Advice for new TJ Parents
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Anonymous
Is Mandarin particularly difficult? Student has 2 years coming from APS |
Anonymous
| Our experience is that Chinese is great at TJ. |
Anonymous
| is the new principal not doing anything about how hard spanish is at TJ? My kid ended up deciding not to go to TJ and hearing how hard Spanish was really turned him off. |
Anonymous
Good question. One wonders if the Spanish teacher has an inferiority complex at a STEM school and uses artificially difficult grading to assuage their emotional needs. |
Anonymous
| FWIW, my kid hasn’t found Spanish to be too difficult. I’m not disputing that other kids have found it to be challenging, but as with everything know your own kid. |
Anonymous
Did your kid stay with Spanish 1 at TJ? The only people I k ow of that said it is manageable were those that started it from scratch at TJ. More typical is kids coming in with 1 or 2 years of it at the MS. |
Anonymous
| ^ start with Spanish |
Anonymous
| Any feedback on Latin? |
Anonymous
My kid took two years of Spanish in middle school, took Spanish 2 their freshman year at TJ (per the standard recommendation at the time), took Spanish 3 sophomore year, and is now in AP Spanish as a junior. |
Anonymous
You have to take 4 years of a history/social studies and AP HUG is an easier AP. No brainer. |
Anonymous
DS likes Spanish well enough and has invested a year into it. So he eould be wasting his year if he switched to another language in 9th. I thought it was 3 years of one language or 2 years or 2 languages. |
Anonymous
It depends on what college your kid wants to attend and what they want to study. Some Colleges, like UVA, want 4 in the same language in HS. They will accept stopping after AP Language because most HS don’t anything beyond that class. Some colleges want 3-4 with STEM kids needing 3 and humanities kids needing 4. DS has two years of Japanese under his belt but it looks like he is going to be restarting at TJ. Spanish 1 and on seems to be a good path but starting with Spanish 3 is the rough course? How is Mandarin? |
Anonymous
For TJ, you need three years of the same language. They don’t allow 2+2. |
Anonymous
My child is a sophomore at TJ and all the feedback is exceptionally positive as to Latin. The students seem to love both the class and the separate club, and you are certain to see some of them enthusiastically dressed in Togas at preview night. We also ran across a few TJ students at the challenging residential Governors Language Academy for Latin at Randolph-Macon last summer (we there there for a different language academy, but learned of at least 2 TJ students in Latin). As to Spanish, we received the same cautions directly from other TJ parents, although some students seem to manage Spanish well. Please be aware: - TJ is uniformly accelerated. Specifically: TJ teaches full-year topics in 1/2 the time as top FCPS schools. Thus: a full year of Spanish at TJ is the equivalent of 2 years at other schools. Please make it a priority to attend preview night and please ask lots of questions. |
Anonymous
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Hello,
I wanted to ask if you have any experience with the Virtual Virginia Summer PE class. We are not able to do FCPS Summer PE because my son will be out of state during the last week of class, and FCPS requires an in-person final test. Because of that, we are considering Virtual Virginia instead. Do you know if the final test for Virtual Virginia Summer PE can be completed while the student is out of state, and whether it can be taken at any available time? Or are the final test dates strict? Also, my son is currently taking Spanish 1 in middle school. Do you think he should take Spanish 2 over the summer next year? Thank you again for your help. |