While there are many benefits to taking college classes, it also raises the question of whether or not the absence of upperclassmen for part of the day affects the culture at Liberty.
In the Fall of 2022, 309 students were enrolled in 520 Kirkwood classes. Each fall, the number of students enrolled in a Kirkwood class increased: 362 students were in 624 Kirkwood classes in the Fall of 2023, and 369 students were in 589 Kirkwood classes in the fall of 2024.
In addition to the online and in-person classes Kirkwood has available to high school students, they can also earn college credit through Kirkwood’s Career Academies. These courses, geared toward juniors and seniors, allow students to explore different careers of interest.
When students, primarily upperclassmen, take classes at Kirkwood, that also means they’re not at Liberty for part of the day. With them being gone, some faculty are concerned that freshman and sophomores are missing out on their upperclassmen role models.
“We have a lot of our very astute, great students, great leaders in the building [who] are now just not here,” said Bergmann. “We would love to have them in the building so that we have that leadership.”
Tom Cronk, PE, adaptive PE, AVID and Success Center teacher, feels very similarly about students who take Kirkwood classes at the regional center.
“It almost feels like they have a foot out the door already because they’re only here for one or two classes a day,” expressed Cronk. “And some of our younger students, especially, don’t have the role models to know what things should look like.”
While some staff members believe that Kirkwood classes affect the culture at Liberty, some students think differently. In her junior year, Kennedy Conner, 12, mainly focused on career-based classes by taking the education package offered at Kirkwood but is now focusing more on her gen eds by taking classes like Composition I and Fundamentals of Communication. Although she only took one high school class, Physics, she doesn’t feel like it negatively affected her connection with her peers as some may think.
“I actually have more connection with my peers because it’s not just kids at Liberty. I take classes with kids all around the district, and I get to make new friends with people I never would have made friends with in these classes,” said Conner.
However, Cronk believes that the absence of our upperclassmen correlates to the lack of student support at different high school events.
“Our student sections are not as lively as they’ve been in the past, especially our winter sports. And I think a lot of that is, you don’t have as many classes with people, with some of our student-athletes, so you don’t know,” said Cronk.
To help strengthen relationships between the under and upperclassmen, there were some solutions brought up to limit the amount of time those taking Kirkwood classes are away from Liberty without diminishing their academic goals. Jenny Mick, English 9, AVID 10 and AVID 12 teacher, had a few ideas in terms of those taking online classes.
“If you had sort of a hybrid model where groups of students were in study groups but accessing the content online, that could be beneficial for some students,” said Mick. “If you had other people around to bounce ideas off of and ask questions and kind of go through it together, I think that could be a good model.”
