Home » Coarsegold » Minarets Programs And The Six Cs
Brianna Brand creating in Art I (credit Minarets Media)

Minarets Programs And The Six Cs

minarets-media-jazmin-sept-2016-screen-shot-2016-09-23-at-2-27-02-pm

O’Neals-Minarets FFA jacket

Written by Jazmin Neri —

Minarets High School came into existence in 2008, intended and succeeding to be an educational and fun environment for the students attending. For eight years, it has helped students develop professionalism in a subject or skill they enjoy.

Our culture at Minarets has become a wonderful thing. Our teachers are remarkable and truly have a great relationship with each and every one of their students.

We have some great classes, departments, and clubs at Minarets including our FFA, Media, Art, Drama, and our IT department. Minarets is a great school to study anything you want to learn and achieve in life, which is why I highly recommend it.

The top reason Minarets is an incredible school, and how we differ from any local school in the San Joaquin Valley, is because we are an all technology-based school. We use Apple products, including our newly acquired Macbook Airs, to learn and succeed in our classes.

Technology is also a powerful tool to support Minarets’ Project-Based Learning. Our lessons are based solely on real-life situations and we often work in groups of fellow classmates.

minarets-media-yazmin-sept-2016-screen-shot-2016-09-23-at-2-29-14-pm

Mrs. Gamble is our wonderful art teacher at Minarets

Minarets’ FFA agriculture department, run by Mrs. Kristi Mattes, excels in competitions and has won several awards, including the state championship last year.

“Minarets FFA students show a number of animals at the Madera District and Chowchilla and Madera County Fairs including Poultry, Rabbits, Dogs, Beef Cattle, Dairy Cattle, Sheep, Goats, Swine, Dairy Goats and Horses,” explains Ms. Jessica Sweet, one of our agriculture teachers, along with Mrs. Keeley Hall.

“Their animals are judged on either their milking or breeding ability or for their quality of meat. The students are then judged on their ability to show their animals and on how well the animal and the showman work together as a team.”

The competitive nature of the Minarets department proves to have educated the students and driven them to success.

“The student then sell their market animals through the Junior Livestock Auction in order to earn money for college and their next year’s projects,” continues Ms. Sweet.

Our FFA programs have been testified to be beneficial for a student’s future.

“We attend events such as,leadership conference and competitions throughout the year, including cotton judging, marketing, vegetable crops, livestock judging, agriculture mechanics and much more.” All in all our FFA program is wonderful and helps our students learn and achieve great skills for life.

Mr. Juan Ortiz runs the Media department helping students, including myself, learn the techniques of photography and how to record film with varying angles and views. We use modern editing software such as Final Cut Pro in Media I, Media II, and Advanced Media.

We use Photoshop for Photography and the class that creates our phenomenal yearbook.

“The media program is a four-year program. Students start in Media 1 then go on to Photography, followed by Media 2. The last class in the program is Advanced Media,” explains Mr. Ortiz.

minarets-media-jazmin-marie-neri-sept-2016-screen-shot-2016-09-23-at-2-26-44-pm

Cole Shattuck working hard in Advanced Media

“Students in Media learn a variety of software. The most common are Final Cut Pro X for movie editing and Photoshop for photo editing. Students showcase their work by uploading to Vimeo or Flickr, and competing in film festivals such as the SlickRock Student Film Festival in Visalia in May.”

Minarets Mustangs’ Flickr page is home to many photographs taken by talented students, with over 30,000 individual pictures.

“Minarets has done well in the past, bringing home Best of Show honors the last two years [in SlickRock], the inaugural ‘Program of Excellence’ award last year, as well as various awards in multiple categories.”

The Media program helps our students learn film so, later on in life. if they want to become a filmmaker they succeed because Minarets taught them well.

Minarets’ Art department is run by Mrs. Jill Gamble. She helps the students, myself included, learn how to draw and be creative with our artwork in Art I, Art II, Advanced Art/Graphic Design, and AP Art. We use all sorts of supplies in our art classes including Sharpies, acrylic paints, watercolor paints, and many alternative supplies.

“We raise money by participating in sales at football games, school events and an annual art show that we put on. We use all supplies that we can get our hands on,” says Mrs. Gamble.

“We do ceramics, computer generated art, drawing, painting, printmaking, installation group projects, ad more. Our big event for the year is our annual art show.”

The art show takes place in the last week of September.

minarets-media-jazmin-sept-2016-screen-shot-2016-09-23-at-2-27-51-pm

Savannah (Savie) Luce acting her play out in Advanced Drama

“It usually includes an installation project created by students, as well as artwork for sale by the students. We also participate in many contests locally and nationally. Students have shown work at Slim’s Koffee Shop, the Ponderosa Phone Company and hopefully at the Fall Festival that is coming up.”

Our art department at Minarets will truly help students become creative and imagine artworks they would’ve never of thought of.

Our drama department, run by Mrs. Kayla West, produces excellent school plays and our students always like cheering on fellow classmates. They work very hard on the plays and always do their best.

“Upcoming events for Drama include the school play You Can’t Take it With You, which is about a quirky, fun family set in the 1930s,” says Mrs. West.

Last year, Minarets Drama took on Cinderella and had a very impressive turnout and production. On Friday, Sept. 9, the Drama class went on an overnight field trip to Ashland, Oregon for the Shakespeare Festival. You can always count on Drama to put on great plays, with enthusiasm.

minarets-media-jazmin-marie-neri-sept-2016-screen-shot-2016-09-23-at-2-26-54-pm

Glen Martin getting ready to perform his play in Advanced Drama

The final major program we have at Minarets is our hardworking IT department, run by Mrs. Jenny Sultana. The students do all sorts of fun things and learn to create games and computers.

“The IT classes are doing a lot of exciting things this year. The advanced programming class is creating games that will be available for all students to play next spring,” explains Mrs. Sultana.

“The programming class is creating games using Scratch, like multi-level mazes, arcade games, and choosing your own adventure games. The IT class will be designing their own computers.”

Our IT department is great and helps the students of Minarets because we learn how to program and create games which we can take into our careers later on in life.

Minarets High School gets you ready for life and for college. Minarets is a Project-Based School, allowing the students to be graded on what we call “Minarets 6 C’s”, which are: Critical Thinking, Competency, Creativity, Collaboration, Communication, and Community.

In conclusion, Minarets is a great school for all of the above reasons. Our school culture is outstanding and we always try to improve it day after day.

Jazmin Neri is a Minarets junior enrolled in Creative Writing

Leave a Reply

Sierra News Online

Sierra News Online