Year 12 Class of 2013, REPORT HERE!

[Mr Keshy]

Sweat? Yep. In my very first week of math classes I was quite paranoid about being late to school because of my history etc - my math teacher is the VCE coordinator. So I wake up at 8.35 when home group starts at 8.45 and class at 8.55.... I made it to one of them riding my Mum's old bicycle frantically.

So you rode a woman's bicycle, to get the maths class... That's 50 SS material.

[brenden]

Sweat? Yep. In my very first week of math classes I was quite paranoid about being late to school because of my history etc - my math teacher is the VCE coordinator. So I wake up at 8.35 when home group starts at 8.45 and class at 8.55.... I made it to one of them riding my Mum's old bicycle frantically.

So you rode a woman's bicycle, to get the maths class... That's 50 SS material.

... Yes ... Yes, I did.

[nosuperstar]

Induction finished yesterday for me, but I didn't go to school on thursday or friday, so i've been on holidays since wednesday, yay!

[simba]

Okay, so I'm just going to have a slight rant here...

There are only 3 people in my school doing specialist next year, so unfortunately a class was unable to run (we're doing it by distance). Instead, the school promised us that we would be able to partner up with another school, as well as have designated study sessions where the ONLY teacher in the school qualified to teach both methods and specialist can help us.

Both of those plans haven't even been acted upon. I didn't really expect it too though, my school is pretty bad with that stuff. I didn't do GMA this year. I really don't know if I should be doing specialist, but I LOVE maths!

Its either specialist or health

[Lasercookie]

Okay, so I'm just going to have a slight rant here...

There are only 3 people in my school doing specialist next year, so unfortunately a class was unable to run (we're doing it by distance). Instead, the school promised us that we would be able to partner up with another school, as well as have designated study sessions where the ONLY teacher in the school qualified to teach both methods and specialist can help us.

Both of those plans haven't even been acted upon. I didn't really expect it too though, my school is pretty bad with that stuff. I didn't do GMA this year. I really don't know if I should be doing specialist, but I LOVE maths!

Its either specialist or health

I did spesh by distance (as in through distance ed centre victoria) without doing GMA this year. The GMA thing isn't anything to worry about imo, there's a fair few schools that don't offer it, or then there's some that do offer it and then don't teach much of the spesh stuff. It's not really a huge disadvantage not having done GMA.

There's some post somewhere where I detailed some stuff about what distance ed is like if that's what you want to know. If you search for posts, there's also a few other people that have detailed how they found distance ed spesh.

There's still heaps of time to enroll. Jump onto the distance ed website yourself, and print out the form and fill it out yourself. Then give it to your school and then get them to fill out their end of things.

I know for DECV you can enroll up until 15th Feb next year (though you'd need to catch up if you enrolled that late) http://www.distance.vic.edu.au/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/School-Based-handbook_2013.pdf

There's probably still time to organise to partner up with another school too. I didn't do this partner school thingo, so I don't know what that's like, but I quite liked the set up with DECV - allocated another block of spares to study in and if I needed to there was the option of calling/emailing/video-conference/whatever the teachers at DECV or I could go hunt down one of the maths teachers at my school and ask them for help (or jump on the internet, atarnotes etc.).

Schools are still open for a couple of weeks. I'd go down to your school, and go slap your principal in the face (metaphorically) and force them to get their act together.

[simba]

yeah, I did H&HD with DECV this year, I found it pretty hard although I still managed to pull close to full marks. I don't really know what its like doing maths by distance though, so ill definitely look at those posts!

Well im relieved GMA doesn't make too much of a difference! I was considering covering the course over the holidays though...

I just hope the distance teachers are good though, because, like I said there's only one teacher in the school who can actually help me, and shes barely ever available!

Thanks for the help though, I'll definitely fill out those forms soon! Last year I didn't know we had to register, because the school didn't inform me about any of it. I started health 6 weeks behind. Fun times.

Thank you again!

[paulsterio]

ATARNotes will help you when it's required, so if you have any questions, just ask here.

Ahh, the truth is you probably won't need a teacher if you can guide yourself and work hard!

[Stick]

Okay, so I'm just going to have a slight rant here...

There are only 3 people in my school doing specialist next year, so unfortunately a class was unable to run (we're doing it by distance). Instead, the school promised us that we would be able to partner up with another school, as well as have designated study sessions where the ONLY teacher in the school qualified to teach both methods and specialist can help us.

Both of those plans haven't even been acted upon. I didn't really expect it too though, my school is pretty bad with that stuff. I didn't do GMA this year. I really don't know if I should be doing specialist, but I LOVE maths!

Its either specialist or health

Ugh, I know that feeling, mate. My Italian class got cut because we were three below the threshold. I chose to pick up another subject instead of learn via distance education because I knew I wouldn't be able to learn Italian properly on my own (I was not being given any extra assistance) and I only recommend this if your school does nothing about the matter. Frankly, it's pathetic that my school has no Year 12s studying a language now and similarly how your school has no Specialist class. It's a bad reflection that suggests that perhaps these subjects haven't been taught very well. I'd be putting these words in writing to your principal and see how that goes. I tried and it backfired, but I was going to go down fighting. Good luck.

[simba]

what's even worse is that we only scraped through to get a methods class running! Only about 8 people are doing methods, and that's in a cohort of about 100.
Last year 1 person did methods. 1!
And my school won't do anything about it. I've been seeing the vce coordinator about it every day for the past month to see what advances they've made... Which is always nothing. I even got mu mum onto them haha
But I must admit, my methods teacher is pretty good! But if you look at the average results of out mid year exam... I got 96%, closest to that was about 63% and the rest were pretty much under 20.
it would be fantastic if they had some sort of guarantee that if the class runs in year 11 it will run in year 12! but i guess that's a bit too unrealistic

[Mr Keshy]

what's even worse is that we only scraped through to get a methods class running! Only about 8 people are doing methods, and that's in a cohort of about 100.
Last year 1 person did methods. 1!
And my school won't do anything about it. I've been seeing the vce coordinator about it every day for the past month to see what advances they've made... Which is always nothing. I even got mu mum onto them haha
But I must admit, my methods teacher is pretty good! But if you look at the average results of out mid year exam... I got 96%, closest to that was about 63% and the rest were pretty much under 20.
it would be fantastic if they had some sort of guarantee that if the class runs in year 11 it will run in year 12! but i guess that's a bit too unrealistic

It saddens me that a school could be so careless like this. Schools should be making every effort to ease their students of stress and worries while increasing your chances of success. Some schools seem to be doing the exact opposite..

I think it's unfair that you have to be worrying about things like this because we'll have an abundance of things to think about next year!

[nisha]

I don't know. It really depends what type of learner you are. If you can teach yourself and understand everything properly, then go for distance ed. But if you are like me, and NEED that extra voice to help you out, then distance ed would be a struggle. It all depends on you really.

[charmanderp]

I don't know. It really depends what type of learner you are. If you can teach yourself and understand everything properly, then go for distance ed. But if you are like me, and NEED that extra voice to help you out, then distance ed would be a struggle. It all depends on you really.

Depends on the subject too. Like I'd never advise anyone to do English (although this would never be required) or Lit 3/4 via Distance Ed, unless they were an incredibly strong English student. Same with Politics. A private tutor would be a necessity in my honest opinion.

[Stick]

what's even worse is that we only scraped through to get a methods class running! Only about 8 people are doing methods, and that's in a cohort of about 100.
Last year 1 person did methods. 1!
And my school won't do anything about it. I've been seeing the vce coordinator about it every day for the past month to see what advances they've made... Which is always nothing. I even got mu mum onto them haha
But I must admit, my methods teacher is pretty good! But if you look at the average results of out mid year exam... I got 96%, closest to that was about 63% and the rest were pretty much under 20.
it would be fantastic if they had some sort of guarantee that if the class runs in year 11 it will run in year 12! but i guess that's a bit too unrealistic

It saddens me that a school could be so careless like this. Schools should be making every effort to ease their students of stress and worries while increasing your chances of success. Some schools seem to be doing the exact opposite..

I think it's unfair that you have to be worrying about things like this because we'll have an abundance of things to think about next year!

My school "justified" its decision because having less than 6 students in a class stuffs up the ranking system (this makes sense). I think VCAA needs to do something about this so schools don't literally leave their students stranded. Perhaps pooling all the 'small cohorts' into one might work.

[pi]

They do recommend that the smaller cohort partner with another one, but is a tough situation to be in :/

[Stick]

I didn't know this and now I am very angry with my school principal.