This year’s summer school program will be from May 31st to July 1st.  Summer school offers much more than just classes.  It offers you something to do during summer and a chance to see your friends who you might not get to over summer. It also allows you to make up a class that you might have failed so that you don’t have to retake the whole semester during the school year.  Or even better it allows you to obtain extra credits which allows you to progress faster through high school. By taking classes like P.E., health, or Personal Finance during summer school it frees up your schedule during the school year which allows you to focus on classes that might be tailored to the career you are choosing.  

Patrick Van Genderen a Parkway South Junior said, “taking summer school allows you to start the year out with a higher GPA, and it also allows you to get some of the classes that you have to take out of the way,”  

Van Genderen took many classes like Personal Finance so that he could get that out of the way.  He also took Video Game Design which was more of a class for his interests.  

He said because the class is taught online that it was harder to obtain help from the teacher but his overall feeling of the class was positive.  

“Depending on what classes you take the work can be beneficial but there can also be quite a bit of busy work with it” Van Genderen said.

Savannah Collins, a Parkway South Senior said, “I took P.E. to get it out of the way and the only complaints I had was that the swimming unit wasn’t long enough and that it was extremely hot out,”  

Collins said because of this she had mixed feelings about the class but did not regret taking it.  

Overall the students that take summer school enjoy it, but what about the teachers?  Art teacher Eric Ludlow has been teaching summer school for about the past 8 years and has been enjoying it ever since.  In the recent years he has been teaching Pottery.

“Summer school is a great time to take the class because the two and a half hour long classes is great for working on the pottery wheel,” he said.

Ludlow said during the school year working on the wheels in Pottery can be difficult because the class periods are only 90-minutes long, so once he gets through their initial discussion on the beginning of class students might only have an hour to use the wheel which can be difficult to make a sculpture in that amount of time.

“That the extra money during summer is great to have,”  

Ludlow said, even though the longer class periods in summer school are great for working on the wheel you can’t rank summer school above or below the regular school year.  

Ludlow said that the positives of summer school are more of a relaxing environment that can still be great for learning.  Ludlow actually proposed the idea of teaching pottery during summer school about 5 years ago.  Ludlow was teaching Metalsmithing until he got the school into the idea of teaching Pottery during summer school.

There are many classes in summer school but when it comes to deciding what classes will be offered in this year’s summer school, assistant principal Michelle Thompson, who is the coordinator, puts together the classes that best fit the needs of the students.  

“We look at the classes from the past years and we also ask teachers whether they have an elective they might want to see in summer school,” Thompson said.

Thompson said this year for the first time they are introducing a foreign language class into the summer school schedule.  This year Japanese 1 will be offered in summer, but if you decide to take this class you must take it for both of the periods that are offered. Since Japanese 1 is a year-long class and there is a huge amount of information and teaching to be done they must make the class  both blocks in summer school.  

This year’s summer school theme is Soaring to Excellence and all the information you need to know on how to sign up will be sent out near spring break.  Registration this year starts on April 7 and for the first time the registration process will be online.  Everyone that attends summer school must attend exhibition evening which is a night where you will bring your parents to school and show them everything you have learned.

“Summer school is a great place for all students to participate in so they can get ahead in school.  It’s also great for freshman because they can get a little taste of the school they will be attending for the next four years,” Thompson said.