What's Public School Like?

Hi, I've only ever gone to small private schools but in my novel most of my characters go to public schools and I don't really know what that's like. At my school there's about 45-50-ish kids per grade, there's a grand total of two hallways for the high school side, the lockers are in the hallway and the hallways themselves are annoyingly narrow.

If anyone could give me a description of their public school that'd be a huge help. :)

Is this an elementary, middle or high school? And what kind of town is it set in? Understand that public schools have high variability, even within a single district.

My district has 5 elementary schools (but one is K-1 and one is 2-5, so let's call it four), 2 middle schools, and one high school. The middle and high schools are occasionally fed by kids who came from private schools and other districts as well as those in the elementary schools below it. The schools in my district were also considered "National Exemplary Schools", which I imagine is some kind of high honor and that though our schools didn't seem like much to us, we were probably spoiled in comparison to other public schools. Granted, I also have the same attitude whenever I visit a public library outside of my city, since our local library is pretty sweet.

The local high school was fed with kids from a few surrounding townships, so I'd give it an estimate of 2000 students in four grades. Yes, it was quite big and resembled a small airport with no runways, and during the nights it was used for night school college and art classes. There were two main hallways coming out from the atrium with the gym and pool on one side and the auditorium and cafeteria on the other, three long halls in the back for the 600, 500 and 400 (really the media center and offices) blocks, the 100s in the front, the 200s in a single ring on the second floor overlooking the atrium above the 100s, the 300s squeezed in next to the gym and cafeteria, and an "outer rim" of halls that I had used in the past for early morning powerwalks and to get to my classes faster since taking the middle halls would mean getting into a serious traffic jam. There were lockers in some hallways, some half-size and others full-size but too obnoxiously thin to use, but through my high school career I never used one since it was just easier to carry the whole bag to each class.

Each class had about 30 kids on average, give or take. We also had block scheduling, so that meant six of seven classes on Monday (skipping 5), even classes on Tuesday and Thursday (2, 4, 5, 6), and odd classes on Wednesday and Friday (1, 3, 5, 7). The longer class period granted by blocks meant we could learn a subject more completely in one day, and we could have an extra night to complete homework assignments since they'd be due every other day.

I live in a large county so we have multiple high schools. My high school is probably a few students shy of 2000.

There is an academic section which consists of a block of seven hallways with English on one, science on another, math on another, etc. This includes art, drama, and foreign language, as well as a few other electives. There are two hallways that connect the academic wing to our cafeteria which is very large (commons A). Directly off the left hallway is our library. On the right hallway is the entrance to our school, plus guidance and the office and the nurse. Between the two hallways is a small courtyard with a statue of our mascot. Across from Commons A (the largest cafeteria) is a smaller cafeteria called Commons B. People can sit wherever they want, but Commons A is more popular. There is another section of classrooms off of Commons B that include a small basement section. These classes tend to be tech classes (cosmetics, vet tech, nursing classes, etc). They also include classes like business and accounting. This is the only section of the school that is on a different floor.

Classes are different sizes depending on the course. It isn't unheard of to have a class with less than ten people, but it's rare. Most classes tend to be between 25 and 30 people. My AP Human Geography class (not a mandatory course) only had nine people, but it got cut the next year because not enough people signed up. Teachers have five classes and have to be paid more if they teach six or seven so that changes the class size. My AP US History teacher had two classes of more than 35 students because they wouldn't pay him more to teach a third course (he had three other classes). Teachers also teach more than just their subject. My English teacher this year has two AP English 12, one college prep English 10, and two honors English 9. My drama teacher has three classes of English and only two of drama because the school needed more senior English teachers so a drama class got cut from the schedule.

Schedules depend on the school. My brother goes to a different high school than me (in the same county) and our schedules are very different. Each of us is on a seven period schedule, but he has all seven classes every day for about fifty minutes each. I have all seven classes on Monday, then 1,3,5,7 on Tuesdays and Thursdays and 2,4,5,6 on Wednesdays and Fridays. Fifth period is a slightly shorter period (60 minutes instead of 90) and directly after fifth we have a 45 minute directed study where we can go to other teachers and do tutoring or makeup work, or sometimes club meetings.

This is just high school so if you have questions about elementary or middle school (or just anymore about high school that I didn't answer) feel free to message me.

Thanks a ton for all the feed back. I did mean for high school. I really appreciate all your comments and this is really helpful.

i was also wondering about the students themselves. Theatrelvr, you said that on your graduation you saw people going up and didn't recognize some faces, that's unbelievable to me, even if I don't know everyone's name I can easily recognize their face and could probably tell you what grade they were in. (like I said there's 45-50 people per grade)

I'm especially interested in how students interact in public schools. On tv shows and a lot of books there's a lot of cliques and rivalry between them. At my school there's not really any cliques but just groups of friends. The guys on the basketball team get on just fine with the more "geeky" guys, and I get on just fine with the girls who're mostly into fashion ect. So I was wondering if my school is some kind of exception to the clique rule or if the media is portraying schools wrong.

As far as I know, the media is a complete liar that doesn't know anything about school since it's entirely likely all the actors are privately tutored on the set due to American education laws demanding it to be so.

Teenagers are just kids, but burlier and more hormone crazed. I've rarely if ever seen clique-based anything in school, but I'm not exactly the social type. If there's a group, they would keep to themselves and I don't see why they'd find reason to mock other groups if they have nothing to do with them.