12 grade literature

[Jen_NH]

What's this 12th Grade Literature course I see? When I click on it, it doesn't go anywhere or show anything. I am interested to know what's included there and who will be teaching it. Am I correct that 11th grade is Divine Comedy?

[Mrs Bee]

Oh Jen_NH!!!! Does it mean MA loves me so much that they're really truly going to offer a class for the 12th grade lit package???? I asked a few months ago if they would eventually offer one, since MP had come out with the set, but I was told there were no plans for it yet. If I'm lucky the time and day will fit our schedule. The package includes A Tale of Two Cities, Anna Karenina, Hamlet, and Macbeth. If nothing happens when you click on the link it means they're not quite ready to publish that web page - Classical Studies VI was like that for a while but now it's there. And yes, 11th is usually Dante, that's why MP has a lit set for 10th and 12th but not 11th,

[jenniferjb]

So glad to see this is finally being offered! And Mrs. Dewberry to boot!

[tanya]

Eleventh grade in our standard curriculum track is Dante.

Tanya

[Jessica Gardner]

What's this 12th Grade Literature course I see? When I click on it, it doesn't go anywhere or show anything. I am interested to know what's included there and who will be teaching it. Am I correct that 11th grade is Divine Comedy?

Hi, Jen. Here is the 12th Grade Literature description page: Twelfth Grade Literature - Memoria Academy. I apologize for the broken link issue; it has been resolved. Thank you!

[Jen_NH]

Hi, Jen. Here is the 12th Grade Literature description page: Twelfth Grade Literature - Memoria Academy. I apologize for the broken link issue; it has been resolved. Thank you!

Thank you! My son opted for the novel class.

[Mrs Bee]

We're very sorry we can't do 12th grade Lit - it overlaps with the only AP Latin we can do, because the other Latin session overlaps with Classical Studies IV, which has two sessions, one of which overlaps with 12th grade Lit anyway... I feel as if I am working on a Rubik's cube

[Jen_NH]

We're very sorry we can't do 12th grade Lit - it overlaps with the only AP Latin we can do, because the other Latin session overlaps with Classical Studies IV, which has two sessions, one of which overlaps with 12th grade Lit anyway... I feel as if I am working on a Rubik's cube

We were in a similar situation. There was really only one "schedule" that works for us so that classes are confined to three days vs 4 or even 5.

[Mrs Bee]

In the end this is one of the reasons we decided not to do the diploma program - we could not have the certainty that the classes we really valued would be doable, given scheduling constraints, and the diploma means you may have to settle on classes you're not too interested in, simply because they're the ones working with the schedule of other classes.

[Mrs Bee]

But we've been lucky in that by the end of high school we'll have been able to do ALL the Classical Studies classes, this was a very big priority for us 😍

[Mom2mthj]

In the end this is one of the reasons we decided not to do the diploma program - we could not have the certainty that the classes we really valued would be doable, given scheduling constraints, and the diploma means you may have to settle on classes you're not too interested in, simply because they're the ones working with the schedule of other classes.

I have had those rubic’s cube years before. I like the MA classes, but I do like how Kolbe (and others) schedule more like a school with class periods. I have never used them, but at least that way you don’t end up with classes that overlap sometimes by 15 min. It doesn’t sound like a lot, but by the time your child logs out, logs into the second class, and maybe needs to stand up for a few minutes, that child has missed a least 20% of the class.

[Jen_NH]

I have had those rubic’s cube years before. I like the MA classes, but I do like how Kolbe (and others) schedule more like a school with class periods. I have never used them, but at least that way you don’t end up with classes that overlap sometimes by 15 min. It doesn’t sound like a lot, but by the time your child logs out, logs into the second class, and maybe needs to stand up for a few minutes, that child has missed a least 20% of the class.

MA did revamp the scheduling for next year. All the classes are at set times, with 10 minutes between classes. There aren't any "odd" start times or overlapping (unless a teacher runs over). Even so, many classes only have one section, and several of those classes seem to be at the same time. I found that a few things that my son was interested in were all on the same day, so he would have 3 classes in a row with only a 10 minute break in between. I realize if he was in school, he would have back-to-back classes, but these online, once a week classes are more intense than if the class met daily. He cannot sit in front of the computer all day like that and process the material.

[momgineer]

Until MA gets big enough, there will have to be conflicts in schedules as there are only so many time slots to fill. It would be nice if they could somehow figure out ways to keep similar level classes from being at the same time. So don’t put Henle 3 at the same time as vector physics for instance. One problem, though, is they have a number of teachers who teach across disciplines so that has to make it hard to plan as they have to try to not conflict two classes both of which a student may wish to take, but also not conflict teachers who are teaching various grade levels and disciplines. I sure don’t envy Paul and Mitchell figuring all that out.
I have been blessed that my son’s schedule has worked out for three years so far, and we have been able to avoid Friday so we can do co-op. Most classes my son has taken have had at least two if not three sections. The ones that only had one, we planned around. Sometimes he had to have a new teacher or a less desired teacher, but that’s worked out just fine for us so far. One benefit of diploma status is you get the class you request, it’s never full when we register. That makes planning a bit easier as you can plan to be able to get the section that fits.
I had two boys go to public school and both had to not take a desired class because it conflicted with a required class. One had to drop his foreign language to take his Project Leas the Way class. I’ve also had a number of my kids have issues with college classes conflicting. The biggest issue was with my son who is a double math and physics major- a double major promoted by his school and the two departments work together on senior seminar projects. He had to not take a math class that would have helped his physics study because it was always offered at the exact time of the required physics lab. I’ve even heard of others who have had to go an extra semester because they couldn’t take a required class due to conflicts. So this is very much not just an issue with MA. If anything, I feel my MA student is better able to fit his classes and get his desired teachers than my public school kids. And their school had over 1500 students so it wasn’t an issue of being too small.

[Mrs Bee]

I agree all this is pretty much inevitable, it's an impossible problem to solve. MA has a very wide path, or rather, it has so many possible different paths, there are so many classes that could be taken in different years - couple that with some subjects having a rotation of 2-3 classes, and you have a very tricky situation. And I haven't even mentioned teachers' availability yet!

We, too, have days with a few back-to-back classes - Monday is the worst, with APEH, 15 minute break then Precalculus, straight into Dante, half an hour for lunch and here comes Classical Studies V. That's 9am to 3pm, and afterwards my kids are a bit fried :-) Like Jen, I have told myself kids are in school going from class to class and it's not a big deal. But like Jen, I do sense a difference - and I agree that it's partly due to the intensity of the work, and partly due to technology, sitting in class is not the same as sitting in front of the computer for so many hours. Next year I would have had my son on fall Tuesdays possibly going from AP Latin straight into Advanced Physics, then a 10-minute break before Classical Studies VI, which is a light class, still that would cover from 11:45am to 4:10pm, with Calculus happening earlier in the morning. I wasn't sure it was a wise choice, so we decided to do Modeling Nature elsewhere. Calculus is something else we won't be able to do with MA, because it overlaps with the one section of Classical Studies IV we can do - because again, if we chose the other section we wouldn't solve every conflict, we'd simply create different ones :-) None of the classes we wanted to do offered a section on Fridays, not sure if it's MA policy to try to stay away from Fridays or if teachers prefer not to teach on Fridays.

None of this is a complaint. Online classes are a choice and they are objectively tricky to organize and to work with. My high school experience in Italy was a different universe so I can't judge, but my husband thinks our kids' experience with MA will make them feel so ready for college, they're already used to juggling a schedule based on intense weekly lectures and a workload to organize for the rest of the week. We'll see!