The mission of the Upper Valley Educators Institute, a Lebanon-based nonprofit organization, is to work with teachers and leaders in educational settings to support their efforts in schools to expand programs and focus on a “learn by doing” approach.
Elijah Hawkes is the director of leadership programs at the UVEI. He is a former middle school and high school principal in public schools, including 10 years at Randolph Union High School. It is important that schools, to the extent possible, offer students options beyond graduation requirements to help them broaden their high school experience and develop their interests, Hawkes said.
Note: Responses have been lightly edited for length, style and clarity.
Question: How have the types of electives changed over the years at high schools? Are they more related to technology today?
Answer: Foreign language, advanced placement courses, and various arts such as band, chorus and visual arts have been electives offered for decades and continue to be offered in most schools. Moreover, electives at career and technical education (CTE) centers have been consistent offerings for high school students for many decades. Other electives have evolved over the years as technology, the economy, graduation standards/requirements, and post-secondary pathways have changed. There has generally been an emphasis on different kinds of technology in high school elective classes. As computer technology has become more of a factor in the personal and professional lives of people, electives have evolved to include web design, robotics, software and coding classes, and many others.
Q: What are some of the most popular electives for teachers and students? Can you say why?
A: Interest in certain electives can vary from school to school. A beloved teacher may be a significant draw for students and help shape the popularity of the class; post-secondary plans will often influence the popularity of a course, such as AP classes that are seen as important to a student’s college-going plans; many CTE programs have consistently popular offerings because of the connections to career paths that have strong interest and viability for students.
Q: Why is it important to provide options for courses that are outside of the standard courses required for graduation?
A: It is important for schools to offer children and adolescents learning opportunities that are relevant to them and engaging. This often involves offering a degree of choice in what is studied or how knowledge and skills are demonstrated. Some schools in our region have a capstone graduation requirement — a “senior project” — that is something every student must do in order to graduate and each person can have a wide degree of choice in deciding what their project will focus on. Electives are another way choice can be offered to students, which can be important to engaging them in their learning.
In their influential study of deeper learning in schools, authors Jal Mehta and Sarah Fine described examples of elective courses that could provide deep, authentic, and engaging learning even in school settings where this was not true for the main curriculum. They described this phenomenon as “deeper learning at the margins” and suggested that these types of learning activities were at least as important as the core curriculum.
Reference: Mehta, J., & Fine, S. (2019). Chapter 6. Deeper learning at the margins: Why the periphery is more vital than the core. In search of deeper learning: The quest to remake the American high school. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Q: Does UVEI assist teachers and schools to develop electives and structure how they are taught?
A: In all UVEI programs, including the teacher and principal preparation programs, there is an emphasis on the importance of what we call “deeper learning,” by which we mean teaching and learning that is relevant, rigorous, engaging, and useful. There is an emphasis on critical thinking; real world application of content knowledge; collaboration; personal and community relevance and more. Electives can be places where this kind of learning happens — but not necessarily. Traditional required courses can also be places where this kind of learning happens. Again, the question of which classes at a school include the kind of deeper learning UVEI feels is important will have different answers from school to school.
Q: What are some of the challenges to providing interesting and educational electives at Upper Valley schools?
A: Electives can be impacted by challenges that are common to schools in our region: funding, staffing (and) student enrollment. A school may not find it a cost-effective use of resources to staff an elective with a very small enrollment.
Another challenge that schools face in offering electives that students find interesting and engaging is that the student body is, typically, diverse, with different students having different needs and interests. It can be hard, therefore, to always offer electives that appeal to all students. Schools will face difficult choices in this regard.
Imagine, for instance, you have a science teacher with room in their schedule for one high school elective. It could be robotics, open to all high school students, with an anticipated enrollment of 15 students. Or it could be Advanced Placement Biology, which just five students are likely to enroll in as part of their plans to pursue med-school in college. Deciding which students’ needs and interests should be prioritized is not an easy decision to make.
Q: How are electives developed? The Science of Survival course at Mascoma Valley Regional High School, for example, was the idea of a science teacher who then wrote the curriculum.
A: Electives are developed in a variety of ways. Some electives, such as AP courses, come with a pre-defined curriculum and culminating assessment or test. Other electives are designed from scratch by educators who are responsive to the needs and interests of students and the wider community. Sometimes electives are offered in particular disciplines or subject areas, which can also meet graduation requirements, and so would be developed in alignment with specific state graduation standards.
