AHS Aims to Prepare Its Seniors for Life After High School

On Saturday, May 2, Arrowhead’s senior class of 2018 will don caps and gowns for their graduation ceremony. The seniors took final exams during their last week of high school, and Friday, May 1 was their last day as students at Arrowhead.

Throughout their years at Arrowhead, seniors have taken classes pertaining to their interests and the paths they plan on following after graduation. For many students, this meant taking extra science, social studies, or English classes. For senior Annie Miller, this meant packing as many of Arrowhead’s art classes into her schedule as she could.

Miller says she thinks Arrowhead has classes that can help students in the real world as adults, such as the Family and Consumer Education courses. Miller said Personal Finance was especially helpful because it taught students how to manage money, how to balance a checkbook, and other financial skills that teens will need in the future.

Miller says she wishes Arrowhead offered a wider variety of art classes, as she will be attending the Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design next year.

“If I were attending a UW school, I think [Arrowhead’s] preparation would have been more effective for me,” says Miller. “However, since I am attending an Art Institute, there are limited classes that will help me work on developing my art towards a professional career.”

Miller spoke highly of her Advanced Placement Studio art class, saying it did the best job of preparing her for a college workload.

Senior Samantha Geissler says Arrowhead could be doing a better job of preparing its students. Geissler feels that, while adapting to different people’s learning styles is good, Arrowhead is too flexible.

“In the real world it is not like that,” says Geissler. “What’s given is final, and you can’t try to take it a different way. You have to figure it out in a way that lets you understand it.”

Not many Arrowhead courses stand out as being college-preparatory, says Geissler, as she felt all classes feel average. Geissler described her course-load as bland, not because she wanted it that way, but because there weren’t many interesting classes she was interested in taking.

Geissler suggests altering how many additional credits students need beyond their core classes, as she found herself taking courses she wasn’t interested in simply because she needed to fill space in her schedule.

Miller suggests an expansion in the art department, as well as more funding for the arts. According to Arrowhead’s budget, the arts, including theater and art classes and clubs, have significantly less funding than other departments and activities, such as sports.

Miller says, “I wish that Arrowhead had expanded their art courses a bit to include preparation for students wanting to go into that field professionally. There aren’t too many options for art kids.”