Oooh! A questionaire!
1. Principal. We also had (ranks beneath the Principle) the Assistant Principal and the Dean of Students (who, I believe, did mostly class scheduling).
2. Sophomore. As an October baby, I turned 16 as a junior. (Sophomore is the second year of high school).
3. There are 4 years in high school. Freshman, sophomore, junior, senior. All years are in the same building.
You are typically in class with people in your same class year (all freshman, for example). They only time that was different for me was in my advanced math classes. I had taken freshman math while I was in 8th grade, so I came in needing to take sophomore math in my freshman year, junior math in my sophomore year, pre-calc (senior math) in my junior year. So I was in those classes with the upperclassmen. By the time I (and the handful of others in my situation) was a senior, we were all just seniors taking calculus.
4. Mr./Ms. Mrs. LastName. In one case, we had a Dr. LastName after one of my teachers recieved her doctorate. Also, we had nuns, so they were Sister So-and-so. (Some of them liked Sister FirstName and some likes Sister LastName.) In college we also had Brother So-and-so.
5. I had a homeroom where we gathered in the morning before classes started. Homeroom was a place to be given stuff like paperwork that we needed (sa, permission slips for the sophomore class trip). Then the bell would ring on the loudspeaker and we'd move off to our first class. In my school, we'd constantly move from room to room and have classes with different teachers.
Also, my school offered honor's classes in some subjects, but not others. So my gym class would have different people than my honor's English class. Again though, aside from the aforementioned weirdness with my math classes, I was only ever in classes with people of my same class year.
6. I actuaally *did* go to an extremely small high school (graduating classes were around 100 or so students). New students would probably deal with the Dean of Students (for class schedules) and have at least a meet-and-greet with the Assistant Principal and Principal. Desciple problems I think were handled mostly by the Assistant Principal.
7. I'm not sure what hitting another student would warrant. I can't remember that *ever* happening in my school.
8. Textbooks were supplied by the school. Workbooks, paper, pens, etc. were all up to the student/parents to buy on their own. Paper fees were added to the tuition to cover what the school needed to supply (like copies of tests, for example). Art fees covered the paints and whatnot used in class. Book bills (the fees, workbooks, etc) needed to be bought through the school could get very expensive, especially for the senior who was taking several Advanced Placement tests for college credit.
9. There was a mixture of people who bought lunch from the cafeteria and those who brought food from home. There was no "meal plan" - if you bought lunch, you just paid for the items purchased that day. If you brought food from home, you didn't have to pay anything. The vending machines in the cafeteria were usually left on (until the board of Ed took over our cafeteria - we were a private school). So most people would buy their sodas fresh and cold at lunch time, rather than bring it from home.
10. We did have a few drinking fountains around, but the only one that was ever really cold was in the cafeteria. The other fountains also kind of tasted funny.
11. I think school started at 7:45 am and went to 2:45 pm. So you're good if you stick in the 8am-3pm range.
*My answers are based on a private, Catholic school in NY from the years 1996-2000.
Hope this helps!
