North Kent News

The Cedar Springs Schools Board of Education discussed the best way to prepare middle school students for their careers at a recent meeting.

Jen Haberling, the assistant superintendent of academic services, presented some course proposals to the board seeking feedback. She proposed a variety of elective courses for middle schoolers so that the 6th, 7th, and 8th graders could be exposed to a greater variety of future career interests and skills. The goal is to expose them to the 17 career pathways in Michigan so they can see areas of work beyond just their teachers and parents.

“In order for us to start helping sixth, seventh and eighth graders think about their future potential, whatever that might be in a career and college and all of the different things that they might choose to do down the road,” said Haberling. “You heard Ronald Behrenwald talk about the EDP, the educational development plan, and that is their plan forward and helping us to help them think through what is it I might be interested in pursuing someday and what would that look like for me to pursue that? So that's a really critical part of a four-year plan in high school, helping students to have options because we know they change their minds as all of us probably have. None of us are what we thought we'd be in sixth grade. But we want to give them an opportunity to think about what it is that (they) might want to do and explore the different possibilities.”

The board had four high school course proposals that they had already seen twice before. These included Law and Justice, Lifetime Fitness, Strength and Conditioning and Team Sports. The other proposed high school courses that the board had not discussed prior were AP Computer Science, Agriculture and Natural Resources Biology and Environmental and Natural Resources Management.

There is an ongoing trend in school districts across the country to implement computer science classes due to the available jobs in the field. A number of teachers spoke on the topic and mentioned that the two proposed science courses are intended for students who want to go into more trades or skills careers instead of college. These courses are meant to provide a good base of information for agriculture and conservation pathways.