There are many electives people choose in Wilson Middle School. One of the most popular electives is gaming and Mrs. Bowerman is in charge of the elective where you can play games. This is a fun period where students can have a break after working hard. After working in all of your classes Gaming helps us access the internet and relax - well sort of. The games can get pretty intense. Before the gaming class was available, the internet and computer games were only allowed during lunch Wednesdays to Fridays. The computer lab gives us access to the internet and makes lunch better by giving us access to the internet and playing games.

Gaming helps you to require critical thinking skills and problem solving with their brains and strategy using stem online. To keep things interesting, they rotate their games once in a while so they can experience more things throughout the rest of the fun year. 

By David Solorio

Have you thought about joining art, painting or photography for your elective? Well, we talked to Mrs. Stojanovski and also some students in her class, we hope maybe you’ll wanna join next year! Mrs. Stojanovski said that she became an art teacher because she loves art and kids, so she decided to be an art teacher. She came to Wilson mostly because she loves the small community! 

Her favorite event of the year is the art fashion show and art auction that is happening on open house night. They'll even have a recycled runway! If you choose to join art, or painting expect to do a lot of exploring art materials, learn different techniques and develop skills. If you join photography, you'll create your own books, and learn how to use DSLR cameras and learn the settings. 

Mrs. Stojanovski loves her classes because she likes the kids, she thinks they are amazing, she loves their personalities, their creativity, humor, and their genuine goodness. She thinks they're also great at learning! We asked her if one would need experience to be  an art teacher, and she said yes. Mrs. Stojanovski told us that you need a degree in art and you need to know all the materials and art history. We asked her what the plans for next year were, and she said that it will all evolve next year, and she actually adapts to her students for that certain year and that deciphers if they're gonna do certain things.

 We also interviewed a couple students. One of them, Simiran Sidhu, said that she enjoys making different things everyday. She chose art because she has a passion for art, she loves art and enjoys doing it in her freetime. Another student said that they enjoy doing oil painting for a lifelong job because of how much money they'd sell for. I hope this enlightened you on the Art, Painting and photography electives!

By Abigail Contreras

Strategy games is an elective at our school where you get to play different kinds of games and use different strategies, and skills to play and win games.  The teacher who teaches this class is Mr. Pimentel in room 26.. They play all different kinds of games on Chromebooks, and board games.  So far, the games they have been working on are Chess, Uno, and Connect Four. Since it's a new semester they’re gonna play new games. 

A student from that class says, “I like this class because it's fun and we get to play games.” The student also says that the teacher is very cool and its a nice class to be in! 

By Selena Lara

STEM stands for Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics. It is an elective at our school where students get to build and experiment. The teachers that teach this elective are Ms. Garcia and Mr. Heredia. 

Students who are in this elective get to practice essential life skills, and solve life problems. Ms. Garcia started teaching STEM because she "found that education helped to be successful” when it came to thinking about the world. Something she likes about this class is that “there’s a lot of experience and engineering.”   She says that STEM helps students be successful for life problems. 

Ms. Garcia also says that the purpose of this class “is for students to build and solve problems.”

Mr. Heredia also really enjoys teaching STEM. One of his favorite parts about teaching this class is "Having the students attempt to do impossible or college level challenges and watching them succeed or fail in an epic way." He really enjoys getting to have his students compete in various "contests that are state, country, and worldwide and see how we compare.  Sometimes we will win prizes but most of the time we win the experience of trying something new.  Lastly, I like to challenge Ms. Garcia's STEM class and battle with coding or robots or any other contests we can think of."

This class is completely project based and very hands on. Some of the projects they completed this year are bridges, coding, and working with electricity and robotics. These projects changes every year. 

By Selena Lara

The Teachers assistant elective also known as the TA elective is exactly what the name suggests - they assist the teacher. The students in this elective assist the teacher by “helping supervise student behavior and help with other tasks", said by Ms. Molina and “they help us deliver passes and help us file,” said my Mrs. Maria in the office. 

This elective is acknowledged positively by both the staff and students. Mrs. Maria has said, “Without TA’s we can’t do our jobs without them here.” Teachers like, again Ms. Molina, said “They make my day possible by helping me with things I need assistance with like helping other students’ Some students like Estefany Reyes said “It's a pretty chill elective and easy to do, so others should do it.” Even though this elective is pretty simple for the most part TA’s have occasional hard tasks. Adrianna Gonzales said, “The hardest part about being a TA is having to make other students behave.” 

So overall the TA elective is received positively and is recommended to do by both students and teachers. 

By Christian Macias

Cross training is a class focused on fitness and growth. Cross training is also about health in general. In cross training they use the fitness room. Cross training is like physical education, but with a lot more equipment. These students work on their  physical health, and the personal health. Their fitness level gets higher almost every class! This elective also focuses on mindset. 

By Jayde Castro

Student Council takes place in room 8 with a very kind and responsible teacher, Ms. Linhares. This is a class for students who joined to be our greatest leaders to our campus and student council. She teaches the students how to take care of the campus with their amazing skills.  Starting off, you might be asking yourself, what is the student council? Student Council is a class where you become leaders to plan school events by their ideas and taking information to vote before they discuss it. In addition, Student Council also takes care of our school by recycling bottles and collecting trash, so we can have a clean campus for our fellow students. They also put up fundraisers to help get money for school trips and events. As well as advertising everything on campus, and posting it on our Instagram page: @wilson.middle.spartans

This is what our student council teacher, Mrs. Linhares, thinks about her class. She is very excited for this year because of the ideas she has for movie nights and winter week that includes dressing up. She had said that her students have a lot of personalities that are very helpful because of different ideas they have for Student Council. Her favorite part of  Student Council is the relationship they built as a team together. Also Mrs. Linhares used to be an ASB teacher for the high school and said “I like working with students and helping them be successful!” 

I recommend Student Council to students for next year if they want to become a helper/leader to the school! Go Spartans!

By Madalinn Gonzalez and Michelle Pizano

The yearbook class is a very cool class. Everyone here love the class; with people saying that Mrs. Hansell is their favorite teacher, and that yearbook is not as hard other classes.  

But while it may not be as hard, it is still stressful and can be overwhelming due to the due dates and having to do multiple articles at once. According to one of the students that take this class, “Mrs. Hansell used to separate students around if our due dates were coming up to ensure we stayed focused to get our articles completed.”

We often take photos of classes while they are working, so that we cant put them in the yearbook. We get to vote on designs and themes for the yearbook, and the class is an overall do it yourself kind of class. It's really hands-on and free class you get to choose the topics and write the articles yourself. We also get to attend after school events, such as sporting events, movie nights, dances, etc. 

Mrs. Hansell says that she loves all of her students, and that it's fun to see all her kids express themselves. However, it can get hard to leave it as a hands on experience where the students do the majority of the work because she wants to be in control in a way to make sure everything turns out good for the readers. She loves to enjoy the different personalities of her students and help kids get out of their shells. Sometimes it can be challenging to keep the kids together, but most of the time they are working and are generally quiet depending on the person.

By Astrella Williams

      Every single student has an Enrichment class this year. Enrichment is a class designed to help enrich and help them with their reading, writing and math. It also helps them through using IXL as well as working on their reading and having 1 on 1 time with their teacher.

One of the enrichment activities is IXL which is a way for students to get better at math skills or reading through individualized lessons that are specific to each students learning needs. Another activity is learning slides where students complete a series of activities. One of the biggest parts of Enrichment is giving students designated reading time during school. Independent reading is a very important part of student learning and must be done daily in order to strengthen learning in all content areas. 

We interviewed some staff and students about Enrichment and here is what they had to say:

Selena Lara said, "enrichment is good way of catching up on our work." 

Michelle Castillo-Pizano said, "it helps us reach our goals."

Mrs. Rodriguez , who teaches 7th grade enrichment and history, is a really good helper so stude1nts won’t get lost while doing work.

Mrs. Maldonado, who teaches 7th grade enrichment and math, is also a really helper. She helps students while they are working on their homework or work. She's also really patient; she will make sure that her students understand the work, and also enjoy it at the same time.

All these are really good teachers.

 Did you know there's  10 enrichment teachers? They all do an awesome job at teaching students to not fall behind, and they don’t stress about missing work. Enrichment is a nice way of helping kids.

By Avnit Aulakh

Spartan Skills is a new elective this year. But if you're not in it, then you probably don't know what it's about or if that elective is what you should do. This is especially helpful for 7th graders to see if you would want to do it next year or even change it when this semester is over.

Spartan Skills is a class where you can learn various study skills, such as note taking styles, how to research, and so on. They will also learn about things such as careers and jobs, and the   reason for this new elective, Spartan Skills, was added was to help students and get them thinking about what they want to do in the future. This year, the class is going to go on a field trip to Merced College as well as have guest speakers come and talk to the class by highlighting their businesses. Ms. Rodriguez is one of the best teachers on campus, and she teaches this class. So I can almost guarantee that it will be an amazing experience and an amazing class. So I hope maybe some of you who are interested give it a chance.

By Noah Soliz