AP Spanish is a year long world language course at Leesville Road High School. The school year begins with Honors Spanish V in the fall semester, and AP Spanish in the spring. Students that are in Honors Spanish V do not have to take AP Spanish in the spring. In order to take AP Spanish, you have to have previously taken Spanish IV and attend the end of the year meeting.
Señor Ross teaches Spanish II, Spanish V and AP Spanish at Leesville. Ideally, AP Spanish is supposed to be the equivalent of a fifth semester in college. “There’s more independence, there’s more kinda self motivation, and it’s really a group of students who in theory at least enjoy Spanish if not love it enough to commit a serious amount of time and effort to it during that year-long adventure,” said Ross.
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Señor Ross believes that taking AP Spanish will benefit a student that graduates from high school. Taking a minor or double major in Spanish is helpful in the United States seeing as Spanish is one of the top-speaking languages in the world. “The way to happiness is to find something that you like and then to incorporate Spanish into it,” said Ross.
Although AP Spanish is a very challenging course, students agree that the class has taught them a lot about life in general.
Throughout the school year, students have learned more about the Spanish culture than just the language. “Families are united more, there’s a lot of poverty, different hispanic countries, and different hand gestures then there are in the United States,” said Valerie Franco, an AP Spanish student at Leesville.
The AP Spanish night is a reflection on what the AP students have learned this semester. Señor Ross broke the class up into groups of five and the students chose a theme for their movie. The students made each movie in Spanish, but have put English subtitles for those who do not speak Spanish. The students had to create their own script and shoot every day in various places of the school. One of the groups chose Shrek as their theme and had to shoot mainly outside in the parking lot and on the baseball field. “I had to find a velvet dress and I sowed green around it to make it look more Shrek like and we had to order ears online. And we just made every character look like a character from Shrek,” said Antonia Dingeman, an AP Spanish student at Leesville.
There are three main purposes for the movie night according to Señor Ross. The first reason is to challenge the students after taking their exam by giving them a fun project to do. The second reason is to showcase the talent that they’ve learned all year and to show their improvement. The goal is to invite family members and students at Leesville to show how far they’ve come throughout the years. The third reason is to excite students that are looking to take AP Spanish next year and younger students that are looking for a possible career in the Spanish department.
The AP Spanish movie night was free and was held in the auditorium on June 1 at 7 p.m.
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