<p>austinareadad, sorry to hear about your son’s problem with the language courses. The schedule constraints of AP classes do make it hard to reschedule. And when a class is “full,” union contracts may prohibit a teacher from taking an extra student, even if the teacher is willing. You might check whether there are such union restrictions in your district, or whether a teacher could voluntarily take on another student. If there is an entire class full of prospective German II students who are out of luck, and would want to take Spanish I, then that route might not work, though.</p>
<p>Will the school district give you a list of all of the classes and times? (I don’t mean the list of students in them–just the course names, times, and whether they are full or not.) It is possible that you might spot a minimally disruptive work-around, that the GC’s didn’t have time to check for. I think you mentioned that not all of the Spanish I classes are full. (I realize that this suggestion is mostly in the category of “simply hop on a flying pig that is passing by,” but it may sometimes work.)</p>
<p>The suggestion that I think is most practical, given that it’s 25 miles to the community college: your son could take online Spanish this year, then rejoin the school’s Spanish classes. Could you hire a Spanish tutor for speaking practice? If the honor society students at the school tutor classmates, this might even be free.</p>
<p>Since your son is in AP/pre-AP classes, he would probably qualify for the online classes through some of the talent searches–the ones that run at middle-school level, but then often offer classes through high school. Typically, there are some test-score requirements for admission to these, but they are not prohibitive.</p>
<p>QuantMech, thanks for the suggestions, but after reading responses here and speaking with my S about it, we both think the appropriate solution for him is to take Spanish I and II next summer at the CC, as each course is only six weeks long yet each counts as an entire year of a high school course. Then he can take Spanish III his junior year. He had been hoping to take CS courses next summer at the CC, but c’est la vie.</p>
<p>The Spanish I + Spanish II plan can work really well, for a student who is adept at languages. If your son will be going into Spanish III after a total of 12 weeks of studying the language, rather than 2 years (for the typical student), he might want to add a little more background in the language before Spanish III–not meaning to delay Spanish III a year, but just to supplement the exposure to the language in Spanish I and II. In this situation, I would probably buy a few Spanish language newspapers (not meaning a few, daily, just a few all together), Spanish comic books, and magazines in Spanish in his area of interest, and encourage him to look at a Spanish TV show every so often.</p>
<p>After your son has taken some Spanish, you might look into the audio magazine called Puerta del Sol, which used to be available on CD’s offered by Champs-Elysees (please overlook the fact that I don’t know how to insert an accent on the e). The company went out of business, apparently, but your local public library may have the old editions, or you might be able to get them on Ebay. </p>
<p>I have used the company’s German CD’s (Schau ins Land) and found them excellent–although I think a student would need about 2 years of study before he/she could make much traction with the German CD’s. Still, Puerta del Sol might be useful to your son after he’s had Spanish II at the CC. The discs typically have popular music, news coverage, sports, and “human interest” stories.</p>
<p>I concur. But that also results in goal conflict. Teach a class of <10 in German and then have to teach a class of 40 in English 1 just to average 25 students per class? Or teach two sections of English 1 at 25 students per class? What is “better” for the English students (which happen to be the majority of students in my example)?</p>
<p>QuantMech, good suggestions and I will look into Puerta del Sol, though where we live it is not difficult to find Spanish newspapers or other written material and about half the television programs are in Spanish. Also, I am sure that at least a few of my S’s friends speak Spanish at home, and he would not have difficulty finding someone to converse with in Spanish. He took German at least in part to be different, because Spanish here is almost as common as English.</p>
<p>Now CS courses ARE in fact pretty good to take on line. My D liked the one now called University Computer Science at eimacs.org. It used to be called something like a first course in computer science, but I think the guy found that Universities were subscribing to his course so he changed the name.</p>
<p>Berkeley and MIT have their introductory CS course materials (lecture videos, books, etc.) on-line, so self-study of those materials can be done to get introductory knowledge of CS.</p>
<p>Xiggi: I’d never tell anyone (unless they really wanted to live in Japan) that Japanese is a practical choice over Spanish–it’s not, at least not in this day and age. OTOH, Spanish isn’t practical for most people, either, nor was the class I took where we sewed hedgehogs and fried donuts. I will say it greatly improved my education, though, and even if it may not have been the most practical choice, it was an awesome, life-changing experience. It was just one that didn’t improve my marketability in a way Spanish might have.</p>
<p>If your son wants to continue German, then he can take (high school) German Online through Oklahoma State University. </p>
<p>(This also might be a cost-effective method for the school to offer German – for a school to offer it, I think it requires an adult in the room to monitor the class, computers, and a phone line once a week.)</p>
<p>You can sign up as an individual, though, and they let you move at your own pace. They make good use of the online model. I don’t think there are any textbooks to purchase. It includes one weekly scheduled call-in with a teacher or tutor and tutors available via phone or computer most of the rest of the time (including afternoons & evenings, I think).</p>
<p>If you end up paying for it yourself, there’s a homeschooler discount.</p>
<p>Everyone I know who has taken the course loves the program director, Sabine. It might be worth calling her just to discuss it.</p>
<p>Thanks everyone for all the helpful suggestions. We had not even considered on-line CS courses to substitute for the classes S was hoping to take next summer. We have much to look into.</p>