With the ever-growing selection of Advanced Placement courses offered at De Soto High School came the implementation of the AP Environmental Science class this year.

Taught by science teacher Kylee Sharp, the new class offers extensive knowledge on environmental issues and the factors behind them in order to prepare students for the AP test in May, as well as teach them how to incorporate these factors into their daily lives.

“When you study environmental science, once you have the basics of ecology and understanding communities, populations and ecosystems, we apply that to things like land use and water use, pollution and climate change and how all of these things are affecting our life,” Sharp said.

Like biology classes, the Environmental Science class covers common subjects such as biomes and ecosystems. In contrast, the class also focuses heavily on the human impact of those subjects and evokes students to reflect on their own habits.

“Mostly the idea is that you have to know what the problems are before we can take steps to solve them,” Sharp said. “We do talk a lot about the issues we’re confronted with and solutions that can be taken anywhere from a personal level to national government policies to a global level.”

The course has sparked many students’ interest in pursuing environmental science as a career. Senior Trey Grieshaber is one of them.

“It’s definitely something I would want to do,” Grieshaber said. “I mean, these guys study things like the effects of pollutants and ecology and field biology … It sounds awesome.”

Sharp would advise students similar to Grieshaber to “take the course, see what parts they like and start following that path.”

For a lot of people, Sharp explains, the field of choice will probably be biological sciences, but for some people it could be environmental engineering or law.

Along with providing Grieshaber with a possible career path, the class has been exceptionally “eye-opening” to the impact of his daily life on the environment.

“My friend Allison [Coy], who’s also in the class, told me that ever since she started taking it, she’s realized that you know, ‘Wow, I’m just going to throw this plastic bottle away, and it’s never going to be reused’ or ‘Wow, I’m using too many paper towels,’ so I think it helps people open their eyes to how wasteful we are as a society,” Grieshaber said.

To some, a major cause for hesitation in taking the course is the political factor of environmental science. Because of recent events, some students may worry that the class would lead to opinion-based lectures, rather than fact-based. However, Sharp debunks this misconception.

“Even in my personal life I try to get news that is very middle-of-the-road,” Sharp said. “The more you know, the better decisions you can make.”

Despite teaching a class that is centered around human impacts on the environment, which are usually negative, Sharp remains hopeful for the future.

“I’m an eternal optimist. I think we have a lot of amazing young minds that can find solutions to these problems that will benefit everybody,” Sharp said.