A recent survey sent out to the student body has inspired the addition of new classes at Chanute High School.
Classes in agriculture, culinary arts and teacher training will be added for the 2018-19 school year.
On February 2 students in the eighth, ninth and tenth grades received a survey referencing potential Career and Technical Education (CTE) classes at CHS. The questions ranged from what CTE classes students are currently taking, to which classes students would potentially want to take.
CTE classes currently available at CHS include many electives, such as Intro to Business, Mobile App. Development, 21st Century Skills and Video Productions among other options.
The survey asked students if they would be interested in taking any new CTE pathways, specifically three: culinary arts, teacher training, and agriculture. Each pathway would be a series of classes.
The interest in these pathways was widespread throughout CHS. Of the 355 responses, 99 (27.9 percent) said they would take culinary arts classes if they were offered, 91 (25.6 percent) said they would take agriculture classes and 60 (16.9 percent) said they would take teacher training classes.
“I would take culinary arts because it would teach me how to cook food properly when I am alone in college and when I need to eat something other than Chinese takeout or fast food,” sophomore Rosebelle Toledo said.
Toledo would also like to see other classes besides the ones possibly offered through these pathways.
“[I would like a] creative writing [class,] because writing creatively helps unearth who students really are and what they’re capable of,” Toledo explained. “As a person who writes poetry and stories daily, having a class solely for writing expressively, instead of just the informative writing most English classes are required to teach, is a compelling idea, and would even make school more enjoyable.”
Another student, sophomore Alayna Inbody, also had an idea for a new basic class to add to the CHS curriculum.
“I’d like to see a class about adulting because that would be really helpful. A lot of kids here need it,” Inbody said. “It would basically be everyday things that you would need as an adult–balancing taxes and budgets and making decisions, making a lot of hard decisions.”
Even freshman have thought of classes they would like to take during their high school career. Freshman Kelsey Goodner would like for CHS to offer a forensic science and more medical classes.
With these thoughts of new classes, also comes the idea of simply bettering classes CHS currently has.
“I would like to see concurrent courses open to more students, either based on academic performance in a particular area [and/or] open it up to “lower” grades,” social students teacher Dr. Wayne Hatcher said. “Often a student performs well in social science or math but not in both. Why not allow her to take an advanced course in the one she performs well?”
This incorporation of concurrent classes into the schedules of more students could allow more students to begin their college education.
“In my experience many high schools offer advanced mathematics, science, social science, humanities/fine arts and advanced technical courses. I have had more than a few high school seniors graduate with an associate degree and a few days later graduate from high school–because they started concurrent courses as freshmen/sophomores,’ Hatcher mentioned.
Mathematics teacher Eric Holmes mentioned a more specific advanced class.
“The math department is looking to adding concurrent credit statistics because lots of majors need statistics along with College Algebra,” Holmes said.