After five years, Fashion Design III, or Practicum in Fashion Design, is being offered for the 2024-25 school year. The class is all year, and includes independent work for students to create their own patterns and develop sewing techniques.

“It’s really for some [students’] own personal interest,” fashion design teacher Dianne Weaver said. “For others, it’s career driven: they want to be in the industry in some way, shape or form, and they want to know as much about it as possible. These kids are willing to commit themselves to learning more complex skills where they can actually sew clothing and learn to even construct their own patterns.”

This year will be the last year before fashion design will have different course requirements in order to comply with a new College Career Military Readiness (CCMR) path. The path will  require students to take an entrepreneurship course in order to continue into advanced fashion design courses. Weaver said she finds the entrepreneurship courses important, after witnessing a student lose a design they hadn’t patented.

“In the class itself a lot of] the students tend to have some little small side hustles going,” Weaver said. “The most common thing is T-shirt sales [or] their own little online stores going. [It’s important that] kids understand [that] when you create something, you legally need to protect your ideas.”

Senior Katie Boeckman, a student in Fashion Design III, said the class allows her to improve her skill set and work on her own personal projects. Boeckman uses skills from fashion design to personalize things like her own clothes, material and items and also repurpose old items.

“[Fashion design] is definitely setting us up to be prepared later in life,” Boeckman said. “We [now] all [are] able to create a project, and start something. [Being able to create freely] is great for building our finances and being ourselves in our clothing.”