<p>Sophomore D is taking 4 honors and 2 AP classes. AP Chem is the problem. She doesn't have the CollegeBoard prerequisites (1 year hs chemistry, physics + Alg II) and is crashing and burning. Grades on the other classes are okay, not her usual, but considering the 5 or so hours of work nightly to try to keep up with the chemistry, they're fine. Problem is that benchmark testing is coming up before the holiday break, and I think she's going to lose it. School is a magnet public school. For her mental health, I'm seriously thinking of taking her out and putting her in a virtual charter for the rest of the year. Opinions please?</p>
<p>Can she just drop AP Chemistry and make up the credits over the summer? Seriously, AP Chem is not a class that should be attempted without prereqs unless the kid is a science genius. Seems like you should appeal to her guidance counselor or Vice Principal and explain that this is negatively impacting her mental health and you need her withdrawn.</p>
<p>Agree, there is a reason schools and later colleges require the prereqs for the next class and there are reasons that schools monitor and sometimes limit when and how students can access advanced high school level classes. Your child is only a sophomore. If I were the parent I would go soon to the guidance office and restructure that schedule ASAP. Sit down and put a reasonable schedule in place making sure the prereqs are covered. Make sure your child is challenged but not overwhelmed. At our school the kids put a 4 year schedule together in 9th grade and then it get’s tweaked each year to make adjustments for the individual student and their emerging areas of strengths and weaknesses. There is much growth and change during the early teen years. There is no need to put your child in harms way at this age. No good reason at all. Get thee to the school.</p>
<p>I would try to drop AP Chem. If she is able to do that it will free up a lot more time to focus on other classes. Often when a class is too challenging it impacts all other classes, it’s sucking up too much of your daughter’s time. I gave the same advice to my SIL when she asked if her son should drop APUSH. He was getting close to C in that class and getting mostly Bs in other classes when he was a straight A student before. It was giving him a low self esteem. He didn’t want to drop it because he didn’t want his friends to think he wasn’t able to do the work. He did go to a lower level history course, which raised his C from AP to automatic B when he moved to a lower level, and more importantly his other grades also went up.</p>
<p>I am a believer of staying within a reasonable track for every subject. Everything a student is doing in HS is a building block for the next level, if that block isn’t solid then there is a chance of it to fall apart later on. D2 is on the second highest math track at her school, there was an option for her to take geometry over a summer to push her into a higher track, but I opted not to have her do that. Previously math was not her best subject, but she is now averaging A+ in her math class and has a lot of time for other classes. She will still have taken hardest curriculum checked off on her transcript. When choosing classes, I don’t think “more is more.”</p>
<p>I agree that she should just drop Chem if that’s an option - switch into a regular chemistry class or take an elective. I wouldn’t attempt Chem without prerequisites - even my math/science guy took regular chem before AP (though he did it through a fastpaced CTY class.)</p>
<p>Oldfort, that is an excellent point about some classes sucking so much time that the others get dragged down. It happened to my young high schooler this past semester. He came through it just fine grade-wise but I felt so sorry for him and I was very concerned about the hours and hours of HW and some stress I saw. He throttled back to recover this semester. I was proud of him as he went to the GC and did it himself and he’s only 15. Clearly he knew his threshold LOL. But this was the one that at age 2 pushed a chair to the cupboard and got his own breakfast one morning when I wouldn’t get out of bed in the wee hours and get him breakfast. A well defined sense of self preservation clearly. The GC e-mailed me and asked me to approve the changes which, of course, I did. Don’t worry too much OP, change the schedule and help your D be as successful as she clearly can be.</p>
<p>I am so surprised that a GC would have signed off on a schedule for APChem without your D having the background for it. It is a tough class even when you have the education behind you. Try to drop the class and make sure it does not show up on your daughter’s transcript as a dropped class.</p>
<p>At my kids’ “Phila” magnet public school, it was common for 10th graders to take AP Chemistry without previously having taken Chemistry, and simultaneously with taking Algebra II. It was something of a watered-down AP course, I believe – kids who did very well in the course routinely failed to get 5s on the AP. The problem is that the alternative, regular Chemistry (no honors if an AP is offered) was next to useless. </p>
<p>Also, I believe that the school I am talking about would not necessarily permit a kid to take regular Chemistry and then the AP class, although I’m not sure about that. The normal “smart kid” progression was AP Chemistry in 10th, AP Physics in 11th, then AP Physics C and/or AP Bio in 12th.</p>
<p>I don’t understand why the school would allow a student to take such an advanced course without prerequisites. They should definitely help her out of a situation they helped create.</p>
<p>And yes, JHS, same situation here-- honors level beyond my d’s capability, regular course pointless. Sigh.</p>
<p>I would encourage your child to step down a notch or drop the AP class.</p>
<p>DD commented a couple of times in senior year of high school that sometimes she wasn’t sure “why” she always opted for the most challenging course…she knew she didn’t want to major in college in anything requiring serious math so why was she taking AP Calc when she could have taken something else that maybe she would have enjoyed more or would have allowed her time to just be. She felt that it was expected of her at school to take the most challenging courses and once you’re put in that level, it’s hard to stop the train and say let’s rethink this. </p>
<p>I think sometimes as parents we don’t realize just how much pressure the school and the teachers are putting on the kid to achieve at a certain level, even if it’s not what the kid necessarily wants or needs.</p>
<p>Magnolia, that can be so true. They accelerated my math challenged oldest during middle school in guess what, “math.” He just ground his butt all through high school and the amount of time it took to get through the math made it tough to rise above and beyond his other classes. It was such a precarious road with him and I wasn’t sure what to do. On one hand schools say challenge the child – a B in a hard class is better than an A in an easy class. On the other hand in the grand scheme of things it matters little as you are only 15, 16 17 once in life and if you are grinding away at one class how much are you learning and loving from all the other classes? The most positive outcome of all of this is that my oldest went off to college fully prepared to make a schedule for himself that made sense work load wise and fully prepared to put the work in. He enjoys college and is doing just fine. But I took a different tact with math challenged #2 and did not accelerate him in middle school even though he passed the qualifying test. It’s been much less stress filled high school years with him, his GPA is a touch higher than his older brother and he’s off to college in the fall. Hopefully he’ll still have the skill sets to survive. I feel for parents and the students who have to make choices but I sort of tilt now toward the emotional health and well being of the kid more than I used to and realize now that high school is a very different place now than when we were there.</p>
<p>magnolia and momofthree, I agree, though it keeps worrying me. D is clearly not a science kid, though she was accelerated through middle school…science and any kind of ‘spatial’ math are too difficult to be anything but frustration at the upper levels and there’s no reason to push her in a direction she’d never go…except the relentless need for a high GPA! This means some colleges will be off limits to her though she really excels in the humanities. And I tell myself that’s just fine. I hope I’m right!</p>
<p>Gwen, I wouldn’t worry too much. </p>
<p>Speaking from my own experience, I attended a very challenging girls private high school. I was however, lousy at math (not dumb, just seriously lacking in confidence) and more or less disinterested in science. While my friends opted for AP Bio, AP Physics, and Calc, I took Honors Bio as a freshman, Honors Chemistry as a junior, and plain old regular Physics as a senior. I skipped AP Calc senior year as well, instead taking somekind of honors algebra freshman year (forget what it was called exactly), honors geometry as a sophomore, and trig/precalc as a junior. No math senior year. </p>
<p>Not the most challenging of all the courses available to me, but plenty challenging for my skill level and through very hard work I managed to pull out A/A-s in those science and Math classes I did take, so because I was taking classes that suited and challenged me, my GPA remained high. My math SAT’s more or less reflected my general skill at Math, so not very high. </p>
<p>But I loved English and history, where I excelled both in school, and on APs and SATs. I loved participating in theater and choir, I volunteered as a tutor, I played a little rec league soccer and was on the yearbook staff, none of which I would have been able to do had I tried to kill myself in APs I was neither interested in nor qualified for. </p>
<p>And I got in ED to Smith, which was my dream school. </p>
<p>So for those of you with math or science challenged students, know that there is hope and they can still go to the schools of their dreams. Taking courses that are suited to them (not easy for them, still challenging, but suited to their level) will keep them mentally and academically healthy and still allow them to achieve their goals.</p>
<p>That was always the paradox at DD’s school…the teachers and administrators liked to repeat the mantra “it’s the learning that counts, not the grade”. Then the parents would say “it’s the grade that gets the merit scholarship”.</p>
<p>It’s a fine line to walk, balancing keeping the high achiever challenged but not burning them out before they even get to college. I had a long talk with her middle school guidance counselor before I placed her in an all honors program in high school because I wanted to be realistic in my expectations of DD. The guidance counselor told me what I already knew…that my child was not born a genius but that she works very hard and wants to be successful. She advised me to put her in as many honors classes as were offered because of her work ethic. Believe me, there were days though that I doubted if I’d done the right thing. When you walk in the door from work and she’s crying at the kitchen table with her math books spread around her, you wonder if it’s just a bad day or if you made a mistake. I think many of us struggle with that.</p>
<p>DD is glad that she had the opportunity to take AP courses and a challenging program because it helped her by placing out of many nonmajor gen ed courses in college, which allowed her to double major and take some courses “just for fun”.</p>
<p>AP chemistry is very tough at our school. D also took it as a sophomore, did not do particularly well, and it defnitely impacted her other grades as well. She stuck it out because by the time she starting sinking, she could no longer drop it without penalty. But knowing what I know now, I would not allow my next child to take it so young, if at all. I agree–drop it if you can. It doesn’t get easier.</p>
<p>The OP’s school sounds a lot like an urban public w/an honors program that I’m familiar with…not in Phil, though.</p>
<p>It’s obvious to me that it’s pretty much educational malpractice to channel all the high-achieving kids into AP Chem without offering them a really good Honors Basic Chemistry first.</p>
<p>What are your options? For this one class, dropping to regular chem and then taking AP over the summer might be a solution. Are the rest of the AP Science classes going to be equally poorly taught? You have to worry about that. In my child’s public school, the overall rate of AP passing grades (3, 4 or 5) is about 60% and the rate on the ‘tough’ AP’s is significantly lower.</p>
<p>I’m taking AP Chem as well as another AP and 3 honors classes as a sophomore. </p>
<p>Have you tried getting a tutor? I got a tutor during the beginning of the year and I found it really helpful to receive that one on one time.</p>
<p>FIVE hours a night? My God. Give that kid an enormous hug and say “wow, I am SO SORRY that you got pitched into the deep end of the pool. What has happened here is RIDICULOUS.” Seriously! AP Chem has not defeated her – but it is, very much, like throwing a little kid into the pool and saying “ok, swim.” Ugh. AP Chem is usually a junior or senior course. Her brain may not be developed enough to manage the material – and it may very well will be in 18 months time. </p>
<p>This is a tough one because she won’t want to “give up” – and she may not want to leave friends. Both are valid points. She may not want to change schools, but do stick to your guns that the AP Chem has GOT TO GO. She is NOT to do another semester because YOU can’t stand the stress (that makes it about you and your limitations, not hers. She can be more generous with your needs than she can with her own). So, trade that miserable, horrible course for something that makes her heart sing – or something that is easy, easy, easy but still valid learning (ceramics? coffee shop/business math? weight lifting? library technician?). </p>
<p>Your instincts are that your child is drowning. She is only 15 or so. Now is the time to give her the gift of time to grow up – she is still a child in many ways. Should the end of her childhood be an ongoing torture?</p>
<p>She really may not want to change schools. It can be very hard to do that at grade 10. But you can insist that the chem class goes and that the two of you sit down with the school counselor and find alternatives. It could be a good negotiation that you insist that the chem goes (for now) but she can pick any alternative that the counselor recommends (so she has some control). Good luck!</p>
<p>Even though I have posted about the lack of college search help our school’s guidance office gives gifted students, I have to commend them for helping parents and students set reasonable class workloads. </p>
<p>Let your gifted child have a chance to shine in some other areas other than classwork, like extra curriculars and growing up socially. That schedule is ridiculous for a sophomore.</p>
<p>Olymom, 5 hours a night is alot night after night I think. That’s what happened to my 15 year old son 1st semester. And he had football so he went straight from school to football, then home for dinner, then he didn’t leave his desk til he collapsed into bed night after night and I made him go to bed, he would probably have kept going but I would put my foot down. Even college kids aren’t in class as many hours as HS students are so can move their study time around to get some breathing room. I was really worried. It’s OK for parents to step back and allow a kid to throttle down abit. Also 5 hours a night, night after night is far different than a kid who crams sporadically late into the night.</p>