Getting up and ready for school at 7:20 in the morning can be difficult, and being marked tardy for classes can get frustrating, but not for these students that came from out-of-country schools! A rare few find it nice that school starts earlier, while others don’t have to worry about being late for class.

WS offers several clubs and activities that schools in other countries don’t have. This school is unique in having a wide variety of extracurriculars that let students find connections with one another through their interests. Through these activities, each student is able to express his or her own individuality.

Senior Rebekah Vanzo, who moved here from England, told us about the extracurricular activities she had at her school there.

“We didn’t have a lot of different clubs like you do here; for example, you guys have a Forensics club and Thespian club. We just had activities like drama club,” said 12^th grader Rebekah Vanzo.

“There was also a music club and sports,” added her brother, 11^th grader Alexander Vanzo.

In another case, one student explained to us how her school actually didn’t have any after school clubs.

We just had sports!” said freshman Samantha Rivero. “We would go home at noon and then come back at around 3pm to participate in activities.”

School schedules and hours are also a big difference in out-of-country schools compared to ours. Rivero’s school day ended at 12pm and the teachers were the ones who moved from class to class, not the students. It must’ve been nice not having to worry about being tardy; I guess it’s the teachers who had to get to class on time!

The curriculum in the Vanzo siblings’ school is also very different from ours.

“Our math levels aren’t split – we have just class called Mathematics that includes all the different types of math and we take it for five years,” said Rebekah Vanzo.

Vanzo also commented on our orange and blue day block schedules and described how the class schedules worked in her school.

“We had eight classes every day and each period was only 40 minutes long,” she explained. “Also, rather than having multiple quizzes throughout the year, some of our classes had a final exam that determined our overall grade.”

She also mentioned that her school started at nine a.m., which some students may sometimes find themselves wishing our school did too since waking up so early in the morning can be a struggle. Vanzo, however, pointed out that she actually prefers having school starting early and that it’s one of the things she likes about our school.

“It lets me to have more time in the day to do things afterwards,” she said.

Observing the different ways that schools in other countries function is a really interesting way to see how unique our own education system is.

“It’s nice to see things in this kind of perspective.”