Johnson County schools aim to add variety, depth to course offerings

High school students will learn how to cook more nutritious meals, speak Spanish in the workplace, hone their acting skills and start their own teaching careers in the next school year.

Other students will program robots.

All are on the list of possibilities as high schools work to update what courses they will offer in the 2019-20 school year. Some of the new offerings are based on what teachers want to offer and what students are interested in. Some are based on requests from parents. Others are based on adjusting high school classes to the future work and educational paths of students.

At Center Grove High School, students will have the option of taking the Global Campus Themes in Literature summer class, intended to assist English language learners. The course comes after bilingual parents pushed for it.

Nutrition and Wellness, a Center Grove online course, would require students to complete labs consisting of cooking nutritious meals. Those meals would include homemade pizza, breakfast burritos and pancakes, among others.

Another course, Industrial Automation and Robotics, would grant students an industry-recognized certification in basic industrial programming, where they’ll learn to program and use an industrial robot.

“Students will use critical thinking as they learn to program a humanoid robot tethered and in autonomous mode, able to react to specific circumstances and perform human-like tasks when programming is complete,” the description said.

At Clark-Pleasant, students will be offered a variety of internship opportunities and business elective courses. Also among course offerings will be cadet teaching, where students will learn different teaching styles, classroom management and other items that factor into preparation for education professions.

Clark-Pleasant Assistant Superintendent of Curriculum and Instruction Cameron Rains is excited about the student interest in following educational career paths, he said.

“(With cadet teaching), as a school corporation it’s exciting to us,” Rains said. “At the high-school level it’s for kids who think they have an interest, to give them a sense of what (teaching) is like before they go into college.”

While cadet teaching will be an elective selected by students, other classes, like business electives which have not yet been finalized, will help meet new graduation requirements.

Greenwood’s finalized list of new courses for the 2019-20 school year includes a mix of creativity and technical fields. Along with Advanced Acting, Advanced Speech and Musical Theatre, the district will offer high school students Finite Math, Computer Science II and Digital Electronics Technology.

Those courses are on a short list of elective options high school students will be able to select from when they make their course selections in January.

Greenwood High School Guidance Director Bill Ronk said unless electives have at least 15 to 20 students interested, they most likely won’t be added next year.

“Right now, departments are going to the principal saying they want to offer these courses, they want to generate student interest,” Ronk said. “We determine how many kids express interest (to see) if we can have the course active.”

Indian Creek High School is planning to add an introductory and follow-up course in computer science as well as two literary interpretation classes.

Assistant Superintendent Andy Cline said the literary interpretation classes will be added pending student interest, and would help fulfill the English Language Arts requirements for all diplomas. The computer science classes have already been added to next year’s offerings at the recommendation of the Indiana Department of Education and consideration by the high school principal, counselors and the technology department chair.

“This is an opportunity to continue to offer and expand computer science and technology opportunities,” Cline said. “For students, as we expand down into the middle school with robotics and STEM activities, this was the next natural extension for us to broaden the applied science and technology we have.”

The school will also offer biblical literature as an elective course, should students show interest.