In the 10th grade, most students will have a standard curriculum, with the option of an elective in which schedules diverge.
Students will take English 10, World History & Geography II, Honors Chemistry, Health and PE 10, Math, World Language, and an elective.
I’ll break down more information about these courses below.
Both English 10 and World History and Geography are integrated courses, meaning that the teachers will frequently collaborate and offer combined projects. Additionally, you’ll have the same peers in both classes, so there’s a lot of group projects and presentations. You’ll frequently hear students talk about which “HUMs” (short for humanities courses) they’ve been placed in, based on their teachers. World History and Geography will be the first history class that most TJ students will take in high school, and it can be difficult because there is a great breadth of topics covered. Nonetheless, it’s extremely interesting subject material for the students because for most students, it’s the first exposure to the history and development of countries all across the world. English 10 will involve several readings, and several essays based on those readings. My English 10 teacher would strive for 2 hours of reading every week, which was reasonable, as long as we spread it out throughout the week.
Honors Chemistry is usually the difficult course of the year for many students, because it’s mostly all new information. There’s a lot of labs and tests. For me, as long as I read through the textbook sufficiently and took notes and paid attention in classes, the tests would be manageable. I would recommend, again, to supplement in-class learning with online resources so that you can really benefit from the curriculum, since it’s a very standard curriculum with slightly more difficult testing and homework requirements.
Health and PE 10 will involve Driver’s Education, which is a requirement for people under 18 to get a license. It’s an important class, but for the most part, it isn’t very difficult. It will also involve a health component, which may or may not be difficult depending on the teacher. Both Driver’s education and Health will be one quarter each, and the other two quarters will be traditional PE.
Math will be the next level up after the previous year. For some students, this is Math 3 and 4, or BC Calculus, or something else.
World Language is usually the next level up from the previous year. Very few students choose to switch the world language from the previous year. A few students also choose to forgo the world language in favor of another elective, such as a computer science course. Most students will choose to continue their language learning in 10th grade.
Finally, students have an elective choice. I took AP Biology as my elective, which was incredibly difficult for me back when I was a student. We had a quiz or a test every class, so I was reading the textbook almost every single night to memorize details and understand pathways. If I had to guess, I’d say that AP Biology was almost as much work as the rest of my classes combined. But the subject material in this course shows up quite frequently throughout the rest of high school and college, especially if you’re planning to be premed in college. You’d be surprised at how much of this material shows up on the MCAT (the medical college entrance exam) and in biochemistry classes.
Please let me know if you have any questions. You can reach out, and I’ll try to address it either in email or in a blog post. I wish you all the best, and I hope you found this helpful.
Thanks! – Naman
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