Hundreds of LT-bound eighth graders and their families crowded into the SC Fieldhouse to witness a variety of exciting displays the evening of Jan. 22 for Future Freshman Night, an event designed to get incoming freshmen interested in LT’s elective courses.

“Personally, I love it, since I do a lot of electives, and can show off why they should join,” Student Leader Morgan Moran ‘27 said.

Many of the displays featured attention-grabbing items, such as the variety of student art examples spotlighted at the tables for art electives like Drawing & Painting, Metals, Ceramics, and even Animation, or the paper airplane toss set up for the Aviation display.

 Aside from electives, some language-centric clubs were also present and gave out food. The French Club offered chocolate croissants and the German Club pretzels, complete with multiple students wearing large inflated pretzels on their chests.

“We do what we call an immersive elective fair, where every freshman teacher of an elective course creates a display,” Division Chair of Counseling & Student Support Services Drew Eder said.

Future Freshman Night is the second program for the eighth grade transition process, and is modeled after the Chicago Auto Show, Eder said. After checking out the Fieldhouse, families were able to head over to a number of “choose your own adventure” style break-out sessions in other rooms, including one for first-time LT families and one solely for Spanish-speaking families. A special session for the only Advanced Placement (AP) class offered to freshmen, AP Human Geography, was held in the PAC and featured both student and teacher speakers.

“This is going to be very different from your eighth grade social studies class,” AP Human Geography teacher Allison Lawscowski said. “If you want to take an AP class, you need to know that there are going to be sacrifices in certain areas.”

The class takes into account that freshmen are not accustomed to college-level classes, AP Human Geography teacher Shannon Lally said. 

“We do know that [they] are 14 and 15 years old and taking an AP class and so we do address-especially at the beginning of the year-how to, like, take notes,” Lally said. “We really want students to be able to use the resources that are available and advocate for themselves.”