During the 2018 McLean electives fair McLean’s list of selections for the New Year harbored three new choices among many for students to pick their fates from in the next school year. The Yoga, Combating Intolerance and Spanish for Fluent Speakers classes caught the attention of students who’ve never heard of these electives being offered in the school before, as getting a new elective approved is a thorough process.

“We typically go through the department chairs, and […] get input from them, and then try to get some teacher input on […] what electives would [they] like to offer and why. And so we just have a process [where] we go through-student services [and] the department chairs. We kind of put that out there and have discussions and get feedback. Then we ultimately make a decision whether we’re [going to] offer it or not,” assistant principal Jeff Barham said.

Creating classes like Combating Intolerance and Spanish for Fluent Speakers isn’t too difficult because classes like those have already been going on in different schools around the county.

“This is a curriculum designed by Fairfax County. […] My previous school, South Lakes had [it]. I know various schools here have them, so it’s not new for the county [but] it may be new to McLean,” Spanish teacher Marco Garcia said.

A class that has not yet been done in FCPS before, but caught the attention of many students as soon as it was introduced is Yoga.

“I wrote the course request this summer. When you do that you put together the standards that the course would be based on, and it needs to be approved here, locally at this high school, and then it gets sent up to the central office where they decide whether it’s something that should be offered, and so it will be offered here next year. It was approved,” Biology teacher Cathy Hott, said.

Students considering taking the class aren’t sure if it’ll be more of an educational or recreational class.

“It’s [going to] follow along many of the same procedures say for, like, personal fitness-another elective course offered by the health and PE department,” Hott said. “We’ll be also teaching students about the anatomy. A little bit about physiology that is needed to be understood to do yoga poses. What muscles are you using when you’re doing a pose? What bones are those muscles connected to? We would check in and do some sort of assessment on that.”

Combating Intolerance was a course that also debuted as a new choice for the 2018-2019 school year.

“I’d like to see a lot of people take it. I’d like to build that course up a little bit because I just think that it’s really beneficial in our day and age now where I feel like a lot of people disagree, and live in a little bit of tough times,” Barham said. “I think learning how to disagree with people without going to name-calling and insulting, and that kind of thing… Learning how to understand a different viewpoint, like: ‘How does that person feel that way?’ I think that’s extremely important.”

The third new course being offered to McLean students is Spanish for Fluent speakers.

“…These are the endings for -ar verbs, these are the endings for -er verbs, these are the predicates…’ I expect everyone to already know that. I expect everyone to be ready to speak, be able to communicate, and be able to generate thoughts and then give input so that we’re all learning from each other.”
Spanish for Fluent Speakers is aimed at not just improving of speaking skills, but of true mastery of the rest of the language.

“Many times many speakers can speak fluently and just speak, but they may lack writing skills, they may lack reading skills. This is a class to improve on that. Presentation skills-a lot of it will have to do with presenting on various topics,” Garcia said. “Becoming a bi-lingual, a true bi-lingual student or individual, and not just ‘Oh, I can speak Spanish,’ but then when it’s time [for you to] write-you [can] write me an essay in Spanish. Write or read to me this poem or this story in Spanish,”

The classes offered to McLean students are created with them in min

d, but how they receive them is important and matters to the teachers overseeing the courses.

“We always worry about what students need and want for school. It’s really big for us to just make sure we’re offering things that are relevant to students, and that would definitely positively impact students at the same time,” Barham said.

If there are no students that sign up for some electives, then eventually they would be removed from the course list of classes available for students to take.

“First of all we have to see whether we have enough interest to run the class next year. I would hope that of the 160 [students that came to the presentation during the electives fair] we would have enough to have at least one section and run it. Weather we run it another year will depend on the interest.” Hott said.

In the end teachers are careful to construct environments where

students will enjoy learning the new subjects that have become available to them.

“Whether this elective goes through or not… ultimately it’s up to the students. If the students want to be part of [it, and] if the students want the class then it’ll happen. Meaning… I’m just doing this for the students that want to be part of a class where they may feel comfortable and just improve their skills,” Garcia said.