New to the master schedule this year are two 0-period electives: Associated Student Body, A.S.B., and drama. The classes occur daily from 7:00 to 7:45 AM in rooms 8 and 33, respectively. Both classes existed as clubs and extracurricular activities last year, but are now formalized as academic courses.
A.S.B. Adviser Ms. Brianna Valencia said, “A.S.B. students learn time management, they learn communication skills, they learn responsibility overall, the first thing I told them that this is a job and you should treat it like one. We are here by 7, not 7:01, not 7:02, we are here at 7 and they also need to understand that they need to sacrifice time, and they need to stay after school, and like right now, the biggest thing right now is the Halloween maze, everybody is planning that they have to be here by 6 pm those days.”
The purpose of A.S.B. is to improve campus spirit through spirit weeks, dances, and other spirit activities. For example, they organized the M.V.P. dance and are planning the haunted maze at the Halloween Dance. Also, the role of ASB is the students’ government, so they have oversight on club spending.
A.S.B. student, seventh-grader, Natalie S. said, “I joined so I can get more involved in school. I like having two electives because I can include things I’m interested in. There are new shirts every year, and we have a lot of things after school.”
A.S.B Adviser, Ms. Brianna Valencia, said, “We needed to spend more time together. Last year, we met once a week, and that was just not enough time to get things done. Now that we are meeting Monday through Friday, we have more time for poster making, and we have time to get ourselves organized, which also allows me to squeeze in lessons and activities that help them gain skills like strengthening the skills that they already have.”
The purpose of Drama is to go into annual production in March, in which both students and parents are invited to see the play. For Drama, the goal of the class is to learn the basics of acting and performing plays.
Drama student, Seventh-grader Jailyn S., said, “I’ve done theater before, and I really liked doing it because I don’t like performing to people, but I like acting. Yeah, it’s pretty fun, it’s pretty hard to wake up early in the morning, but I really enjoy doing activities that I like. Something new about drama is that we do a lot of writing activities and play a lot more games.”
For the past several years, the seminar class, known as Tiger Connection, has also occupied the “0-period” spot on the schedule. However, both drama and A.S.B. are graded courses and electives, unlike Tiger Connection.