A few days ago some of the guidance counsellors from the main high school that students from my elementary school usually transfer to, came to our school to talk to us about course selection for high school. Although going into grade 9 we don’t have much flexibility in which courses we take, they still told us all about which credits we had to get, which electives are available, and everything else we need to graduate.
The system we are using to plan out our courses is a website called myBlueprint where we choose eight courses (including the compulsory subjects) and whether or not we would like to take the academic, applied, locally developed, or open course if the options are available. As grade 9’s there are six compulsory subjects which are English, Maths, Science, French, Geography, and Healthy Active Living Education. Besides those six, we have the option to choose our own elective courses.
The open and locally developed courses are there for students that are having difficulties in that subject whereas applied and academic are the courses that most people take which are at or above grade level. For English, Maths, Science, French, and Geography I selected the academic courses because it’s better to take the academic courses if you are trying to go to university. I’m still not 100% sure which direction of work I would like to go in the future, so I decided to take the academic course for all the subjects. The Healthy Active Living Education is just one subject with no other options, so it’s just a course everyone takes.
As for my elective choices I selected Orchestral Strings Beginner course and Non-Traditional Visual Arts. The reason why I chose Orchestral Strings is because I find playing music quite fun. Additionally, I’m learning how to write music for these types of instruments, so I think it’d be good to actually be able to play one of the orchestral string instruments. I also chose the beginner course because although I can play guitar I have no experience with specifically orchestral strings and little experience with reading ledger lines. I chose the Non-Traditional Visual Arts because when I read the course description it seemed more interesting to me than traditional art. The course revolves more around media and technology like, video, computer animation, and digital imaging. I felt like this was something I could get interested in, so I chose the course.
In addition to the two elective courses we chose, we also had to select two other alternate courses in case our first two choices couldn’t be made for us. The two alternates I chose were Exploring Computer Technologies and Business. These two things are also things I’m kind of interested in, but not so much as the other two I chose as my first choices.
Overall, there’s not really too much I look forwards to in high school, but there are somethings I’m interested in like maybe getting the chance to have music class every day for a whole semester.