Any forum members currently of high school age or that have kids of high school age, what's high school like today? Is it much different than when I attended in the early-to-mid-1990s? I mean I know I hear about things like active shooter drills (even at my old high school). Do they still have bomb threats (I'm guessing yes) that causes everyone to have to evacuate and stand around and socialize until the all-clear is given?

I had homeroom, 7 periods of around 50 minutes each, a lunch (half-hour, I think), and 5 minutes between each of those to get from one place to another. There was a warning bell followed by the tardy bell. Toward the end of high school, they started experimenting with "block days", where we'd have four longer classes on a particular day at the expense of excluding the other three. What are the school days like today?

School ran from around 7:55 AM to 3:05 PM, and the bus ride each way was over an hour, due to the large number of stops and trips down side streets to pick everyone up. These would take longer if a student or students causes problems on the bus, resulting in the driver pulling over and calling the "base" over the radio to talk about it, which resulted in a collective groan from all of the students. Also, if we got too loud, the overhead lights would come on, meaning shut up. Any school bus stories to share?

Do students still carry textbooks, or are they assigned tablets?

What about taking notes? In a notebook or typed? Or audio-recorded?

Are hand-written papers still sometimes required, or can everything be printed?

Tests and quizzes: paper or computer?

Are scantron sheets and No. 2 pencils still used?

Anything else that might be a "thing" at school nowadays that I might be completely unaware of?

In my High School a few years after I graduated. A girl hung herself in the bathroom. That poor girl. Imagine walking into the bathroom & seeing that. You'll never forget it.

I graduated highschool in 2011. My grade, including me, graduated 99 students. I went to a small school. It actually first started on the college campus so I had high school at the college  for 1 year before the schools official location was built. I loved it because i think we were the only high school on my area that had a building for gym and got to go to the college cafeteria for lunch. We were able to get fresh air without getting in trouble for cutting XD

Anyways, I had what they call "blocks" like A Block, B Block , C Block all the way until G Block. A Block = 1st Period. B Block = 2nd period. Freshman year classes were scrambled so different times each day but that stopped Sophomore year. School started at 8:20am and ended at 3:20pm except Wednesdays we went in at 9:15am and Fridays got out at 2:30pm. No homeroom. We had "advisory" which was a class with the same teacher and students every year. But i heard now that its a different class each year with different students and teachers yearly. It got changed:/ .

I had to take two city buses but freshman year since the bus was in a different location the first bus I took had a bunch of students who went to a different high school and people kept looking at me funny for not getting off the city bus to to go "school" even though I was on my way to school just not the school everyone on my bus went too.

scantrons still used with #2 pencils or a paper the teacher came up with.
essays were always typed.
i still used textbooks and my sister who is 17 and in high school uses textbooks too.
notes are still in notebooks.
One thing we had in school was a thing called  "engrade" which is an online website the teachers used and they put your grades on their so you can track your progress in class. I liked it because that way I could see if I had to bump up my grade

I teach high school math in a suburb of Detroit and have been there since 1994.  We still have the state mandated fire and tornado drills.  We also have two lockdown drills per year.  I think this is also state mandated.  I don't think we've had any bomb threats in the past decade.  They were a bit of a fad after Columbine, but aren't an issue for us.

My students take notes in composition books, in spiral  notebooks or on looseleaf paper.  I haven't had any students take notes on computer.  I've never really used scantrons, but a few teachers still use them.  Mostly for final exams I think.  My students will hand write their math papers, but most type their English papers/essay.  Some teachers allow these papers to be submitted digitally through google docs or google classroom.   My pre-calculus class still uses textbooks, but our textbooks for the algebra and geometry classes are old and outdated due to common core so we don't use them anymore.  Most of the stuff we use is teacher created or worksheets.

My school starts at 7:45 and gets out at 3:30 which is a bit longer than many area schools.  We have 6 classes of about 68 minutes plus 30 minutes for lunch.  We have advisory on Wednesdays combined with a late start for staff meetings so classes are only 40 minutes long.

We have computer carts in each classroom and I will give practice quizzes using sites called kahoot and quizizz from time to time.   Standardized testing is done on the computers now, except for the SAT which is still paper and pencil.  Some teachers use the computers  more than others.   I write my notes on a smart board and can actually save the notes and email them to students who were absent.  The class also has a white board that I use for some things.  We stopped having chalk boards when our new building was built a decade ago.  I think most schools have switched over to white boards and/or smart boards.  I also have a document camera that I use.

Quote from: BettyReggie on September 06, 2016, 10:14:46 PM
In my High School a few years after I graduated. A girl hung herself in the bathroom. That poor girl. Imagine walking into the bathroom & seeing that. You'll never forget it.

Oh my gosh, that's awful!

I don't mean to veer away from the original intent of Mark's thread, but I'm interested in hearing about High School from any era.  I find the later school years fascinating, in specific the socialization aspects that likely affect most of us for many years following.

I was suprised to see Rusty's school start at 7:45.  We started at 7:55 and that was way earlier than any others in the district.  We were let out at 2:40, so in a span of six hours and forty-five minutes we had nine "mods"(modules or classes). One Mod was lunch and two mods bookended the lunch so we had one class that lasted an hour in essence. There was a four minute break between classes, so that made each mod(class) somewhere around 46 minutes when all said and done.  On Wednesdays we had a dedicated "club" or activity period added(yearbook, debate team, drama, etc.) so class periods were even shorter that day except for the ones wrapping lunch.  Class periods were only about 35-36 minutes those days including the four minute break so the day just flew by.

Some kids who had classes like auto or woodshop, Vo-Ag, Phys. Ed., etc. had a full hour class before or after lunch, so there were three lunch periods(mods) each day.

I remember, on some days, all of the classes were shortened, so we'd finish early, because the rest of the school day was taken up by something that everyone had to be present for, regardless of whether they liked it or not. For example, a Tae-Kwon-Do show in the school auditorium (I remember one routine set to "Bad to the Bone", and my friend, sitting next to me, said "Oh, God"), a concert by some nobodies singing popular songs (a "reward", I guess; I think this was in middle school, because "U Can't Touch This" was big), or, Goddess forbid, a pep rally. I hated pep rallies. I just sat in the bleachers and had to endure a dimly-lit, noisy environment. At least, my friend was smart enough to have one of his parents pick him up early (which probably wasn't "allowed", but whatever). Do school still do crap like this?

The cool gym class was Bowling. The Bowling Alley was near my house. I remember the teacher was terrible though.

When I first started teaching, my school started at 8:30 and students got out at 3:00.  Band and drafting both ran during 0 hour from 7:25-8:25.  We added a bit more time over the years and eventually went from 8:15-3:30.  We then moved everything back 30 minutes and went from 7:45-2:30.  We added the extra hour to get out at 3:30 about 5 years ago as part of an attempt to increase test scores.


In my high school back in the 1980s (I graduated in 1988), school started at 7:50 and got out at 2:20.  I think classes were 55 minutes and we had 6 periods during the day.  We didn't have any days with shortened classes except for half days before some holidays. We did have three exam days at the end of each semester where we would have two 90 minute exams each day.  The school now runs from 7:15-2:15.  I think starting school that early is kind of ridiculous, but part of it is a nod to sporting events and travel times to get to away games I think.

I remember our cafeteria had the best cheese burgers. They were awesome. You were allowed to eat outside. You could walk up to West Chester Square. There's a White Castle & Pizza & Mc Mcdonald's. And if you went near the bowling alley. There was a Burger King & 7-11.

Quote from: BettyReggie on September 07, 2016, 10:26:00 AM
The cool gym class was Bowling. The Bowling Alley was near my house. I remember the teacher was terrible though.

In HS the only cool gym class I remember was when we played dodgeball.  The rest were mostly a waste in terms of exercise and activity.
One exception, and maybe out of the norm for other schools but following Thanksgiving break through the New Year Holiday we did square dancing. So for (like) four weeks and eight classes.  I found this to be super-fun for so many reasons.  "Ladies in, men sashay, promenade, reverse"!   

At the school we had play Volleyball I hated it. I couldn't do it. It was awful. We play badminton which was ok. And we had change in the locker room. I don't remember if you had to change everything. You had to have sneakers on though. We did run around the track. But when I graduated. The senior class took a picture in the gym. I was in the front. It was great. I was wearing a dress. I had long red hair.

Gym was boring in my school. Girls tricked the teacher by pretending to get dressed by putting sweatpants over their jeans. The final exam he gave a sheet of paper and it gave us a list on what to do like for example 50 jump ropes or 35 jumping jacks. Girls would lie on the paper because we had to do it in teams. My friend and I played badmiton during free time and my friend loved it so much she brought her own set.