Painting, Spanish, Journalism, there are so many different electives to choose from. On January 6th it will be time to start deciding your 2022-2023 courses. This can be a hard decision for people, as there are many fun electives. For this article, you will learn some elective choices that you can select. Blueprint staff members Breanna, Emma, and Matthew interviewed teachers and students about their classes to help with the many choices you can choose for classes. 

Journalism

Journalism is a great elective that allows your voice to be heard. I interviewed Mr. Banse, our Journalism teacher, and he said “students get an opportunity to write in a way that they don’t get to write in English class.” In Journalism, you get to choose the stories you want to cover, and they can end up on the BHS Blueprint. When I asked if there were other electives he recommended he told me “TV-Journalism, Yearbook, Debate, or anything where you can make your voice heard.” 

Drivers Ed

Drivers Ed can also be a great elective to choose! When interviewing Mr.Wolfe, the Drivers Ed teacher, he told us to make sure to sign up for electives that interest you. He believes you should make sure to take an art class, a language, learn to manage your money, but if you still have room on your schedule you should definitely sign up for drivers ed!

Mr.Wolfe said “BHS data shows a 98% passing rate for the state permit exam. Students can also save about $100 by completing simulated behind-the-wheel hours in class. Ancillary benefits include: not being allowed to use your phone for 67 minutes of the day, and legally be allowed to use the library as a hallway!”

Art

Yesterday I had the opportunity to receive some exciting information from teachers around Blaine High School about classes that registering students should consider for their electives. I started in the art wing with Mrs. Schenk, who teaches drawing and painting courses.

“There are a lot of opportunities for students to showcase their artistic abilities, in the different levels of drawing courses students will work their way up from learning how to draw the figure, to stuff like charcoal sketches and mixed media projects. The same goes for painting, we start small with watercolors and simple acrylic paintings, to large canvas oil works.”

Mrs. Schenk encourages students to look through this PowerPoint that has a lot of awesome pictures of projects that students will be able to work on in art courses. “I encourage people of all artistic abilities to join, whether you are a doodler or a painter, there’s always room to learn, and grow, as an artist.” 

Powerpoint link here

Music

In addition to this, students looking to pursue the arts can look into music courses at Blaine. “We offer band, orchestra, and choir,” says Mr. Hebert, conductor of the high school concert orchestra. “We are really looking to expand our program in size of student and support. It doesn’t matter the ability of the students coming in, we encourage every middle schooler and high schooler with musical experience to continue on that journey.”

Students looking for extra knowledge can look into the Music Exploration course which delves into music history. For those looking for a challenge, AP Music Theory is available to explore the technicalities of music composition, understanding how music works, and how chords and musical ideas form to create a cohesive piece of music.

As the author, I can attest to the success of the classes in this article has taken most of them, and I would recommend them to those looking to be molded by the expression of their minds, and individual creative personalities.

Ceramics

We interviewed Sierra Brittain for the class Ceramics, she said that “It was really fun and you were able to express yourself in any way you want.” which is very true because Ceramics is a really good self-paced class. Sierra also learned how to solve problems that went her way with clay. A self-paced class and it’s in your own style, it’s also really fun to go with friends. The teacher is very liked by many people and plays music during clay molding.

Animal Management

If you are looking to be a vet, marine biologist, or zookeeper you should pick the class Animal Management as an elective. This class even helps you if you have any pets at your house at all. It can help you take better care of your animals overall. You learn about birds, fish, dogs, cats, and sicknesses, and parasites.

Breanna Vessels took this class and said that it helped her learn better skills to take care of the pets she has now. Also helped her be aware of the illnesses they can have, and know what they act/look like when they get them. Taking Animal Management can be a great experience with friends because it isn’t a super-fast class. If you know how to do note-taking you should be able to keep up really well. There are also quist speakers 

 Spanish

 Mrs. Chapman is a Spanish teacher at Blaine high school. Some people would ask “How can this actually benefit me in the real world?” This is what she claimed, knowing a different language can help you get a job. It can show them that you can see the world through another lens which gives you an advantage with a competitive job setting. It can also relieve stress on traveling if you know how to communicate where you are going.

How about college? Mrs. Chapman stated that “from strictly a cost-benefit, many students after taking 2-4 years in high school can test out of a language in college and those are fewer credits you have to pay for, which can add-up (most language courses count towards elective/bachelor of arts credits).”

In addition, doing another language in College can only add to your interpretation and communication abilities. Spanish teachers are always trying to improve how they teach to make it easy for students to adjust to a new language. Mrs. Chapman noted that “I will continue to improve upon what I do in classes, especially levels 1-3 because that is what I teach the most, trying to incorporate some authentic resources.”

Lastly, the best part of Mrs. Chapman’s Spanish class is “A lot of students try to use their phone to translate because they want to go word for word from English to Spanish and that just is not how the languages work, they are grammatically set-up differently. So, seeing students connect using their notes and vocabulary lists and allowing the learning process to move through some errors and corrections is exciting.”

Out Door Adventures

“ODA really helps to get you out of your comfort and get you to try new things that you normally wouldn’t have the opportunity to be able to do,” said Logan Vessels. The class is a lot more fun with friends in it, it amplifies the experience of ODA. You learn many skills in ODA you learn how to identify different types of animal tracks in the wild. You also learn how to identify different plants too. This class is really cool to learn more about the wilderness and to push your limits.