Hey Kids! - It's HS in NYC applications time!

10.7.13

 

Brooklyn Tech. Specialized High School.*

What: Reportedly the largest HS in the US, with 5500 students. The Brooklyn kid brother of the bigger name-brand Specialized High Schools, Stuyvesant and Bronx Science. Sophomore year you choose a major. Yes, a major; yes, in high school.

Observation: I'll say it again. THIS SCHOOL IS EFFING HUGE.

Trivia: Harry Chapin is a BT graduate.

Favorite elements:

Architecture students build a house, a real house, with plumbing and electricity, inside a 3-storey classroom. Every year. Then they dismantle it. With a wrecking ball.

*To get into a Specialized HS you take one multiple-choice test, known as the SHSAT, commonly pronounced SHIZZAT, which determines if you get in or not. Grades, attendance, criminal record -- N/A. Just the SHSAT, fo' shizzle.

10.8.13

Millennium Brooklyn. 

What:  “Partial replication” of Millennium Manhattan, which is a well-regarded HS in, yes! Manhattan. Shares its space (is "co-located") with 3 other High Schools.

Observation: I suspect they didn’t reverse the order of the words in the name and call it Brooklyn Millennium because of the resulting initialism*.

Learned: While visiting an integrated English/Humanities class, I learned the word *initialism. An initialism is an abbreviation consisting of initial letters pronounced individually (e.g., GPA). It’s like an acronym, except it doesn’t spell a pronounceable word.

Favorite elements:

• posters recommending the morning after pill as birth control (if you didn’t "mean to," but did, have sex)
• posters announcing: “A closet is for clothes, not people. Come to the first GSA meeting of the year.” GSA is an initialism. Look at me, applying my learning!

 Favorite euphemism: “scanned school” = school with a metal detector. Use it in a sentence? Millennium Brooklyn is a scanned school.