Lunch
Jordan has lunch with different people on different days. He has a close friend for sharing stuff and just to keep in touch, and then two groups of people who he’s gotten to know from past experiences or classes. One group of people is a subset of the Ultimate Frisbee players, who he connected to especially because they are also musicians. The other is people he has met in class. Mostly Jordan doesn’t plan who he’s having lunch with; it’s just whoever happens to be around.
Best class so far
He loves Recording Arts Tech, which is basically a class in how to create electronic music. There is clear skill development in specific software, he sees a lot of places where it could be useful, he gets to use his prodigious musicianship, and it’s fun.
Lamest class so far
He says this is World History. He likes the teacher a lot, and the vibe in the class is terrific, but he is unimpressed by the content. The class is supposed to be about how to analyze current events, but Jordan doesn’t feel clear on what they’re really doing. One of the class routines is to watch a video with history content, and during the video, complete a template based on the “Five Habits of Mind” (5HOM – things like significance, perspective, connections) using evidence-based reasoning (EBR). This simultaneous video-watching and template-completing doesn’t work well for Jordan, and so it's hard to finish in-class assignments in class.
(We happen to have visited Jordan’s World History class for a “family exhibition night,” and we thought it was totally awesome. The students held a seminar in which they discussed questions like “Is conflict necessary for progress?”, informed by their readings and research. To Dale and me, it looked like what we were doing in our first year of college, in the best way. But Jordan is allowed to have his own opinion about it.)
Mentorship class
Nathan Hale students have a class called “mentorship,” which is somewhat comparable to the “advisory” that they had at Billings. Both are intended as an informal time for students to connect to each other and take care of school bureaucracy things. Jordan says they feel different in that Billings advisory was strictly for socializing, whereas in Nathan Hale mentorship, people might be doing homework or busy on their phone.
Does he like high school?
He does like it. He feels more socially open, more able to connect with people personally and have memorable experiences. He even likes it better than middle school, which is a surprise to me, but great news (because I think he liked middle school pretty well). Some of this is just how big of a school it is: he has a sense that there is a friend club for every interest you could possibly have. Like if you like Fallout 76 (a particular video game), there are probably three groups of people dedicated to Fallout 76.
He loves Recording Arts Tech, which is basically a class in how to create electronic music. There is clear skill development in specific software, he sees a lot of places where it could be useful, he gets to use his prodigious musicianship, and it’s fun.
Lamest class so far
He says this is World History. He likes the teacher a lot, and the vibe in the class is terrific, but he is unimpressed by the content. The class is supposed to be about how to analyze current events, but Jordan doesn’t feel clear on what they’re really doing. One of the class routines is to watch a video with history content, and during the video, complete a template based on the “Five Habits of Mind” (5HOM – things like significance, perspective, connections) using evidence-based reasoning (EBR). This simultaneous video-watching and template-completing doesn’t work well for Jordan, and so it's hard to finish in-class assignments in class.
(We happen to have visited Jordan’s World History class for a “family exhibition night,” and we thought it was totally awesome. The students held a seminar in which they discussed questions like “Is conflict necessary for progress?”, informed by their readings and research. To Dale and me, it looked like what we were doing in our first year of college, in the best way. But Jordan is allowed to have his own opinion about it.)
Mentorship class
Nathan Hale students have a class called “mentorship,” which is somewhat comparable to the “advisory” that they had at Billings. Both are intended as an informal time for students to connect to each other and take care of school bureaucracy things. Jordan says they feel different in that Billings advisory was strictly for socializing, whereas in Nathan Hale mentorship, people might be doing homework or busy on their phone.
Does he like high school?
He does like it. He feels more socially open, more able to connect with people personally and have memorable experiences. He even likes it better than middle school, which is a surprise to me, but great news (because I think he liked middle school pretty well). Some of this is just how big of a school it is: he has a sense that there is a friend club for every interest you could possibly have. Like if you like Fallout 76 (a particular video game), there are probably three groups of people dedicated to Fallout 76.
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