Home economics, creative writing, Black history, marine biology, foods and nutrition, and film analysis are all offered as electives and available to all students, but next year that will all change.
These classes are a versatile group that teach students a unique set of skills. Although Poly does provide the classes, they are not responsible for what happens to them. The Long Beach Unified School District decided that Poly offered too many electives, and needed to focus on academics.
To make up for losing electives, Poly now offers a multitude of APs for students to take. Creative writing has been a class choice for 100 years and taught by Brett Alexander for four years. Alexander emphasizes that having the ability to write well is vital, and that being able to compose something that has meaning is an important skill.
“It’s sad that students won’t get to express themselves in [the] classroom; it’d be a bummer that future kids won’t have a good course like that,” said junior Ella Christensen.
Alexander commented, “I’ve really enjoyed it because students come in [and] spill everything onto a piece of paper without a time limit. It’s been fun. I have students from every academy; it’s a great class to have.” Alexander, along with other teachers at Poly, is very sad to see the class go.
Anne Smith is a long-term substitute this semester, taking the place of Gayle Boone-Beegle who had taught home economics and foods and nutrition at Poly for over 20 years. Smith said, “What I like most about teaching this class is that students find something that they didn’t expect they could do is very interesting; it’s my favorite thing.”
Students are exposed to real life skills, like learning the steps to forming a good and wholesome diet, or experimenting with a recipe or dish foreign to them. Many of the eliminated electives would have informed students on things they would have otherwise never gotten the chance to be educated on.
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