Unfiltered Story #411997
When I was in 10th grade I had the opportunity to be in a combined 10th and 11th grade program where several subjects were taught by a specific group of teachers and we were supposed to learn how these subjects related to each other and use what we learned in one subject to help us in the other subjects. The subjects were Science, Math, social sciences and English. We would also go on “field trips” that lasted several days to put our new knowledge to use. We did a a variety of trips and most of them involved camping out or staying in a school gym for the duration. We went to National Parks, a farm, and we went to look at an oil shale project among other trips. I think there were about 60 of us the first year about evenly divided. The English class we all had was American Literature which was normally only taken by 11th graders in our school unless either someone transferred in for their senior year and hadn’t had it before or had to retake it for some other reason. But I had it my sophomore year because this program didn’t offer “sophomore English” (which I think was World Literature). When I went to register for my classes, senior year, the person approving the schedules noticed that my transcript didn’t show me having “American Literature” Junior year. I told her I had it sophomore year as part of this program. It actually said that right on my transcript but she didn’t believe it and wanted me to take it Senior Year (even she didn’t think I should take a sophomore class senior year). I finally convinced her to let me take some elective English classes to make up for my lack of sophomore English.
Then there was my math issue. There were two math choices in the program first year, Geometry or Algebra II. The trouble was that I didn’t take Algebra 1 my Freshman year and this was a requirement for both classes. So I ended up having to take Algebra 1 in my non-program time and Geometry during program time. I absolutely loved Algebra (weird I know) and did well. I hated Geometry and barely survived.
I stayed with the program for all 3 years until I graduated. Out of the roughly 30 sophomores when it started only one other girl and myself were still with it at graduation. I have no idea if it survived past that year.
