• Instructional Objectives: Students will identify criteria to determine a good high school (or good college) for them.
• Time Required: two class periods
• Advance Preparation:  You should have a projector or TV screen setup beforehand to use. You should also have copies of the New York City High School & Specialized High School handbook for reference. You can also download information from DOE website at http://www.nycenet.edu/ourschoolsInfo/hsdirectory/handbook.pdf . You may want to have students open up email accounts. You can create supervised email accounts at http://www.epals.com You may also want to do a unit on career explorations before this lesson. See http://www.teachnet.org for lessons.
• Materials / Resources Required:  projector or TV screen setup, computer with Internet access, Microsoft Word, High School Handbooks
• Vocabulary: personal inventory
•  Concepts, Focus Questions (and responses), Generalizations, Key Points: What are my strengths and weaknesses? What makes a good high school? How do I know a high school is good for me? What programs am I interested in? What are some possible careers I may be interested in? Students need to assess themselves and determine what are their likes, dislikes, strengths and weaknesses. Students need to understand that a good high school for one person is probably not the same for someone else no matter how close that person is to you. You cannot be thinking about your friends when making choices regarding high schools. In high school you make new friends and lose some you had in middle school.
• Procedures:   
  1. As a motivation, talk to students that one of the most important decisions that they will be making soon is regarding which high school to go to. For many students this is probably the most stressful decision they will be making this year. It is one that will affect your life at least for the next four years, possibly for life. Not everyone may take this assignment seriously, but those that do, can alleviate a lot of the stress associated with this decision.
  2. As a do now, have students answer the following questions: What would you like to be doing when you finish school? What do you feel are your 3 greatest strengths and your 3 greatest weaknesses? What are 3 interests that I have? Discuss the responses with the class. Some students may have difficulties writing down three.
  3. Ask the class what characteristics should a good high school have and list their responses on the board. Write as many as possible. Have the class look at the responses and evaluate them, ask them if they feel that if all the characteristics are necessary to have a good school. The point to make here is that there is some subjectivity as to what is a good school.
  4. Have students look at their interests and needs from the do now, have them look at the following website to determine schools that fit their interests and needs http://nycps.schools.net/cgi-bin/sme_where/NY . Students should look at the criteria posted on the site as well as their personal inventory list from the do now. Students can also look at their high school books while doing this exercise.  Suggest to students that they should also go over this site at home with their parents.
  5. After selecting high schools, students should save their selections to My Schools List by clicking on the button and providing an email address.
  6. Other websites students can look at while evaluating high schools are: Inside Schools, Eschool Profile and  Great Schools Net.
• Activities:  Students can look at the characteristics list they did and the one on the board to determine the five most important criteria for them. They should number these characteristics and look at the schools they selected and determine by order number which high school best satisfies their topmost characteristics. For example: 1) Graduation rate 2) Location  3) Size  4) Diversity of programs 5) Number of graduates that go on to college. If they live in the Bronx, near 205th street & Grand Concourse and they selected as possible high schools: Bronx Science, Brooklyn Tech, Stuyvesant, and Murry Bergtraum, their high school order based on the selected characteristics would be something like: 1) Bronx Science 2) Stuyvesant  3) Brooklyn Tech 4) Murry Bergtraum. 
• Homework: Have students revise their do now and make any revisions or additions they see necessary. For journal writing, you can have students name something they learned about themselves that they previously did not know.
  
• Summary: Students need to think about the future and think about possible careers, how committed they are, what their needs are and how a school best accommodates their wants, needs and strengths. A good high school is one that taking into account these factors, is best suited to help them achieve their personal and career goals. What may be a good school for one person is not for another. Friends should not be a determining factor in the selection of a high school.
• Tips: While going over the personal inventory do now, for those students having problems. Tell the class that if they are constantly doing assignments the night before and stay up late doing it, one of their weaknesses is procrastinating. If they are always late to class or school, one of their weaknesses is tardiness. You can think of other hints for strengths & weaknesses and tell them to the class. For teachers adapting this unit for high school students, simply substitute high school for college or university and for examples, look for an educational institution of higher learning that is near to your school. Let students know that technical schools are also viable options for study.