by Jordan Joyce
Staff Writer
As course cards are being rounded up this week, exactly when incoming freshmen must take a local credit course is begin clarified.
“Healthy Lifestyles is a course required for graduating in NEISD. Students are highly encouraged to complete the course as freshmen. However, students must complete the course by the conclusion of their sophomore year,” AP Hensley Cone said.
Adding Healthy Lifestyles to freshman course cards has taken a toll on enrollment in electives and extracurricular activities.
“With changing from a block schedule, along with Healthy Lifestyles being added, our Theater 1 class has dropped to about one third of the size it was,” drama director Suzanne Martin said.
Despite its negative affect on electives, the course is also important in teaching students about healthy habits and how to avoid unnecessary obstacles.
“We have a really long fitness and nutrition section. Childhood obesity is on the rise, and we hope that the nutrition part of it could help prevent that now, and when the students get older. The sex ed part of our curriculum is really important. It talks about stds and teenage pregnancy, and how to avoid it,” Coach Jennifer Fox said.
Healthy lifestyles isn’t your typically health class, they mix real life experience with their curriculum to help students have a deeper understanding of health.
“In a health class you would just talk about these things, but in this class we actually get to go out and do stuff as far as how to work out, yoga, pilates, running, weight lifting,” Fox said. “There are a lot of different things we incorporate.”
Although it teaches how to balance your life and make good life choices, Healthy Lifestyles could be restricting students from electives they wish to partake in in the long run.
“I think the biggest problem is that Healthy Lifestyles is being highly encouraged to freshmen. With the four by four, a foreign language, and if the student is in another activity, they just don’t have room,” Martin said. ” We aren’t getting the freshmen we need.”
