High School Survey

[crschmidt]

Survey for schweds. I figured I'd post it here in case anyone was wondering about my high school life. Feel free to comment and ask questions if you're interested. Or make it a meme and pass it around!

Describe the school you attended in high school.
98% white, mostly high income families. Large: 3000 students, 800 in my graduating class.

What level were you in? (accelerated, "normal", LD.)
Honors classes in pretty much everything. Double advanced in math: Took two years of calc in high school, normal curriculum was only up to pre-calc. 5 years of spanish, etc.


How do you feel your instructors' expectations compared to other teachers'
expectations of their students? (Did they expect more, less, or the same
from you?)
They exepcted more simply because I was an honors student. All honors students were expected to do more, better, faster, stronger, longer, etc. etc. ;)

Were you encouraged by your instructors to continue in higher education?
I think we were all just expected to continue in higher education. it wasn't something we were encouraged or not encouraged to do, it was just something we were all expected to do.

How did your instructors motivate you to succeed? (by helping you set
goals, by rewarding you, competition with other students, etc.)
There wasn't a serious amount of motivation: it was mostly "Do well, or you'll flunk," especially later in high school. Teachers would encourage us by letting us know how we were doing, but we were making our own way, not forced to by any teachers.

Do you feel that your instructors were more or less lenient with
misbehavior in your class (compared to classes at different levels)?
Less lenient. We were "the creme de la crem" (or however you spell that: obviously, i wasn't all that good in english ;)), so we were expected to be better behaved than everyone else.

Were you involved in many extracurricular activities, and did instructors
encourage these activities?
7 during my senior year, 5-6 other years. Not encouraged by most of my teachers, although one of them encouraged me to join the math team.

Do you feel that the material you learned was appropriate for your level
(too easy, too hard, just right.)?
I think it was appropriate for my level.


Extra comments?
Nope.

Comments

[pie-is-good.livejournal.com]

You managed to fill out a survey about STCE...

And you didn't mention mold.

*dies*

And. Um. la creme de la creme. French, not English? Yeah. Being bad at English shouldn't matter. ;)

[stretchplum.livejournal.com]

Sarah had me do it too. Here's a little contrast.

Describe the school you attended in high school.

It was a small school of about 400 to 450 people from five small towns in central Champaign county. As a result of our low numbers we obviously didn't have too much in terms of money or diversity of class selection. For example, there were no AP classes offered because there simply weren't enough students who were performing on a level to justify them. Additionally, our computer resources were always fairly limited, with only 10 to 15 machines being available for free use by students in our library. However, despite those disadvantages, I believe that we had a very caring teaching staff who was never going to turn down any student who needed help.

What level were you in?

Because of the small size of the school, there were no official levels. The two areas in which their were separations due to ability were math and english. English classes were divided in to "college bound" and "non-college bound" sections beginning with junior year, and I was always in the college bound sections. There was also a wide array of math courses based on one's ability in that field, and I was always in the highest level math class availabe for my year in school.

There were classes that were generally only taken by the brighter students (e.g. courses in chemistry, biology, and physics) but they were not considered "advanced" classes and could be taken by anybody who had successfully completed the prerequesites.

Essentially, though I was taking more advanced courses, it was not because of an official level or track that I was placed on by the school.

How do you feel your instructors’ expectations compared to others’?

Again, because of the small size of the school, practically every teacher wound up teaching students on every level. They expected more out of me in terms of results since I had proven that I could produce good grades, but I do not believe that their expectations differed from student to student in terms of effort, even though they knew in the back of their heads that there were some students from which they weren't going to get that effort no matter how hard they tried.

Were you encouraged by your instructors to continue in higher education?

I don't think I was explicitely encouraged, but it was always somewhat assumed that becaue I was one of the school's top students that I would be going on to college.

How did your instructors motivate you to succeed?

I don't believe that they did much because they didn't have to...I was always fairly self-motivated and my parents motivated me a lot as well. Instructors saw that I didn't really need help in that area and left me alone.

Do you feel that your instructors were more or less lenient with misbehavior in your class?

I was generally a well-behaved student, so that's a difficult question to answer. I think that my position as a good student let me slide in some jokes or sarcastic comments that wouldn't have been accepted from other students, but in terms of the regular classroom misbehavior like talking during lecture, passing notes, etc....I just wasn't doing it.

Were you involved in many extracurricular activities, and did instructors encourage these activities?

I was involved in several activities, although I don't believe that I was encouraged to participate in them by instructors aside from whichever instructor was sponsoring that particular activity. Even then I was never encouraged to join one so much as I was encouraged to do more while a member.

Do you feel that the material you learned was appropriate for your level?

In courses like math, I believe the wide variety of different courses allowed me to be in a class that was always challenging, though not overly so. In science courses there were still multiple classes though not nearly as many as in the math department, so I believe the content was always appropriate though to a lesser degree. However, in areas such as history and English, I specifically remember being annoyed with doing units that were simply rehashes of things that I had learned at a much earlier level. (For example, I remember being very angry with having to learn about punctuation during my sophmore year.)