New Opportunities for Students in Nutley High School

Shaping Students’ Futures Step-by-Step

New electives were introduced to the Nutley High School students for the 2017-2018 school year. Electives are courses that students take to help shape their future. In addition to the required courses, students are allowed to pick two electives in categories such as Career and Technical Education, Mathematics, Academy of Health Science Careers, Visual and Performing Arts and English.

Dr. James Riley, the Coordinator of Fine, Practical and Performing Arts, believes that the classes provide opportunities for students to take introductory level courses to gain experience in these areas, while satisfying their fine or practical art graduation requirements. “The new offerings create several opportunities for students,” Dr. Riley said.

The introduction of the new Rotating Drop schedule in the 2017-2018 school year, allowed students allowed students to take additional classes. “I saw the change to the new schedule format as an opportunity to examine our existing course offerings and make adjustments that would both be appropriate for the timing of the new schedule, but more importantly bring new course offerings that would be more relevant to our students,” says Dr. Riley.

These new electives bring benefits and exposure to NHS students. “Our new Marketing classes provide opportunity for students to take four years of sequenced courses (Marketing I , Entrepreneurship, Marketing Applications, and Market Research (Honors).  In Digital Art, our Graphic Design and Digital Photography classes also offer sequenced program from an entry level class (Intro to Digital Media) and then from there students can explore either Digital Photography (levels I and II) or Graphic Design (levels I and II),” Dr. Riley said. 

Students, parents and faculty participated in a survey to help decide which new courses would be offered. In addition to courses in the CTE category, Journalism and Creative Writing were offered as English electives. “By providing elective courses in English at NHS, students that may be interested in exploring careers in fields such as writing, journalism, advertising, and teaching will have the opportunity to deepen their literacy skills while potentially fueling a passion,” said Mrs. Brooke Benavides, Coordinator of English. “Since literacy is the foundation of all learning, it is imperative that we offer students elective courses to remain competitive in the 21st century global society.”

The new electives at NHS offer the chance for students to take courses which may help shape their future paths and enable them to explore new areas of interest.