The Journey to Writing a Successful Story: a tip book

American Schools Pt. 4 - Online High

I've seen a lot of people asking about the American school systems, so I will like to provide you the information on them. I have been to over fourteen different types of schools in various areas, so I'm using my knowledge from that and from my siblings' schools. Do know that I'm no "knowledge-keeper" when it comes to this - I know a lot of the system, but there are things that I am unaware of. If you do have any questions that I did not answer throughout any of these areas, please comment below. I will try my best to find the answer from my most wonderful best friend, Google.

Now, let's get started.

I've only experienced two online high schools. I can't tell you anything about how it would work for children and middle schoolers, or how other specific homeschooling works. I can't tell you that it's the same types all over the country, because according to these two types, it differs.

But, nonetheless, I will tell you my experience with each type of online high school - but this is mainly just my life experience; other students may have been different.

Goal Academy was... quite interesting. I liked it to some degree, but I suppose that was just my laziness as a normal teenager.

The online school was only state-wide - it was only meant for the state itself, not like K-12 which is country wide (but has different names for each state).

I'm not too sure if the rest of the school had to do so, but because we lived near their "HQ" we had to meet up there for a couple times, mainly to get all settled. They gave us a small computer (with a camera on it) and a computer bag for it. We were there for them to show us how everything would work - creating our usernames and passwords plus showing us around the website.

You didn't have teachers that lectured you, like in normal schools. In this online school, the website did everything. For me, they gave me one class to finish. When I finished it, I was given a new class. Each subject came with a good twenty or so topics that took an average of two hours to finish. In each topic, you went through notes (that you write down), a ten question quiz, and when passed (the quiz), you would move onto the test. Your next topic would be locked unless you got a good grade on it. If you wanted to retake the quiz or move on, you would contact your academic teacher and they would open the next topic or refresh the test.

The only way to contact your teacher was by phone call, a Skype call, or messaging through Skype.

By the end of each class, your academic teacher would come to you and you would take the final exam online.

Why I didn't like the school was because they "encouraged" you to cheat. I don't want to say encouraged, but it seemed like it. Or at least, allowed you to cheat. During my final exam, I had asked a question and the teacher came over and had me look it up through Google. After that question, though, he took a seat next to me and had me actually answer the rest of the questions by looking them up and getting the answer there. Another thing was that during another final exam, there was a teacher who came by and he sat there, playing on his phone - even ended up talking on it and he wasn't being quite. In fact, he was talking quite loudly. It was very distracting.

Because I was slow, I had to meet with an academic teacher every week who would ask me how I was doing, see where I'm at, how can I improve, and so on. There were times where she had driven me to another "HQ" of theirs to do testing with some other students. It was a bit interesting. Basically, we would take a test or so, take a few breaks during it. There was a time where during lunch, they went out to McDonald's and bought all of us mainly a full meal (sandwich, fries, and nuggets) and since they had drinks in their office, we would be able to grab a few from the fridge. Another time, they took us out to Chipotle (and for those who don't know what this is, it's a Mexican restaurant with delicious burritos - you get to choose what you want in your burrito or whatnot).