<p>I found online Italian through UNC, but it’s limited to rising high school seniors. U of Wisconsin also offers it but again, appears to be limited to high school seniors. Good luck, sacchi.</p>
<p>I’ve heard good things about Concordia Language Villages. ([Concordia</a> Language Villages - High School Credit](<a href=“http://www.concordialanguagevillages.org/newsite/Programs/Youth/hs_credit1.php]Concordia”>http://www.concordialanguagevillages.org/newsite/Programs/Youth/hs_credit1.php))</p>
<p>Can she switch what order science she takes?</p>
<p>^ I don’t think she can switch science order. She’s not far enough in math to take physics early. And AB Bio requires a Chem prereq.</p>
<p>Check about the future on Italian classes at your high school. At my son’s high school they eliminated German a few years ago. (Part of it I think was the fact that so many kids to IB languages, Spanish and French). With budget cuts and scheduling difficulties I suspect languages are on the chopping board elsewhere too. That could impact your long term planning.</p>
<p>I think the least disruptive option is to just take the regular Science class and have the GC mention it on the LOR. A scheduling conflict is very common at small schools.</p>
<p>I wrote on the other FL question thread that we were urged by an adcom not to switch languages, but to go as far with the one she started as she could.</p>
<p>My D1 used the U of Wisconsin Learning Innovations program 4 years ago, when she couldn’t schedule a year of German. At the time they had HS level courses quite inexpensively; I’m not finding that on their website now, but maybe I’m just missing something. It was distance learning, not an online course. But I will say that it was a HUGE amount of work, and my very capable kid was way over her head. We had to hire a tutor to help her get through it. She was proud to have mastered it - it was so intensive that she did German 2 and 3, by the time she was done with their version of HS German 2. She took German 4 senior year, and placed out of quite a lot of college German. She was always behind in usage, not surprisingly, but she was quite solid in grammar.</p>
<p>I agree that Italian may not be there in the future. I would say that people would understand about Chem; at some point, kids have to choose what matters to them, and can’t always do everything, and everything at the highest level. If language matters more right now, I say she should go for it, especially with a language that is unusual and not always offered even at colleges.</p>
<p>At DD’s (very small) high school, she was allowed to self study honors physics because of a scheduling problem. She read the honors text, took the honors test, but sat in the regular class. The same teacher taught both the honors and regular classes. The year before (her first year at the school) she took regular chemistry instead of honors because of a scheduling problem. Had we known that the self-study was possible, she would have done it for chemistry too. Taking the regular chemistry did not hurt her when she applied to colleges. I think scheduling problems are common.</p>
<p>Thanks for all of the feedback. I looked into distance learning options, to consider taking Italian 2 during the summer, and Italian 3 next year in school. Unfortunately, Italian 3 also conflicted with her schedule.</p>
<p>We decided to have her drop down from honors chem to regular chem, and take Italian 2 in school next year. Hopefully the GC will note that in her LOR and it won’t have too much impact on her college admissions.</p>
<p>sacchi, that sounds like a good plan. I don’t know why it’s so difficult to fit in a language, particularly one that’s not “popular”.</p>
<p>Congrats on following her heart. I’m sure she’ll have fewer regrets about the chem than on losing her chance to take this unusual language that she enjoys.</p>
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I don’t know why it’s so difficult to fit in a language, particularly one that’s not “popular”. [/equote]</p>
<p>The unpopular classes typically only have one section. That’s what makes scheduling difficult, especially if the student is taking several course only offered in one timeblock.</p>
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<p>Sacchi, I think you made the right choice. My daughter took a less common language in high school – and for a variety of reasons had a lot of scheduling conflicts, and came out of high school extremely weak in math & science classes. But exceptionally strong with her chosen language. She ended up being accepted to highly selective elite colleges, despite also having lower-than-hoped-for SAT/ACT scores. </p>
<p>I think it was a HELP that she had a more unusual pattern on her high school transcript. I’d note that we also targeted colleges where her language would be an asset. </p>
<p>Obviously, every situation is different – but I pretty much let my daughter navigate the whole scheduling thing in her high school, and she made choices that were rational but didn’t always put her on the top (“most challenging”) track. I think in the long run she had a better and more balanced high school experience. </p>
<p>I think too many students – especially here on CC – go overboard trying to do it all – and they don’t necessarily end up with better college options. Some do get into their super-reach dream colleges – but there are also plenty who don’t. </p>
<p>Anyway, its pretty easy to explain a scheduling conflict down the line.</p>
<p>I think more and more schools are putting their focus on one language (in our case, Spanish) to the detriment of other language courses. Obviously when a language is unpopular there are going to be fewer sections because there is no demand for it; but at least at our high school the demand is lowered by the school itself because the focus is on one language only. It’s as if they heard “everyone must speak Spanish in our global economy” which is, of course a valuable skill; but what about those who wish to be multilingual?</p>
<p>In our school district they cut out German in favor of Chinese and virtual Arabic. French is also set to be phased out. There was a big uproar from the parents partly because of a German heritage here but the school district wouldn’t budge. So now we have Spanish classes that are over-subscribed and the others are way under-subscribed. There are also two unhappy German teachers that are forced to teach Social Studies because they were dual certified. Ironically, that’s the reason they could cut German because those language teachers could be kept on for Social Studies. Spanish is so popular because French is going to be cut and the other two languages are reputably too hard to learn and may not stay in the curriculum.</p>
<p>More and more our student are taking classes virtually during the summer and during the school year to make sure they get in all the classes they want. They are graduating with more than enough credits, however when you are trying to cover the county graduation requirements and the colleges ‘suggested’ requirements they are running out of slots. Other times students are trying to correct schedules if they were not given correct advise by GCs early on (ie. they took Earth Science in 9th grade only to find it is not a lab science).
My son had to do some serious swapping and switching to get in a 5th year of a language his Sr. year (for only one target school), along with two programming classes. Luckily he had a very understanding engineering teacher that let him take a couple of classes out of order.
How many other kids have AP Chem that takes 2 blocks, 1 lecture and 1 lab? That is a real zinger. I’m wondering how common this is.</p>
<p>blueiguana, is that course for a full year or just a semester for AP Chem? Our high school had block scheduling so AP Chem was 1.75 hours every other day for the full year. D ended up doing several virtual courses: AP English Language (high school didn’t offer it at the time), Number Theory and AP French (neither offered by HS). Also fortunate to be able to do pre-Calc independent study and Organic Chem as well. </p>
<p>The swapping and switching is more par for the course for high level students in our district. Of course, that’s only after the battle of the century with guidance. kathiep, I hate to see any language being cut but I think kids become fearful of languages with a new alphabet. Too bad that type of learning can’t start earlier than high school.</p>
<p>I wish the school had let us know that there is a higher likelihood of scheduling problems with less common languages in advance, before she ever picked Italian. In hindsight, if you think about it, it makes sense that the less popular classes would have fewer sections. But it never occurred to me at the time in the 8th grade when she picked that she wanted to take Italian. </p>
<p>Her 2010 brother also took Italian and had no problems with scheduling for Italian 1-3, although wasn’t able to take Italian 4 this year because of schedule, and stopped with 3 years. </p>
<p>NJ is going through a lot of school budget cuts, and there will be a lot of layoffs in our district for next year, so I suspect the scheduling problems will continue junior year.</p>
<p>In our local public schools kids have problems every year with languages and either band or orchestra and they have to choose. It is really a bummer for some of the top kids because they really want to continue with both. Here there are several sections of the upper level Spanish, but one section of German and French, and those are the only languages offered.</p>
<p>Just had same conversation with our GC, can’t continue on track for AP French (did pre-AP this yr) and do band. Well band is what my son lives and breathes so…forget that. GC kept saying “you have to continue French, it looks bad to drop in sr. yr, when he did pre-AP” but all of his colleges just want 3 yrs so why does it look that bad? If he was planning to major in French, I could understand but really, when is enough…enough?</p>