|
 |
Helping Your
Student Schedule Classes for Next Year
By David Torrence, Assistant Principal
Greenville City School District
For seniors at Greenville High School, the beginning of the second
semester is a time to start counting the days left before
graduation. For everyone else, however, it is a time to start
thinking about next year’s schedule. Over the next two months,
students in grades 8 thru 11 will be starting the process of scheduling
classes for the 2016-17 school year. Here are a few things
parents and students should consider as they start to build their
schedules:
1) Every High School Class Matters! The first, and most
important, thing to remember is that almost two-thirds of the credits a
student needs to earn a diploma are determined by both the Board of
Education and the State of Ohio. Students will need four Language
Arts credits, four Math credits, three Social Studies credits, three
Science credits, a Fine Arts credit (Art or Music), a half-credit of
Health (one semester), and a half-credit of Physical Education (two
semesters). That’s sixteen of the twenty-two credits a student
needs to graduate.
In our new schedule, students have seven class periods in which they
can take classes. In four years, that allows for twenty-eight
class periods, which should be more than enough periods to gather the
twenty-two credits a student needs. Most of these classes,
however, build upon the ones from the previous year. So if you
fail a class, you may not be prepared to take the next class in that
discipline. At the same time, you have to give up a class period
in your schedule next year to make up the class you failed last
year. So, if you fail Language Arts 9, you don’t have seven
periods for your sophomore year; you have six, plus Language Arts 9
again. This can cause a student to be unable to take a desirable
elective in order to re-take a class that should have been passed the
previous year. So it is important to remember that whatever
classes you choose, your paramount goal is to make sure that you pass
all the classes on your schedule.
2) Know Your Foundation Classes. Many of our Career
Technical programs have what are called “Foundation Classes.”
Foundation Classes are a way for students to get a feel for the program
they might want to pursue. In some cases, however, they are
required for future participation in a Career Technical program.
Foundation Classes also serve as an elective, and can help students
fulfill their elective requirements for graduation.
3) Watch Out for Classes that Have Prerequisites. By the time
students reach their junior year, they may find that advanced classes
have some sort of prerequisite. Prerequisites can be as simple as
having earned a minimum grade in a particular class, or as complex as
going through an audition or a meeting with the instructor. This
may not seem important to incoming freshmen, or next year’s sophomore,
but it can help your student make a good choice when it comes to
scheduling. Even though you are looking at next year, it is a
good idea to think about what you might want to do in two (or three)
years, so that you can take classes now that will make it easier to
take other classes in the future.
4) You Will Have to Make Choices. Because of the limited
resources we have and because some classes are attractive to only a
small number of students, there may be times when your student will
have to choose between two classes that he or she wishes to take.
When this happens, difficult choices must be made. When faced
with this situation, students need to seek the counsel of the teachers
teaching the conflicting classes, their guidance counselor, and their
parents. Ask for help in identifying the positives and negatives
of each choice. Consider why each class is attractive to you as a
student. The key is to understand WHY one class is more important
to you over the other one. If you have valid reasons for your
choice, you can know that the choice you made was a good one.
Ultimately, you may find yourself having to choose one class over
another.
5) College Credit Plus is Good – IF You Are Ready to Work Hard.
With the adoption of the College Credit Plus program, students can now
earn college credit and Greenville High School credit at the same time
in a single class. These classes, however, are much more rigorous
than a traditional high school class. Students thinking about
attending college should consider taking a College Credit Plus class,
but only if they are ready to do college-level work at a college level
pace. And consider this: a student who does not successfully
complete a College Credit Plus course will have to pay the tuition for
that class him- or herself. Before you sign up for a College
Credit Plus course, make sure that you have talked with both your
guidance counselor and the College Credit Plus teacher with whom you
are thinking about working. Make sure that you are ready to take
on a College Credit Plus class.
6) Career Tech Programs Are For Students at ALL Levels. There was
a time when the phrase “Vocational Student” was thought of as a sort of
code for “that kid isn’t college material.” This is certainly not
the case for the Career Technical programs at Greenville High
School. Our Career Tech program offers opportunities for students
to be trained in a wide range of fields, many of which will lead a
student into college studies. These programs can also prepare
students to move right into the workforce, offering students the chance
to earn industry-standard credentials that make access to a number of
jobs easier. Most of these classes, however, require a two-period
class commitment in your junior and senior year, which means that
having room to schedule them can be difficult. So, students
should make sure that they look at these programs, even as a freshman,
to make sure they are getting as many required classes and electives
completed in their first two years as possible.
Keeping these things in mind will help you and your student put
together a schedule that not only meets your student’s graduation
requirements, but that will also help him or her prepare for life after
high school.
|
|
|
|
