While some students may have already created a plan for their future with every point in place, others have found themselves further behind.
As the student population makes their way through high school, they have found that electives are often their favorite classes. Although Lakeland offers a rather wide variety of electives, it can also be viewed as lacking in some areas.
Lakeland has more than 40 electives, ranging from athletics to real-world skills to creative arts; the list does not end there.
Just through physical education classes, there are about four electives, including athletic conditioning, physical education, and weights.
Physical education allows students to get up and move around for an extended period of time in their day. Instead of spending 6 hours at a desk, they can spend less time playing badminton, basketball, hockey, baseball, and so many other sports.
“I joined athletic conditioning to mostly help with sports,” Maddie Chapple said.” I do cross country and track, so I think it helps a lot with that because it helps me keep in shape, and it keeps me strong.”
Physical education is one of the many athletics classes at Lakeland.
Weights is another one of the favored classes at Lakeland. Not only does this class provide opportunities for students to gain strength, but it can also allow athletes to prepare during off seasons.
“I’m in weight class because it helps me train for track,” Sean Elmose said. ”It helps me train my endurance.”
Lakeland gives its students a variety of courses that expand their skill base, which may help them to gain more experience for a future job or just grow their interests. Classes like Graphic design, entrepreneurship, and livestock management provide learning for real-world skills. Whether it is something as simple as teen living or a more complex class like FFA or even coding.
Each of these electives provides students with opportunities to learn about life rather than having to figure it out as an adult.
“I joined FFA because I had previously done 4-H since I was eight years old. Lakeland offers FFA, and it was a better branch out compared to 4-H, and there were a lot of leadership opportunities.” Charlie Friddle said.
These classes grow the students’ interests but can also foster a good learning environment for students who already know what they are passionate about.
“I want to be a wheat farmer, so FFA might help a little bit.” Joshua Callender said.
Electives can also be a very creative area of practice: classes like welding, journalism, art, acting, or even Hawk News prepare students for the world in another way. These electives give people a chance to create a different outlook on the world.
All classes are counted as creative in some way. However, these specifically provide a way to be a little more free in what you do and share. It allows students to practice skills, possibly for a future job, in a strong environment.
“I would say that the importance of the industrial mechanics class is that what we’re doing is to learn about blueprints and to understand what needs to be the correct measurements,” Kros O’Brien said. ”By learning it in that class, we understand it before you even go out to the workforce, which a lot of employers appreciate so that they don’t have to be responsible for training a lot of kids.”
Welding may not be everyones favorite elective, but Lakeland offers several others like acting. Acting class is designed to give students chances to understand this specific style of work, whether or not they plan to pursue it.
“I joined acting because I just think it’s really fun to act,” Suzzanah Smith said. “In acting, you learn skills like improv, which is a very transferable skill. That can be very applicable to a lot of different situations, nothing I want to make a career out of, but I think it is fun to do community shows.”
If none of these classes sparked your interest or maybe even expanded them, students can consider taking classes at K-tech. K-tech is a perfect way for students to get in-depth, hands-on experience for future careers.
K-tech offers welding, plumbing, HVAC, health, diesel mechanics, computer repair, and many more.
“I took K-tech to expand my knowledge on building P.C., and to meet people with similar interests,” Adam Landin said.
Although Lakeland provides many different electives for students to choose from, the school does not offer certain electives that other schools do offer.
Lakeland offers students a small variety of musical electives, including band, choir, and guitar. Although these are all great classes that many students enjoy, it prevents growth and expansion in other areas of musical technique. Many other schools have begun to offer piano classes and music theory classes. Yet, Lakeland has not even developed an orchestra.
Another class that many students wish the school had more of is foreign languages. Lakeland offers Spanish and French to its students, which are both great languages to learn.
Many students have found that they feel pinched through their ability to only choose from only two languages. Most schools offer German, Chinese, or even ASL, on top of Spanish and French.
Since French or Spanish has not sparked some students’ interest, they have opted for foreign language courses online.
“I wasn’t very interested in the other languages because I thought they were kind of boring,” McKenna Crouse said. ”I took German because I thought it would be cool, and I was interested in German history, especially World War II.”
While the school may be lacking these subjects now, they are already preparing to add more to meet even more of the students’ interests, making their High School education a much more enjoyable time.
Although your average English, Math, or Science class at school provides viable information and knowledge, electives allow students to grow their interests without difficulty.
While Lakeland High School may be missing some electives, it still provides students with a large variety of electives that will reach the students’ liking.
