For students at Green High, the month of February symbolizes the academic planning for the upcoming school year. Many students base their planning on the use of the curriculum guide given by the guidance counselors. But, planning for the next academic year is especially unique due to the creation of many new elective courses. Guidance counselor Kevin Granito is especially excited about the new course creations. “Out of the new ones I think that mindfulness and self-care one is very interesting because that’s such a big thing in our society now. Taking care of yourself and mindfulness is important especially for high school students who are sometimes over-stressed. I think that would be a great one,” Granito said. “Also, true crime narratives and detective fiction sounds interesting because I like new true crime stuff.” All the new courses offered next year are sourced from the language arts department. The Language Arts department chair, Patricia Berardi, is very proud of the department’s ideas becoming realities. “In my opinion, public speaking seems the most overdue. For students public speaking is really scary and that’s how I was as a student. But public speaking has become just such an essential skill in our daily lives,” Berardi said As previously mentioned by Mr. Granito, another course being newly introduced is called Mindfulness & Self Care. New English language arts teacher Miss. Knight talked about the new mindfulness course and stressed its importance to Green High. “I think the course is important because in our society today I think that we’re starting to put more of an importance on managing stress and taking care of ourselves so I think this will be an asset to Green High School because there are students who are really busy and have a lot on their plates,” Knight said. “It’ll be a chance to learn some ways to handle stress and even in time in the day to get away from everything else on your plate and learn some mindfulness studies.” Another course being newly introduced to GHS is the True Crime elective. Mr. Potter spoke about what this elective has to offer for true crime fanatics. “True crime is a fascinating aspect of normal life that encompasses all levels of society… the study of human behavior and why some of us choose to commit atrocities has infatuated people for hundreds of years,” Potter said. “I’m excited to focus on a few well-known cases, as well as some lesser known ones.” As for courses that already exist, the sports literature and Shakespeare course will now be worth half credit. With these new course additions, Green High has a promising future in broadening learning aspects for the betterment of students.