Mental health, sexuality, drugs, alcohol and nutrition are topics that are talked about in health class.

“What’s more important than our health,” coach Rick Keltner said. “You can talk about all subjects being important but seriously having a healthy lifestyle is important. Young people today make so many decisions that are going to impact their lives, I just want them to be educated in the decisions they make.”

Keltner and coach Haley Wolf teach the students about problems in America and encourage them to make better decisions.

“We talked about drugs back in high school, but we didn’t talk about legal painkillers,” Keltner said. “I had them when I had back surgery and people get addicted to them and our country’s got a real epidemic, a real problem there and I’m excited to get to talk about this stuff to kids because this is one of the few places they will get to talk about it.”

Keltner said that suicide is the second leading cause of death with teenagers and alcohol related deaths are the first.

“What’s more important than making decisions about those things and finding ways to deal with those stresses that young people go through,” Keltner said. “That’s kind of my mission and I’m honored and I enjoy doing it. I do my best, there’s just so much to try to get through in a semester.”

Keltner said it is not hard to fill a semester up with Health related topics, he also believes that every teacher with a semester class probably feels rushed when teaching.

“I think there’s so many things, when you talk about the curriculum, that students have to get through to get prepared,” Keltner said. “I think we’re probably okay being a semester class but there’s a wealth of information out there, you could make it as detailed as you wanted to get. It’s worked out fine but I could go either way on it. If it was a year-long class we’d make it work, we wouldn’t run out of things to do.”

21abraun@usd489.com