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Practical Arts Department
The Hill-Murray Practical Department offers students coursework to help them develop knowledge and lifelong skills in three areas: technology, business, and family and consumer science. Department goals include helping students discover a vocation or an avocation; learn relevant, practical business skills; stay current with trends, technology, and educational standards; and set students up for success in a world that demands them to be business literate; establish healthy living choices for themselves and their families; acquire knowledge of prenatal care and developmental growth; learn basics of parenting skills, consumer education, and the preparation of nutritious foods; and become wiser consumers in the future.
Business Education
Course Descriptions
Computer Literacy: 9th Grade
This course is designed so students learn the computer keyboard, as well as develop accuracy and speed. Students will learn to use Microsoft Word in the process of creating meaningful documents for college and beyond including reports, letters, envelopes, outlines, title pages, memos and more. A reference manual will be made for future use. Students will also have the opportunity to learn the basics of PowerPoint, and Excel.
Computer Applications: Grades 10-12
This course provides an opportunity for students to learn how to create a web page (FrontPage), work extensively with spreadsheets (Excel) and create databases (Access). Students will use the Internet, e-mail, a scanner, a digital camera, and a CD burner. PowerPoint and Microsoft Word will be used to create multi-media projects and presentations.
Consumer Education: Grades 11-12
This course is about using our resources wisely by becoming wiser consumers. Students will learn to manage a checking account, establish and manage their personal credit, explore alternative forms of investing, the process involved in purchasing a car, how to managing risk, how to save, how to create a personal budget, how to calculate finance charges to see if they are really getting a deal, and how to file a tax return. Students will also learn what to do and where to go if they find they have been ripped off and become aware of resources and laws designed to protect the consumer. Regardless of where you go after high school, this class will help any student by teaching them practical personal finance concepts and skills.
Sales and Marketing: Grades 10-12
This course is about understanding what a huge role marketing plays in our world today. Through hands-on activities, projects and guest speakers, students will become familiar with concepts necessary in understanding how marketing affects individuals and businesses every day.
Technology Education
Course Descriptions
Intro to Tech Education: 7th grade.
Students are exposed to technical skills in graphic arts, drafting/design, woodworking, and model rocketry.
Exploring Tech Education: 8th grade.
Expands the student’s experiences from the previous year. Curriculum topics include woodworking, plastics, and electricity.
World of Technology: 9th grade.
A year-long course devoted to a variety of technical fields such as drafting/design, woodworking, plastics, pneumatics/hydraulics, magnetic levitation vehicles, and model rocketry. The emphasis of this course is on hands-on activities.
Machine Woodworking: Grades 10-12.
Students experience hands-on exposure to a wide variety of hand and powered tools and machines by constructing a Grandfather Clock/Bookcase and a Coffee/End Table. Strong emphasis on safety.
Modern Cabinetmaking: Grades 11-12.
Allows a student to select a project while demonstrating skills acquired in “Machine Woodworking.”
Architectural Drafting and Design: Grades 11-12.
Students are introduced to the field of Architecture by working with a “client” in the designing and drawing of a residential floor plan.
Small Gas Engines: Grades 11-12.
Students discover the workings of the internal combustion engine through the disassembly, inspection, and reassembly of a small, four-stroke engine.
Family and Consumer Science
Course Descriptions
Skills for Living: Grade 7
A course designed to introduce students to basic health issues and living skills. Students learn home skills such as sewing and study healthy choices related to substance use.
Skills for Living: Grade 8
Student study nutritious snacks and learn to prepare a balanced breakfast, lunch and dinner. T he consumer education unit focuses on teen shopping trends and making wise choices as a consumer.
Foods: Grades 9-10
Upperclassmen Foods: 11-12
Emphasis is baking and cooking techniques of quick breads, yeast breads, pasta and rice, fruits and vegetables, dairy, eggs and proteins. Meal preparation ties all of the various food preparation techniques together.
Ethnic/Gourmet Foods: Grades 11-12
Emphasis is on two distinct areas: food presentation; and exploring and preparing ethnic and regional foods from different areas of the USA and the world.
Parenting Skills: Grades 11-12
Students study pregnancy, prenatal, infant, toddler and preschool developmental stages. Specialty topics such as how children learn, discipline, illnesses, SIDS, and other topics.
Faculty
Top: Julie Peterson, Mary Mohan
Lower: Brad Peterson, Tom Houle
Tom Houle (Business Education) attended Chisago Lakes High School, then continued his education at Bethel University, earning a B.S in Accounting and Human Resource Management. After working for an accounting firm and manufacturing company, he returned to college to earn his teaching license in Business Education from the University of Minnesota. He is now in the process of completing a Masters in Business and Marketing Education.
Mary Mohan (Business Education) has been teaching computer classes at Hill-Murray since 1999. She earned her BS in Mathematics Education and her MS in Computer Science from the University of Wisconsin Madison.
Brad Peterson (Technology Education) attended the University of Wisconsin (Stout) where he earned both his Bachelor's and Master's Degrees. He taught middle school in Stoughton, WI for 8 years, worked at a cabinet shop in Madison, WI, and begin teaching at Hill-Murray in 1985.
Julie Peterson earned a B.S in Home Economics for Business at the University of Wisconsin, Stout. She received a teaching degree from University of Wisconsin, Madison and began her teaching career at Hill-Murray in 1986. |
