Family and Consumer Sciences teacher Jennifer Harding and Natalee Stover, Grace Calle and Ashley Terron Robles.
Prospective junior high school students will explore classroom, performance, club and sports opportunities at Poston Junior High School’s Peek at Poston open house on Thursday, Feb. 7, from 6 to 8 p.m.
A new schedule for the upcoming school year gives students more options than they have had in the past.
According to principal Michael Rapier, Poston will switch to a seven-period day, and will move away from the block schedule starting in 2019-2020. This seven-period day will give students an additional class period to experiment with something new in courses like Future Chefs, or Automation and Robotics, and still have time for traditional, yearlong electives, such as Spanish and Performing Arts.
The open house gives incoming seventh-graders the opportunity to get a taste of the wide variety of those course options before enrollment begins. They will be able to sample food from the Family and Consumer Sciences classes and see Poston’s Design and Modeling students demonstrate using a 3D printer to produce something they designed.
They also will hear the school’s advanced orchestra, the concert band, and the advanced girls’ choir Bella Voce perform throughout the evening. And they will be able to talk to students who participated in the Close Up trip to Washington, D.C., and in this year’s school musical Beauty and the Beast.
School counselors, administrators and teachers will engage the students with interactive computer games, historical costumes, contests and prizes. Representatives from National Academic League, Art Club, Chess Club, Yearbook Club and National Junior Honor Society will be answering their questions.
Students also will have the chance to talk with coaches of the sports teams at Poston. At last year’s open house, Jack Anderson talked to the cross-country coaches about joining the team. This year, as a seventh-grader on the cross-country team, he will be one of the students recruiting and answering questions.
One student who wants to find out more about sports at Poston is Lauren Keeler, a sixth-grader at Hale Elementary School. She is hoping to find out more about the soccer and volleyball teams. She also is interested in music and drama classes. Her brother, Brayden, now in eighth grade at Poston, will be playing with the orchestra at the open house. Lauren will be listening, trying to decide between choir and orchestra. With an extra class period in the schedule for next year, maybe she can do both.
Approximately 600 students and their families are expected to take a Peek at Poston this year. Fiiz Drink Truck and Jimbo’s Dog’n It Cart will be serving food on the basketball court, starting at 5:30 p.m., and the open house will begin at 6 p.m., in the auditorium.