For years, Dual Credit courses have been offered at SHS so students have an opportunity to earn college credit during high school. Starting next school year, a new DC course option is being added.

DC speech is a semester-long class that will be taught by speech teacher Sara Berghoff, the only teacher at SHS currently qualified to teach the class. 

“I think it’s a great opportunity,” Berghoff said. “Just because people do get so nervous about speech, and they can get it out of the way in what I think is a warm environment.” 

The class is through IU’s ACP program. Because of that, Berghoff has strict lesson plan guidelines she has to follow in order for students to get the credit they signed up for. 

Berghoff said that speech in college is unavoidable, so taking this class is a great chance to get the credit with peers the students know and are more comfortable with. 

Sophomore Lara Schuette is the class for this exact reason. It was recommended to her by her counselor so she could get it out of the way before college. She thinks that although it is a DC class, it won’t be too difficult, especially in the environment she’ll be taking it in. 

“I don’t think it will be too hard, you just have put effort into it,” Schuette said. “And I think it’ll be fun if you’re with the right people.” 

Berghoff knows for sure that there are enough students signed up for one session, and she hopes maybe even enough for two. 

Junior Clark Wilson is signed up to take the class next year. He says he’s taking it because he loves Berghoff as a speech teacher and he needed a semester-long class to fill his schedule. 

He thinks it will be a little difficult; however, not as difficult as other advanced classes. 

“I’m expecting it to be harder than a normal class,” Wilson said. “But not as hard as some other DC and AP classes.” 

Berghoff says DC speech will be tougher than regular speech simply because it’s for college credit, therefore as difficult as a regular college class. 

She also says that the class is focused on different things than the regular class. 

“It is a lot more focused on communication theory, rhetoric and how we use words and speech in order to convey a message and sway an audience,” Berghoff said.

In her eyes, this class offers more to students than they might realize at first. Not only does the class count as college credit and contribute to the requirements for an honors diploma, it can also be substituted as student’s eighth semester english credit. 

She also thinks that when students learn to speak and communicate better, they become better writers in general, which has even proven true for herself. 

“I always tell people I became a better writer because I was trained to be a better speaker,” Berghoff said.