Education in The U.S. (by Nadya Denisova)
(www.youtube.com/user/dsashulya/featured)
The United States of America being located on
the other side of the globe, thousands of miles away from Russia, have always
been a mysterious and fascinating land for me. A couple of years ago I was
given a once in a lifetime opportunity to become an exchange student and get an
inside look at the life of a typical American teenager. I can even say that I
got a chance to live like one for about seven months. I enrolled at American
school and were studying there on a par with the regular students, which gave
me priceless experience and many interesting stories to tell.
Let us start with debunking the most common
myth – not all American high schools are quite like what we see in movies. They
all do have lockers (the iron boxes where you can put your binders, books and
even outerwear) and plenty of various sports teams but studying at some of them
isn’t all that glamorous. In fact, after discussing public schools in
Portsmouth, VA (where I got the chance to live) with my host family and other
Americans, I learned that public school system there is low quality. The
families who can afford sending their kids to private schools or homeschool
them, try their hardest to avoid the necessity of sending them to public
schools.
However, America is known as a melting pot of various nations, traditions and customs, which makes every corner, every state and even every town in the country completely different from one another. That is why I know for sure that everything, including the quality of the school system, would be different for any other place in the country. Nevertheless, some aspects of a high school teenager’s life are quite similar in every part of the USA.
American education is longer than that in
Russia. High school starts with the 9th grade that is called
freshman year, then continues with the 10th grade that is called sophomore,
then goes the 11th grade called junior and the last, twelfth one, which
we don’t have in Russia, is called senior year. I was enrolled as a junior and
had some classes with the people of my age while others I shared with students
of all four high school grades. That happened because, as many of us already
know from movies, Americans get to choose the classes they take. The choice is
quite vast – you can take academic classes like chemistry, biology and physics
on a par with choir, art, fashion marketing and design. That is why you
generally have completely different people in each of the classes you take. However,
there are some restrictions.
First, every student has to take English,
History or Government, Science and PE classes at least for one semester. The
school year at the school I attended was divided in two parts called semesters,
and you could pick different classes for both of them. Nevertheless, some
classes, like AP (Advanced Placement) English were yearlong which reduced the
number of other subjects you could take. In addition, most classes have
different levels, for example, there were regular and Honors History classes
and regular, AP and DE (Dual Enrollment) English levels. The variety helps every
student find what would be the most suitable for him or her. As an exchange
student, the only mandatory classes I had were English and History, other blank
spaces in my schedule I could fill with any classes myself.
Secondly, in my American school there were
only four classes a day, each lasting 1.5 hour. Every day I had the same schedule,
which changed only once - at the end of January when the second semester
started. Such system didn’t allow me to take all the classes I wanted. However,
talking to other exchange students, I learned that some schools have around
seven or eight 45 minute long classes a day just like in Russia, and two
different schedules that changed one another daily. The two different schedules
at such schools are called Day A and Day B and the alternation of them stays
the same throughout the whole year.
Another interesting fact about American high
schools is the length of the breaks between classes. To collect all your
binders and books, get to your locker if needed, visit the bathroom and get to
another classroom you have only five minutes. Being late to a class without a
special note from a teacher or a member of administration is punished. After a
couple times of being tardy the teacher calls the student’s parent, and if the
student doesn’t change his or her behavior, he or she will be suspended for
several days, and if it doesn’t help next goes the expelling from school. The
disciplinary rules are indeed quite stricter than in Russian schools. The same
happens for those who miss classes without a valid reason.
The lunch break is the longest and usually lasts for half an hour. There are several of them and they take place during the third period, because the cafeteria can’t house all the students at once which is more than a thousand teenagers. During the lunch break you can either buy a meal at school the cost of which is about one or two dollars, or you can eat what you brought from home in a lunchbox. One can’t walk around school during that time – there are staff members watching students and keeping them disciplined. However, if you manage to sneak past the staff, you can spend some time at the library.
The most interesting and even disappointing
for some people fact about American high school is that cell phones aren’t
allowed not only during classes but also during the breaks. If staff, who as
I’ve already mentioned are constantly watching students, see you having your
cell phone out even if not using it, they will withdraw it from you and only
your parents can get it back next day. If it happened on Friday, you wouldn’t
have your phone back until Monday, because American students have a five day
school week.
The famous yellow school buses are another element
of a typical American teenager’s life that has always interested me. The bus
picks students up either right at their houses’ thresholds or at an arranged
bus stop depending on how many students live in the same area and how long the
route becomes if driving past every student’s house. There are at least ten
busses each having a different route. Since all the students have the same
number of classes a day, after the last class busses are already parked at the schoolyard
waiting for the students to get on. They stay there for 10 or 15 minutes and if
you’re late for the bus you will have to find another way to get home. However,
many teenagers have their own cars. Every school has a rather vast car parking
space, because one of the peculiarities of America is that you can hardly ever
see a person walking – everybody prefers using cars even if they need to get to
the next block. Teenagers can get a driver’s license and start actually driving
at 16, there is even a special driving course at school which you can take
instead of PE. Most teenagers have a part time job after school at places like
grocery stores and pharmacies, and the money they earn helps them keep a car.
To sum up, I can say that school system in
America is indeed very different from that in Russia. It was truly exciting to
have an opportunity to live a typical American teenager’s life for the long
seven months and if I had a chance to go back in time and face the decision of
whether to become an exchange student or not, I wouldn’t change a single thing.
I the American lifestyle from the inside enjoying some things and being shocked
by the other. However, as we were taught at the exchange
student orientation camp, life in another country isn’t better or worse. It is
just different.
VOCABULARY
- debunk - разоблачать
- restriction - ограничение
- sophomore - второкурсник
- suspended - приостанавливать
- valid - веский