If you could add a subject to the high school curriculum...

amother

Green

Wed, Feb 14 2018, 8:28 am

amother wrote:

As a General Studies high school principal and curriculum coordinator, I am thrilled with this thread! I am always looking for new ideas and have implemented some good ones (would rather not elaborate as specific examples might be a giveaway......)

At the same time, many of these ideas cannot or should not be incorporated, or have been tried without success.

I don’t have enough time, but I will give you a quick overview

Experience has shown that many of the non academic subjects, such as gym and art, are the subjects in which students give their teachers the hardest time, and are the first class students will try to skip when given the opportunity. This doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be given at all, but may be the reason that the frequency of such classes is not increased.

Other things that some have written here are really not in the jurisdiction of the school. Things such as how to prepare healthy meals, change lightbulbs (!) and other similar ideas, are nice to quickly mention in a one semester home economics class, but are not really substantial enough to make up a whole class. Even things like balancing a checkbook can be covered quickly in an economics class, but are not a full subject.

Hope I will have time to come back here and add more. In the meanwhile, would love to find real concrete ideas when I come back!

I was going to say to add more sports and excercise. I believe the reason that students in more right winged schools don’t take these classes seriously is because the school doesn’t. If the schools would hire professional instructors for gym or any sport , take it seriously themselves, and make it competitive, students would not mess around. You can see this in more MO schools and non Jewish schools where gym / sports leagues are taken very seriously.

imasoftov

Wed, Feb 14 2018, 11:37 am

amother wrote:

My experience is that physical education programs neglect students who don't display native athleticism when they concentrate on competition. Possibly even when they aren't about competition, here, everyone climb this rope, you can't, you don't get taught how to climb it.

nylon

Wed, Feb 14 2018, 6:20 pm

I went to public junior high/high school and unlike a lot of people I don't feel that my "practical" classes were spectacularly useful. Economics was a required class, though, in 12th grade.

I think students don't take electives seriously because they're taught that they don't really count unless you are talented and planning to pursue them.

I think students should be encouraged to be well rounded and that at the high school level the problem is less often the subject than the course content.