In 2022, the introduction of a seven-period schedule for Lee County high schoolers impacted AP, AICE, and IB students the hardest. IB students were left with one less free period for electives, resulting in the district’s decision to allow students to take one class on an A/B rotation along with the required TOK class.

With upcoming changes in the district, the IB program at Cape Coral High School will begin offering one-year standard-level (SL) courses for students, opening a period of electives during their junior and senior years. The IB program requires students to have 3 SL and HL courses, with the SL courses taking up a minimum of 150 hours of active instruction time. Although Cape High has offered one-year SL courses in the past, it hasn’t in the past few years.

“In the past, I think we’ve tried some classes,” said IB Coordinator, Katelyn Uhler. “I know they tried math and they taught math in one year before but then just decided to go back to a two-year model because we just felt that two years may be more beneficial to give them more time to prepare for the IB exams.” 

Recently, IB juniors have had the choice of two-year science courses, those being biology, chemistry, and environmental systems & societies (ESS). Now, ESS will be offered as a one-year course, along with a new course: Sports, Exercise, and Health Sciences. 

The Sports, exercise, and health services class will have a prerequisite of Anatomy and Physiology to save time when going over specific content. 

Students will be able to take the one-year course either junior or senior year, allowing them an extra spot for an elective. After fulfilling their science credit they will no longer need to worry about a science SL class the year after. 

These classes won’t be widely different from the already existing two-year SL courses, apart from certain requirements and class pacing.

“So, the students that are going to be doing it in a year, there’s not going to be a lot of downtime,” said IB ESS teacher Lori Shaw. “That means that it will be focused on content. And it’ll be focused on content and less kind of the exciting side conversations that we have in a two-year program.

In the future, the plan is to offer one-year SL courses in different subjects to offer IB students more electives each year. 

“It’s just been difficult trying to figure out which classes that would be appropriate for and it has to be a SL so I hate to do that with math,” said Uhler. “And then the World Languages I’m a little worried about because students struggle with four years and then if we try to condense that into three years, I think it’s just going to have to be more preloaded.”

The IB administration at Cape High will also be opening select IB electives to traditional students. Traditional students will still be required to take the IB test at the end of the year and will receive college credit for it. 

IB Sports, Exercise, and Health services will be the first course offered, along with IB Visual Arts and IB Digital Societies.   

“I think this year we’re gonna start with just the three classes, see how it goes since it’s kind of like a trial stage, and also gauge the interest of students who are not IB in possibly taking the classes,” said Uhler. “If it goes well and we see interest, I think we definitely would open up more classes.”

Although the rigor will stay the same, traditional students will still be required to submit an internal assessment as well as take the two-year course. 

“The most difficult thing for non-IB students will be having to deal with the internal assessment since they will still be required to complete it,” stated IB digital societies teacher Aaron Smoly. “The class is also a two-year course which means that non-IB students are committing to a two-year course with IB students who are dealing with all those stresses.”

Allowing non-IB students to take IB courses will give students who were in the program and dropped out a chance to continue taking electives they feel passionate about alongside their peers while still not in the program.  

“It’ll be good for people to branch out into new things like IB classes and rigorous courses like Digital Societies,” said executive producer of Hawk News and junior, Dakota Downey. “It’ll look better on college applications for those students who have taken more rigorous courses like IB classes, and it will help fill up any gaps in the classes so there’s max participation.”