In the 2024-2025 school year, South will have two new courses: Teaching Life Skills (TLS) Chemistry, and TLS Environmental Science, Cameron Muir, Associate Principal for Teaching and Learning, said.

The new classes will  introduce more science learning opportunities for many students who take TLS classes at South, Muir said.

“[The introduction of these classes] allows for our students to have and be exposed to a wider range of disciplines within science,” Muir said.

Science teacher Jill Serikaku will be teaching the TLS Chemistry and TLS Environmental Science classes. In the  Chemistry classes, teachers want to help students learn to think and act like scientists, Serikaku said. These skills will help students solve real world problems in their future, Serikaku said.

In the Environmental Science course, students will focus on the bigger picture of how humans interact and effect their environment, Serikaku said. Students will collect data to help them understand how environmental science works on a global scale, Serikaku said.

“[Students will be] designing and running experiments, and collecting data [to analyze]” Serikaku said.

New classes start when teachers have an idea, they create a proposal, which is sent to administrators, Muir said. Next, the proposals are sent to a combined group of South and North teachers. If approved, it then moves on to the Assistant Superintendents and the Superintendent. For the final approval, the proposal goes to the School Board, Muir said.

In previous years, the only TLS science courses that were offered were Biology in semester one and Horticulture in semester two, leading students needing to either repeat these classes or take classes that are outside of their comfort zone, Serikaku said.

“Because [South] has a two-year science requirement for graduation, we wanted to give students some kind of variety, [in their classes]” Serikaku said. “Adding these two new courses would make for four courses that would [add up to] two years of science classes.”

Jeff Rylander, Science Instructional Supervisor, is also very happy that these classes will fill educational gaps for students.

“[These teachers are] rock stars with [TLS] students, [so]I’m excited that [they] are going to have new experiences,” Rylander said.