A new elective class is being offered at Hoover High School this year: ‘Tech.”

Jessie Lim, the Korean teacher at Hoover High School, was given the opportunity to teach the class. Lim has been teaching at Hoover High School and Toll Middle School since 2018. Due to COVID-19, she is no longer able to teach at Toll Middle School but she is still enthusiastic about this school year and the tech class she gets to teach.

She spoke with the Tornado Times about the new class.

Tell us a little about the class

When asked what students can expect when signing up for the class Lim answered, “We’re mainly focusing on software and educational apps, so students will learn and explore different educational apps that we will use in classrooms. They are basically acting as a student and as a teacher.”

How do you feel about the class?

Lim was very enthusiastic to share her thoughts on the class. “It’s amazing, my students work really hard,” she said. She talked about how she’s been wanting to teach a class like this.

“It’s great,” she added. “It’s a student-led class. I’m only a facilitator, the students do the learning, they do the designing, they do the planning, and they do all the work. It’s a fun class to be in. We don’t have tests or quizzes.

“Our students have many creative ideas, basically what we do as a class is put those ideas together and create one giant masterpiece for other students to see. Our goal as tech ambassadors is to help other students.”

Do students need a special skill for the class?

“No, as long as they are willing to come into class and do the work, that’s all they need. You don’t even need to have tech skills to be in this class because we all learn, explore, and test things out together. We get ideas from everybody so you don’t need to have a special skill.”

When asked if there was a skill that would help, Lim answered, “Creativity is a skill that could help. We’re planning to launch a student tech support google site where students have access to all these different resources that we’re creating in class.”

Will this class prepare students for college/the future?

“Yes, without a doubt. Right now I’m preparing the students on how to make good presentations and how to appeal to audiences. They are learning all these practical skills that they need in the future, as a student and as a worker, wherever they go.”

When asked if the class was more collaborative or independent, Lim answered, “Students still have to learn the skills by themselves but whenever we’re putting our projects together, it’s one big project as a class. Students will learn little things like how to copy and paste and they will also learn more advanced things, like how to create a google site. It’s a very fun class.”

Lim has continued to show her enthusiasm for teaching and is excited to see the future for this class as well as the students in it.