American Studies is one of several unique classes offered at CK and is meant for juniors only. It is a block class, similar to the Humanities classes most students have taken during junior high school, and includes English teacher Elizabeth Blandin’s American Literature class and History teacher JD Sweet’s U.S. History class. These two teachers have designed this course to be constantly reflecting on the other course. For example, Sweet said last year in his Modern World History class, “If we do a comic book unit in American Studies then Ms. Blandin will focus on the English portion of it and I will teach about the History portion.” This intrigued several of his students enough to enroll.

In a recent project, students created a 30-minute newscast involving three topics during the late 1800’s western expansion in the U.S. These topics, one for each group of about seven students, mainly consisted of miners and ranchers, farming in the midwest and Native Americans. These news segments were performed on December 5th during 2nd and 3rd periods. All of the students were nervous since they were only given about two weeks to prepare and one of the weeks involved Thanksgiving, causing some difficulties and complications to their plans. But nonetheless, every student completed the assignment to the best of their ability and even dressed for their role(s). The unit was mainly based during the late 1800’s so most of the students wore plaid and flannel clothing to fit with oldish clothing. Addie Hunter, who is not enrolled in American Studies, said, “I was wondering why everyone seemed to be wearing flannel. Like, did I miss out on something?”

The news reports were a mix of creativity and humor to teach the other groups on their topic. Treys Neptune modeled hydraulic hoses and Skye Southern stated, “I think Treys would be a great model for hoses.” The news anchor of the group assigned to Native Americans, Brad Martel, used a “time machine” to bring forward the famous writer, Elias Boudinot, played by Keito Coyle, to interview him. Also, the farming in the midwest group gave a comedic ending to their commercial on mechanical reapers when Sebastian Jessee said, “Inventions INC is not responsible for the injuries or deaths that may result from the use of these inventions.”