Fairbanks High School is getting new business and technology courses for the 2018-19 school year.
At December’s meeting, the Fairbanks Board of Education approved of high school course offerings that would dig deeper into exploring science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) studies. These technology and business-inspired offerings included 11 new courses to be taught by teachers Ed Rebmann and Jim Fawcett.
“It’s really exciting, and this is what you want to do,” Rebmann said. “You want kids to be using equipment and being excited about it.”
Rebmann said his goal is to familiarize students with computer programming and coding concepts to “round off their skills.”
“What we’re trying to do with all of this is to allow students, in no matter what field they’re going into, to be able to feel confident whenever they need to create something in code or when they need to work with people in coding and the process they’re doing it.”
Rebmann said the way he’ll be structuring the classes won’t be like a traditional lecture, but rather it will be supervised online work in the classroom. He said this will help encourage independent thinking and more “hands-on working with coding” that a traditional classroom couldn’t provide.
“It’s a little bit of a different model of education rather than sitting in a classroom in a traditional lecture mode,” he said. “It’s a lot of fun for me because we’re really looking for what a student is interested in.”
Rebmann said these classes will give students a small taste of these technical skills, while students who want a more specific education are encouraged to attend classes at Tolles.
After a year, he said these classes will assess the students’ interests within the programs and use that knowledge to improve future courses.
Fawcett said he will also be looking for skills students are interested in pursuing in his business courses.
“I think it’s going to be a great step toward giving students… a better education where they’ll have experiences other schools might not offer,” he said. “Now they’re going to get that hands-on experience and hopefully leave the classroom better prepared to contribute (to the community).”
Fawcett said the focus of his classes is to introduce more technology in business education. He said he wants to teach students how to make effective videos for their business ideas and to better understand delivering information with technology.
“Because they’re in the business world, technology is a big part of it,” he said.
He also said the classes will incorporate local business owners and Fairbanks High School graduates to share their knowledge with students. He said his goal is to get the business program to be more involved with helping the community.
“You have a lot of assets around us who would love to share their knowledge,” Fawcett said. “I think there’s a lot of opportunities for this to grow and become more of a Fairbanks community type of thing.”
He said he’ll start getting into contact with business owners in the community to get them onboard with the program.
For those who are interested in collaborating with Fawcett and his business classes next year, they are encouraged to email him at jfawcett@fairbankspanthers.org.