In this thread, describe what social class you felt your school belonged to. Why did you think it belonged to that social class? How did your teachers treat you and your classmates in general?

I feel like my high school was a working class school. The school was generally made up of students that came from lower income families. Originally it was a affluent school, as many students from Weddington attended it before the school was divided due to overpopulation. The "rich kids" went to Weddington High and the lower income kids stayed in Sun Valley.

It felt like my teachers treated me with little respect. I was merely a sponge meant to soak up knowledge and regurgitate it on a test. I succeeded in doing what teachers asked, but I didn't learn anything I just knew facts. I had been taught to seek right answers from the book, and only ask questions if I had to, since the teacher was always so busy.

Like Jon, my high school was mostly a working class school. Most students had parents that never attended college or did not finish college and were lower income. I was in this category and I feel like I was treated differently than the kids that were from higher income families.

When I was applying for college, my counsler would not even help me fill out my FAFSA or my college applications. I had to do it all on my own because my mom did not know anything about that. They did not really care about what happened to the lower income families because I feel like they were expecting us to fail in the long run. I feel like I did not learn as much as I could have because like Jon said I was just taught the material to pass and I did not really take the information in.

I think that my school was probably middle to upper middle class. I went to the same private school from 3-year pre-school until I graduated. So, pretty much everybody knew everybody, even the teachers. My brother went to the same school and was four years ahead of me, so by the time I had a teacher that my brother already had, the teacher knew me. I always knew my teachers and so they would always treat me well and like an adult. Since we were a private school, teachers were not really allowed to tell their students to "shut up" or anything like that. Thus, my teachers were usually polite and attentive to our needs as individual students. My teachers and guidance counselors were very helpful when applying for college too!

I think this is a really good question because everyone's high school had a different social class. My high school was the inner city school but it also had a lot of wealthy people attend it. It was odd because there were many lower class people and many higher class people, but there wasn't much of a middle class at all.

Most of our teachers teated us as equals but there were that select few who were friends with the high class kid's parents and they teated them with special privileges and it was very obvious that they were their favorites. I think things like this need to not happen in high school, because coming from some one who wasn't a favorite, it didn't feel very good to achieve the same things as some one else but seeing them get more praise for it because of who they were.

My high school was full of mostly lower income families. There may have been a few middle class families, but not very many. The teachers didn't treat anyone differently and most of them tried to help as much as possible. The athletes were given help by clubs and teachers to allow them to have the funds to play the sports they wanted. Also, I saw that many students that were of the very low income families were given better treatment than the middle class students. I think this was because most of the teachers were from the county and knew what it was like to come from that kind of background.

I consider myself to come from a lower class family, which doesn't make me any more or less smart than anyone else. I graduated at the top of my class and was accepted into every college I applied. Also, as a lower income student I was never rude or disrespectful to anyone. My teachers would say that I was one of the nicest students to attend my high school. I came to Appalachian with many scholarships and grants because of my grades and community service. My family did not have the money to send me to college so without my excellent grades I would not be here.

I think that if you see class as a factor that restricts you then it will, but if you can see past your social status then you will be successful in whatever you pursue.

I don't really know how I would classify my school because we had students from all economic backgrounds. There were students that came from very wealthy families and students from lower income families.

As far as how the teachers treated the students, I think that was based more on what classes you were in or what track you were on rather than social class. The students in the honors and AP classes were definitely given more attention and taught to think critically where the general classes were often just expected to memorize a bunch of facts. There were students from all the social classes in the honors and AP classes and I think that all of those students were treated equally.

I think my high school was mostly a middle class school. Most of the students were on the college prep track. A lot of the people that I know who were on the community college track, ended up transfering to a university after two years at a community college. I did not have any teachers who were rude to us or told us to shut up, honestly I don't know what I would have done if a teacher said that. There were kids who were rude to teachers or acted up in the classroom but it was not because of their social status, it was because of how they were raised.

I think my high school was a very mixed class when talking in terms of social class. I think that the elementary schools in my county were much more divided into classes but the high school had all these elementary schools coming together and there were definitely some students from the upper class, some from the middle class, and some from the lower class. You could often tell who was from what class by the pathway they were placed in - college prep, technical prep, or career prep. It was pretty ridiculous how they placed students into these categories, and while there were a few who were outside the norm, most of the lower class students were placed into the career prep track and most of the upper class students were placed into the college prep track.

My school was a working/low class school, or at least that's how our community viewed it. There are three high schools in my system - the 'city/low class' school, the 'country/stupid' school, and the 'rich' school. Nobody wanted to send their kids to my school because it was labeled as a school full of gangs. It really wasn't...there was no more violence at my school than at the others. In fact, I wrote a letter to the editor of my city's newspaper my senior year. A little research revealed that my school actually had the lowest level of violence and offered the most/had the most enrollment in AP classes. People mainly labeled us a violent and low class school because we were in the city and had a lot of minorities. Plus, you never heard about us in the news based on our achievements...only things like drug busts or fights made the news. Of course it's going to appear slanted when you only cover the bad stuff. Community people didn't respect students from my school or the 'country' school as much as they respected the 'rich' school kids. When there was a merger after I left, the county basically had riots because none of the 'rich' school parents wanted to send their kids to my old school (even though they drove past it to get to their fancy school). It was ridiculous.

The high school I went to I believe was upper middle class. A lot of the students that went their live on Lake Norman or around Lake Norman. The student parking lot had nicer cars then the teacher parking lot. This being said there was a gap between the richest and the poorest of the school. Even though the poorest could not be considered poor. If that maes sense. The teachers overall noticed that there was a lot of money at the school, but I think the focus like others have said was what track you were on. Most of the students at my school were on the four year university track or the 2 year college degree, or they ended up at the community college. I think a lot of emphasis was put on your track it really determined what classes you had to take to graduate from high school.

I feel like looking back on my high school, it was a very interesting mix. The actual school was out in the middle of no-where by about 10 minutes, but on that ten minute edge, you had lots of built-up areas with people from the upper middle class. So, my high school had the lower class farmers who drove the old trucks or walked to school as well as the upper middle class who had the fancy, expensive cars. It was a very interesting atmosphere to get used to and blend in to a certain "group". You could definitely tell who belonged to what class and how people were treated accordingly.

My school was mostly middle class. We were also mostly white with a few hispanics, black, and chinese/japanese. We had a few poor students and a few rich kids. My graduating class alone was similar in the income of our parents.

The school had good facilities and the number of enrollment was growing when I left. Teachers were supportive but thier were some kids that could care less and they didn't get as much needed attention. So over all we were typical based on the readings from the past week.

My school was the newest High School in the county and was only built about 4 years before I began 9th grade. The facility was very nice so it was sometimes referred to as "gucci high" etc. I believe that my school was predominately middle class but there were also some students of lower socio economic status as well as students from the elite class. Some students walked to school and others drove escalades, corvettes, hummers etc. There was some diversity but I still feel like the students were predominately white. I feel like some students were treated better than others if teachers knew that they were from affluent families or had relatives that were important in the community. People generally spent time with other students of the same socioeconomic status.

Mmmm, well, guess it's best to start by saying that there were 2200 students that attended my high school. I know of a few people who had a little bit of money, but most of the people who attended my high school were working to lower class. There were several high schools in the area an the neighborhoods were always split kind of funny (people from the same neighborhood could often attend different schools. For example, many of the students who attended Southeast were friends with people from our school. South east however was built in 1999 and Garner was built in 1962. With all this said however, I truly did enjoy my high school and even got a chance to go back and work both as a coach and a sub which changes the way I see it from when I attended as a student

My high school was really small and there was only around 200 people in my graduating class. But it was middle and lower income families. It was a county school, and out in the middle of no where, surrounded by tobacco fileds. To relieve overcrowding in the city schools the county bused students to my school. Most of the kids that lived around the school came from wealthier families and the kids from the city that were bussed in came from housing projects or low income housing. This created some tension between some students at times.

Overall the teachers were very supportive of all students. All of the teachers I had or knew, went above and beyond to help their students.

I'd say like most skills there was a wide variety of classes, but we did have some folks really low on the social ladder as well as people very high up on that same ladder. Being a mountain county with nothing but a bunch of abandoned factories as our industry, the only jobs were for the government, Wal-Mart or working for the retirees/tourists.

One of my friends grew up without running water or electricity half the time because his mom couldn't pay the bills and he actually dated a girl (for a short while) who had an indoor pool and a bowling alley in her house which was next door the country home of the CEO of Coke. The large disparity was at times very obvious, but never seemed to cause any conflicts.

I would say that my high school was a mixture of social classes, but mostly middle class. I believe that it was a mixture because we had numerous kids from all classes. There was only two high schools in my county and both had a mixture of classes. I would say that my county is more middle class though because it is a rural county. I would say that the teachers in my high school were very friendly and nice and very helpful. I think my county is so small in the sense that everyone practically knows everyone in some way. I would say that I had a rather irregular experience in high school than many of you did.