How to Take High School Summer Courses
While it is true that the majority of high school summer courses are remedial in nature, there are also summer programs intended for advanced students, which help them enrich their educations before heading into college. To find out the full breadth of summer school courses available to you, consider your options with the help of your guidance counselor.
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Instructions
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Explore and develop your talents during summer school. In most every state, there are institutions, many of which operate in cooperation with local colleges, to help high school students learn more about subject areas they're interested in that are not part of the regular curriculum. For example, the California State Summer School for the Arts offers programs in a wide variety of specialized art forms, including animation, dance and fine arts (see Resources below).
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Ask your school's guidance office to help you prepare any application materials for summer programs with competitive entry. Specialized institutions often have limited space, and you'll have to gain entry by winning a spot from an admissions committee.
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Take courses in summer school to free up space on your timetable for the following academic year, so you can get required classes out of the way in order to take specialized courses. For example, your high school may offer a specialized English class in literature or creative writing, which you might not be able to take because of scheduling conflicts with a required class. You might opt to take the required class in summer school.
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Use summer school to repeat key courses in which you didn't perform well. For example, the vast majority of schools require students to attain a certain grade level to remain in advanced classes. If you want to move on to Grade 12 advanced math but didn't hit the grade cutoff you needed to reach in Grade 11 math, keep your calculator handy, because you'll be headed to summer school.
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Browse the offerings at alternative summer schools. There are trade summer courses that offer hands-on training to students with field placements and summer programs for advanced students to tackle college-level course work.
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Tips & Warnings
Plan ahead if you want to take enrichment courses during the summer by looking for a summer job with flexible hours.
Even if you take a class over again in summer school and get a better grade, your original performance will still remain a part of your permanent academic record.
