My son has chosen the Middle Years IB program in the district. His classes will include:
- Intro to Literature
- Geometry
- World Geography/History
- Spanish 1 (He chose this, he's had 2 yrs of Latin)
- Biology
- Health/PE combined-semestertotal
- Theater (instead of art or music) -semester
- Geospace (Astronomy & Geology)
- Team PE -semester
- Business Economics - semester
I've had to put aside John Taylor Gatto's Weapons of Mass Instruction, to read Robert Fried's The Game of School. Somebody tell me these books have a happy ending!
Instead of homeschooling the boy, we're providing value-added instruction. Last night we watched Religulous and that provided plenty of opportunity for discussion.
An update on our charter school's expansion into high school:
A final proposal was submitted to the school board and they agreed to send it on to the district. The original goal was to give the school a science/math focus.
There was an interesting discussion at the Information Night or "reveal" night for parents. The proposed coursework for 9th - 12th grade would require:
- 4 yrs math
- 4 yrs science
- 3 years foreign language
In the local district, students are required to take 2 years of each. Some parents at the "reveal" night thought that the curriculum would be too boring and rigorous. I pointed out that the local colleges: CSU, UNC & CU Boulder required 3 years of each subject to be admitted (UNC only requires 2 yrs of a language), and ivy league schools were in line with what the charter school would be requiring, hence the name "Liberty Preparatory Academy".
The budget proposes offering 40 new courses with only 8 new teachers. Here's how the math track would look... Currently students take the following math courses:
- Pre-algebra (may test out) 7th grade
- Algebra 7th or 8th And a few 9th graders)
- Geometry 8th or 9th
- Algebra 2 9th
- Pre-Calculus
- AP Calculus
- Discrete Math -semester
- Personal Finance -semester
- Discrete Math -semester
Taking my younger son as an example, here is what his math options would look like:
- 7th grade - Algebra
- 8th grade - Geometry
- 9th grade - Algebra 2
- 10th grade - Pre-Calculus
- 11th grade - AP Calculus
- 12th grade - 2 semester courses. of course he can always take these in 11th grade as electives. To continue in math, he'd have to go to the local community college.
Overall, there was a lot of interest in the proposal with close to 200 families asking for more information.
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