I miss it so much. I got to live at home, learn things all day and then play korqruet on the quad after school. I like college, but I don't do well in such an unstructured environment. The dorm living isn't really my kind of life either.
Do you mean croquet? Did they have spelling class at your school?
Or is korqruet some upper class game us underlings wouldn't understand?
Anyway... I enjoyed high school. My city only had one high school (now there are 3.. 2 charter schools have opened since), but my class had about 500 students, so we had the benefits of having every socio-economic class in the same school, but also having lots of electives and stuff.
Our community has put together a lot of resources to produce great schools. We've also done a lot of thinking outside the box. We have partnerships with the local university, tech college, and Habitat for Humanity for technical training and taking college courses for college and high school credit for no charge.
There's also a strong investment in extracurriculars. While most modern schools only have a 400-600 seat auditorium, ours was built with 1200 seats and every year the Christmas choir concert is performed to a standing room only crowd. The arts, cultural experiences, and sports are very important here.
The school has a partnership with the local curling club. The class is so popular that it has waiting lists and 300 kids take the class each year. This has led to 8 U.S. olympic curlers coming from Bemidji.
Plus there were little quirks and benefits that a lot of kids don't get elsewhere... like the lunch ladies giving you cookies and singing happy birthday as embarrassingly and obnoxiously as possible.. also, the school is on 80 acres of land that abuts the Mississippi river, so environmental science and biology classes do a lot of research on aquatic life as well as forestry.
It's a strong connection to the community and a strong sense of pride that has led Minnesota into the top 10 in the world (I think we were 5th or 6th) for educational achievement.
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