increase the selection of English courses available to students. Hall said that continuing to diversify high school English course options is important to encourage more interaction with the subject area.
“One of the main reasons why I wanted to push for [AP Seminar] is because I feel like there’s a bit of an imbalance,” Hall said. “There’s a lot of options for math and science, and it seemed like English was not really seen as having the same kind of interest or opportunities. We want to emphasize that it’s still an important subject area and can be done in similar ways to other subjects where you can pick things more on your interests or what you’re trying to accomplish and do.”
