On May 25, 2021, the Maryland State Department of Education announced that they would be implementing a second health class credit required for high school students in the Class of 2025 and beyond. The addition of this class has been somewhat controversial, especially for students who had just completed their first health credit. 

According to Linganore High School (LHS) administration , it is unclear as to why the MSDE decided that only a half credit of health education was no longer satisfactory for a student’s education.  Staff were just as in the blue about the decision as Maryland students. 

The publicly available announcements  regarding the change are vague and do not go into detail about what is expected as part of this requirement, nor how to successfully add it to a class schedule. 

“From a scheduling standpoint, yes, it is a challenge [implementing the class],” LHS Student Services department chair and guidance counselor Jessica McDonald said. “[MSDE] didn’t really give us a whole lot of guidance other than telling us it’s a requirement.” 

Despite the fact that the Health 2 class has been a requirement for students since the 2021-2022 school year, it remains unclear as to why the class was implemented and what  content has been added to specifically augmented what is being taught in the Health 1 class. The understanding of Linganore staff is that Health 2 is intended to go into further detail on topics such as mental health.

“My guess is that as there’s more awareness [of] the struggles that teens face related to mental health,” McDonald said.  “Students that were taking health in 9th grade were missing an opportunity by not being able to touch base [with their counselors].” 

The Department Chair of Physical Education at LHS, Rachel Easterday, agrees that the course needs some clarification and believes that changes may have been made to the health credit requirements because of current trends and issues in society.

“They didn’t really give us the specifics,” Easterday said. “The high rates of mental health issues, alcohol, vaping … There’s just a lot of new stuff that has come out in the last couple of years. It’s important to understand what’s going on.” 

According to the Maryland High School Graduation Task Force Recommendations released by the state superintendent of schools, many factors went into the decision to implement the new health class. These included legislation requiring drug addiction and prevention programs at high schools and results of the Maryland Youth Risk Behavior/Youth Tobacco survey showing increased levels of drug and alcohol usage in teens. 

In addition to delving deeper on topics taught in Health 1, the new class was also intended to cover a variety of new topics, including lessons on diabetes, dental hygiene and sexual abuse; however, the recommendations make no mention of expanded, detailed or updated mental health lessons. 

Accordingly, students at Linganore did not perceive a difference in some aspects of the class when compared to Health 1.

“I don’t think that the lessons were more detailed regarding mental health,” Junior Alix Herron said. “I didn’t learn anything that I hadn’t already been taught. 

Some students reported that certain topics the state had intended to be covered in this new graduation requirement were limited or non-existent in the new class at Linganore. 

“Diabetes was really brief, but we had a unit on sexual abuse,” Herron continued. “Dental hygiene was never mentioned in my class.” 

Junior Harry Sauer added, “[The lessons] were just kind of like ‘don’t kill yourself, it’s not good for you.’That was it. It was all comprehensive [information] besides the mental health ones.” 

It appears that apart from further discussing topics related to mental health, the Health 2 class was intended to incorporate lessons on new drugs that had emerged in the years since the original health credit was created. However, according to Linganore students, little was discussed about these new drugs and prior drug lessons did not appear to be updated. 

Sauer reported not receiving much of a takeaway from the new drug lessons. 

“It was just kind of ‘drug bad” Saurer said. “[The teacher] was just like, ‘the fentanyl is coming up through our border.’”

Similarly, Herron did not see much of a difference from Health 1’s lessons. 

“I felt like it was the same content, but just in a little more detail,” Herron said. “We already learned the content that was being taught [about drugs].” 

The confusion surrounding the content of the new required health class and how it truly differs from Health 1 is not the only aspect of this new graduation requirement that has created controversy. Along with implementing the new health half credit, other half credit classes needed to be created to be paired with health for a student’s schedule. 

Along with several options for PE electives,  Film Study and Managing Your Personal Finances are also available. Which half-credit courses run is dependent on how many students sign up for the class during registration. 

Sauer took the personal finance half-credit course, the content and quality of which he was unimpressed by. 

“Three words to describe [the class]: freakin’ packet, yo,” Sauer said. “My teacher would just talk for five minutes and give us assignments we would completely have to use Google for, and take off points when she didn’t like the answers we put. I’d give [the class] like a four out of ten.” 

According to Sauer, both his health and finance teachers were invested in the content they were teaching, “almost a little too much.” 

Herron added that her half-credit classes were vastly different.

“My health teacher was very passionate about what she was teaching,” Herron said, “But, my film study teacher rarely seemed invested.”

Herron shared that the half-credit model is not conducive to all content areas.

“It was only once in a while that [my teacher] would really discuss the films in assignments in class,” Herron said. “We didn’t have time to go in-depth about all of the content in the movies. I don’t think that film study as a half credit should even be an option.” 

Easterday agreed that, just like any class, the quality of lessons in the half-credit health class may vary, particularly without a fleshed out curriculum provided at the state level; however, she strongly believes in the purpose of health classes. 

“It really depends on who you get as a teacher,” Easterday said. “I created a lot of the lessons too, so I’m more impassioned about what’s going on. What I say to [my students] is you have one body, you need to take care of it,” she said. “It’s important that you understand your health, cause when you leave here and you turn eighteen you’re responsible for it.”