Need help with HS Foreign Exhange

Next fall, my daughter is going to apply via the US Congress and Bundestag to spend her HS junior year abroad.

I have many questions regarding classes. What I do know is that they will be taught entirely in German. What I don't know yet, is what it will do to her Advanced Diploma track that she is on.

I saw on the website that many students take classes in Summer school to get around the classes they will miss. However, I found out that in Summer School they do not teach Honors courses, which is what she takes, and they do not teach AP courses (obviously). So one could look at the year abroad as a great experience, but the downside is not being able to keep on the Advanced Track.

For example, AP US History is only for 11th graders. As well as English 11H. Now the English class wouldn't be as much of an issue if they have the 11th grade Honors class in Germany and neither would science. But would they have the AP class? I don't know if that is just for American classes.

As it is she'd have to take German 3 this summer and German 4 in the fall, so she could come back after her junior year and go directly to AP German 5, as they will not, I'm sure look at her experience and say," OK, you spent a year of immersion in the German language, so you can just skip over German 4 and go right into German 5. AS it is, she'd be way ahead in that area anyway.

Yes. I've put a call into her guidance counselor, so we'll see what she can tell me. But if any of you have navigated through this, please let me know what to expect.

 

We are going through it, sort of. We met with the guidance counselor at the high school and didn't have any problems, but we are lucky in that we are looking at sending our daughter to an American High School in Israel. The high school is accredited by a group here in the US and offers AP courses accredited by the College Board. They also teach directly from the home school syllabus', so it really is actually better than say, attending a semester in Fairfax County.

I'll warn you, you are going to have a very tough time having any of the required courses transfer back as meeting the requirements. In our first conversation with the guidance counselor, they were insisting that our daughter would have to take both 11th and 12th AP history classes her senior year and probably 11 and 12 english also.

I would check with the program you are looking at and see if what assistance they can provide you with convincing the school to take the required courses. Our program said they would get the College Board people involved in we had to. Thankfully it didn't turn out that way.

Now I just have to figure which bank (or retirement account) to pay for this shinding.

 

Thanks. I know that the program my daughter would go through is a scholarship application :http://www.k12academics.com/congress_bundestag_youth_exchange.htm

All we have to do is get her to the airport(DC) pay her a monthly allowance and everything else is covered. She has to fill out the application, and write a letter to her Host family. If she gets accepted after the interview, then they send the letter. She would be gone June or July to the following June or July. All her classes would be in German - which is good, since they do not teach immersion hear - due to the block schedule.

I sent an email to the German teacher at SBHS with most of my questions. She will get back to me soon. I emailed my daughter's teacher on Feb 24th and have heard nothing back from him nor her counselor - which is not unusual for BWHS...yet another reason we don't care for it. Personally I'm always amazed a teacher from SBHS will call back and talk to me when my girl doesn't even attend.

 

Ps: I love your call sign!

 

My daughter is in Italy now - has been since Sept and will come back in July...We are not confident that the courses she is taking now will transfer to LCPS. She will have to take 1th and 12th grade Eng and history...she plans to take AP classes, what really burns me is that although she is now fluent in Italian she can get no foreign language credit...LCPS is not very flexible about earning credits that don't happen in their classrooms. She may elect to come back as a junior and graduate in 2011 instead of 2010 - although this will be our last resort...she is sooo ready to be done with HS!

 

I don't know if policies have changed, but back in my day you could take an AP test and get foreign language credits for college if you scored a 4 or higher on the test and you didn't have to take the AP course in that subject before taking the test--we just signed up for any AP test we wanted to take.

 

Thanks all. We've decided to forgo this during HS, so she can instead attend the Governor's Academy in the summer next year at VCU and get a few weeks of all immersion. She says she'll do it her Jr year in College, which makes sense as then class credits will transfer better as they are used to these types of programs.

When you look at the Germany program, they only take 250 kids from the US, so it figures that a school might never have had one student do this before and does not know how to handle it. They most likely do not have anyone who can make sure that the courses match up.