Complete Course List

As a nonprofit charter school in the state of Illinois, YouthBuild McLean County follows the academic standards set by the Illinois State Board of Education.  To maximize the opportunities available for YouthBuild students, I've assembled a document that outlines English course options avaible for our students from freshmen through senior year.   Although most YouthBuild focus on our freewriting and creative writing options, we have a wide variety of courses to explore research, literature, and other areas of interest.  Each course is designed so that students can choose their own topic voices and sources:

English Secondary Course Catalog (Google Docs)

Under Illinois State Board of Education requirements, each one-semester English course counts as half a credit, and a full credit counts as one year of high school English.  Since YouthBuild follows an asynchronous Workshop Model to better meet the needs of each individual student, different students may be at very different points in each course.Additionally, each student has unique interests, and I want to ensure that we have options available to best fit the needs of each individual student.  Some students prefer focusing on writing, others on reading, and many thrive during active discussions.

To ensure each English course meets similar standards of rigor, each course is equivalent to 0.5 credits (one semester) of high school courseworks, and the total for these courses adds up to 50 points — a full credit (for one year of high school credit) is worth 100 points.  The following reading and writing activities are each worth one point:

• One page of writing (250 words).  These pages can be typed, handwritten, or prepaed through speech-to-text.  Any number of pages written together will be counted toward these points.

• One discussion with half a page of writing (125 words).  English discussions run approximately 45 minutes each, and they range across a wide variety of topics from history, current events, and issues affecting our students in their daily lives (maximum 2 points per discussion).

• Special Activities with half a page of writing (125 words).  For field trips, special workshops, and other activities, students earn points for every 125 words they write about the event (maximum 5 points per event — one bonus point after 500 words).

• Reading 25 pages from a book of the student's choice (approximately 6,000 words).  Students have access to a library of books in genres ranging from fiction, history, poetry, memoir, and graphic novels, and we regularly order books requested by our students.

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