New Courses or New Names?

Monica Zoldowski

Every year in February Conifer students excluding outgoing seniors, must complete their class registration. Students register for classes both on paper and on Infinite Campus, and the course names displayed are the official course names. “Social Media sounds like something that involves Social Media, like Instagram, not a second year Newspaper course,” Fritz said.

At the state level of Colorado, every few years, course names such as Newspaper and Yearbook are changed. 

“They happen at state level and there seems to be no rhyme or reason for why they take place,” student media adviser Leslie Thompson said.

Next year course names for Newspaper are Communication for Newspaper 1, Social Media for Newspaper 2, and Emerging Technology in Journalism for Newspaper 3 and 4. If you are interested in joining a yearbook, then you have to join Photojournalism for Yearbook 1, Media for Performances for Yearbook 2, and Journalism Advanced for Yearbook 3 and 4. It’s not just Student Media that has changed, but so also Business/Marketing classes, however, their course names aren’t changing now but will be in the future.

“It is a real challenge to keep helping kids understand what courses are. It would be a lot easier to say Yearbook 1, Yearbook 2, but this year they have to sign up for Photo Journalism or Media for Performances,” Thompson said.

With the new course name, students who attend the high school are often misled by the names too. This can lead to students who want the class to not know what to sign up for and students who don’t want the class to sign up accidentally. 

“It made me think more on what they are about based on the name then, what we actually do in the class,” freshman Emery Fritz said.

As a Student Media Adviser, Thompson has to market the new names, what they are, and what classes they represent, so that students aren’t confused. Seventh grader Ryan Zoldowski has a year before he comes to Conifer High School.

“I think that Social Media is a place where you can learn how to program a social platform along with making posts to go on the school’s Instagram page,” Zoldowski said. 

However, the Social Media class is not a class where students program a social media platform, but rather part of the newspaper classroom.

The advisers help students understand by sending out information, hanging up posters, and handing out flyers to the current students in these classes to inform them of what class they should take next year.

This is so that new freshmen who are coming to Conifer High School can understand what classes to take. The courses are Newspaper and Yearbook, both year-long classes. The yearbook is where students go and take photos and interview students and faculty to go in the Conifer High School yearbook. 

“There is a real chance that I will miss children who want to be in my classes because of the weird names. Would you really believe that Intro to Communication is Newspaper 1?” Thompson said.