Our student Government bascily is supposto
cover everything from policy changes (we ajusted the way Honors are achieved earlier this year) to school spirit events and dances. It is really a group that does everything. We orgainize blood drives and run a student store. We help other student groups with funding (we make a good deal of $$ from the student store) (student council might be buying the tech crew t-shirts! (lumping them with a larger order for other t-shirts they are ordering)).
My freshman and sophmore year it was really just a normal student council with a popularity contest type election in the begining of the year, and 2 months later it was a defunct group b/c the kids who won the popularity contest were not kids who were hard workers. Last year, my school got hit HARD by budget cuts (we lost EVERYTHING including 25% of our teaching staff). Student Council was cut, but me and a few friends got together and orgainized student council meetings anyway. We opened it up to all students and didnt elect any positions. We went from a max of 12 kids being involved (on a good day) to having an AVERAGE of 20 kids attending our all meetings (with some meetings haveing more then 35 kids!). We got ALOT dont last year, without the help of faculty advisors. This year we have advisors back but we still didnt have elections and things are still going well. (I have a college application essay on this topic if anyone really wants to read more, I can make it available online)
moving on.
AP Bio is a cool class. I took Advanced Biology my sophomore year and took BioTech my junior year. (Biotech was a SWEET class where we got to do all kinds of stuff including extract our own DNA (i have mine in a glass necklace/charm type thing still) and even genintically engineer bacteria (we made bacteria that ate different very specific kinds of oils, and made a safe strain of E.Coli glow using Jellifish DNA).
We try to meet one day a week after school for about 2 hours (although we have been having a hard time b/c of the snow recently). Right now all of us (the 3 people that are doing the class) have taken one practice AP Bio test, and now we are working through it going over it and reviewing the stuff as we get to it. I think that is kinda going to be the way we are going to do the class, with a few breaks to do the required labs (the ones that we havent already done
in one of the other classes). However, I'll be sure to let you know if I run into any questions!
@supercow: I dont know if I like the fact that your activities are required. I guess it is good that your school makes kids get involved with things that widen your horizons, but I also think it is not necessaraly good that kids are forced to do things b/c then they dont necessaraly take responsibility for doing good things of their own initiative, and may not have the same dedication to the activities. (I am NOT saying that you have any of these problems, just I can see these problems possibly occuring)
It defanatly sounds like you guys have more opportunities as far as the number of things you can get inolved with. My list of activities is basicly the most any student can do, b/c that is all that is offered at my school (again b/c of budget cuts). My school doesnt have frisbee or cycleing, or football, or
track, or a million other sports, basicly we have, *soccer, X-country running,* *
Basket ball, wrestling, downhill sking, x-country sking,* *baseball, and softball.* (*s seperate seasons, one sport can be played per person per season [not required though])
ok, that's a long enough post!