Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My kid is going to Blake. I didnt go to school in the US and I am so confused.
Do you only take PE for 1 year and you choose the year?
Why are you saying to do health in the summer instead of during the school year?
There is a meeting at Blake next week I think that I am going to go to but I have no clue what my kid should be doing. She is in private now so she doesn't have a clue either.

Happy to help. My kids don’t go to Blake, but everyone has the same graduation requirements. Kids need to take two semesters of PE (one year) and many of them take it in 9th just to get it out of the way and do an easy class as they transition to high school. Freshmen need to take English (everyone takes honors English), math (if you tell us what math she’s in now we can tell you the next math she should take), a social studies course (different schools do this in different orders so this would be Blake specific), a science course (most take honors Bio) and a foreign language assuming your daughter is likely college bound. That’s 6 courses and she has 7 spots. The other graduation requirements kids need to check off include a year of health, a year of tech, and a year of fine arts (art, music, etc.). So she should ideally pick one of those three areas for her 7th course. The reason a lot of people do health over the summer is that it’s mainly a lot of easy busy work and easy to knock out in the summer so you have room in your schedule to fit other classes you might prefer like engineering pathways, school newspaper or SGA, 4 years of band, double period science lab courses, etc. You’re not able to take PE over the summer and you can’t exactly do orchestra over the summer so that’s why people do health (and sometimes the tech credit).

Thank you so much. This was immensely helpful. My kid is taking pre algebra. She’s not great at math but in the faster paced class and gets As.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My kid is going to Blake. I didnt go to school in the US and I am so confused.
Do you only take PE for 1 year and you choose the year?
Why are you saying to do health in the summer instead of during the school year?
There is a meeting at Blake next week I think that I am going to go to but I have no clue what my kid should be doing. She is in private now so she doesn't have a clue either.

Happy to help. My kids don’t go to Blake, but everyone has the same graduation requirements. Kids need to take two semesters of PE (one year) and many of them take it in 9th just to get it out of the way and do an easy class as they transition to high school. Freshmen need to take English (everyone takes honors English), math (if you tell us what math she’s in now we can tell you the next math she should take), a social studies course (different schools do this in different orders so this would be Blake specific), a science course (most take honors Bio) and a foreign language assuming your daughter is likely college bound. That’s 6 courses and she has 7 spots. The other graduation requirements kids need to check off include a year of health, a year of tech, and a year of fine arts (art, music, etc.). So she should ideally pick one of those three areas for her 7th course. The reason a lot of people do health over the summer is that it’s mainly a lot of easy busy work and easy to knock out in the summer so you have room in your schedule to fit other classes you might prefer like engineering pathways, school newspaper or SGA, 4 years of band, double period science lab courses, etc. You’re not able to take PE over the summer and you can’t exactly do orchestra over the summer so that’s why people do health (and sometimes the tech credit).

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Finish your health using 8th grade or 9th grade summer. That's my only useful suggestion. Health A and B are completely waste of time and they appear absolutely no use at all for college application. For fine arts, maybe your kid would find it interesting and want to pursue AP 2D arts or 3D arts later. For PE, if your DC does not plan to involve in varsity sports, then taking PE before senior year might help demonstrate they are not too nerdy, otherwise, using PE as a relaxing timeslot to take a break from senior year application stress is not a bad idea.

Except they just changed summer options. Look closely at the schedule for in person and virtual. Seems like it will conflict with a lot of common teen summer activities like swim team B meets.

Yes, I’ve heard that from this week’s BOE meeting, and that’s because Taylor is a strong believer of in-person learning. That’s also the reason why he cancels the virtual institution.

Scrapping over health in freshman summer is still better than waiting till later when internship and summer jobs really conflict with the scheduling.

+1. Your kid can live without swim team B.

For a lot of kids this is their main sport. Kids are 15 between 9th and 10th grade so they are definitely swimming events at B meets on Wednesday nights.

What is the attendance policy for the virtual and in person summer classes?

It’s mandatory attendance. It’s only 9 days of instruction covering the semester and they squeeze in tests and quizzes that can’t be made up if you miss. I’m sure if you have a super extenuating unexpected circumstance there could be flexibility but no, you probably can’t skip 2 out of 9 zooms for a swim meet without messing up the course grade. If the 7pm time slot doesn’t work you should do the daytime in person class. I empathize and think they should offer two zoom options like they did last year (1pm).

How do we know they are not offering two virtual time options this year? I don’t see anything about times here https://www.montgomeryschoolsmd.org/departments/extendedhours/summerschool/central-high-school-summer-school-program/

Anonymous wrote:My kid is going to Blake. I didnt go to school in the US and I am so confused.
Do you only take PE for 1 year and you choose the year?
Why are you saying to do health in the summer instead of during the school year?
There is a meeting at Blake next week I think that I am going to go to but I have no clue what my kid should be doing. She is in private now so she doesn't have a clue either.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Finish your health using 8th grade or 9th grade summer. That's my only useful suggestion. Health A and B are completely waste of time and they appear absolutely no use at all for college application. For fine arts, maybe your kid would find it interesting and want to pursue AP 2D arts or 3D arts later. For PE, if your DC does not plan to involve in varsity sports, then taking PE before senior year might help demonstrate they are not too nerdy, otherwise, using PE as a relaxing timeslot to take a break from senior year application stress is not a bad idea.

Except they just changed summer options. Look closely at the schedule for in person and virtual. Seems like it will conflict with a lot of common teen summer activities like swim team B meets.

Yes, I’ve heard that from this week’s BOE meeting, and that’s because Taylor is a strong believer of in-person learning. That’s also the reason why he cancels the virtual institution.

Scrapping over health in freshman summer is still better than waiting till later when internship and summer jobs really conflict with the scheduling.

+1. Your kid can live without swim team B.

For a lot of kids this is their main sport. Kids are 15 between 9th and 10th grade so they are definitely swimming events at B meets on Wednesday nights.

What is the attendance policy for the virtual and in person summer classes?

It’s mandatory attendance. It’s only 9 days of instruction covering the semester and they squeeze in tests and quizzes that can’t be made up if you miss. I’m sure if you have a super extenuating unexpected circumstance there could be flexibility but no, you probably can’t skip 2 out of 9 zooms for a swim meet without messing up the course grade. If the 7pm time slot doesn’t work you should do the daytime in person class. I empathize and think they should offer two zoom options like they did last year (1pm).

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The easiest thing to schedule is to dedicate 1 slot each year for PE, Health, Fine Art, Tech, in any order.

Optimizers do Health in summer, Tech in middle school (or maybe summer), and then free up extra elective some years. If you love Fine Art (or Tech?), you might already be planning to take multiple years of it .

Since advanced courses usually have prereqs, and schedule space is limited, there is not so much free choice to choose in scheduling.

Aren't tech classes obsolete? Or do they try to offer pertinent tech classes?