Job shadowing - elective or science credit?

[LAR]

I just don't know what to do.  DD16 10th grade has taken geology, chem/honors, bio/honors, physics, and anatomy and physiology/honors.  She said she'll take an AP bio or chem next year if I make her. But she'd like marine bio/honors or something different.  While she's taking math and spanish at the local college in the fall, she's not ready for three college classes yet.  She's a premed student, currently has 400 hospital volunteer hours, nearly finished with her congressional award program,  and struggles to handle more than 3-4 classes at a time.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      As part of her schedule next year, she wants to continue volunteering and asked me to find more job shadowing opportunities for her.  She's shadowed three doctors so far and loves the experience.  Any thoughts on how I could turn job shadowing into an elective or science credit? I also have calls in to several labs so if she can shadow, intern or participate somehow.  I know I'm pushing the envelope especially for her junior year, but know that she's not shooting for an ivy league school - plans to apply to University of Florida, University of Tampa and University of South Florida....maybe Miami.    Think this crazy idea would be a red flag since it's her junior year?  

[City Mouse]

My DS attends a public school that allows for job shadowing/volunteering/paid employment to count as an elective credit. Students must turn  records of hours worked. There are options for how this info is reported. 100 hours os .5 credit x one semester. 200 hours is a full credit. There is additional paperwork required to start out and required progress reports during the semester. It is listed as “internship” on the transcript. The hours can be all at one location or a combination of several locations.

 I'm just giving an idea of how internships are handled at his school, and not suggesting that you have to copy what his school is doing.

Edited May 8, 2019 by City Mouse

[TarynB]

I think your DD's job shadowing would make a fantastic elective credit. Esp. if you could formalize or document it somehow, like CityMouses's example. For more science credits, if that's what your DD wants, just throwing out some ideas here. My DS is in a similar situation, rising 12th grader, looking at medical or related health field, doesn't need or want AP science credit prior to starting at a university. (He needs to take his college science credits on the campus at four-year university, not transfer in credits or test out of them.) So we're going interest-led and also beyond the traditional high school science sequence.

He's going to take DE chemistry in the spring, fully intending to take chem again once he gets to his four-year university. We're going to list the DE chem course Advanced Chemistry on his high school transcript, and he won't apply for or accept college credit for it from the university he eventually attends. We also looked into using Thinkwell and a textbook for chem. Thinkwell's basic chem class, not the AP version, is an intro-level college course.

He's also going to take a one-semester class called Biomedical Science through Excelsior Classes. Regular high school bio is a prerequisite. It goes a step further than regular bio and is more interest-led, not a standard high school class. More appealing to DS than a plug and chug, teach-to-the-test AP Bio course would be.  DS took two classes this year with Excelsior Classes and both were very good experiences. DS is really excited about taking this course:

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In this introductory course on Biomedical Science, students will combine concepts of Biology and Medicine to investigate the variety of interventions involved in the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of disease. We will explore how to prevent and fight infection, how to screen and evaluate the code in our DNA, and how to prevent, diagnose, and treat cancer. Patient scenarios will be used to expose students to interventions that may range from simple diagnostic tests to treatments of complex diseases and disorders. Lifestyle choices and preventive measures will be emphasized throughout the course as well as the important role that scientific thinking and engineering design play in the development of medical interventions.

 

FundaFunda Academy offers a Biology 2 high school course in which the student gets to choose from different modules to basically create a course that interests them most, can be one semester or two, and they research topics and write about them with the instructor's guidance and mentoring. DS had this same teacher, Dr. Underwood, for Bio 1, and we thought she was great. She also posts here on the forum, I think as ClemsonDana, and she's extremely accessible and helpful. I wish DS had time to take this course with her next year. Here is the course description:

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The goal of this class is to expose students to areas of biology that they would not normally encounter in a high school classroom. Students could take 2 semesters or one semester, depending on their needs. There are already 12 possible units, with more planned. Students will have a lot of flexibility to choose modules and spend a few weeks or even a few months researching a topic and writing about it.

Students will be provided with some material to help them get started – a short lecture, links to sites explaining basics, articles, conflicting data, videos, or book suggestions. Some students may choose to read ‘hard science’ articles in primary journals, while others may choose a softer approach with articles from popular science magazines and sites. Instead of tests and quizzes, students write summaries, explore ethical implications, or address questions about the material. There is also a year-long project in which students write a short research proposal. Even if they don’t intend to continue in the sciences, most students find that this process helps them to understand how scientists work and why some question are so hard to answer. How do you ask a good question and break it into testable pieces? How do you get patients to participate? How do you judge if the experiment was successful?

On average, students will do 4 units per semester, with maybe a week or 2 of fill-in (there will be module that’s just ‘cool science stuff’ that they can pick and choose from when they have a leftover week or 2). But it will be flexible and students can do as few as 2 and as many as 6, depending on which modules they choose and how in-depth their research is.

Modules will include ‘allergy and immunity’, ‘cancer biology’, ‘prions and neurodegenerative disease’, ‘the microbiome’, ‘how to lie with statistics’, and ‘biological cycles and rhythms’. There are also suggestions for labs that students can buy and do for certain units, if they want to. Microbiology, for instance, lends itself to labs that one can purchase kits for.

There will be a required unit, ‘experimental design’ which students need in order to do their proposal (we talk about how to get participants to join the study, how to ask the right question, confounding effects, ethics, and why some questions are hard).

 

One final idea, maybe your DD could pick some titles from The Great Courses and pair them with a spine or two to create her own interest-led science class(es)? We've done quite a few. They have courses on neuroscience, botany, marine biology (I know you mentioned that), physiology, genetics, infectious diseases, and so on.

Edited May 8, 2019 by TarynB