School subjects

It feels like 2022 has barely started, and yet Mulan's school is already requesting that students lock in their choices for next year.

Yesterday, Mulan and I spent about an hour looking at her subject options for Year 12 (NCEA 2) in 2023, before submitting her choices.

Mulan still doesn't have strong opinions about what she wants to do after school (in just 2.5 years!).  So, it's about keeping her options open.  She may want a music career, or possibly something in sports science.  She still enjoys doing a lot of dance.  Or maybe something completely different.

Music was an easy first choice.  It's by far Mulan's favourite subject, and the learning environment at Westlake Girls is excellent.  From the sounds of things teachers and students are passionate and motivated and they're having fun learning at a high level.

Mulan quite enjoys science, despite teacher troubles in the first half of the year.  Westlake has been having difficulty getting enough teachers, and Mulan was stuck with relievers who were not very skilled communicators.  Mostly, the students were teaching themselves.  It was so bad that we contacted the school about this; the person we talked with was very understanding, but said it was the best they could do.  Fortunately this term Mulan's class has a new science teacher, who seems good.  For Year 12 Mulan has decided to take three science classes -- Biology, Chemistry and Physics (with her preference in that order).

Mulan finds maths relatively easy, although she has never been that interested in it.  While homeschooling, and before starting school, Mulan was consistently working at about two years ahead of her age.  Since starting school a year ago Mulan's maths has stagnated somewhat.  Often the school work has been easy, or with familiar content; she sometimes comments that class lessons progress too slow.  On the other hand, one assessment dropped below excellence, suggesting that the learning environment for new content is not ideal.  For Year 12 Mulan has decided to take Maths Progression, which is the second tier course (behind Maths Extension).

Mulan dislikes English, but it's still compulsory in Year 12 (she's looking forwards to Year 13 when she doesn't have to take it!).  This year Mulan was selected into the extension English class (English Writing), which includes some work that's a year ahead (NCEA 2).  For Year 12 she's again applied for the English Writing class, which will do some NCEA 3 work.  (If she doesn't get in she'll do English Literature instead.)

Mulan is taking Accounting this year, and has selected it as her 2023 backup option.  We were wondering about doing this instead of three sciences, but Mulan enjoys science more than accounting.

Mulan is also taking PE this year, but has decided to drop it.  It has been very interesting to contrast PE (and Dance, which Mulan did last year) with Music.  In our experience, the motivated musicians choose Music as a school subject, and the class lessons work at a high level.  On the other hand, it seems the motivated sportspeople generally don't take PE, and neither do the motivated dancers take Dance.  My impression is that school PE lessons are not as high level as non-school-subject sports lessons and training.  (Similarly, school Dance classes are not as high level as non-school dance classes and training.)

After submitting the subject courses we looked at Mulan's mid-year school report (which came through at the same time).  So far this year she's got a couple of merits and the rest excellences.  The main teacher comment is that she needs to ask questions more when she doesn't understand something!