Everybody knows about the 7th hour classes known as electives, and you might wonder what teachers think about them. If you have wondered about this, then this is the right article for you. Miss Thompson, the journalism teacher, shared her thoughts about the mixed-grade classes known as electives during a recent interview in classroom 020F.
Elective classes are interesting, and they are quite different from normal classes. One difference is that students from different grades can be in the same elective class, and this is very true for the journalism class. You might think that it could be hard to teach or manage a class with kids from varying grades, and it is. Miss Thompson notices that some sixth graders just don’t have much experience with technology. This can be a big problem in a class where you will eventually be using your computer frequently. But since the elective rosters have kids in various grades, Miss Thompson brings up a great point: “Many 8th grade students have stepped into leadership roles where they continue to develop their skills while helping younger students who don’t have the same skill set and experiences.”
Normal classes are on topics like math or science, but elective classes are usually on very different topics. From what I’ve seen, students sometimes don’t care about these different topics. This can be a big problem not only for the teachers, but also for the other students. Students who don’t care about electives do many different things. Sometimes they just don’t do their work, or worst of all, they talk over or disrupt the class. When asked about this, Miss Thompson said, “Students care about journalism to varying degrees. It often depends on how they ranked their choices.”
The size of elective classes can vary from very small to pretty large, and Miss Thompson has noticed this. She misses the smaller classes because she had more time to work with individual students. With the new, bigger roster, this can be more challenging. With the bigger class size and stressful work, Miss Thompson says, “Teaching this elective is often stressful and a lot of work, but I love the part where things finally come together, and I see a lot of growth with journalism students by the end of the semester.”
Miss Thompson’s thoughts about her elective class, journalism, were very interesting. Electives are great classes that many people enjoy, including teachers. If you want to learn more about elective classes, go ask students and teachers. They will surely have very different and interesting perspectives. Maybe you could even make an article out of them.
