Academics

Emily Brandt

More stories from Emily Brandt

Freshmen Ashton Castro, Rayly Aramburu and Oscar Pimentel-Rodriguez present their graph to the class.

There are many opportunities in academic courses to be involved in more hands on activities. Some of these include classes like PE, Small Business Management and Algebra. 

Physical Education is a very active course and is required for all students. Although students in PE spend a few weeks per semester sitting in a classroom, the majority of their time is spent moving their your feet. About 6 weeks of the semester is spent in the swim unit practicing various swimming strokes as well as playing games, like volleyball.

“I’ve always liked swimming. I just like being in the water, so that’s my favorite part. I would prefer swimming in PE than sitting in a classroom,” freshman Piper Seidl said.

The Small Business Management class is a less common course that is often on their feet. This class consists of designing and making t-shirts, advertising products, restocking concessions, taking inventory of products and many more tasks that go into learning to build a business. 

Senior Gavin Cusick explains how the dynamic of this classroom is helping him work towards future goals.

“I’m gonna get my masters in business, so this is helping a lot with knowing how businesses work and how sales work. I think this is more of a hands-on thing, like you’re doing everything physically. You do some thinking and planning, but it’s a lot of hands-on. I enjoy that, I love it,” Cusick said. 

In order to take advantage of different learning styles, teachers also incorporate interactive activities in core classes, like math. Working together in table groups, freshmen in Mrs. Koontz’s 7th hour Algebra 1 class graph situations from word problems in slope-intercept form on white boards. 

“The team work is good because they depend on each other to get a good product. They create their white boards together. Then their presentations are neat because they get a chance to learn from each other instead of always learning from the teacher,” math teacher Esther Koontz said.