How Electives Help All Students Succeed

I recently conducted a student focus group on the topic of school attendance. One of the participants, a high school junior who admitted to being frequently late or absent, explained why she still came to school: “I never want to miss Drama. My teacher is awesome. Her class is the reason I show up every day.” As the rest of the focus group chimed in with similar thoughts, I reflected on the power that elective courses hold for students of all ages.

These courses, from jazz band to yoga, cement students’ sense of self not just in their primary and secondary years, but also in their journey toward adulthood. In these tight economic times, schools or districts often slash electives to save money on staffing, which is highly detrimental to student success. Instead, not only should budget cuts be made elsewhere, but also elective offerings should increase to heighten student choice and well-being.

Student choice matters, and electives provide that choice

Adults tend to forget what life is like without choice. Kids have almost no control over what classes they take, which teachers or students they must interact with, or what is on the lunch menu that day. Electives provide the rare opportunity to self-select learning experiences, which in turn nourishes students’ sense of academic identity.

Choice becomes more important as students progress into their secondary years and begin to explore possible career interests. I recently spoke with Jeremy Stelzner, who teaches Silver Chips, the newspaper course at Montgomery Blair High School in Silver Spring, Maryland. He says, “Kids who worked on the newspaper have gone into different but related fields like interior or graphic design and building websites because while they were in my class, they realized that their interests might not necessarily lie in the words on a page, but rather with how to engage with people in a different way. Students produce and put something together that is theirs, something that the adults in the room do not take ownership over.”

Electives often influence what students choose to pursue for their careers. Anika Seth, who is about to graduate from Yale University with a double major in statistics and data science and women’s gender and sexuality studies, was the editor in chief of Silver Chips at the height of the Covid pandemic and speaks to the inspirational impact of Stelzner’s class. She told me, “I thought I would go into engineering or math, but then I fell deeply in love with journalism in high school and more so in college. I was the editor in chief of the Yale Daily News my junior year. When I graduate, I’m going to work for Bloomberg and spend time in Mexico City as a freelance journalist. I’m so excited.”

Electives Allow Students to Develop an Identity

Electives allow students to develop a more nuanced version of themselves, and they connect better with teachers when they are seen from more than one dimension. Teaching electives opened my eyes about how differently kids can present themselves from one space to another. As I write in Education World, electives give kids “a greater ability to show sides of themselves that might not emerge in required classes.… Maybe a boy that comes across as shy needs to express himself in the safety of his drama elective.” When students have the ability to pursue their passions, they can showcase their talents in ways that might otherwise remain invisible within school walls.

Sometimes, students took two classes I taught in the same semester, like Creative Writing and AP Language. Kids were almost always more open and enthusiastic in the class they had opted to take. Their enjoyment at having more freedom to create projects such as a children’s book or an original song outside of a more rigid academic framework came out loud and clear, and I relished the opportunity to get to know my students more meaningfully.

Seth, who also had Stelzner as a teacher in nonelective AP Literature—which showcases a different set of skills—speaks to the additional perspective that working on the newspaper in his elective course offered in fostering a more meaningful connection that has stood the test of time: “It speaks volumes that he’s still someone I text when I get a job offer or publish something that I’m proud of and want him to read. I’m so grateful to have had that.”

Students engage more meaningfully in electives courses

Seth, who was most active in the school newspaper during the year that schools went into a virtual space for the pandemic, shares that the paper “was really special… because while it was a lot of work and incredibly stressful to move the newsroom to an online format, I needed those connections with others and the purpose and structure that was missing from other academic courses.” Whereas students often struggle to see the relevance of required courses, electives feel more purposeful, as they tend to be project-based with visible and direct relevance to work that is perceived as valuable.

When kids are interested in what they do, they take time and care with their work. Participating in electives all but guarantees that students will grow beyond the pretense of superficial engagement (think about kids who nod and smile, but who are not really invested in class) and experience a far more profound level of cognitive or even affective engagement. As Stelzner says, “There is a little pep to their step.” Furthermore, once students have opportunities to see how much better they perform when they are excited about what they learn, their new skills might reinforce strong academic habits and be extended to other coursework.

Seth shares that the skills she learned in high school electives helped her prepare for her future in unexpected ways: “Part of why I liked Silver Chips is that I did a lot of exploring of county budgets. It was a really early introduction to math and statistics in a journalistic news context and wound up being important in college when I covered financial news. It was great to be able to draw from my statistics background, and how I relate that to an audience in a meaningful way.”

Keeping Space for Electives

When I think back to my own education, the classes I remember the most vividly and fondly are the ones I opted to take. In the drama troupe and madrigal choir, I felt like I might be good at something, which was not usually a sentiment that carried over into required classes. It is so important that adults remember how powerful electives can be in changing not just a student’s day-to-day experiences, but also the trajectory of their futures.

If we allow electives to be the first item on a budget chopping block, the consequences will be dire. For the sake of student growth and lifelong success, we must continue to rank electives highly among our chief educational priorities. As Seth shares, “I can give a rousing defense of electives. As a high school student, I had the opportunity to explore specific interests that had a direct effect on what I wanted to pursue, that helped me understand what I liked and didn’t like, and that gave me choices I otherwise would not have explored.”