Ready for enrollment: More about 5 new courses being offered in the 23-24 school year

Students will begin requesting classes for the next school year starting Jan. 31. Added to the 160-page document of course options are five new classes: English Language Arts College Now Honors, Plant and Soil Science, Public Relations and Media, IB Philosophy and IB Environmental Systems and Societies .

ELA 4 College Now Honors:

This new English course is an opportunity for students to earn college credit without taking an AP class.

“The idea is [to] offer it to more students who would take advantage of that opportunity to earn some college credit who wouldn’t otherwise take an AP Literature class,” English teacher Andrew Gibbs said.

To be a part of the course, students must be accepted into the Johnson County Community College Now program. Then, they can sign up for the Honors ELA 4 class and pay the tuition to receive credit.

Most colleges require a writing composition credit to graduate, and this class provides that credit.

This new opportunity excited junior Emaline Handzel, who plans on taking the class next year.

“It would be really nice to not have to worry about taking the first English class my freshman year of college,” Handzel said. “Also just to prepare myself for the classes that I will have to take in college and getting my mind ready for harder classes.”

The class will focus on writing composition, including summarizing, analyzing and comparing pieces of literature with some non-fiction reading — primarily academic pieces.

Students enrolled in the class will have a workload between that of regular ELA 4 classes and AP Literature, according to Gibbs. 

“I feel like it’ll have a similar workload and structure to the AP class,” Handzel said. “And I think it’ll be less stressful because I won’t have to prep at the end of the year for [the AP] test.”

Plant and Soil Science:

Plant and Soil Science will be offered at the Center for Academic Achievement next year. It’s a hands-on class focusing on agriculture, according to CAA science teacher Doug Moles, who will be teaching the course next year.

The class will be held in the greenhouse, where students will learn how to maintain plants, explore the science behind agriculture and see their produce cooked and sold within the CAA’s cafe and local farmer’s market.

While the class requires three periods — two for the course and one for transportation – it counts as a single science credit and provides an interactive experience of working in a greenhouse.

“Aside from occasionally needing to read up on some of the chapters in the textbook, I don’t see it as a class,” Moles says. “If you’re going to have a lot of homework, it’s mainly going to be a lot of hands-on work.”

Students will explore different methods of growing and farming plants, including hydroponics and vertical growing. Not only will they learn as a hobby, but as a marketable skill.

Public Relations and Media:

After two years of the course being offered at Shawnee Mission West, Public Relations and Media is being added to East’s course list.

The student-run class provides a space for advocacy and promotion within schools, utilizing social media and organized events to learn how to communicate messages to a public audience.

In the program at West, students run a TikTok, Instagram and Twitter account to promote pep-assemblies, sports games, dances and other school events and traditions.

While digital media teachers Kelly Kaczmarczyk and Kelly Gill teach the course at West, they say they mainly act as advisors to their students, allowing them to make decisions about what to cover and how to cover it.

“It’s 100% creative freedom, and I don’t know of too many kids that wouldn’t want something like that in all their classes,” Gill said. “[Students] dictate what they’re going to do — they plan it out and then we just approve it.”

The class, being primarily student-run, will include many assignments creating posts and promotions, but no written work, according to Kaczmarczyk.

Junior Nora Hill, who hopes to pursue public relations as a career, plans to enroll in this class for next year. While she doesn’t know much about the course, the idea of learning about the connection between PR and social media interests her.

“I thought the PR aspect of this course was intriguing just because I’m interested in the public image of a company and what goes into maintaining that relationship with consumers,” Hill said.

IB Environmental Systems and Societies:

Environmental Systems and Societies, another year-long IB science course focuses on how humans interact with the environment and their impact on the world.

Biology teacher Stephanie Valencia has been interested in the topic of human-environment interactions and wants to teach this class.

IB coordinator Meredith Sternberg is also enthusiastic about the class and believes that it’s an important topic for students to learn about. 

“​​I think the message behind it of how humans interact with the environment is something that is not only really timely, but it’s also really interesting and really adds to our science offerings,” Sternberg said.

Students will study various environmental issues and answer questions about the ethics, science, social and political aspects of them.

With recent environmental issues arising, including global warming, pollution and deforestation, a class like this is becoming increasingly more revelevent, according to Sternberg.

“It’s one of those classes that as we look at our world around us, you see more and more of a need for this kind of study,” Sternberg said.

IB Philosophy

IB Philosophy, a course expanding on the philosophy portion of Theory of Knowledge, will be available next year for both IB diploma and certificate students.

Students will look at how humans view the world and the history of philosophy by pursuing thoughtful questions and studying famous philosophers, according to Sternberg, who will be teaching the class.

Some of the questions Sternberg plans on tackling are: How do people think? How do they act? How do they view themselves? They will also look at consciousness and how people view their bodies and freedoms.

“We just sort of live our day-to-day lives without really questioning a lot of the time,” Sternberg said. “The how’s and why’s of how we’re working, how we’re thinking and how we’re regarding ourselves and others, and philosophy asks us to make those connections and observations.”

Junior Maddie Doyle has been interested in philosophy since sixth grade when she began studying famous philosophers and reading books on philosophy and social psychology. She looks forward to taking this course next year and learning more about the subject.

“We don’t really get as much in depth philosophy in Theory of Knowledge as I would have hoped,” Doyle said. “So it’s just really awesome having a course that’s dedicated to that and hasn’t been offered to us before.”