By Megan Kelley

Review Writer

During their Nov. 6 meeting, the LOCS school board heard from several Lake Orion High School teachers regarding new electives.

On the list of new course requests is African American History, AP Environmental Science, Interior Design, Honors Architecture, Intro to Theatre and Mechanical CAD.

LOHS teachers Michelle Cureton and Marie McDonald addressed the board to present their proposal for African American History.

The class would be co-taught by both Cureton and McDonald and be offered to students in grades 9-12.

“I work for the Michigan Department of Education through the Arab American Museum for the purpose of civil rights,” Cureton said. “We received data from the Michigan Department of Education that the state of Michigan in general was lacking in a lot of areas with diversity and in particular with our study of civil rights for African Americans, Arab Americans, Latino and Hispanic Americans and our native and indigenous people.”

Cureton was placed on a task force where she created lesson plans to help schools in that area where they are currently lacking

Though McDonald is new to the district this year, in her previous position at Carman-Ainsworth she created and taught an African American History course for her students.

Cureton also cited her successful History of Ethic and Gender Studies course (which she has been teaching for eight years) to show that student interest is not lacking.

Theatre teacher Jonathan Kind spoke to the board regarding his proposal for Intro to Theatre.

Intro to Theatre would be offered to all students in grades 9-12 with no prerequisite required.

In addition to his proposal, Kind has requested to change the names of the courses Theatre 1 and 2 to Acting 1 and 2.

According to Kind, LOHS has one of the best technical theatre programs in the state. LOHS’s Technical Theatre course runs at least once a year.

“The big issue that I see between that class (Technical Theatre) and my acting classes is that students walk into this class with absolutely no exposure to theatre in any way shape or form,” Kind said. “Because of that, I have students walking in thinking, ‘Okay, this might be fun.’ And then realizing within the first two days, ‘Oh dear lord, don’t put me in front of people, please.’ And the lovely thing about theatre is that we have space for all of those people, but because the classes are primarily acting classes, I want to have this class be much more of a focus on the history of theatre, looking at what that means from a cultural aspect, taking fieldtrips to go see local universities do productions, things like that.”

Kind describes his course as a “more well-rounded” look at theatre, something he believes is vital to the districts dwindling theatre program.

As of this year, all three middle schools are no longer offering a theatre course, causing participation among students come high school to diminish.

“Because of that it is exceptionally, vitally important that this class get through if we want to continue to produce the quality of theatre that our community has grown accustom to,” Kind said.

Assistant Superintendent of Teaching and Learning Heidi Mercer echoed Kind’s words stating, “We started phasing those out (middle school theater courses) to bring in more of our engineering and more of our STEM…the middle level cannot compete with what’s going on at the high school in the whole theatre realm. That makes even more sense for this class.”

Rosa Everitt presented details for Interior Design, Honors Architecture and Mechanical CAD.

Interior Design will be offered for grades 9-12 with Drawing 1 as a prerequisite. Honors Architecture will be offered to grades 10-12 with Architectural Design as a prerequisite, and Mechanical CAD will be offered to grades 9-12 with no prerequisite.

“Engineering, until now, has really been a CAD and hands focus…our advisory committee which is made up of many engineers and many designers has said, ‘Hey, we appreciate what you’re doing but we would also like you to focus on CAD’,” Everitt said. “The first class that we would like to propose is Mechanical CAD where students can focus on inventor, infusion and actually learning simulation instead of just trying to fit CAD in with engineering, so there’s actually going to be two paths for us.”

According to Everitt, Architecture is one of the top careers that LOHS students are interested in. Because of this new information, Everitt and other engineering teachers decided an Honors Architecture course would be a perfect fit.

Interior design is also a growing subject that students are interested in. This subject can range from card design to fashion design.

“We’re really trying to beef up a little bit of what we’re offering in the engineering world where it’s more technical and also artistic at the same time,” Everitt said.

Lastly, Mercer presented a little information on AP Environmental Science to the board.

AP Environmental Science will be offered to grades 11 and 12 with Physical Science, Biology and Earth Science all as prerequisites.

The district will likely be voting to approve these courses at their next meeting on Nov. 20.

“The nature of the high school, we’re all kind of competing for electives because we all think, in all departments, what we have to teach is important for our kids to learn.

“In our ideal world we would hit all of those areas that are not taught as well or as much as we would like but that’s an ideal world,” Cureton said, summing up the whole process to the board.