Curious to know the experience of others with online summer school. Our school district offers both a traditional and an online version of summer school. For various reasons, my D is taking Latin in online summer school. We did Latin 1 last summer and this summer she’s tackling Latin 2. (Our district no longer offers Latin in the traditional classroom at any time, but you can take it online either during the school year or in the summer.)
I absolutely hate the way our district’s online summer school works and wonder what the experience of others is. (This is mostly a rant since I don’t expect our district to make any changes in time to benefit my D.) My main complaint is that the semester’s course work is super compressed. The first session runs 6/12-6/29 and the second session runs 7/10-7/25. So you have to cover a semester’s worth of course material in 17 calendar days for session 1 and 15 calendar days for session 2, including taking and completing the final at the high school computer lab no later than 4 pm on the last day. The student is not allowed to access any of the curriculum, assignments, reading etc before the start date of each session so there’s no useful way to get a head start, and even with a 504 you can’t get extra time past the end date to finish.
Obviously she could do general practice of Latin online beforehand. But based on our experience last summer, a lot of the assignments involve creating powerpoints, art projects (ex: create a cartoon strip telling the story of a mythological character – my D did Arachne), history reports in the format of a newspaper article, etc. So without knowing the specific assignment you can’t get a head start on it. It creates unnecessary stress to force such a compressed schedule. AFAIK, this is the same curriculum that is used during the school year online class but compressed into 15-17 calendar days. I am sure they think that asking for reports in the form of cartoons or newspaper articles makes it more interesting, but on a super compressed summer schedule it just gets my kid bogged down spending excessive time on the logistical details of creating the project rather than learning the material.
I also hate the user interface. Our district uses this “Genius” system. http://www.geniussis.com/. One of my biggest complaints about it is that, unlike the Synergy system that is used by the district for its traditional classes, this interface doesn’t tell you anything about how each assignment is weighted. And that information would be very useful as the deadline races up! I figured out a backwards way to discover the weighting of assignments by playing around with the “what if” calculator, but it was tedious and not straightforward.
Anyone else have issues with online summer school?
My D2 took a couple summer courses 2 years ago. One is online (health) and the other one is outdoors (PE). Both are only ~3 weeks long. For the online course, the student can work on his/her own pace as long as finishing up within the 3-4 weeks time frame allowed. So it fits family vacation schedule easily if the trip is not more than a week long. She took those summer courses because of schedule conflict (school offer less classes after school district cutting budget) and we do not want her to leave those electives to junior/senior year when she should take other advanced level classes. The bad part is we need to pay for the summer courses for the trouble created by the school district at ~$350 per course.
Well, yeah. If you want to complete a whole year’s worth of work. If the pace is too fast, can your D just take Latin 2A, i.e., the first semester’s worth? Or perhaps pick it up a a community college with an 8 week schedule?
17+15 = 32 days. Our HS summer calendar is 30 academic days. But our HS offers only a few full-year courses during summer school, and most of those are for remediation (D’s and F’s looking to pass).
D can take just the first semester of Latin 2 but that doesn’t change the problem because she still has to do it in 17 days. She can’t stretch it over both sessions. Our district’s summer school definitely covers a lot of students who are taking a class for grade remediation, especially among the math classes. Another effect of the extremely compressed schedule is that it makes it very difficult for anyone to take two summer classes simultaneously, unless the student is a highly organized, motivated person.
Based on our experience last summer, I get the impression that the district gets the online curriculum from an outside provider. I feel that a lot of the pressure could be alleviated if the student could see the curriculum and assignments ahead of time and get a head start. There are 18 days, for example, between the end of the regular school year and the start of the online summer session. But I’m guessing that the contract with the outside provider doesn’t permit access until the official start date?
One positive is that the cost per semester is only $185. I agree that a CC class would be another option, but still find it frustrating that the district operates it’s summer school this way. I can understand the schedule for the traditional summer school, where they open and staff one of the high schools during that same time interval. But the way they operate the online summer school seems unnecessarily rigid.
Six of one, or half-dozen of another, as my mom used to say. 30 days are 30 days. A full year’s course is gonna be 3 hours/day. It is compressed by definition. Whether the course has ‘finals’ after 15 days or midterms, the grade totals still count.
Our school district offers Frosh Bio, for example, over summer. While Bio 1A is not a separate course, with a final at the midpoint, instead the total scores at the end of 30 days counts as a double grade (for two semester’s worth).
I remember taking a whole year of US History in HS and that course was 3.5 hours/day (8:30 am to noon) for 30 days. We had weekly quizzes and a mid-term, but everyone understood that the class was “compressed” and every piece of work counted 2x. And yes, it required a “motivated person” to keep up.
And yes, it was impossible to take two full-year courses simultaneously. (Summer school was only offered in the morning.)
Since the course is online, what about searching for other online options. There are plenty available nowadays.
I am eternally grateful that there are summer school options. Compressed is terrific. If kids can’t cope with compressed, then don’t do it? Mine mostly did dunderhead courses in summer, grad reqs that waste class time. Luckily we didn’t have to do academic make ups and no one wanted academic pole vaulting, but for sure kids did just that for math (one year in 3 weeks) languages (same). etc.
Our school only offered summer school to make up bad grades. There were other options like Florida Virtual or district online programs, but those programs set their own rules and schedules.
I understand the OP was a vent, but she’s being offered more than most, and more than is required. My sister is teaching summer school (4th grade) and it is only for those who qualify for more help (many special need students) and only for 3 weeks. That’s all the program has funding to support.
Some families like compressed courses and some don’t. It is true that the course time and homework will take up more of the day the more compressed the timeline is.
I will add that my D once took a 2 week 3 credit college course. It was a bit crazy --class started Monday, midterm Friday, final the following Friday – with 5 hours of observation, a demonstration, and a paper in between. The course took up virtually 100% of her time, energy, and attention for those two weeks. But even with the very compressed time-frame, she learned a ton and was so grateful to have the chance to take this class at a local college over the semester break as her college did not offer an equivalent course.
So bottom line is if your D decides to take a compressed class, she should be committed to giving it her full attention for the period of time the class in is progress.
Not doing it is not really an option because as described in the opening post, she lost a bunch of credits freshman year due to mental health issues. I’m trying to position her to have all the credits she needs by graduation to qualify for admission to our in state universities. I’m sure it will all work out and I’m just griping because it seems needlessly rigid to have the summer on-line program have to exactly track the timing of the traditional summer program. I’m not looking for alternatives although I appreciate the thoughtful suggestions. It’s more that I’m just curious about what other people’s experiences were like.
Based on last summer’s experience with Latin 1, I’m pretty sure that this online curriculum was create by some outside provider. Our district actually has a wide range of 48 online classes offered during the summer (for a fee of $185 per “semester”), the majority of which are not remedial but electives like forensic science, agriscience, medical terminology, interior design, fashion design, oceanographic/marine studies, veterinary science, etc. The vast selection is part of what convinces me that the curriculum comes from an outside provider. D would love that forensic science class but we have to prioritize Latin 2.
@Corinthian Did you check to see if she can take Latin 2 at a local CC to satisfy the requirement? A CC course woudl likely then be spread out over 6 weeks or so.
We don’t have any summer classes here except for make up classes given to kids that failed courses needed for graduation. You are lucky that you are able to take courses over the summer.
Posting an update about this. D is working her way through the 17 day first semester course. It’s stressful, but I found a tutor who is a retired Latin teacher and am paying her to come over a few times and help D understand some of the material and stay on track to finish in the 17 day limit.
D can’t take the second semester through our district’s online summer school because the timing of the 15 day Session 2 conflicts with a debate camp she’s attending. But the good news is that I found an alternative online option that offers the exact same curriculum from another provider with flexible timing. In fact, this provider (Florida Virtual School) appears to be the original creator of the Latin curriculum that our district uses so the lessons track exactly.
It took me some online detective work to figure this out.The user interface mentions Pearson so I googled and found my way to this information about how school districts can utilize Pearson’s online learning services: https://www.pearson.com/us/prek-12/products-services-teaching/online-blended-learning-solutions/gradpoint.html. This explains why there are so many course offerings from my district. There’s a course catalog here: https://www.pearson.com/content/dam/one-dot-com/one-dot-com/us/en/pearson-ed/downloads/K12SM16882_GPCourseCatalog_F_singlepgs-lr.pdf. From there I figured out that Pearson gets its Latin curriculum from the Florida Virtual School (FLVS). https://www.flvs.net/global-school. I’ve compared our district’s assignments and lessons to those described on the FLVS website and they are the same. The FLVS offers flexible start and end dates, and you can take the class at your own pace taking up to a semester’s worth of time to complete. So I’m going to have her do the second semester with FLVS and then apply for credit from my school district. It’s more expensive ($400 per semester for FLVS vs. $185 for the school district) but worth it to me for the timing flexibility.
DD’18 is taking 2 online courses, Economics and US Government, this summer during the same 5 week period. These 2, 1 semester long, classes are required for graduation. DD decided to take them online so that she could take an elective and an AP class that are only offered during the school year. These classes are work at your own pace and then a set day for the final. It is taking her, if she stays on her current pace, about 2 weeks per class.
This is our 1st experience with online classes…I can see why our school does not count online classes in the GPA, so far classes have not been very challenging. I doubt she is really learning anything as it seems at this point it is a game to her to see how fast she can get through a unit and how high of a grade she can earn on the quizes and unit test, which so far have been in the 90 -100 range, except for one quize she got a 70 on because…“I really had to use the bathroom, but we only have a few minutes for the quiz and I wasn’t really paying attention”. This has definately simply been a way for her to tic the box that the classes are done for graduation. Normally I would have encouraged her to take the AP Econ and AP Gov classes during the schoolmyear (as her sister did). Frankly I am regretting letting her take these classes online. It has been eye opening, if this is how online works for home schooling it scares me as to the quality of education the kids are getting.
Interesting. Our experience with online Latin 2 has been that it is challenging, and the retired Latin teacher we hired as a tutor would agree. However I have heard from others that some of the online courses offered by our district are very easy, especially the regular US History offering.
My kiddos did 3 years of Latin each…I can’t imagine trying to learn Latin online over the summer in a condensed timeframe! I bet it is very hard! Res secundae!(?)
Our high school offers several online classes through the county department of education. IT’s about 6 weeks and you can take up to two 5 credit classes. Gov. is particularly popular to free up room for more relevant AP classes senior year.