<p>My son- 2014 scheduled Honors English and Apush next year which has to be taken together in a 2 period block. If you don't schedule it together- you cannot have Honors English. I posted before when he was planning the schedule. It is challenging with lots of homework and lots of smart kids avoid it. He did the same combo this year but a lot of kids are not sticking with it next year. Too many kids want the easy A's and also the Eng. teacher is taking a leave of absence so there is an unknown.</p>
<p>He made a try-out choir next year- not a huge deal for boys- but very few soph. girls make this choir. Well found out this choir meets the same period as his H.eng-APush (2 period class). And because there are so few kids challenging themselves- there will only be 1 section. (other boys made the choir but they are in regular classes)
At first, I was like, oh no problem, the school will change it but it only affects 2 kids. One boy and one girl. </p>
<p>IF it was a budget issue, I could understand, but out of 350 or so kids, probably 25-30 will take this class. Only 8-9% will get H. Eng. The school does not do a good job of telling students and parents about the importance of a challenging curriculum. </p>
<p>I have vented to a couple friends but I have had a couple people (including a mom of a val.) say he should drop down to reg. classes. WTH</p>
<p>Things that I think could help:
If the school would weight Honors classes .5 or something.
Already they are adding "advanced Language arts" to the MS so maybe more kids will be prepared for challenging classes and on that "track"
They could split up soph. level Eng. and it could be taken with reg. level or Honors U.S. History because many more kids would want to take H. English. It is called Humanities as a block</p>
<p>So you are saying that he has to choose between this choir and honors/Apush courses? Well, I think this does happen… it happened in my high school many years ago. My kids’ high school schedules it so “elective” type classes like choir are all in two specific blocks during the day so there is no conflict between them and academic classes. You might not be able to do something like a specific choir and an art class you wanted, but it would not conflict with academics. But it is a private school where academics and arts are valued.</p>
<p>I really like our HS, but it’s small and it’s not uncommon for kids to have scheduling problems with a class that’s only once a day. The harder the class, the more likely that it will be offered once. AP physics has always been offered 1st period, and band is also always 1st period so those kids often do band once a week. Thank goodness the band director is flexible. Maybe a similar compromise can be done at your school.</p>
<p>APush is definitely loaded with homework. If he doesn’t take Honors English, will he still be able to take AP Language the following year? At our school the kids had to follow a sequence.</p>
<p>If you are looking at a top college, you son should try to stay in the top 10% of his class unless your school doesn’t rank.</p>
<p>Happykid went to a 2000 student HS with a bazillion honors and AP classes and there were still all kinds of conflicts. That’s life. Not everyone can squeeze all the classes they want into their schedules. Would your kid be able to do the honors English work as an independent study? Ask about that kind of option. Sometimes there are one or two “honors” kids in a regular class who do extra work or slightly different work.</p>
<p>It is unfortunate, but not uncommon, for kids to have to give up something along the way. Each of my kids has had to drop something they liked to take something they wanted to take. Harder yet is our “smallish” school has some desireable classes that only meet every other year. There are always schedule conflicts for a small number of kids.</p>
<p>In our school the kids who took the most advanced classes were very frequently in the music program, so the school always scheduled band and choir during the first two hours of the day, and the high-level academic classes after that.</p>
<p>Consider writing a letter to the school board.</p>
<p>Kids always have to pick and choose, especially as it concerns electives. My daughter is the editor of her HS newspaper. There is no credit given, but it takes up a regular class period in her schedule. So yes, she has given up some electives in order to make it work and I am ticked because there is no credit whatsoever on her transcript. </p>
<p>It is what it is. But I can assure you one thing, getting a school to give APs or more rigorous classes a GPA bump is not an easily done thing. Lots of school boards, parents meetings etc… and then a lot of times it fails because of just what you point out. Some kids will have dropped down to the regular curriculum and so even if they do institute a bump, they wouldn’t do so until the current classes graduate and can’t be penalized by the change/</p>
<p>Consider online courses or community college courses in place of the APUSH and Honors English. Or, he could do chorus in a nearby conservatory prep program, if there is one, or a community chorus or choir. Or, he could drop down a level with the English and take another history class.</p>
<p>Our school is also small, and there are many scheduling conflicts. Our daughter had to drop a level and a year in math, in order to take music theory. For history, she took it online. This was so successful for her that I worked with the local education foundation to fund an online program for the whole high school, which offers AP classes and other classes that our school could never, ever afford, everything from environmental science to philosophy to detective novels.</p>
<p>Colleges did not penalize our daughter for dropping in the math, by the way. They saw it as a sign of her dedication to music, it would seem. She enjoyed the lower math class more than she ever had enjoyed math, which was an added bonus.</p>
<p>My daughter was very involved in auditioned choir/jazz singing in h.s. Her choir director also taught at the local community college, so he could only schedule his h.s. classes at a certain time.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, it conflicted with my daughter’s schedule twice. But, she refused to give up choir and jazz. It was a big part of her day. So instead of having her father (she had him for Geometry) for Honors Pre-Calculus, she elected to take it at the community college. It was just called Pre-Calculus there. The next year the same thing happened with AP Statistics. Conflicted with choir. So, she took Elementary Stats. at the community college. She passed with an A in each class and she liked that the courses were just a semester long. Also, it counted as college credit at the university where she’s finishing up her freshman year.</p>
<p>I’m not sure how my daughter would have handled it if she hadn’t been able to adjust her schedule the way she did. She definitely would have needed to give up choir if it meant that she would lose out on an important academic class.</p>
<p>You may want ot consider the option of having your son attend the community college to take these classes and others that interest him. They are often scheduled in the evenings so there would not be a problem with his EC’s. I personally think kids who do this are trully showing their personal interest in obtaining what is available to them and I am sure that kids who do this stand out in the college selection process…although the reasons for doing this should be about interest in getting an education and not how things look. If your child wants to choose choir than choir it should be. If this does not sit well than look into different options. Coices are not easy to make and sometimes over burdoned public schools just don’t encounter many kids who want both the EC’s and the academics. Good luck and I hope it works out. I would also add that there might be on-line classes for these subjects but be aware that on-line courses are really for kids who can keep up with the assigments and readings without anyone reminding them to do so.</p>
<p>Are these people kidding? Take the classes at a community college? Go find a conservatory?</p>
<p>There are tons of kids in high schools around the country who deal with this exact same situation. They almost all make the same choice: take the academic class, forego the music class. It’s not a happy decision, but its one that has to be made. I sure had to make that decision. In high school I was in band classes (at least one, sometime up to three) all 7 semesters up until the second semester of my senior year. Then there was a time conflict with IB Physics and I had to drop band to take it. Not a happy decision. But it was the right one, and I have no regrets.</p>
<p>Unless your son is going to major in music then the choice is pretty clear. You can definitely offer the community college courses route, but just be aware that’s going to be significantly more work and stress on both you and him.</p>
<p>My D had the same choice, band or APUSH. She chose band. One, APUSH was not something that would affect what she wanted to major in in college. 2, band was her major ec and one that if she didn’t take band would affect many other activities that she was in.</p>
<p>She never looked back and got into all but one of the schools she applied to. </p>
<p>I think your S should try to decide what course he wants to take. I don’t think that there is a wrong choice.</p>
<p>In many areas, there are extracurricular choir groups – either at churches, or independent. A good option might be to get the extracurricular out of the academic day.</p>
<p>The trouble with taking the music at church or in the community is that, for many kids, the students in the band and choir constitute their social group. They just don’t want to miss that communal experience.</p>
<p>In our school, with few exceptions, the music kids were one social group and the football/cheerleaders were another social group. </p>
<p>Weighted grading is a many-edged sword. It helps some kids and hurts others, and sometimes helps and hurts the same student in different ways. Be careful what you wish for. And I agree with Modadunn, even if the school institutes weighting, it would probably begin with a future freshman (or even 8th grade) class, not current HS students. To do otherwise would be unfair.</p>
<p>My daughter faced scheduling problems as well. Ironically, she was the founder of the Latin Club at her school but couldn’t get Latin 3 into her schedule, which then eliminated her from AP Latin and the Latin Honor Society. Its a good thing that she had doubled up on languages in freshman and sophomore years or she would have been hardpressed to meet the language requirements for graduation and some of the schools she applied to. It was a bit of a concern at the time, but she’s been accepted to her top choice schools, so in the end it didn’t really matter. And she’s still thinking about Latin and may minor in Classical studies.</p>
<p>I think all schools deal with the scheduling problems. Our school is small, and often there are conflicts. For S3 he was a year ahead in Spanish so he had to choose between Honors Geometry and the higher spanish class his freshmen year. We decided likely it would be a problem every year so just decided to go back a year in Spanish.</p>
<p>Just to clarify: my daughter is a music major in college. Doing Sat. classes at conservatory (with or without financial aid) was a pretty “normal” thing to do for kids who were going on in music, and sometimes the music at high school is no longer satisfactory (depending on the school).</p>
<p>The point is that many schools have these scheduling issues, and there are options for dealing with it: dropping one of the classes, and taking a different one; online courses; doing music outside of school; independent study.</p>
<p>Also, later on, the guidance office can include a note in their letter to colleges explaining that a student did such and such due to a scheduling conflict.</p>
<p>What is clear is that students can’t be in two places at once!</p>
<p>Almost all the posters are addressing the time conflict issue, but few seem to be taking on the issue of kids taking less-challenging courses in order to have a higher GPA. I think that the highest priority should be to take the AP/Honors English and APUSH. If a kid wants to excel and go on to attend a challenging college, he better start now. Both my kids took the same combination, and indeed it was tough, particularly the homework and reading load in APUSH (advice: buy an APUSH exam review book). Still, they were better prepared to do college-level work. </p>
<p>Also, college admissions personnel are not stupid. They are generally able to discern the difference between a kid with a 3.8 GPA who took no Honors/AP classes, versus a kid with a 3.5 GPA who did.</p>
<p>The community college option is another worthy choice, if is logistically workable. My daughter took Political Science and English Comp at the local CC (admittedly, 3 miles from the high school), and I think that it made a huge difference for her. The high school English courses were good, but they were strong on literature, weak on writing skills. That one CC English Comp course turned our daughter from a mediocre writer into a good one.</p>