Students all over the world are hoping to find that one thing that they are passionate about and can see themselves doing in the future.  For this reason, electives are very important to the educational development of high school and middle school students. Electives allow students to explore different interests, discover new passions, and uncover talents and interests they didn’t know they had, which is why New Providence High School is and has been working towards expanding and diversifying our options.

Mrs. Shadis, the Director of School Counseling said: “I think we have many different electives to offer to students and we are getting there in terms of having electives for most of the students’ interests. I do think that we are STEM heavy, but knowing sort of what happens on the back end of things, you also have to think about having teachers available for new or different electives.”

Having teachers that are available and qualified for different elective classes/courses is definitely one of the setbacks, but Shadis, some of her colleagues, and the Board of Education are still working hard to solve this problem and create a wider group of selection for students. 

Mrs. Shadis said: “There are a couple of new courses being proposed, but just a handful this year because we added a few in the past couple of years. At this point, I can’t really share what they are but there are some being proposed.”

Shadis also said: “I do really like the electives that have been added over the past couple of years, for example, the business ones. I think that has really strengthened our overall elective program because in general after speaking with many different students the top things they tell me they want to get into are engineering, business, and nursing.” 

Freshman Abby Gilbertson said: “I think our school has many different electives to choose from. I am very excited for some of the relatively new ones like the Marine Biology, Marketing, and Nursing classes and I hope to get those in the next few years. Our school can definitely add more electives, but compared to other schools we have a wide variety to choose from.”