At Rosary Academy, our private education and all-girls community allows for smaller, more specialized learning environments—a perk I have come to thoroughly appreciate throughout my time as a Royal and even look for in my college search.

This year, in my experience, the class that most directly reflects this favorably small size is AP Calculus BC, which boasts five eager mathematicians. Though we are small in number, us Calc BC girls have formed a supportive village of dedicated learning, as the focused environment allows us to communicate and collaborate more directly with our teacher and each other. For those unfamiliar with what being part of a class this small looks like, I wanted to take you all into the world of small-but-mighty learning by asking by Calc BC classmates about their experiences.

For example, fellow BC-er Margaret Yang affirmed the positive effects of an intimate learning setting, detailing, “For me, I prefer the small class size because I feel more engaged in the class. The atmosphere is better. In Calc BC, it is more like a discussion than a lecture. Since there are only five students in the class, we get much more attention from Mrs. Davidson which really help my learning in such a challenging subject.”

Additionally, BC-er Emma Fredmen ’23 explained that, because we collaborate so often and so closely, we have come to be closer friends and share more inside jokes between ourselves and our teacher, Ms. Davidson: “We’ve become kind of a little team over the past few months. We have a bunch of little jokes that are only funny to us since they reference BC concepts; for example, we have jokey nicknames for different derivative rules because it’s just funnier to call Product Rule ‘Voodoo Rule.’ It’s a bit dorky, but at least we’re all dorky together.”

Calc BC isn’t the only class on campus enjoying this academic advantage and bonding environment—far from the only one, in fact! A few of the sub-ten-student classes on campus include the likes of AP Art History (five students), AP French (four students), and ASL IV (seven students).

For example, junior Natalia Chavez also feels the increased focus and tight-knit community of a smaller class in her AP US History class, which contains just four students this year. When asked how this small class population influences her learning experience, Natalia shared, “Since we have a small class, I’ve gotten pretty close with the other girls pretty fast, and we can bounce off each other super well now! And, it’s great being small because, when we get to talk with Mrs. Jenkins about our LEQs or whatnot, we have more time to really get into it if we need to.”

Whether humanities or STEM, a small classroom size makes a noticeable, positive difference in every student’s learning experience, and I’m sure I speak for my fellow Royals when I say I am grateful for this and other academic advantages that Rosary offers us!