By Donald Gilpin

Princeton High School (PHS) is preparing to welcome about 1,550 students next Tuesday for the start of the 2024-25 school year, and, along with a large contingent of new students, there will be new staff members, a new cafeteria, a new food service provider, a new roof, new security vestibules, new classroom doors, and more.

“It’s been a phenomenally busy summer, primarily because of the construction that’s been going on,” said PHS Principal Cecilia Birge. “We’ve never had so much construction. I’ve been in this building for more than 10 years, but this is the first time I’ve seen that all of the projects are coming to fruition at the same time. We’re 99 percent there.”

She pointed out that significant parts of the building had been brightened up and modernized. “The feel of the building has been changed,” she said. “What impresses me this time around is the focus on delivering a physical space to our students and staff so that our educators can really imagine the different possibilities for teaching.”

Elizabeth Taylor

Birge went on to mention a number of upgrades to teaching and learning as well as to the facilities, and she summed up, “Every single project I have described is going to the core of our operation — making sure that our kids are fed, making sure that our classrooms are a safe space, making sure that taxpayers’ money is used efficiently and effectively.”

Even more exciting than the physical changes for veteran PHS social studies teacher Elizabeth Taylor, however, are her plans for two upper level courses: Advanced Placement (AP) U.S. History, always especially interesting in an election year; and Accelerated Sociology, which this year for the first time will be offered as dual enrollment, meaning students will be receiving four credits from The College of New Jersey as well as the normal PHS credit.

Taylor described the sociology course as “life-changing,” for her as a teacher and potentially for her students too.

In her 14th year as a PHS social studies teacher and her 10th year of teaching sociology, a course rarely found in high schools, Taylor talked about the value of developing a “sociological perspective” to help understand the unseen patterns that shape society and our lives.

“Many of my students tell me it’s the most impactful course they’ve taken at PHS,” she said. “It’s one of their favorite courses. It makes them, and it makes me, view the world in a different way than we were able to view it before.”

Birge concurred. “I’ll speak to that as a parent as well,” she said. “My children took the course and it really is life-changing and mind-changing. The way Elizabeth organizes lessons, you do a lot of reading and a lot of discussion. She is able to take the material and deliver it in such a compact, impactful way. And when students take that home they also do a lot of interviews, a lot of projects, and a lot of research.”

She continued, “They write and they reflect, and they actually connect with their families, so I was interviewed, by my daughter, as an immigrant, as a single mother. That interview really opened up a conversation for two hours one night after midnight. You see how their minds are getting reshaped, and in the questions they ask after taking this class, you see how extensive their scope has become.”

Taylor explained the idea of the “sociological imagination” that frames her course, noting that most people are not aware of the underlying patterns that impact almost every situation in society. “So they make judgements without understanding the whole situation,” she said. “But sociology is all about trying to dig in to find those unseen patterns and to understand what the context is and what the nuances are.”

She continued, “A big part of it is recognizing that a lot of outcomes are not entirely based on individual decisions or individual choices. Instead it is these broader societal patterns that are playing a role.”

Taylor sees her role as helping students to ask questions that might lead them to understand what those patterns are, “and hopefully to design policies that can help to change or interrupt some of those patterns in order to get better results.”

Accelerated Sociology starts with an introduction to sociology and a grounding in theoretical perspectives and in research methodology. The second unit is on culture. In one of the assignments for that unit students design their own experiments where they deliberately have to violate a cultural norm multiple times and then analyze how people responded to their violating that norm.

“That takes them out of their comfort zone,” said Taylor. “But there are a lot of rules I have for them in order to keep everyone safe.”

The following units focus on socialization, “like a mini-psychology unit,” according to Taylor; social stratification or inequality in societies, both U.S. and foreign; gender and sexuality; race and privilege; deviance, in a unit that confronts modern issues with criminal justice and mass incarceration; and education.

“I think the education unit is particularly powerful because it gives them a chance to reflect on the education they’ve had up to this point,” said Taylor, “and it keeps the focus on inequality, really understanding how unequal public education is in the U.S. and how they have benefited from attending PHS.”

Ten years ago when Taylor, who considered herself an historian rather than a sociologist, was asked to teach a sociology course, she was reluctant. “I wished I could have said ‘no’,” she recalled. “But having to prepare to teach sociology has definitely strengthened my sociological imagination, and I had to dig into topics that I knew something about but never really had to get detailed information on.”

She continued, “It was good for me to get out of my comfort zone, to expand my content knowledge, and try out different ways of teaching the content and interacting with students. I feel that I am a better human because of teaching this course.”

The course was originally designed as an AP sociology pilot course. The College Board eventually decided not to create an AP sociology course, but PHS decided to keep the course, which has always been intended as the equivalent of a college course, but until now it has not had the college credit which AP status could provide.

This year, with Accelerated Sociology given dual enrollment status, students will be able to transfer their credits to whatever college they attend. “It’s an amazing opportunity, better than AP in certain ways. Whether they’re going to major or minor in sociology or not, it’s just a great opportunity,” said Taylor, who notes that many of her students do decide to continue their sociology studies in college.

Extending opportunities like this to more students at PHS is a priority for Birge. “This really opens up access,” she said. “Also, there is a significantly reduced cost, so it really is a win-win in so many ways.” Unsurprisingly, Accelerated Sociology is a popular elective, with about 60 students this year in three sections, and the dual enrollment option is likely to generate even more interest.
Birge went on to mention the importance of this course and the humanities in general, particularly in the current STEM-focused environment.

“Machines are outpacing us in so many ways, but this class highlights the case for humanities education,” she said. “Elizabeth has illustrated how our students are trained to be critical thinkers and that is an element they will carry through the rest of their lives in the complex world we live in today. When we talk about the school’s mission, when we talk about raising critical thinkers, this course is really the training ground, and the timing is also perfect, because it’s aiming at upper class students to prepare them for a bigger environment, a bigger campus in college.”