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Lupine
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Posted: Mon Jun 11th, 2007 04:52 pm |
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My daughter (a rising junior) got her schedule for next year, and though she'd requested 7 courses, she got only six. (Adv. Pre-Calc, IB Chem, AP Eng Lang & Comp, AP French Lang, Latin 3, choir). She'd requested anatomy, but didn't get it. Her schedule is fairly constrained -- Latin and the choir are singletons, French is effectively a singleton since the only other section offered is during latin.
How important is it to be taking an absolutely full load junior year? We have an 8 period day, and most kids take six classes, but many take 7 and a few (crazy) kids take 8. She did great with seven classes freshman and sophmore years, but since there isn't a whole lot on offer 8th period that she's really thrilled about, I'm wondering whether it would be fine to just leave it as is.
Thoughts?
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Alumother
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Posted: Mon Jun 11th, 2007 05:12 pm |
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Just from my personal experience. This year, his junior year, my son took Latin 3 Honors, Spanish 1, AP Physics, Pre-Calc Honors, Global Studies, AP English Lit, and Religion (required at his high school). He also did journalism, counting as an 8th but not really. So that was 7 real classes. This schedule was my dumb idea, as he took band freshman and sophomore year and then decided he hated the new band teacher and wanted to quit. I told him he had to take something in its place, not realizing that that meant he took more classes than almost any other junior. Duh. Also he was still doing varsity soccer and then he joined the track team for fun and still of course kept up his obsessions with basketball and then on yeah decided he missed music and taught himself guitar.
His GPA had more A-s this year than previously....but what did I expect? So I recommend you let your D focus on the ones she is taking and not put another class in just for the load. If your D has interests she can use the time better focusing - or if she needs to earn some $$$ or whatever. I am testifying as a junkie to high achieving kids and every time I slip up and do something like this, push for the extra class, send injured kid to ballet summer intensive just because it will be "good for her" -----it backfires.
And I am out of kids so if I have learned my lesson I have no one else to communicate it to but this board .
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CarolynLawrence
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Posted: Mon Jun 11th, 2007 07:03 pm |
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Lupine, College admissions officers are looking for kids to have those "core" academic classes each year - math, English, science, foreign language, social studies.
The only thing I see missing from your daughter's schedule is the social studies, but I'm assuming that she will have at least three years there before she graduates, which will be fine for most schools.
Therefore, I agree with Alummother: with the possible exception of a history or government class, I wouldn't push in another elective course just to have 7 courses, unless it is something that your daughter really wants to take next year. But, others may have a different slant on things.
Last edited on Mon Jun 11th, 2007 07:05 pm by CarolynLawrence
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WestrnMom
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| Joined: | Fri May 26th, 2006 |
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Posted: Mon Jun 11th, 2007 07:29 pm |
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Anatomy is considered an elective even if it's as difficult and time-consuming as any other science course. We went through that this year. If it helps, my son's school also allows them to take 7 classes, rather than 6, but they are only required to take 5 solids and PE or study hall (or a free period in 11th and 12th grades). It didn't keep kids who did that from getting into some good schools.
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Lupine
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Posted: Mon Jun 11th, 2007 07:42 pm |
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Thanks. I think we'll just go ahead and leave it alone. (She'll take AP US History as a senior, so that will give her three years of social studies; government is a freshman class in our district.)
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outwest
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| Joined: | Sun Mar 4th, 2007 |
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Posted: Mon Jun 11th, 2007 08:19 pm |
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Our high school only offers six periods. Six is plenty! Seven or eight seems like way too many to me. I am wondering what your school hours are? Ours are 7:45am-2:45pm with a 30 minute lunch every day, no other breaks. Are your classes really short or something? Each of our six periods is 58 minutes long with 8 minutes passing period inbetween (hardly time to run between classes when they are far away from each other). Our HS also offers a full summer school program which is optional and some kids take their history or science or PE in the summer for 6-7 weeks depending on the class (to make room during the year for something else). They also have a zero period for PE during the year that a few kids take advantage of. What HS kid is willing to get to school at 6:50 am.
I thought other states were supposed to have better public education systems then California, but the more I hear about them the more I think our district has got it right. Yah, we have 32 kids in a class, but not in K-3 or in 7th or 9th grade English. All those classes have a max of 20. Yes, we have 2200 in the high school, but we also have tons of choices and multiple sections of classes so people aren't locked out like your DD was because there is always another section you can take.
If a kid takes 8 periods a day tell me when they eat lunch?
The colleges are going to want to see math (3 or more), english(4), foreign language(2 or more), science with lab(Chemistry/biology/physics) and social studies (US/World history/Government/econ if they offer it). They don't care about PE. As long as she has at least 3 years of history and at least three of the others she'll be in good shape.
Last edited on Mon Jun 11th, 2007 09:06 pm by outwest
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Lupine
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Posted: Mon Jun 11th, 2007 10:31 pm |
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Our H.S. begins at 7:30 (gulp) and finishes at 3:00. Each of the eight periods is about 50 minutes long, and they allow five minutes for passing period. Most kids have period 4 or 5 off for lunch, but there are those who take 8 full periods. I've known a few who've done that, and they were pretty much all music or drama folks who wanted to participate in multiple ensembles. Kids with that kind of a schedule can usually find a teacher who allows them to eat during class.
As far as I know, singletons are a problem at a lot of schools, not just ours. There just aren't enough students taking Latin 3 to support multiple sections, and the same is true of many of the advanced German classes. On the other hand, if you take Spanish (at any level) you have a lot of sections because so many students take Spanish. All in all, I'm glad our school still offers up through AP level in Spanish, French, German, and Latin, and a new Chinese program is being added next year.
The class size issue is nastier. We've got a math problem here -- students are funded as if they're taking 5.5 classes as a full-time student, but the typical student takes 6.5 classes. Teachers are full-time if they teach 5 sections a day. Added to that is a managerial decision that AP/IB classes can be quite a bit larger than regular classes since they generally attract stronger and more capable students. They're probably not wrong, but it is aggravating to see 35 kids in a French IV class. I've heard the suggestion that this is the fairest way because it is precisely those AP/IB students who load up on 7 classes that cause the class size issue to begin with.
I'm particularly wary of legislative class size limitations, and my professional involvment with K-12 legislative initiatives has reminded me of the adage, 'Be careful what you wish for." If English classes are capped at 25 students, and a 26th or 27th student comes along who's interested in AP Enlish Literature, the economics will almost always force the school to turn those supplemental students away. In many cases (such as with our German teacher) there's also the teaching capacity -- she has no time available to teach an extra section, and trying to hire a teacher for a singleton course offering is a tough proposition.
I'm a bit happier with targets, because that still leaves the school some flexibility to deal with local conditions or capacity issues. Right now our targets are too high, but the economics are scary -- the cost is about $1.5 million/year in operating costs to lower average class size by one child districtwide. Given that the school has 26 National Merit finalists (and fifty five or so NM Commended students) out of a graduation class of around 440, there isn't the push to spend additional money in that direction. These days about the only incremental funding that comes in is for at-risk kids, and our AP/IB kids do not fit into that category.
Last edited on Mon Jun 11th, 2007 10:38 pm by Lupine
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CarolynLawrence
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Posted: Tue Jun 12th, 2007 02:31 am |
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| Wow, Lupine. My head is spinning just reading about your school district's situation! It is interesting that they have managed to make it all work reasonably (?) well for the majority of students.
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Lupine
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Posted: Tue Jun 12th, 2007 02:58 am |
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CarolynLawrence wrote: Wow, Lupine. My head is spinning just reading about your school district's situation! It is interesting that they have managed to make it all work reasonably (?) well for the majority of students.
I won't say that it works fabulously, but it does work. I suspect that you'd find that the scheduling issues and budget tradeoffs are just as complex if you looked at much smaller school. It worked better at our middle (charter) school, because one of our tenets was that every student gets every requested core course (math, science, English, social studies, foreign language) but at the middle school level most teachers teach six periods a day, and as a charter school we had a lot more flexibility in setting and arranging schedules. Since we cared about having small classes, we were willing to make the tradeoffs (big gym and choir classes, fewer administrators paid less,...) that allowed us to have a target size of twenty students in core classes and a classroom set of texbooks for most courses so that students didn't need to haul books around. Even there, though, you'd still end up with the situation where one Spanish II class ended up with 26 students because it was the only way to make the schedule work, and an Algebra II/Trig class ended up large because the (fabulous) teacher didn't want to teach another section.
The bigger issue at the regular public schools, like my daughter's high school, is that they aren't consistently hiring wonderful teachers and they don't have an effective new teacher mentoring program. The variability of sections taught by different teachers is dramatic, and unfortunate.
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Descartes
Super Moderator
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Posted: Tue Jun 12th, 2007 03:12 am |
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How did a 7.5 hour instructional day make it past your teachers' union?
In our school district, and I believe this is common in the metro area here (and possibly throughout the state), instructional days are limited by contract to 6.5 hours. Teachers get 1.5 hours prep time.
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Lupine
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Posted: Tue Jun 12th, 2007 03:22 am |
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Descartes wrote: How did a 7.5 hour instructional day make it past your teachers' union?
In our school district, and I believe this is common in the metro area here (and possibly throughout the state), instructional days are limited by contract to 6.5 hours. Teachers get 1.5 hours prep time.
No teacher teaches 7.5 hours per day -- middle school teachers at our charter school teach six periods a day, high school teachers (non-charter) teach five.
Education rules vary tremendously state to state, and comparisons are tougher than you might imagine. For example, your state might require 180 contact days per school year (contact day=day with kids in seats and teacher in the room) while ours might allow for 178 contact days, but then allow that to be reduced for parent teacher conferences. Also, because we have quite a few very tiny school districts in very rural areas, we have a number of districts that operate on a four day schedule with an extended day.
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Deja
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Posted: Tue Jun 12th, 2007 11:53 am |
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Descartes wrote: In our school district, and I believe this is common in the metro area here (and possibly throughout the state), instructional days are limited by contract to 6.5 hours.
Same here. Two schools in our large school system (85 schools) have a longer school day. One is a high school that has a 12-minute longer school day than the rest, and the other is a middle school that has a 30-minute school day longer than the rest.
My son is one of those kids who takes 8 courses/year in high school. I don't agree with it, but he insists on it. There is no lunch period; if a student wants to eat lunch, they are forced to lose a whole block of potential class time, since we are on the A/B block schedule. Half of the block is lunch, and half is studyhall. If they wanted to eat lunch every day, they would have to lose two full blocks/year, so they could have that free block on A and B days. Teachers allow students to eat in class, which is what my son has done the past two years (he is a sophomore to become a rising junior at the end of this week).
In examining his course list for next year, I think the difficult classes are going to be:
AP Calculus AB, AP Biology, and possibly (depending on the teacher he gets) Spanish4. He shouldn't have much difficulty with AP US History or AP English Composition. The remaining three classes shouldn't be bad at all -- Legal Oratory and Debate/Legal Ethics (required for his high school program; teacher has already talked about giving him alternate assignments for the debate part, since he's a state champion debater), Courtroom Drama (new offering in the Theater department), and his independent study in economics. I'm hoping he has some flexibility for that independent study course so that he can get occasional help in Calculus and maybe eat lunch! during the study block that he will be assigned for that course.
He isn't involved in extracurricular sports (which I know are intensely time-consuming), but he does have other extracurriculars, and his day (although only in school from 7:25 a.m. until 2 p.m.) is very long, since he has to get on his bus at 6 a.m. each day because he attends his high school out of zone for its special legal program.
Last edited on Tue Jun 12th, 2007 11:58 am by Deja
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mathmom
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Posted: Wed Jun 13th, 2007 05:14 pm |
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Our son has had scheduling issues every year. One year his schedule arrived with three courses! He's gotten adept at going into the counselor's office and playing with the computer until he's got a workable schedule. He didn't get to take the AP Science courses in the order he would have liked. This year he had to do differential equations as an independent study and couldn't find any way to include honors or AP English, (but got his first A in English doing non-honors so not a huge loss.) We just try to make sure he has a full schedule of reasonably challenging courses he likes.
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