Open House

Tonight was Open House and orientation for Jullian at his new high school. He'll be going to Independence High School and though Independence has been a good school in the past, its reputation as a good school has been waning in recent years. Independence is an old school and when we walked into the building you could really see how old it is. The architecture is very sixties. Kinda cool looking, but definitely old. We listened to the principal make his speech and a few other speakers before roaming the school to find Jullian's classes and meet his teachers. I gave Jullian the map and let him lead the way since he needed to remember where he would be going come next Monday morning. I was actually pretty impressed with all of his teachers and the rest of the staff there. They were all very friendly and sounded like they were ready for a new school year as well. One thing I asked each teacher about was homework. I wanted to know what to expect to see coming home. All teachers, except his English teacher, said there would be little to no homework. Jullian was excited about that! His English teacher did say that because he was in an Honors English class he would have a lot of extra homework every day. That will work out well for Jullian because it will give him time to adjust to high school without being overwhelmed with homework from all of his classes too. Next semester will be different - I expect him to have homework from most of his classes.

The schedule is structured differently than I'm used to. They have four 90-minute class blocks on an A/B schedule. So he will have four classes a day and be in each class for ninety minutes and he will alternate two of his classes every other day. He will have English, Math, Science and Social Studies, core classes, for only one semester each rather than the full year. His class schedule is as follows.

First Semester:

Spanish
ROTC
Health/P.E.
Honors English
Business Computers

Second Semester:

Spanish
ROTC
Algebra
Science
Social Studies

I was excited for Jullian and told him that and how much fun I thought he was going to have. There are a lot of fun things to do in high school, provided you stay on top of your school work. I told him one of the most important things in determining his success and fun in high school was the friends he chooses. I think most of the classes he's in will include the kind of kids who stay out of trouble, so hopefully he'll make some pretty good friends there. He said of all the kids we saw there tonight he recognized only one person - a kid he knew from Reedy Creek elementary about three years ago. There are about 1000 freshman this year at Independence and 1700 students in the remaining grades. Sounds like a lot of the freshmen this year won't be there in the coming years.

Jullian is usually pretty reserved when it comes to showing his emotions, but he seem to be pretty excited about his new school. I hope he puts his best efforts and attitudes forward and has a lot of fun in school while doing his best academically.