Student Advisory Council October 26 Meeting: Career Exploration, SPARK Future, and High School/Post-Grad Planning
Cover image design by Violet Rhoades.
Dylan Frankovis and Jack Fischer
The Student Advisory Council met on October 26 during advisement with Mr. Bauer for the third time this year. The following is a summary of the agenda items discussed between Mr. Bauer and the students involved in the Student Advisory Council.
Career Exploration
With Career Day planned on Friday, the council opened by talking about expanding the Career Exploration events to include more careers. While the law enforcement event already occurred, there are four more planned. They include:
Legal careers & criminal justice
Vet & animal science
Cosmetology & beauty
Fire, EMT & paramedic
As for future events, the advisory council suggested including events to cover:
More types of doctors or anything in the medical field
More types of engineering because Career Day doesn’t have a wide enough variety
Mr. Bauer thinks that students interested in engineering should just take the engineering classes because the class sizes are small
Business/marketing/finance because even though we have classes, a demonstration of what people do on the daily would be good
More creative jobs or things that are hands on
Someone in government because we don’t have someone coming for career day for government
Should we have one of the teachers be a career day speaker?
Maybe bringing in someone from another school instead of from Hamilton
SPARK Future
Next, the council moved into discussing Spark and what would happen in upcoming years with the program. Mr. Bauer confirmed that there will be more branches of Spark in the upcoming years. This year there was construction, but in coming years it will grow to also include Global Business and Future Teachers (Expansion Year 1); Engineering and Data Science (tentative Expansion Year 2); Healthcare and Public Policy (tentative Expansion Year 3); and a sustainability year focused on refining the program and growing enrollment.
High School/Post-Grad Planning
Course Exploration Day is coming up on the first day of second semester with classes still happening in the afternoon. However, some members brought up that they believed there should be more resources for four-year planning for all of high school. The thoughts of the council are relatively split on this issue, with about half saying they agree with this sentiment and the other half saying they either are indifferent or that there are enough resources. Mr. Bauer brought up how there is an advisement day in January that is planned to help students prepare for their future and what high school should look like for them. Council members added how they believed the traditional junior meeting could be moved to sophomore year instead, as it allows for students to spend more time working towards their goals junior year. Students also said that they would like more college visits from places specifically from far away to allow them to get a better idea of what colleges in different regions are like and suggested virtual meetings if representatives aren’t able to attend in person.
Miscellaneous
Teachers are being encouraged to have looser course requirements and they cannot require a grade better than a C in any previous class.
A lot of decisions have to be made every year on which classes are going to have a lot of students because in general there aren't enough teachers to have good class sizes across the whole school. Ultimately, students have to accept that large class sizes will happen.
