<p>Hey all! I have two questions:</p>
<p>1) I'm either going to start an Organic Chem class at my school next year that will be headed by my current AP Chem teacher (who's awesome) or take AP Bio. Will Organic Chem be recognized by college adcoms as being just as challenging.</p>
<p>2) Who here has gotten their HS to offer a new class? Share your experiences with trying to get it offerred.
Was it difficult at your school? Did you get enough student interested in it to get it offered?</p>
<p>afaik, starting a new course requires lots of paperwork and getting through administrative red tape. a teacher at my school wanted to introduce a new course and it took him more than 2 years before it got approved. did you already jump through those hoops?</p>
<p>no. but my school is pretty low key. last year during track i was talking to my coach/math teacher and he goes "i've decided to offer ap econ. you should take it." the next week a course description was posted in the course guide and, when enough people signed up, it was offerred the next year.
the problem this year is that my city is expanding so fast we don't have enough teachers to keep up...and as the school continues to grow we get more ESL and unmotivated kids...so, competing for resources, is the principal who wants to use up one of my teacher's 5 periods to offer a "Chemistry in the Community" class for kids that can't do General Chem
we'll see. i started an "interested" petition and we're up to 25 names. 29 is a standard class size so we're almost there!</p>
<p>From my experience, only teachers can propose new courses if they volunteer to teach, though I suppose if you convinced one it would work just as well. My totally awesome world history teacher just started a military history course that I was looking forward to, but unfortunately it wouldn't fit schedule-wise (well, it was either that or AP bio, not much of a choice there).</p>
<p>Yeah, so I'm totally jealous - wish we had that kind of specified science class. Good luck with recruiting people. I'm sure organic chem will look just as challenging if not more so, despite the lack of AP in the course title. Mentioning that you helped organize the class in your essays would definitely be helpful. See if you can get it designated as an honors course.</p>
<p>thanks for the encouragement silentsailor. we don't have honors courses though...maybe we could get an "advanced" thrown in the title...."UberAdvanced O Chem" would be another cool title...</p>
<p>Yeah, my Chem teacher is willing to teach it...but I would feel bad for him at the same time if he had to, lol. he'd then have to prep for 3 general chem classes, an AP chem class, and his organic chem class.</p>
<p>It'd be cool if the administration let us o-chem kids teach the "Chemistry in the Community" class...a 1:1 TA to student ratio would probably help the ESL/ struggling kids....but I don't think that'd ever happen.</p>
<p>My school just decided to offer Vocal Technique for next semester. This semester ends tomrrow. The process doesn't seem too hard. We just got AP Chem integrated in this year. It's definitely worth a try.</p>
<p>a student worked on getting a philosophy/sociology class at our school... he started working for it late sophmore year... it wasn't offered until the year after he graduated... most schools need lots of time... you have textbooks to worry about... teachers... classroom... space... interest</p>
<p>If you are interested in having the school offer a new class, make sure that
1.) there is a teacher (seems like you do already)
2.) get a petition of 30ish (or however many students make one class at your school) so that the administration knows that there are people interested in taking the course
3.) write up a brief overview (course, goals, reason) of the class you wish to offer</p>
<p>Organic Chemistry resources on the net...</p>
<p><a href="http://www.101science.com/Chemistry.htm#ORGANIC%5B/url%5D">http://www.101science.com/Chemistry.htm#ORGANIC</a> CHEMISTRY
<a href="http://www.101science.com/Chemistry.htm#OrganicTutorials%5B/url%5D">http://www.101science.com/Chemistry.htm#OrganicTutorials</a></p>
<p>i wanted to take AP macro or microeconomics next year but my school offers neither. does anybody know of a way to take it like online or something?</p>
<p>You might want to try the Florida Virtual School @ <a href="http://www.flvs.net%5B/url%5D">www.flvs.net</a>. It provides both AP Macro & Micro.</p>
<p>thanks kchen!!! :)</p>
<p>You're welcome. =)</p>
<p>(Apologies to the OP for hijacking the thread)</p>
<p>Do you have experience with this FLVS or have you just heard about it? If you have had experience, how did you go about the process of getting into it?</p>
<p>I took AP Microeconomics at FLVS and it is a prety good class. I got a 1 on the exam because the exam is hard and I got a B in the class. The class is kinda confusing.</p>
<p>since its only a 1 semester course can i take micro or macroeconomics still this year if i started within the next 2 weeks?</p>
<p>Another suggestion to the original poster: maybe you'd wanna help the school out in finding a suitable textbook?</p>