Reply to Poolesville Global Ecology House

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I attended in the mid 90s, so I'm sure the program changed a lot in 20+ years. Back then it was seen as the third choice magnet compared to Blair (STEM) and Richard Montgomery (IB). I applied to all three and got into Poolesville (admittedly I wasn't a great student, and generally would be described as "intelligent but not motivated" by teachers). I thought the program's focus on environmentalism was progressive for that time and I enjoyed the ourdoorsy aspect of the trips, as well as the tie in with how to use science to study the health of the environment. I distinctly remember taking water samples from various bodies of water to study dissolved oxygen content and identify microorganisms as ways to measure the health of an ecosystem. We definitely tried to take learning outside the classroom into nature as much as was practical - not surprising considering most of the teachers were former hippies from the 60's.

The program was challenging and had an accelerated science program. From what I can remember (again this was 20 years ago so not sure if is still accurate), we skipped 9th grade Lab Science and went straight into Chemistry and then Biology, which was taught later in a typical high school curriculum in MCPS. There were several capstone projects where we were expected to use the scientific method to study some aspect of the environment. I believe we were also expected to maintain the Honors track in Math, and expected to finish with some flavor of AP Calculus.

All that said, the commute is what killed it for me. My family lived in Germantown at the time and it was tolerable for 9th grade. Also the alternative was Seneca Valley, which didn't exactly have the best reputation at the time (first school in MoCo to get metal detectors and cameras IIRC). When we moved to a W school district right before 10th grade, the commute time almost doubled - I remember being out at the bus stop before 6:30 or so. I ended up transferring to the new school I was zoned to middle of 10th grade and found that the curriculum was probably equally challenging, so take that how you will. There was a bit of confusion with how my credits transferred though and I think I missed out on half the standard Chemistry curriculum (didn't impact me at all considering I continued on to study Computer Science). Honestly I liked it much better than Poolesville because there was much greater diversity (I'm East Asian, though I understand that Poolesville's racial demographics have gone from like 2% Asian to like 20% since the 90's).

In the end, I would say I recommend the program for those who know they want to go into the sciences or if you know you have an interest in studying the environment. Just make sure the commute from where you live isn't a dealbreaker.[/quote].

This is all helpful - thank you for taking the time to post. Unfortunately the commute is our dealbreaker. [/quote]

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