High School Class Registration

Yesterday Ben brought home a 9th grade course registration schedule and last night I attended a meeting with the principal of Providence High outlining the ins and outs of course registration. It's a bit confusing. And not anything like when I was in high school. For one thing, all the "core" courses seem to be something called "4x4"s, which means they meet an hour and a half every day for 1 semester and then are done. So at any given time, he will only have two core courses at a time, and two electives. Most of the electives are "A/B" which means they meet every other day for the whole year. So you can't have an odd number of either type on your schedule,  because a 4x4 needs to be paired with another 4x4 for the following semester and a A/B needs to be paired with another A/B for the every other day thing.

So some things about this strike me as odd, like you could have Math I as a Freshman first semester and not have Math II until second semester Sophomore year, and wouldn't you have forgotten Math I in the intervening year?

Other slightly odd things are that there's no honors track any more, so students aren't assigned to honors sections and you just sign up for honors or not or AP or not as you see fit. Also, I am slightly peeved that the recommendation for students who took Spanish I in middle school is to retake it Freshman year because Spanish II is really hard and they don't really feel like many students would be prepared for it.

Another weird thing is that Gym/Health is only required Freshman year, though there are other classes like swimming, yoga, weight training, team sports that students can use as electives.

For Ben's schedule, we've decided on honors English and honors science, standard social studies and math (he doesn't have the option of honors math in 9th grade), Spanish, gym/health, and then he gets 2 more electives for which he is hoping for team sports and sports & entertainment marketing ;) (I see a theme here). Seniors get first dibs on electives and the schedules won't be finalized till summer, so it will be a while before we know what his actual schedule will be, I think.