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JustWatching
06-11-2007, 08:59 AM
Does anyone know the best way to get the following information regarding Saint John high schools - A comparison of schools or individual school results as far as number of students (or percentage) of students who graduate...(not sure if they keep this info) but percentage of students who go on to post secondary education...number of scholarships given out....basically looking to figure out which is the best HS to enroll child in.

Thanks a Lot

mizunderstood
06-17-2007, 10:23 PM
I am not sure but I think that each high school has all that info on record u could email or call the high schools... Just my 2 cents worth but the best is SJHS.. lol.. good luck..

Rickster
06-18-2007, 09:30 PM
Just take turns driving around each individual school at dinner time and see how many groups of students are standing around doing the 'doobie' thing; and the school with the least amount of this going on, would probably be the best one to send your child to,lol. - Rick.

trinity
06-19-2007, 04:14 AM
Does it still depend on where you live, where you are allowed to send your child??

Woofer
06-19-2007, 06:59 AM
i know we had to transfer my kids cause we moved, they wouldnt let them bus to finish off the year in thier old school.

Rickster
06-19-2007, 10:12 PM
trinity; Yes it does still depend on where you live and they only give you 1 or 2 choices.My ex. tried even the school board to get her child transfered and their basic opinion was for her to move,???,quite the option,eh !

trinity
06-20-2007, 05:19 AM
Hmm, then for "choices" of high schools I guess it depends on where you TELL the school board you live. **wink wink**
My personal preference is HarbourView, the few times I supplied there it seemed like an active, positive school. I didn't ever get called for the other high schools this past year, since my supply time had to be limited to 1 day a week based on my other work schedule. If I had a child, I would have no problems sending them there.

blondie
06-20-2007, 07:31 AM
I would say that even though a lot of people (especially in the media) say negative things about HarbourView, its a great high school. I graduated from there and even though I didn't really participate in the extra-curricular activities much, there was no shortage of things to do, and there are many courses and different clubs that are unique to HarbourView, for example, the Green Team which is a group of students, teachers and some staff members who do things to help the environment and try to get others to do the same. There is a bead and jewelry making club at lunchtime once every week. There are many sports teams which have great coaches and have had their share of successes. Some classes that are unique to HVHS are Leadership, History of Rock and Roll (really great class, sounds like a bird course but there is a lot of work involved and you learn some very interesting things about history), and a really well developed Culinary Technology course. Also they have the Renaissance program which is designed to acknowledge academic, extra-curricular and personal achievement. Also the school has car care courses, which can be very helpful to anyone who owns a car. The teachers at HarbourView put a really honest effort in involving the students in decisions about the school and in their education, as with any high school around the world, there are some students who can't be reached and they eventually quit or get kicked out because they stop showing up. The guidance councellors are amazing there, they really try to do whatever they can for you and help you decide on what courses you take, and what post secondary program you apply for. Its a really great school, and as a graduate I am really proud of the accomplishments that they have had and the changes that they have made.

JustWatching
06-20-2007, 08:06 AM
Thanks for all the replies....I suppose our area would be HVHS....I haven't really heard anything good or bad about that school (until I posted here)...I'm not sure if this is true (just listening to the kids) - I hear SJH is the school everyone wants to go to - not sure why - I suppose I could give the schools a call or drop by - I'm very interested in finding out the percentage of students who graduate - not that that will tell you everything about school :) but .... it helps in making a decision...I would be willing to move closer to another school if need be...anyway I guess it will all fall into place.

rubycshells
06-20-2007, 08:37 AM
Thanks for all the replies....I suppose our area would be HVHS....I haven't really heard anything good or bad about that school (until I posted here)...I'm not sure if this is true (just listening to the kids) - I hear SJH is the school everyone wants to go to - not sure why - I suppose I could give the schools a call or drop by - I'm very interested in finding out the percentage of students who graduate - not that that will tell you everything about school :) but .... it helps in making a decision...I would be willing to move closer to another school if need be...anyway I guess it will all fall into place.


I guess it wouldn't really matter what school your child goes to...I mean you have read "The Secret" haven't you?

JustWatching
06-20-2007, 08:59 AM
Yes I agree - Thats why I said "I guess everything will fall into place" :) - We'll be lead in the right direction...:D

dolphins#1
06-20-2007, 06:28 PM
i have not heard anyone talk about st. macs any inputs please i am a bit nervous of sending my daughter there

Rickster
06-20-2007, 07:50 PM
My son went there and the only thing I can say about it, is the teachers don't have time for any personal one on one help for a student that is having a problem with any particular subject. A teacher (actually two)stated to me that they don't have time for that kind of assistance as there are 30+ other students in the class that require their attention and they can't just stop because one 'kid' doesn't understand something. This did make me quite mad especially after the principal at the school took their side and agreed that perhaps a tutor was in order. Hell, what the heck are they there for !!?? - Rick.

The_Dave
06-20-2007, 08:43 PM
Teachers are teaching classes that are much to large, that is why they do not have time for one on one's. It is every parent's responsibility to do whatever it takes to help the child and teacher out. If it means a tudor, so be it. I would not want to be a teacher. It is hard and stressful work.

dolphins#1
06-20-2007, 09:28 PM
well if you guys are talking about saint macs you are right cause my neice went there and the teacher told her right at the beginning of the year that they will not like her if she had all a's they still would not like her well you don't tell a teenager that even if the have an attitude what kid doesn't and also i don't know about everyone else but they are teaching way different then they did about 20 years ago and please no negative talk as it is just a statement.

All you need is love
06-20-2007, 11:16 PM
SJHS is probably the best school to go to. I may be biased! But there are a lot of things that set SJHS apart from all the other high schools. As far as one-on-one help, there is plenty at SJHS. Tutors are paid to be there after school in the guidance centre, often they are students themselves, and sometimes at Lunch. The resource room is usually open at Lunch too and I know my teachers have always held tutorials at Lunch or sometimes before exams for students who need help. That's definitely not an issue at SJHS with 99% of the teachers. And we do have a leadership course at SJHS...

-SJHS is the ONLY English school in NB to offer the International Baccalaureate program. Universities love this. They offer IB courses for academic subjects, as well as Art and Music and some courses in French Immersion as well. Plus, the program requires so many hours of extra-cirricular activity, and pretty much every person who graduates with their IB diploma gets a huge scholarship, last year's Valedictorian went to Harvard on a $25,000 scholarship! Plus, a lot of IB courses have maybe 20 or less kids in them. And I think we're the only school in the district with exam exemptions, since KVHS is in district 6.
-We also have AP, level 1, 2, and 3 courses. And, as of next year, SJHS will also offer several trades courses (Metals Processing, Robotics, Appl. Theatre Tech, Electronics, etc), which makes us quite competitive!
-Out of last year's graduates, 98/248 were offered some sort of money for University through scholarships, and that doesn't include bursaries. 143/248 graduated with honours or high honours and 64/248 received an FI certificate.
-"In September this class was given the challenge to equal or surpass the class of 2005 by reaching the "top line" of one million dollars in offered scholarships. I'm pleased to announce that this objective has been reached and with the money presented tonight our graduates have amassed 1.1 million dollars." (Quote from Barry Harbinson, Principal of SJHS)
-The facilities are awesome...the auditorium just received all new lighting and a huge screen; the media centre has a darkroom to produce images, a distance learning room, brand new computers (not even a year old yet, with flat screen monitors...they're pretty sweet), video editing equipment, and we've had fundraisers this year for a recording studio I believe so perhaps that will be a reality in the future. We also have a swimming pool, which STM does not I don't think, and the biggest library in southern NB (with comfy couches too...)

Basically anything else you want to know you can find out at www.sjhigh.ca. It's a great site, there are course descriptions and a virtual tour of the school on there, and a helpful Forum community for students/parents/teachers alike to use. :) Also, there's a huge thing on the District 8 website about how they determine what schools kids can go to depending on what area they live in...but I know kids from everywhere in the city that go to SJHS, and even a few kids from Rothesay, St Martin's, Brown's Flat, Grand Bay, Quispamsis, etc.

Rickster
06-21-2007, 09:36 AM
Yea, well that's the thing that's wrong today...They are there for the paycheck and not because they like to teach. Back in the day when I was in school the teachers always were able to take time or suggest that you stay a little after school to get the extra help.They were real teachers with a concern for EACH child as opposed to todays breed of teachers. AND they had the same size classes if not larger. As for the person(and I'm being nice) that suggested the tudor be the way to go,I ask WHY,isn't that what the teachers are being paid for ?? Why should one incur an extra expense because the teacher doesn't want to do his/her job. - Rick.

JustWatching
06-21-2007, 11:08 AM
Thanks for the great info....you don't happen to know as much about HVHS do you :) .... I think it will be either SJHS or HVHS for us :)

hello
06-21-2007, 12:31 PM
Yea, well that's the thing that's wrong today...They are there for the paycheck and not because they like to teach. Back in the day when I was in school the teachers always were able to take time or suggest that you stay a little after school to get the extra help.They were real teachers with a concern for EACH child as opposed to todays breed of teachers. AND they had the same size classes if not larger. As for the person(and I'm being nice) that suggested the tudor be the way to go,I ask WHY,isn't that what the teachers are being paid for ?? Why should one incur an extra expense because the teacher doesn't want to do his/her job. - Rick.

Sorry, but I gotta say you're wrong on this.

Teachers are paid to teach the class, and most of them work a ton of hours already (although yes, they get summers off, but their pay isn't really that high anyway).

It's impractical to expect teachers to spend extra hours doing one on one tutoring for individual students. A high school teacher usually has 4 classes of 32 students each. That's about 125 students. If 20% of them need 1on1 help, that's 25 students... if each student needs 1 hour per week, that's an extra 25 hours per week!

The problem is something you have to blame on both the system and administration, not on teachers. They're paid to teach the class, not to do 1on1 tutoring... I'm sure nearly all teachers would give 1on1 help to a kid once in a while for maybe 10-30 minutes at a time, but expecting significant 1on1 tutoring is not reasonable.

hello
06-21-2007, 12:47 PM
A teacher (actually two)stated to me that they don't have time for that kind of assistance as there are 30+ other students in the class that require their attention and they can't just stop because one 'kid' doesn't understand something.

That's true though, they can't stop in the middle of the class for just a few students.

Also, I'm not a teacher and I am not saying this about your kid's case but in general: from a teacher's perspective, I know it would be frustrating when sometimes kids don't pay proper attention during class and fall behind, and then need help afterward.

I say that only as a general statement, and as someone who did not always pay proper attention in class myself. :o
I don't know much about St Mac's, but I think they should have a system like "All you need is love" said about SJHS where there are tutors available outside of class to help kids.

Rickster
06-21-2007, 08:21 PM
Well I'm sorry too but you misunderstood what I was saying. I did mean the extra little 5-10 minutes that it takes to explain something to the individual child and NOT tudoring,Obviously they don't have time for that and I understand that.They don't even want to take the time(5-10mins)to ensure that a student understands something in class. Funny , the teachers in my day seemed to care alot more for their students and had compassion enough to help the child that has a little difficulty with some aspect of the lesson at hand. Yes , they are there for the 'buck' today and that is probably why a scary percentage of kids graduating today don't even know how to spell let alone figger out some simple life problem by themselves.A few years back they did studies on this and much to eveyones amazement our school's students were way behind in some subjects or lower standings than schools in other provinces. Why...cause they(teachers)don't go out of their way to make sure each and every child under their instruction understands the work in front of them at that time.-Seen this in action as I said about ST, Macs. - Rick.

trinity
06-22-2007, 12:12 AM
I disagree with saying that teachers today are there for the paycheck. I graduated with 60 people from STU and not one of them was in it for anything but the work. I did however know of two teachers who are now retired that got into it for no good reason, one man told me that when he graduated he and his friends were sitting around the pub wondering what to do with their BA's and one of them said "Hey, I heard the school board is hiring." so they all went over and got jobs for the heck of it, and to get summers off. Fortunately he turned out to be a good teacher, but it was never his plan when he started university.

JustWatching
06-22-2007, 08:30 AM
I think the system is like it is....because of several reasons (I can't speak directly about the incident at St Macs but this is in general)

- Not enough parents push or are involved with what their kids are doing or how they are doing in school (I mean not even making them go or if they do go they're more of a distraction in class and probably should have stayed home - not there to learn) - These parents don't seem to care if Social Services is called on them (which it has been ) - No change - kids come and go as they want and do what they want - This would be enough for me right here to be discourged as a teacher (good thing I'm not one I guess :) )

- Some of the teachers are there for a steady job (summers off) and they don't want to put anything more into than they have to (mind you these are the minority - not alot like this - but there are some)

- Some other teachers I think started off being very decent teachers now they're so appauled by some of the parents/students that they have become negative - too bad really for the students who are they're to learn.

- I find the older teachers are the best in the sense they don't take the **** from the kids like the younger/newer teachers do (just my opinion)

Anyway again I go back to holding the parents responsible for their childrens education as a way to make the system better.

hello
06-22-2007, 02:33 PM
Well I'm sorry too but you misunderstood what I was saying. I did mean the extra little 5-10 minutes that it takes to explain something to the individual child and NOT tudoring,Obviously they don't have time for that and I understand that.They don't even want to take the time(5-10mins)to ensure that a student understands something in class. Funny , the teachers in my day seemed to care alot more for their students and had compassion enough to help the child that has a little difficulty with some aspect of the lesson at hand. Yes , they are there for the 'buck' today and that is probably why a scary percentage of kids graduating today don't even know how to spell let alone figger out some simple life problem by themselves.A few years back they did studies on this and much to eveyones amazement our school's students were way behind in some subjects or lower standings than schools in other provinces. Why...cause they(teachers)don't go out of their way to make sure each and every child under their instruction understands the work in front of them at that time.-Seen this in action as I said about ST, Macs. - Rick.

Oh, okay, well it is surprising that teachers wouldn't spend 10 minutes after class to help with something.

I can understand why they wouldn't do it during class, because that would cause problems for the entire class schedule and course timelines.

I agree with trinity though, in that most teachers teach because they want to teach. If they wanted to do it for the money, they could get much easier jobs using the same skills.

All you need is love
06-28-2007, 03:14 AM
Probably the reason why most teachers do not give help after class is because the breaks are very short, and every single class is being used during class time. Most teachers I know have to move from one class to another, often having to drag projection equipment and things with them from one floor to another. That and it often makes students late, which counts against exemptions (5 tardies and you lose your exemption at SJHS).

And in class, well, sometimes classes are large (particularly in lower level classes, my higher level classes usually have 20 or less people) and the teacher can only be in so many places at once, but in those classes, my teachers seem to do the very best they can to answer everyones' questions, sometimes devoting full classes to just question and answer periods. We have smart boards in almost every class at SJHS so usually if it is a Math question or something that can be worked out, the teacher does it on the board for everyone, since they also have virtual TIs on there. Good thing about the smart boards is that the teacher can save those notes to a file and bring them up later as opposed to erasing it on a board old school style!

But at SJHS, teachers are always willing to give help at Lunch on the days they aren't required to give duty, and I have had many teachers even offer for students to ask for help during that time too! Plus there are always paid students and people down in resources to help at lunch and after school.

And on Monday night, almost $80,000 was given to the class of 2007 in bursaries and awards alone! That adds to the nearly $1 million offered to the graduates in the form of major scholarships and entrance scholarships. You can see a full list at www.sjhigh.ca, they posted the graduation program so you can see how much each student was awarded and a list of bursaries! :)