Beka Chankseliani – from Tbilisi, Georgia followed the High School SmartClass Program with us.
Please tell us your name and where you are from. Also please tell us about your home country.
My name is Beka Chankseliani. I’m from Georgia. Georgia is a very friendly country which has an interesting history. I come from the capital of Georgia named Tbilisi. It is a very traditional place. It’s very small but very beautiful. You can see many beautiful places with a long history. One of my favorite places in Tbilisi is Mtatsminda (Holy Hill), which is also where the cemetery of some of the most famous public figures is.
Beka, you started studying with us on a GO Prepared/High School Completion course. Can you tell us about your experience with the Penn Foster High School Completion Program? How does it work?
High School SmartClass is a program which can help you finish high school in as little as three months, if you have successfully finished grade 10 in your country and have completed many courses. The course is fully online, so you need a computer.
At Kings we have a schedule where I complete a maximum of 15 lessons in a week, Monday to Friday. You must read a lot of information, text, and after that you have questions, which you need to answer. Before you take the exam for each course on your portal, you have a self-test to practice. Each exam usually has 20 questions based on the information that you read in that subject. You can get marks instantly, after finishing the exam. If you do not like your mark, you can retake the test with different questions. The questions will always be based on the text/information which you read. You should try to get minimum 65 out of 100 or Pass when you take the exams.
What courses are included in your High School Completion Program?
I have Orientation to High School, Human Relations, Reading Skills, Civics, Basic English, General Math I, American History, Practical English, Consumer Math, Earth Science, Written Communication, Junior Math II, and World History. My teacher at Kings can see and check my progress from the teachers account and if they notice any problems, I get an email or a message and they discuss these problems with me.
What do you do to prepare for each exam?
Sometimes I write important information in my notebook, and sometimes I read the same text two times because texts are very big and it’s hard to remember all the important information after one reading. I search new words in the dictionary and on the internet and sometimes translate into Georgian if I don’t understand something.
Considering that the High School Completion Program entails independent work while completing courses on the Internet, how do you manage your time to complete the program in one GO Prepared term (3 months)?
At first I counted my lessons in my course plan and figured out how much time I need to complete all of them. Kings suggested me a work schedule for my online courses, which has 15 hours in a week, 3 hours Monday to Friday, but sometimes if I have soccer practice or I am tired, I do less lessons in one day but then more lessons another day.
What do you find most challenging about this program?
It was my first experience completing a course online, and also the first time when I had a chance to retake a test. I had a difficult time with my first two courses because it was hard for me, and I didn’t like my results but if you pay more attention, you will have better marks.
What are your educational and professional goals for the future?
My first goal is to finish the High School SmartClass program with good marks and also have good mark in my academic English class. I do not know what major I am going to choose in the college yet.
What do you like to do in your free time?
I like to play soccer and go to the gym. I also like to read adventure books and listen to lectures on YouTube. I enjoy David Gogichiashvili’s YouTube channel for his many educational talks and presentations.
