Revere High School (RHS) is adding new AP classes to expand the curriculum for upcoming school years.
Next school year, students will have the option to take AP Environmental Science as a science class, and sophomores can take AP Seminar as an English class. The following school year, AP Research will be an elective option.
David Parry, a science teacher, will be teaching AP Environmental Science for the first time next year. He provided insight into what students will be learning in the new class.
“We’ll look at interactions between living and nonliving parts of our earth and how we work within those systems. . . . It’s going to be a great opportunity for students to take what they already learned in biology to the next level,” Parry said.
In order to explore this topic, there will be both labs and independent work assigned to students. This work will cover a variety of components to environmental science.
“We’re going to look at hydroponics and build a hydroponic garden. We’re going to look at building and maintaining closed ecosystems,” Parry said.
Parry intends AP Environmental Science to be a more advanced class for people who have a strong desire to learn about the subject material.
“It should be something that students want to explore and play and be a scientist [and] have that independent part of learning while at the same time be able to explore your own scientific curiosity,” Parry said.
There are prerequisites and requirements needed in order to be successful in AP Environmental Science. The class presents certain difficulties that students need to be able to handle.
“Students have needed to complete biology and then be willing to take an AP level class. . . . [The] environmental science [class] is a basic understanding of environmental science whereas AP environmental is a much higher level,” Parry said.
The labs in AP Environmental Science will be similar to those some students have seen before in their freshman year.
“AP Environmental [Science] will be an opportunity to have a lab-based exploration of science that students probably haven’t had since [Honors Physical Science],” Parry said.
In addition to AP Environmental Science, RHS will offer AP Seminar starting the 2026-2027 school year. It will be an ELA class, which Leigh Haynam will teach, and it will be offered to sophomores. It serves as a prerequisite for AP Research, another new class to RHS that will be an elective; however, RHS will not offer AP Research until the 2027-2028 school year. The goal of AP Seminar is to teach the skills needed to write research papers.
“Students learn how to conduct their own research at a college-level, so that in the following year, if they choose to take the elective AP Research, they would know how to do their own research,” Haynam said.
Unlike many papers students may have had to write in past high school and middle school ELA classes, AP Seminar will require students to join groups and explore many aspects of their research.
“Students would meet as a team with group members, and choose an area that they would like to do research on. . . . They would choose different lenses to explore, regarding that particular problem in the world or issue going on. It might be that one student in the group would explore that issue through a cultural or social sort of lens. Someone might choose an environmental lens to study the issue through. Someone else might look at it from a political or historical lens. . . . I would teach the students how to do all that, and when it comes time to do that then they have to do it themselves,” Haynam said.
The only requirement to take AP Seminar is a teacher recommendation; however, that does not mean everyone is set up to succeed in the class.
“This is [a class] where attendance and work ethic matter because if a student isn’t meeting their deadlines on a paper, that could undermine the team’s presentation,” Haynam said.
Another important assignment students will get is an individual research paper. In both the individual and group assignments, the students will not only be writing, but presenting their research in front of the class.
“There [is] something called ‘oral defense,’ where I would ask them questions that they would have to respond,” Haynam said.
By completing AP Seminar, it not only opens up the option to take AP Research, but it also checks off a requirement students have to get the AP Capstone Diploma. This diploma can only be earned after a student performs well in AP Seminar, AP Research and four other AP classes.
“[Revere is] offering AP Seminar so . . . [students] could potentially already qualify for the AP Capstone Diploma by the time they become seniors applying to colleges. . . . It would also help our seniors with scholarships,” Haynam said.
The Revere Director of Curriculum and Instruction, Marcia Roach said there are several things that getting this diploma can help students with. Until now, they never had that opportunity to get the AP Capstone Diploma because it required students to take AP Seminar and AP Research.
“[The AP Capstone Diploma is] an additional thing . . . that might help them in more selected institutions. It really could encourage students to take more AP courses that could give them more college credit. . . . It’s another thing that celebrates academic success,” Roach said.
RHS added AP Seminar and AP Research to the curriculum because of the crucial skills they taught students. These skills could prepare them for future parts of their lives.
“We were talking about every career field we could think of and how research, especially research on a topic that you’re interested in, is part of so many different professions,” Roach said.
While very similar, there are distinct differences between AP Seminar and AP Research. The latter course will require more independent work than the former.
“In AP Research, that responsibility for that wide breadth of resources is on the individual student, so the individual might have twenty-five to thirty sources,” Roach said.
Because AP Research is coming to RHS later than the other two courses, the course work is not as developed. RHS is also not certain on who will teach the course.
“The teachers who are going to be teaching the[se new AP] course[s] are going this summer . . . [to a] required training . . . where they build their course,” Roach said.
