Wearable Art and Apparel Design, Ceramics, Metalsmithing and TV Production; when it comes to creative electives, the high school has a lot to offer. Still, the Editorial Board observes that many students often find themselves conflicted between taking advantage of the plethora of electives and conforming to academic pressure.

While many electives aren’t considered traditionally academic, they frequently teach important real-world skills. Culinary Exploratory, for example, teaches students how to cook for themselves once they are on their own. The World of Money course, under Career and Tech Ed, teaches students how to navigate the financial world, with units on basic investing and tax-filing.

TV production allows students to express their creativity through their movie creations, while allowing them to engage in valuable leadership skills as they take charge of their own projects. This class has sparked interest in new fields for many students.

By exploring these subjects, students may find a lifelong interest. Members of the Board know students who, despite having never touched a ceramics wheel before high school, are applying to college as ceramics minors after following the Ceramics elective pathway at the high school. The same holds for many other electives such as Needs Improvment, Furniture Design and Construction and Forensics.

Despite the benefits and opportunities these electives bring, we observe that they are often crowded out of schedules by more traditionally academic options. Students will sacrifice an elective block to fit an Advanced Placement (AP) class, like Computer Science or Statistics. The AP science double block makes it even more difficult for many to accommodate electives. Many students opt to take these courses in the hopes of building up their college resume.

It’s a problem that our high school’s competitive atmosphere can discourage students from pursuing the opportunity to learn valuable life skills or discover new passions.

For students: If a piece of you is itching to take that art class, but you feel hesitant because of all the noise of APs or other academic courses, take the art class. These four years may be the only ones of your life where you have essentially any art, music or performing arts elective at your fingertips. Make the most of this privilege and opportunity.

We understand this is easier said than done. In reality, there needs to be a fundamental systemic change to encourage students to take advantage of their elective opportunities. The Board suggests the school administration modify the elective pathway requirement. To graduate, students should be required to commit to one elective pathway and pursue it for at least three years.