Does anyone’s school require volunteer hours? Ours doesn’t require them but strongly encourages them and students can earn a special cord to wear at graduation if they have 70+ hours of unique hours (hours can not be used for any other club or award requirements). The GC’s see these hours and factor them into their recommendations so I’ve always asked my kids to do 100+
DS20 has found a way to rack up some volunteer work fast. DS18 is in NHS and they have there own volunteer requirements since DS18 provides transportation to DS20 so he has to tag along on these service projects anyway, he asked if he can participate in the NHS service projects for school volunteer hours since he’s not eligible to be a member of NHS yet and everyone agreed:-)
Does anyone’s kid have any experience working with school’s administrators on starting the NHS chapter? What all would be involved for the teachers/administrators? Thanks!
D20 was nominated for freshman homecoming princess. Teachers nominate, then the class votes. It’s a huge class, about 750 kids, so nice to know the teachers think she’s worthy. I don’t think she’s high profile at all with students so unlikely she will win. “It’s an honor to have been nominated”
@lilmom, thanks, I saw that I was wondering if anyone has personal experience to share tips on how to get things in motion - I assume this is pretty time-consuming for a school, so how can a student facilitate things? Can a student help in writing by-laws and other organizational documents to lessen time commitment for the teacher/administrator who’d be willing to serve as a chapter advisor? For example, I found a post by one student who initiated an NHS chapter in his school, he shared that he reached out to a local community service organization who agreed to sponsor the chapter for the annual dues and in return kids from NHS volunteered at that organization - a win-win for everyone. Thanks!
@typiCAmom I am not sure if you said or not, but do you know if there was previously a chapter of NHS at the high school? If so there may already be a chapter number and also some history of which teachers were involved etc. Hopefully a good history
@VickiSoCal, neither does our school, unless you count Spanish 3 (Honors, at least in name). I wonder how colleges can differentiate between kids who don’t take advantage of more challenging classes at their school and those who simply have no option to take more challenging classes. I know admission officers take school into consideration, but they can’t intimately know EVERY school, can they? Or do they consult every school’s curriculum?
@typiCAmom each school send a profile that explains what is and is not available at the school. A college knows if a school has 23 AP courses or 3. The counselor also fills out a form indicating if the student took the most rigorous option available, and I think it is on a scale of something like 1-5.
Also a lot of schools have regional readers who get to know an area, so they are aware.
so, my S20 is taking honors US history in 9th grade. he had the option of taking APush, but we said No because our other kid took it in 11th and thought it was hard (did well on AP test though). So - question - can a kid take the same class as an AP class later? And do you think 9th graders in general are ready for AP classes? (or can do well on the tests?)
He’s been so so so busy with ECs this fall that his grades are suffering. Never again will he do 2 major school activities at once (Xcountry & marching band).
Depends on the kids and the class, all three of my kids took AP Comp Sci in 9th grade (older two both got 5’s) and my S20 is taking Human Geography too. At our school you would not be able to retake the same course at a different level it would also look really odd on a transcript.
At our school, you cannot take US history until 11th grade. So, 9th graders can take AP world or AP human geography (or just regular world history - we don’t have an honors options between the two), though some 9th graders don’t take any type of history class at all. Many kids only take 3 years of social studies at our school, so they skip it freshman year.
Now, at the same time - many do take honors bio freshman year and then take AP bio senior year so I don’t know why it would be weird to take US history twice but not weird to take bio twice. I don’t understand any of this really, but I hope I will by the time our second goes to high school.
New here. my son is at a small private school (not academically elite but not bad for our area which unfortunately is not saying much, lol). There are no classes called honors for freshman and no AP classes for freshmen, but the students who are in geometry this year are essentially the honors track. I wish they had computer science as he has techie aptitude, but most of the large public high schools here don’t even have it. It’s possible he could take it at the nearby CC when he is ready for it (working on adjusting to high school at this point which is going well). He has a high achieving older sister ('17) who is at one of the larger public schools. She took a lot of AP classes but not all offered. She has supplemented with dual and concurrent enrollment at the CC.
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@VickiSoCal - "Kids who are advanced but don't want AP have no choices."
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My D17 has fallen into this for some subjects. I wish they kept honors track all the way through HS. The gap between AP and “college prep” is huge at her school and, as she says, most of the kids in “college prep” have no intention of going to college. One option is to do dual enrollment at a CC. Those classes are probably more challenging than regular track but not as demanding work load wise as AP.
my son is at a small private school (not academically elite but not bad for our area which unfortunately is not saying much, lol). There are no classes called honors for freshman and no AP classes for freshmen, but the students who are in geometry this year are essentially the honors track. I wish they had computer science as he has techie aptitude, but most of the large public high schools here don’t even have it. It’s possible he could take it at the nearby CC when he is ready for it (working on adjusting to high school at this point which is going well). He has a high achieving older sister ('17) who is at one of the larger public schools. She took a lot of AP classes but not all offered. She has supplemented with dual and concurrent enrollment at the CC.