The Community Resource (CR) program is one of the pillars of CHS’s identity. The program allows students to create their own unique classes with local experts or participate in classes at one of the universities in the vicinity and beyond. Despite seeing an expected decline in participation during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, numbers have leapt right back to pre-pandemic levels according to the CR office.
This semester, Sam Austin, Jaye Robbins-Oliver and Zoe Simmons are among the dozens of students customizing their courseloads.
Sam Austin
Enrolled in A Tour Through Aliens, an in-person University of Michigan course.
How did you decide on taking this specific course? I was just looking for any sort of U of M class and I don't really like writing that much, so I wanted some sort of science class. I found this one on astronomy and it looked like it would be really fun.
What things that you’ve learned so far stick out to you? We do lots of problem-solving in class that involves a ton of critical thinking. I think it's really helped me in my math class here at Community because critical thinking is a skill and practicing it consistently makes you better at it. I’ve also started to notice astronomical events and things going on in the sky with the planets and the stars and whatnot. I’m able to appreciate that in a new way.
Do you plan on pursuing these topics in the future? For sure. I think it's [astronomy] a really interesting field that I'm definitely interested in exploring more. I think it’ll be at least a hobby, or maybe even a job. – I'm not fully committed to it, but I can definitely see myself sticking with it.
Jaye Robbins-Oliver
Classroom assistant at Angel elementary school
What does your CR involve? I’m a classroom assistant at Angel Elementary school. When I’m there, I help out individual kids when they need help with math and other subjects. I'm learning a lot about what fourth graders think about and how they act.
What inspired you to take your CR? I've always liked working with kids, so I wanted to do something surrounding that. And then I chose to contact my former fourth-grade teacher, so I just emailed her and asked if I could come volunteer, and she said yeah.
What do you remember about your fourth-grade year? Off the top of my head, not a ton, but then I’ll remember some of the specific activities that the teacher is doing now because she was my teacher back then. Like they were doing these math stations the other day, and I totally remembered doing the fractions and inputs and outputs lessons that they [the fourth-grade students] were working on.
Do you plan on pursuing teaching in the future? Yeah, I’m definitely considering it. This has given me more perspective on what that would be about. I feel like by just watching her [the classroom teacher] teach I'm definitely learning what it takes to be a teacher.
Zoe Simmons
Enrolled in three University of Alberta online courses concerning early theropods, marine reptiles and pterosaurs, respectively.
What do your courses involve? I'm taking one [course] on early theropods, one on marine reptiles, and one on pterosaurs. I’ve learned about how Triassic-era theropods were a very early lineage of dinosaurs that came before the big ‘TV dinosaurs’ and how later therapods came to fill their niche later in the Mesozoic era. In my other class, I’m learning about marine reptiles that weren’t dinosaurs but existed during the same time and how they lived and digested and migrated and all sorts of things. The classes involve videos and interactive online resources and there’re also online forums where you can ask questions and get answers and communicate directly with your professor and other people in the class.
Do you plan on pursuing these topics in the future? I plan on pursuing either biochemistry or evolutionary biology. I know I want to be a scientist, but college is going to be where I'm gonna find out what kind of scientist that's going to be… I hope to minor in paleontology.… Right now, I volunteer at the University of Michigan Research Museum in the paleontology lab, and I am cataloging fossils and making labels for them and learning how to image them. So I'm getting hands-on experience. And then I'm also in a Paleontology Interest Group, which is a program where you get to talk to other people [who are also interested in paleontology] including all of the paleontology professors at U of M.
What’s special about the CR program? I think because [CR classes are] self-made and there are so many additional resources that you can utilize, it's really a you get out of it what you want to [situation] and I think that that's something that can be lost in actual classes.
What other CRs have you taken? Along with this one, I took paleobiology 101 last semester, which detailed a broad overview of the Mesozoic era and how dinosaurs functioned and how their physiology and biology went into how different dinosaurs reproduced and how that affected which lineages lasted longer and which didn't. It was a lot about understanding the phylogenetic tree of dinosaurs. And then I took another one [CR] over the summer. It was a lab at the dental school which was really cool because we wrote a research paper that actually got published.
Credits:
Photos by Lucia Page Sander