Dear class 8,



It's great that you are interested in the American High School life. I will tell you a bit about my school life.

We don't have different types of schools, so we all go to the same school. Normally, it's the school that's nearest to your home. I’m in eleventh grade, so I’m a ‚junior‘. Next year I will be a ‚senior‘ and graduate.

My school starts at 7.30am and finishes at 2.25pm. I'm 16 years old, so I can drive to school myself. The younger students normally take the yellow school buses.

As you can see from my schedule, I have four periods every day. We have A-Days and B-Days. That means that I have four subjects on A-Days and four subjects on B-Days. The classes are 90 minutes long and we have a five-minute break between them.

We don't have classrooms, instead our teachers have their own rooms. So we have to change rooms between classes. Because of that we keep our stuff in lockers in the hallways.

You can choose your own subjects. You have to take some subjects (so called 'requirements') and you can choose others (so called 'electives'). If you need help choosing your subjects, you can go to the guidance counselor. You can also go there if you have a personal problem.

My favourite subjects are psychology and calligraphy. I don't really like math and biology.

Because everyone can choose their subjects, we are not always together with the same students.

After school there are a lot of clubs and extracurricular activities. You can do sports, play music, dance or join different clubs. This year I’m on the swim team and I work for the yearbook committee. My task is to take pictures of our school life. So I often go to football games or theater productions in the evening.

Another important part of our school life are the dances. We have four different dances throughout the school year: Homecoming, Winter Formal, Spring Fling and Prom.

Something I don’t really like about our school is the strict dress code. We are not allowed to wear caps or hats and we can’t show too much skin. So we are not allowed to wear tank tops and the skirts must be long enough. If we break these rules, we have to go home and change clothes.

But all in all I really like going to my high school. Now I’m really interested in hearing from you.



What’s your school like? Is your school life totally different? Do you have dances and a dress code?



Best wishes,

Mia