Dr. Jenny Niebsch
Having the great opportunity to spend six months in the USA, I would like to share some of my experiences with you.
Just for the record: I am in Kent, Ohio, a small city with about 30,000 inhabitants and a big University with roughly the same number of students. I am here with my family and I am teaching a 5-hour course in Math at the Kent State University.
Being a teacher at HAK and HTL and having two kids of the according age I was most interested in the way high schools are run in the US. And I thought that might be interesting for you, too.
First of all, there are no different types of high schools in the US, except private and public schools. Private schools are supposed to be better otherwise no one would pay thousands of dollars to send their kids there. After primary school and middle school you start the 4 years at high school at the age of 14 as a so called freshman. The second year students are sophomores, followed by juniors (3rd) and seniors (4th).
As a high school student you have a lot of choices. Each year/semester you can choose among a big variety of courses and within the courses between three different levels: basic, CP-college preparation (intermediate) and advanced (highest level). You can choose 7 different courses at the level you want. English and Math should be among them but you can also choose e.g. History, Biology, PE (sports), Chemistry, Art, Music, Languages and so on. There is also a course called Study Hall where you have a unit per day for homework and other assignments. During the four years you have to cover a certain minimum of courses and collect a certain amount of credits. Thus the freedom is somewhat restricted.
Every day you have the same schedule, i.e. you have one hour of each of your courses at the same time. You attend each course with different students even from different years. There is no organization of a class as we know it. A course can have different numbers of students. An advanced math course in Calculus can have as little as 7 participants, whereas in English there might be 30. You change the classroom for every course while the teacher stays in the room. High school in Kent starts at 7:30 am. Each unit runs 51 minutes followed by a 4 minutes break. There is half an hour lunch break around 11:30. Thus school ends exactly at 2:29 pm.
If you are not interested in sports you might take one of the famous yellow school buses to go home. If, however, you decided to be for instance in the soccer or tennis or football team then you continue your day (each day) with either 2 hours practice or a game versus a team from another school. Depending on playing home or away and on the kind of sports, your day may end by being picked up by your parents at school between 6 and 9:30 pm. That is quite a day! Hopefully you have chosen Study Hall otherwise you might have to do some homework.
Whatever one may think about that system it is great to experience something different than the usual routine at home. Changing the perspective might change your opinion on some aspects.
I hope and wish that many of you will have the chance to experience something similar.