While our school is known for our outstanding academics in English and Math, many students come here for our vast amount of electives offered in order to learn about their personal interests. For example, some of our more popular electives include Basic Design, Video Production, Band, Yearbook, etc, but what makes our school stand out, even more, are the niche electives that most students may look over. Electives such as Creative Writing, America in the 1960s, Journalism, and Food & Nutrition aren’t your standard electives, each class teaches something beyond the paperwork and tests while being thoroughly enjoyed by the students who took a chance with their elective classes.

Creative Writing is a new year long course on campus created and taught by beloved English teacher Jonathan Smither that goes above and beyond the writing itself. Smither teaches his students life lessons through his assignments and makes an effort to connect to each and every one of his students in a different way to help them accomplish their own personal set of goals. Senior Shya Samadani took the class last semester and said her favorite part was “Definitely the conversations we had. It was something that no teacher really takes the time to do, it made me excited to come to class and stay interested in everything we were learning.” Samadani said her most memorable conversations were when “Mr. Smither got emotional with us students and listened to what we had to say about ourselves while truly caring about how we were doing that day.” Her final thoughts on the class were “I most definitely recommend the class, it was small but I honestly enjoyed it so much more because of how small it was it felt like a little family and Mr. Smither is a fantastic teacher who really cares about his students so if you take the class make it count and put the effort in to be involved in the class.”

Additionally, Food and Nutrition is a class many students are not aware of. This class, taught by teacher Mrs. Carrie Smith, dives deep into the art of cooking and has a sister class relating to creating coffee, and tea drinks.

America in the 1960s is another semester class that was started a few years ago by our iconic AP US history teacher, and girls’ golf coach Richard Letus, that takes a deep dive into this turbulent time period in America’s history. The reason he wanted to start the class was that “In US History we pretty much gloss over this entire pivotal decade that to this day still has a lot of influence in our culture. I especially love it when kids start to understand the references.” The biggest lesson Letus wants students to take away from his class is “The more things change the more things also stay the same, seeing kids make connections between things our society did in the past and comparing it to now teaches an important lesson about how history repeats itself.” His favorite section to teach and several students’ favorite lesson to learn is the “Whole day where we just learn about the John F. Kennedy assassination and the different conspiracy theories surrounding it.” He last said, “I want the kids to remember that learning can be fun and that I encourage them to take classes that they enjoy in college because graduating isn’t a race, if you finish early that’s just another few years you have to work before you can retire.”