In the 2016-17 school year, Capistrano Unified School District will be updating and improving the curriculum in College and Career Preparatory and Health classes and will be making sure that the same information is being taught in all schools within the district.

College and Career Preparatory and Health is a semester class that is required to be taken by freshmen.

In Health, students learn about nutrition, drug and alcohol use, sexually transmitted diseases, how to deal with stress and low self-esteem, and etc.

“I believe that Health is probably the most important class that students will take in high school. Every issue we talk about could potentially affect a student’s life in a very significant way” says health teacher, Sharon Spiers.

In health, they are working on bringing in additional information and going more in depth with topics.

“[We are] bringing a lot more training on social media, bullying, sexting, suicide, and nutritional guidelines” says principal, Jennifer Smalley.

In College and Career Preparatory classes, also know as CCP, students get help with what to do throughout their 4 years of high school that will prepare them for after they graduate.

CCP has been using a program “Naviance” that help students create their 4 year plan and allows them to do college and career research.

“One major shift with CCP is to kinda start teaching the class almost through the Naviance program” says Vice Principal, Eric Paulsen.

CCP will have more of an emphasis on ROP pathways for students as well, that aren’t interested in going to a 4 year university.

They will approach an interest on ROP pathways by providing information about it in CCP and offering them with the courses offered. This will prevent students from not knowing what they want to do after they graduate and will give them the option to do something in high school that will help them go into a career afterwards.

 At a school board meeting, it was realized that health and CCP provide students with valuable information that won’t be offered to students any other way.

Information from health class is really relevant to students for them to be a  completely healthy person not only physically but emotionally as well.

“Without CCP we won’t have a way to reach to these students to teach them about these pathways for development and how to use the naviance program” says Paulsen.

Two teams are working on the advancements of CCP and Health, and will be organized and ready to implement into the next school year.