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In the case of our kids (my own and the kids I carpool with) they seemed to have been helped a great deal by actually going up to the school and getting registered for their courses (which is going on right now) and having the opportunity to ask the freshman guidance counselor some of those questions themselves. And also being able to see the building, the facilities, the other HAPPY high school kids walking around etc. School is still in session in WCPSS for another 2 weeks, so I would tell you as a teacher, to strongly encourage your students and their parents to make an appointment with the counselor at their high school and go and see it for themselves. It will definitely take the edge off of their anxiety off for now (until next fall when they really freak!)
And I would tell them that it's going to be "fine" because it will be. Yes, going to a WCPSS high school will be different than a charter school, but different doesn't always equal bad and I fully expect that most normal teens this age will adjust perfectly well.
No matter where you come from, if your kids went to a smaller school, Wake County will be culture shock. We came from a small area upstate New York in the Catskills last summer. Our boys are finishing 6th and 9th grades here now. They go to Wakefield. It has not been the easiest of years, but I doubt the things they went through would be any different in many other schools. Yes, I knew the school board and teachers where we lived. It was a neighborhood school and very intimate. My news is that our sons managed to get through the year, although not always happy about it and still compare this to what we had. However, we are making progress. The older one is finally at a point where he will say if he could move his friends here, this would be good. I guess we all get there in different/small stages. Let the kids figure things out on their own. They are much more savy and can learn their way around situations I won't mention here rather well. We keep telling our boys the lesson is a good one learned now, and not to have to face for the first time when they go to college. At the end of the day, the responsibility is on the parents of your students and the students themselves to figure things out. Your job as teacher is simply to offer support in the classroom and be the best teacher you can. I think your students are probably lucky to have a teacher who is concerned for them, but they are moving on. There will be people in their new schools to help them through the next step. Best of luck to them all.
It might help them to know that these are the questions every kid heading off to high school asks, whether they are coming from a small charter school or a large public middle school. Everyone goes through this.
I am from an extremely small community. My high school graduating class was only 130 students; the high school was about 650 students.
That being said, I completely agree with you. It doesn't matter the size of the school a student is coming from or the size of the school a student is moving to. It is the anxiety of moving to a high school, of being a true teenager and not just a "kid."
You know, I thought to myself, "these are intelligent people on this message board, I've gotten some pretty good help from them over the past few years, so if I explain to them that I'm looking to help out my students and get them excited about their years of school to come, I'm sure they'll give me the information they can."
Perhaps a simple, "hey, my kid goes to Cary and she loves the dance team" or "my neighbor's kid goes to Green Hope and is always talking about the debate team"...some real-life endorsements for these schools. I mean, as an adult, I would search out people's personal reviews on something before jumping into it, that's all I wanted to offer my students. But all you people seem interested in is adding your sarcastic remarks about how I'm asking for something completely off the wall.
I retract my original post, clearly I'm not going to receive any constructive help here.
I am so sorry you had to find this out the hard way, KIMBERRRR. There is a big time negative and sarcastic tone in many of the threads. You will see it when someone asks a simple question and people yell at them to just look it up or they try to scare people by repeating the same don't move here without a job line not knowing the person's situation. It is quite shameful. The best you can do is take what useful information you can find and just shake your head at the rest.
I am so sorry you had to find this out the hard way, KIMBERRRR. There is a big time negative and sarcastic tone in many of the threads. ... It is quite shameful. The best you can do is take what useful information you can find and just shake your head at the rest.
I think the negative tone reflected in some of the replies to this thread are the result of what was perceived to be a negative tone in the original post. Intentional or not, it seemed as if Kimberrrr had declared Wake County schools to be universally "bad" and asked if after (just) a year they were any better. Not surprisingly, a number of people took some exception to that question. Kimberrrr's later posts seemed to phrase things in a more positive, constructive manner in which she sought assistance to help and encourage students, instead of (what seemed like) a request for help in dealing with "bad" Wake County schools.
I am so sorry you had to find this out the hard way, KIMBERRRR. There is a big time negative and sarcastic tone in many of the threads. You will see it when someone asks a simple question and people yell at them to just look it up or they try to scare people by repeating the same don't move here without a job line not knowing the person's situation. It is quite shameful. The best you can do is take what useful information you can find and just shake your head at the rest.
Unfortunately, the negative tone was created by the OP. By alluding to the fact that the OP came from a "crappy" Wake County school, has supposedly found "heaven" in a charter school, and then wanting to know how much better "hell" has gotten in the last year is the most interesting point to all of this for me.
As we have recently seen with the debacle of many year-round students having to go to school on Memorial Day, school calendars are made 2 years in advance. That being said, I doubt many things within a school system as large as Wake County could really be changed in a year.
There were better ways of going about finding the information necessary to satisfy the students' curiousity. Lamishra had the best ideas.
I also found it weird to solicit other WCPSS math teachers to become part of the OP's charter school.
Of course, it is difficult for anyone to compare the high schools that these students will be going to without knowing what school they are coming from.
You are asking about the Wake County school district, yet these schools are from different districts that are all a part of the WCPSS.
The terms are being used differently. WCPSS is a single, unified school district. I reviewed the Wikipedia article you referenced and couldn't find a single use of the term "district" which suggested anything to the contrary.
The terms are being used differently. WCPSS is a single, unified school district. I reviewed the Wikipedia article you referenced and couldn't find a single use of the term "district" which suggested anything to the contrary.
Thanks for this.
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BEST idea!
