This school year Manual introduced two new elective courses, Financial Literacy taught by Mrs. Allison Cecil (Social Studies) and Sociology taught by Mrs. Merritt Robinson (Social Studies).

The move was to add more non-Advanced Placement (AP) courses so that students had more options for electives than just AP classes.

“The administration came to me and asked if I would teach a new elective course [non-AP] and I got to pick any course I wanted,” Robinson said.

Cecil had a different road to getting her Financial Literacy class. 

“I have always pushed for there to be Financial Literacy. I would talk to students here and would be so amazed by how little they knew about handling money, budgeting money and simply making checks. They finally let me have it this year,” Cecil said.

“This differs a lot from years past. In the past all I worried about was AP Human Geography (APHG), now I have to worry about that and Sociology. It’s exciting to be able to not worry so much about APHG so much and constantly plan and tinker my lesson plan for that so much,” Robinson said.

She delved into how her Red days now give her a bit of leeway.

“It also gives me kind of a break on Red days since I only teach two classes on those days. It gives me extra time to plan for Sociology,” Robinson said

“I think that the challenge has been that you have to change your mindset from one class to another for each day. It’s not so much the content it’s more so the prep. Now I have to prep for two different classes,” Cecil said.

These two teachers had to give up two APHG classes each, which will be taken over by Mr. Raymond Krause (Social Studies). 

Featured Image taken by Tyler Lericos.