Two years of foreign language...

Parent Cafe
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<p>You all rock! Thank you so much for your kind and thoughtful responses. It helped me so much to be able to just write down my concerns. Your responses helped me process the whole matter much clearer than I was doing.</p>

<p>To be fair to the administration, they are trying to work with us but this year seems to be their “practice year” where they are learning from the mistakes to better prepare for future classes. They plan to offer an after school class for PE in order to free up an extra period during the day. Unfortunately, for kids like my son, they would have to quit all their extracurricular activities in order to take the class and that’s not going to happen.</p>

<p>To answer the question about how many classes per day, that’s where it gets a bit tricky as there are only six. So with 4 years of English, 4 years of Math, 4 years of Science, 3 of History/Social Studies, 2 of PE, 2 of Foreign Language, 2 of state/district mandated electives (one Fine Arts and one that is a STEM class that is also a part of the academy’s curriculum), that only leaves the kids 3 elective classes (over the course of 4 years) that they get to choose on their own, as fun or as a special interest. Normally, the kids use two of these electives as their 3rd and 4th years of foreign language, but for the kids in this academy, all three classes must be from their STEM curriculum.</p>

<p>It would be nice if we had some wiggle room with the PE classes, but our district only offers summer school to students who need to repeat a class that they have flunked. We asked if our S could take summer PE courses at our community college, but the district has a firm rule against it and will not give credit for it. </p>

<p>But…the good news is that after reading your responses, I realize that this is actually doable. I love the idea of having his counselor write a note with his application explaining the circumstances. We live in a large city that has many universities and there may be one that offers some sort of summer language enrichment program or he can self study and take the AP test. He can even somehow turn this into a really cool college application essay down the road. I have a call into his counselor and with all your suggestions, we’ll be completely prepared when we meet with him.</p>

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<p>mom24boys - Much success to your son’s robotics team! I hope they make it to St. Louis!! The World Festival is the absolutely most amazing time for the kids.</p>

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<p>I wanted to add - I will definitely work to make sure this is changed for future students. It is frustrating to say the least. My son is a student who equally loves his STEM courses and his humanities ones. At this point, I could see him as an engineer or a journalist, or knowing him, maybe both. The academy is fun for him but so are all his other classes too.</p>