Whats high school like in the US?

My high school has about 1,000 students, which is pretty small. I live in Southern New Jersey in the Northeast.

We have 8 periods a day, plus a 10-minute homeroom. We get to school around 7:10 AM, and the doors open at 7:15 AM. You can go to your lockers and whatnot before 7:25 AM, but after then if you don't get to your homeroom, you're marked as late. Three latenesses means a detention. Each class is 43 minutes long, and you get exactly 4 minutes to get from class to class between periods. The day ends at 1:59 PM, and the buses leave at 2:05 PM. My school starts on September 7th and ends on June 19th, give or take a couple days. Usually 182 days, when you count snow days and various breaks. You get a 10 day long Spring Break whenever Easter is, and a 10 day long Winter Break whenever Christmas is.

The 8 periods are generally year-round. You have the same 8 classes every single day, Monday through Friday. However, the days are split up into A, B, C, D, and E days, corresponding to the days of the week. Very confusing, so I won't get too much into that.

You MUST take 4 years of English, 3 years of Math, 2 years of Lab Science (Lab Chem, Lab Bio, Lab Physics), 1 year of foreign language (Spanish, French, Latin, Italian), 4 years of gym, 1 year of Fine Arts (Ceramics, Art 1, Band, Chorus), 1 year of Tech or Family Skills (Skills for Life, Computer classes...), and 3 years of History. They have to fit this into the 4 years. My school does not offer geography, psychology, wood shop, or any hands-on classes. They do however offer Forensic Science, Digital Photography, Marine Biology, and Film Study. A couple cool classes to keep in mind.

Most people take Spanish as their world language. I'd say about 60% of kids. Fewer people take French, and even less take Italian. Latin is slowly being phased out due to lack of interest.

Hmm... Lunches are completely optional at my school. Generally the guidance counselor asks you if you want a lunch, then builds your schedule around it. You just get your parent to sign a waiver and you have an extra period in your day. For lunch, you MUST stay in the cafeteria unless going to the bathroom or making up a test. The cafeteria has a bunch of long wood tables that each have 3 benches on either side.

We have a system called Renaissance where you get a certain card based on your preformance. Gold, Blue, Red, or White. To get a Renaissance Card, you need to have good attendence, be involved in a sport or club, and never have a disciplinary infraction. People with a 3.5+ GPA get a Gold Card, and they can get away with just about everything. The other cards are pretty much pointless.

Yeah, we don't have chavs here... The closest equivalent is the prep. I live in New Jersey - anyone who's from the US knows about Jersey girls. I guess that's our equivalent. They go out and party, get deep tans, dye their hair, get really big poofs and volumized hair, drinking, smoking, working out, big on makeup.

Homework is easy. I'm in AP classes, and I'll probably have Math HW all five days, English HW once or twice a week, Science HW four or five days a week, history HW very rarely, a project or two every couple weeks. The A level has even less. HW is given to us in the form of packets or book work.

My school is renowned for weed. We are possibly the biggest druggie school in the area. So there's a huge pressure to have tried weed, smoke, or drink. There's a lot of pressure to do well in school, too. My school is determined to have just about everyone graduate and go to college.

Hm, the work is pretty easy. A typical class would be... Sit down, listen to the teacher talk for a minute or two, hand in or have the teacher check homework, have the teacher put notes on the board or on a projector, do silent individual or group work for the rest of the period, then the last two minutes is our's to talk and pack up. Tests are given every week or every two weeks, quizzes even more often. Projects are given about once a month, depending on the class.

After-school clubs play a large part. The after-school buses leave at 3:20 PM. Some of the clubs are... Art Club, Science Club, Academic Challenge, Renaissance, Interact (a community service type of club), Bible Club, History Club. Some sports are Football (American Football), Soccer, Tennis, Baseball, Basketball, Softball. Sports are separated into Varsisty, Junior Varsity, and Freshman, from highest to lowest.

Good luck!

i live in a small town, so my school is k-12. 3 levels, elementary on the 1st, middle on the 2nd, and high school on 3rd. there's about 900-1000 students overall. really only 2 races make up my school, half is white, half is african american. there's a few hispanics, no asians, or anything else. so not very diverse.

we have 8 periods a day, each are about 40 minutes long. we start at 8:15 and end at 2:44.

everyone is required to take 1 semester of pe each year but you can choose to take fitness & aerobics instead. depending on how many credits you need for each subject, by the time students are seniors, they have enough math,science,english and history credits, so they can take mostly electives their senior year.

during junior year, everyone is required to take what is called seminar, it's a class where you work on writing your senior paper, we're required to do 2 job shadows pertaining to what career we chose. then senior year, we take a class that focuses on the powerpoint and speech part of the senior project.

some of the electives we have are: woodshop, matting & framing, painting, digital photography, stage and theater, yearbook, band, music theory, science issues, zoology etc.

the work varies class to class, if you take any AP classes the work is much harder.

at my school classes are split into 3 catagories: regular, academic, or AP.

homework depends on the teacher and class. some classes it's mostly just lectures and homework. others are more projects, speeches, presentations and no homework.

as with most schools, mine has 'cliques', most of the jocks hang together and sit at lunch, the cheerleaders sit together, theres the 'weird white kids'lol, the 'weird black kids', the band geeks, preps, so forth.

my school requires uniforms even though it's a public school, we have to have shirts with collars in black,white,blue,or tan. same for the pants. we can't wear hoodies, and no sandals.

oh my lord, this is an interesting question

ok high school is nothing but cliques

pressures:fitting in , gettin good grades, dressing so your not picked on ,etc

the work:not hard if you study idk what its like where ur from so i cant really explain

homework :probably was like 30 for 4 classes every day.We have to take either 4 classes per 2 semesters or 8 classes like a day b day .But ya it always tons of homework.

subjects:pre alg., alg 1 alg 2, pre cal. statistics, us history , world history , chemistry, physics,english, hnrs classes

electives:band,chorus,foods ,oral communications,computer classes,gym,jrotc