The change from 6 to 8 periods has brought with it a multitude of new classes, including several Dual Enrollment (DE) and Advanced Placement (AP) classes, providing students with more opportunities to excel.
DE Art Appreciation with Julie Shakher
Art appreciation centers on the perception of art throughout history, introducing numerous artists from different eras. Students will learn and research art history, processes, artists and their inspirations, to help them further acknowledge more complex meanings behind art. Students in the DE Art and Music Appreciation will shift between classes each semester, enabling them to learn both forms of art. While engaging her students in activities such as painting, drawing, embroidery, installation art and more, art teacher Julie Shakher further expands their knowledge by diving deeper into the lessons.
“If you just look at an art piece you say ‘okay, an art piece,’ but you really have to go further than that and understand how they made it, what was the purpose, what time period is it from and how they’re all linked together,” Shakher said.
“It was really cool to see how artists use different mediums to create their art,” senior Maya Gruenberg said. “Especially when the mediums are things that you would never think that people could use to make art.”
DE Music Appreciation with Richard Yaklich
Teaching the fundamentals of musical work and some aspects of musicology, Krop’s DE Music Appreciation class educates students about music history, historical composers, different genres, musical culture and the political side of music along with the arts.
Students are also taught through Miami Dade College, with the information from the textbook “Music Appreciation” by Roger Kamien with the additional teachings of Orchestra teacher Richard Yaklich, whereas students answer college level questions to test their comprehension of what they learned from the book.
“When I teach Music Appreciation I’m not necessarily concerned with the technical aspect of music but to give students an idea of how some music from the past is connected to music of the present and that they have an appreciation of the different timelines in music and history so they can get an idea of the general picture of its culture,” Yaklich said.
“I think Dr. Yaklich teaches everything that you have to know in an understanding way,” senior Luna Jervis said. “It is a really good class that you learn a lot of information in and it isn’t too challenging.”
DE Aeronautical Science and Unmanned Aerial Vehicles with Commander Kevin Follett
Through the Embry Riddle Aeronautical University, one of the leading Aeronautical universities in the country, the DE class at Krop switches between Aeronautical Science in the first semester to instructing the overviews and fundamentals of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles. This year, partakers of the DE Aeronautical Science course are additionally able to acquire an industry certificate from completing the course along with six college credits.
As Commander Kevin Follet pushes his students’ interests towards flight aviation, some of the lessons in this DE course include subjects of aerodynamics, aeromedical, types of aircraft, aircraft systems, airspace, bounce patterns, aviation history, weather, navigation and more. Next year Follet is hoping to increase course to possibly include flight ground school, so if a student is looking to attain their private path license, they can complete their ground school here at Krop.
Due to thousands of jobs opening up for aviation and no one to fill them, Krop’s DE Aeronautical Science program is attempting to interest students toward the career.
“I really want to push females in aviation since it’s a mainly male dominated career, so we had a field trip to Fort Lauderdale Airport for Women in Aviation day to really try and get women interested in flight,” Follet said. “If you want to pursue this career in college it is important to take it. A lot of women should study this career and become pilots, depending on what they want to do.”
AP Precalculus with Daniela Poe
Krop’s recently developed AP Pre-Calculus program aids students in preparing for college level mathematics and science courses as well as fostering a deep understanding of functions. The course textbook is set to come out to Krop in February; therefore, despite the lack of resources, Science and Math teacher Daniela Poenariu overcomes these differences so far by providing worksheets and additional lessons from a college professor online. Since the book doesn’t follow the same material as the AP Pre-Calculus course, other teachers have had to share material between each other alternatively as well as creating their own problems.
“It’s not only Pre-Calculus, you have Statistics inside and expanded mathematics so it’s difficult to teach because not everyones takes Statistics between Pre-Calculus and some students don’t know all this stuff,” Poenariu said. “It is a struggle, but it’s all together and we make it happen.