With meetings about class enrollment fast approaching with the start of second semester, many students are starting to plan their classes for the upcoming school year. Santa Fe offers a wide variety of classes, specifically electives, that cover topics ranging from the arts to culinary to law. Here are some that you should consider this upcoming enrollment season.

Painting with James Coplin

Painting I & II are both one-semester courses open to any student who has taken Art I. Students in this class have the opportunity to explore painting with oil paint using various different prompts. 

“[Painting] is really fun,” junior painting student Julia Smith said. “Coplin always does a good job at helping beginners. It’s really enjoyable.”

You don’t have to have previous oil painting experience to join the class.

“[Coplin] makes it seem like painting can be done by everyone, which a lot of people think it can’t be.”

The prompts throughout this class vary from animals to objects to people.

“I like when we are able to paint our own photos because I get to draw my family, or my pets or gifts for people; I always think that’s nice,” Smith said.

Coplin’s painting classes are the perfect opportunity for students to explore a new creative medium that they otherwise may not have.

“I definitely recommend this class. It’s so awesome and amazing.”

Civil and Criminal Law with KC Williams

Civil and Criminal Law is a one-semester course open to juniors and seniors.

“I’ve been teaching for 18, 19 years, give or take,” Civil and Criminal Law teacher KC Williams said. “We [learn about] active shooters and stuff on what to do, like run and hide. We have various speakers come in, we have the DEA come in and talk about fentanyl. We have inmates come in and speak, we have SWAT and we have various sanctities like that come in and speak to the class.”

This course teaches students the importance of staying educated when it comes to law; knowing your rights, what is legal for law enforcement to do and what is illegal for law enforcement to do fosters a safer environment for everyone. 

“I’ve noticed that sometimes kids come in and they’re not interested, and all of a sudden you look up and they’re going to be, you know, they’re working for the medical examiner or they’re working for the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation,” Williams said.

Theatre Productions with Robin Robinson

Theatre Productions in a full-year course open to all students; this course alone would fulfill the required arts credit for graduation.

This year during first semester, Theatre Production students learned the ins and outs of putting together a show, whether it was through monologue preparation and performance, costume and lighting design or even putting on a short play. During second semester, students will take this knowledge and prepare a short one-act play.

After the production for the one-act is done and the year is over, next year’s Theatre Productions students will pick it back up and will have the opportunity to compete with the play.

“I love how closely knit we are with everyone,” junior and Theatre Productions student Shelby Gomes said. “It feels like everybody’s known each other for years.”

Culinary with Kristen Harris

All three levels of culinary classes are full-year courses taken in chronological order. Intro to Culinary Arts is open to any incoming freshman or sophomore. Once a student has taken the intro course, they can move up to Culinary 2 and eventually Culinary 3.

Santa Fe’s culinary program is done through a program called ProStart, which is often used for restaurant certification. Culinary students learn and then become certified at the same standard as a professional cook would.

“Pro start is a two to three year program that is industry driven, so all of the curriculum is written by people who work in the restaurant industry,” culinary teacher Kristen Harris said. “So we learn everything from restaurant management to culinary arts.”

Furthermore, culinary class is a lot more than just making and eating new foods; it requires a lot of cleaning.

“There’s probably more cleaning than there is cooking. So you have to be willing to work hard for tasty food,” Harris said.

Junior Anabella Niewiecki is a third year culinary student. After being a part of this program for all of her years at Santa Fe, she’s had lots of memorable experiences.

“My favorite memory would probably be running groceries for Ms. Harris all the time,” Niewiecki said. “Just grocery trips, like grabbing a bag of nerds to put in them in the freeze drying machine.”

Additionally, Santa Fe’s culinary program is a community of all kinds of people who get to work as a team to learn and prepare food.

“This program has provided a lot of a lot of people that feel like family,” senior and third year culinary student John Hernandez said. “And I’ve learned a lot of a lot of things like, for example, how to kind of cut an onion properly. My skills with knives have really improved, and I’m Hispanic, I love food. I love cooking food and making food for other people. I think it provides hospitality. And you just really feel good after providing for something, you know?”

Newspaper with Callie Reichert

Newspaper is a full-year course open to all students. The Howler staff members are required to write a minimum of two articles a month that will then be published on our site. All Howler staff members have the opportunity to take photos at various school events. Each month, writers choose their best articles to be submitted to Oklahoma Scholastic Media (OSM) for feedback. Later in the school year, OSM hosts Spring Media Day for school yearbooks, newspapers, magazines and broadcasting; at Spring Media Day, staff members receive awards for their photos and articles from throughout the year. 

“I really enjoy being on newspaper,” sophomore Copy Editor and photographer Emmie Vasquez said. “It helped me enhance my writing, photography and interviewing skills. “

If you are interested in joining newspaper, you must fill out an application, which can be found outside of Room 155 in G Hall. Contact The Howler’s adviser at [email protected] if you have any questions.

Class enrollment meetings are already in full-swing, so make sure to take these classes into consideration.