Saved By the Bell. Malcolm in the Middle. Glee. Buffy the Vampire Slayer. And JR’s favorite, Young Sheldon: school is a popular theme in TV shows and movies. And on today’s Plain English, we’ll talk about what life is really like in school in the United States. Is it like what you see on TV? You’ll find out today.
Lesson summary
Hi there everyone, I’m Jeff and this is Plain English, where we help you upgrade your English with stories about the world. And this summer, we’re focusing on American daily life and culture. And listen, not everyone in the U.S. is big and grown up like JR. Some Americans are still growing up, and we want to include school life in our summer lessons.
Today’s story and Monday’s story are about what it’s like to go to school in the United States. In the second half of today’s lesson, I’ll show you the English phrasal verb “spread out.” This is lesson number 697 of Plain English, so that means you can find the full lesson at PlainEnglish.com/697, thanks to JR.
The typical American school day
Today, we’re going to talk about a typical school day . And we’ll focus on what we call middle school and high school —say, from about age 10 to about age 18.
The school day is about 8:00 a.m. to 2:00 or 3:00 p.m.; typically the older students start earlier, the younger students start and finish later, but 8 to 2, 8 to 3 is a good average of the school day for most kids.
Let’s start with how students get to and from school. Most ride a big yellow school bus . American families like their single-family, detached houses . And many parents, when they have kids, they decide to move to the suburbs . The suburbs and smaller towns are spread out , so schools are usually far away from where kids live. Most of the time, you can’t walk to school—and most suburbs don’t have sidewalks anyway.
Most suburban towns run school buses that pick kids up in the morning and drop them off at night. The school bus is usually free. Kids wait at the end of their driveways or at the end of their streets .
At school, most students are assigned to a classroom called their “homeroom” class. And that’s the classroom they go to in the morning. That’s where teachers take attendance , pass out announcements , and take care of other administrative matters . They might meet there again at the end of the day, too. A teacher leads that classroom, but no teaching really happens there. That’s just the first place that kids go in the morning.
Schools usually have bells that ring in the hallways and classrooms to signify the beginning of the day and the changing of class periods . And when the bell rings for the first class, students begin follow their daily schedule of classes. Every school does it a little differently, but in most places, the students follow a daily schedule of classes in about 45-minute increments . They might have five or six of those per day. And the students move from classroom to classroom, as they go to their different subjects during the day.
Each class has anywhere between 15 and 25 students. Each class has one teacher, though some schools have the budget for an assistant to work in some classrooms.
What do kids study? There’s math and science. A class called “social studies” is usually about history, culture, politics, things like that. Younger students take reading classes ; then they advance to writing and grammar (sometimes called “language arts”). Older students take literature classes.
At about age 12 to 14, most kids start to take a foreign language ; the most common are Spanish and French. Only a small minority of students take other languages, but German, Russian, Italian, and Chinese are sometimes available .
As a general rule , middle school kids take all the same classes, unless they need extra help or struggle in one subject. But in high school, some students might be invited to take classes called “honors” classes.
These advanced classes cover the same subjects, but they go at a faster pace and they cover more ground in a year. So for example, I was good at literature, but not good at all in science. So I was in honors literature classes, but not honors science classes. In their last year or two, students can take an even more advanced curriculum called “Advanced Placement” classes, or A.P. classes.
Why would you take the hardest classes ? Besides being interesting and motivating , these advanced classes help in applications to universities .
Schools offer non-core subjects , too. These might be only for a quarter or half the year. These are subjects like music, art, and health.
Most high schools offer “electives.” These are optional classes that students take to fill a free period. Everyone is required to fill the period, but they can choose what classes to fill it with. Electives might be woodworking , marketing , computer programming , nutrition , film , astronomy , journalism , robotics , religion , or personal finance . Not every school offers all of these, but most schools offer a handful of choices like this.
Assignments are usually graded on a 100-point scale. The scale roughly aligns with letter grades, with A being the best and F being the worst. Most schools these days report grades using an online system , so parents can check the progress of their kids and monitor their assignments and grades.
High schools calculate something called a grade-point average—this is like a weighted average of all a student’s grades during their entire four years of high school. And this can be competitive , too. At the end of high school, all students in a school are ranked by their cumulative grade-point averages—so there’s no hiding your school performance .
In most public schools, students are assigned books for each class at the beginning of the year. It’s usually just one book per subject, to keep things simple. The books are free, but it’s the student’s responsibility to return the books in decent condition at the end of the year. Teachers also supplement the books with online or other resources.
The school day includes some time out of the classroom, too. All schools are required to have physical education—gym class. There’s a gym teacher. And there are a variety of activities, depending on the weather and time of the year. But this time can be used for team sports like basketball and volleyball. Or it can be for activities like running, stretching , or climbing a rope .
Jeff’s take
Oh, one more thing. The length of the school year. It’s a little different in every state, but most schools are open 180 days per year. Most schools open from about the end of August, beginning of September until about the beginning of June.
Now, class is only one part of the school experience. So on Monday, we’ll pick the topic up again and talk about what kids do when they’re at school, but not in class. This will be about the unstructured part of the school experience —lunch, recess , sports, after-school activities , things like that.
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