Lubbock High School has many engaging electives that enhance students’ performances in their fields of passion and even introduce students to new opportunities and interests. Two of these elective classes are debate and journalism, taught by Mandy Garcia and Andrew VandenOever.

Debate is an elective that teaches students how to perform in different events, helping them to develop strong cases, arguments, and overall speech and public speaking skills. This class allows students to pick from a variety of events within speech such as DI, Duo, HI, POI, POE, etc. As well as events regarding debate such as CX, CON, LD, XDB, etc. Students can choose between speech and/or debate. Freshman Sophia Quirino states:

“I enjoy learning new ways to approach new elements of speech and public speaking.” 

Junior Mason Wittie says that Interp has helped him with “being able to learn how to speak in front of an audience confidently.” Along with speech, debate also teaches many beneficial skills to students. Sophomore Alisha Farooq competes in LD and DX. Farooq says that these events have helped her “gain knowledge on current events and how to create a political opinion.” 

Journalism is an elective class that’s curriculum focuses on students writing different forms of stories and learning about techniques to create informative,creative,propper,articles. Students are given the opportunity to write for Westerner Media, and learn interviewing techniques as well as putting those skills into an article. Sophomore Lily Brooker says that the most efficient thing that she has learned in this class is “how to write in a journalistic style and how to implement that into a story.” Students are engaged in the world of writing and reporting, and learn many skills and techniques that will improve their speaking and communication. In journalism, students will not only learn writing skills, but also how to master different forms of photography.