By: Morgan Lei
Incoming freshmen will be required to take a semester long course of Life Management or AVID or ROTC, Principal Francis Rojas said. The requirement is due to an increase in student mental health issues at MHS, Rojas added.
The Life Management class aims to teach students about how to deal with stress and how to make decisions best for themselves, Rojas explained. High school is the last couple of years before adulthood, and students need to be prepared for the transition into the professional world, he continued.
“It was a proposal I put forward to really, let’s get this done freshman year. Let’s talk about it. Let’s know that we’re all here; we’re all experiencing similar things,” Rojas said. “We can help each other with it so that really instead of focusing on those problems when
they come, we can actually overcome them, be a stronger person, and really focus
on our college and career goals.”
ROTC and AVID work as alternatives for Life Management since both teach students about managing stress, Rojas said. By teaching these skills, MHS will be able to develop a stronger student culture, he added.
“AVID provides very similar type of support though their mentorship and through their elective course; so if you are in the AVID program, you already have that period where the AVID teachers talk about stress,” Rojas explained. “They talk about time management. They talk about all this stuff. ROTC also has a component of that in their program according to the ROTC leaders.”
Teachers for the class next year include Life Management Teacher Bridget Hall, who has been teaching the course for four years, and Health Teacher Toby Anderson, Rojas said. The curriculum is being worked on and will merge with the Health curriculum, Rojas continued.
“We have a couple teachers who are working together on taking our current Life Management class and trying to gear it up toward current advances where it needs,” Rojas noted. “We are planning to collaborate with the teachers that teach at my former school.”
The Health class covers a range of topics such as substance abuse, nutrition, diseases, intercorse and childcare, mental health, and more, Anderson said. While Health is more for Juniors and Seniors, there are some topics that will be implemented into the Life Management Curriculum, Anderson added.
“I think there are some things that I’m going to teach in health that I also want to share in Life Management as well because Life Management, the way I want to teach it, is to make healthy decisions while managing your life,” Anderson continued. “So I think that they have a lot in common.”
Life Management could be helpful for freshmen, according to Senior Catherine Ma, who is currently enrolled in the course. However, for juniors and seniors, it is a bit too late, she added.
“We mostly just talk about our career and plans for life. Right now for example, we are choosing a career we want to do and fields and then we also analyze our own personalities to make decisions,” Ma commented. “This class will help [freshmen] focus on themselves and try to direct themselves, so it will help them.”
In addition to the new class requirement next year, the school plans on partnering with the company Naviance, a software that helps students with college and career planning, Rojas explained. The software will help students find what they are interested in and determine the best course of action for their four years of high school, he added.
“It’s a software that really connects students with their skills and their interests with helping them choose the courses that they need to take during high school to achieve their goals to get to a certain college that they want to or career,” Rojas noted. “They will really help our counselors reach out to more students because it’s something that all students will have access to and doesn’t require an appointment.”