“How are we going to use these classes in the real world?”

No matter the class, grade level, or school, there will always be a time where students ask themselves the age old question. After all, the first years of someone’s life is, more often than not, taken up by school. By dismissing the importance of the school curriculum, it’s easy to float through each class, not absorbing the information. Read further, however, and you’ll no longer have an excuse – each class has a purpose.

Languages:

This is an easy one, simply because students can continue to take it by choice. No matter if you intend to visit your language’s country one day, or just because you want to learn, language is a vital skill that can help you for the rest of your life. Communication is a gift!

Skill Breakdown: Helpful in other countries and gives the ability to communicate with more people.

Careers: Language teacher, interpreter, language tutor, translator, foreign civil service, airline services, subtitle creator, tourism, voice-over actor, and tour guide.

Aquatics:

Swim is another easy one, as people swim all the time. Whether you’re heading down to the beach on a hot summer’s day, jumping in your neighbor’s pool, or visiting some other body of water, swimming can become a fun hobby, or even a career. Whether you don’t know how to swim, you love it, or you’re somewhere in between, learning how to swim is an important thing to life.

Skill Breakdown: Helpful at the beach and can become a career. Just look at Michael Phelps!

Careers: Swimmer, pool manager, underwater photographer, rescue swimmer, dolphin trainer, marine biologist, water sports player, swim teacher, swim coach, and lifeguard.

Health Decisions:

3 words: emotional, physical, and social. The three sides of the health triangle explain what exactly one needs to have a happy, fulfilling life. Personally, classes don’t get more useful than this – it’s simply learning about how to live well!

Skill Breakdown: How to keep yourself safe, prevent peer pressure, have healthy relationships, participate in an active social life, stay on top of schoolwork, eat healthy, work out, and overall maintain a mentally and physically healthy lifestyle.

Careers: Health teacher, counselor (of any kind), personal trainer, and health & fitness guru.

English:

People read their entire life, write their entire life, and talk about their entire life. English basically teaches you how to communicate in the best way possible, using a wide selection of words and expressions.

Skill Breakdown: Grammar, punctuation, vocabulary, sentence structure, and how to write correctly.

Careers: English teacher, journalist, author, and editor.

Geometry:

Full of angles and measurements, the best word to describe this math class would be “precise”. It teaches you how to be exact, to always double check your work, and if you don’t succeed, try again!

Skill Breakdown: How to measure and identify objects, how to find the areas and perimeters, and how to memorize formulas.

Careers: Math teacher, construction worker, mathematician, and any kind of builder.

Biology:

The study of life – literally. What’s better than a class that teaches you about the world around you and what things are made of? It can get a little confusing at first, but it’s such a cool thing to understand what’s happening around and inside you.

Skill Breakdown: What’s inside you and why, what’s in the world and why, all plants and animals, anatomy, growth, and cells.

Careers: Science teacher, scientist, and researcher.

American History:

History class, in the most simple of terms, is getting together everyday to talk about and analyze the past. You can research relics of old times and discover what shaped the country we know into what it is now.

Skill Breakdown: Everything and anything that’s ever happened.

Careers: History teacher, and historian.

News Journalism:

Of course, this one had to be added. Clearly the most important class, News Journalism will teach you how to cover stories, interview others, and overall be more aware of the world around you. You can often recognize a journalist if they’re always aware of what’s happening in the news, if they live and breathe writing, if they constantly talk about how much they love their awesome teacher, Mr. Manero, and how the class can’t compare to anything they’ve taken before (and never will.)

Skill Breakdown: Interviewing, writing, analyzing, researching, and so much more!

Careers: Journalist, editor, or journalism teacher.

No matter the class, there’s always a purpose and things to learn!