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but officially can't recommend him because he is 1.5 pts away. So we are really stuck between a rock and a hard place
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At our hs, there is an "appeal" process for a placement a student/family wants to change. Nothing extremely bureaucratic. Involves filling out a short form of what you want to change, meeting with the dept. head. S had a nudnik middle school science teacher who didn't recommend him for honors Freshman science. He appealed; hs dept head talked to him for a short time and knew he should be in honors. This is a kid who won Statewide first place in a Science competition as a freshman, Physics Award as a Senior. Those "test scores" and teacher recs can be wrong. If you/your kid feels he should be in Honors, press your case.</p>
<p>I agree to press your case to get your kid into honors, if he is willing to do the work. And it has been my experience that your kid will be let into the honors class--the administration has nothing to lose by letting your kid in. It will become apparent soon enough if the decision to let him in was wrong.</p>
<p>The problem comes when the PARENT wants the kid in honors but the KID doesn't want to be there.</p>
<p>We were in the same situation. Son was offered 3 honors classes in 9th grade but opted to take only 2. Due to a combination of lack of motivation and uninspiring teachers (and perhaps too much videogaming) he did poorly and was denied taking ANY honors classes in 10th grade. He finally started to get serious about his studies and is taking a combination of AP/honors and regular classes in 11th grade and will be able to take mostly AP and honors next year. It would be nice to do it over differently but I think he had to learn the hard lessons on his own and motivate himself.</p>
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The problem comes when the PARENT wants the kid in honors but the KID doesn't want to be there.
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<p>Exactly. Our #3 child, outwardly just as capable as the first 2 in Elem/middle school, decided he was strictly a math/science person and wasn't doing AP History or English. He demonstrated this by not doing the required summer work. It would have been better if he had told us and the counselor his preferences, but this was a different kid than the first two and we had to learn that.</p>
<p>ahh, mommusic, if only our kids would tell us what they really want and if only we would listen when they tell us what they really want. I'm always saying, "Try it this once." But with your son, I guess "just once" wasn't going to happen.</p>
<p>I think you hit the nail on the head. If the parent wants it and the child doesn't is where the problem comes in. </p>
<p>My son says he wants it but I don't know if he'll deliver is really the bottom line. He says he will, but he's been saying that all year and came up a little bit short; although towards the end of the year did start working harder (too little too late). </p>
<p>If he doesn't deliver. he could end up hurting himself in the long run; that is why I'm thinking of an easier class. He will definitely have more chance of success in the regular class, but if he works hard he could prove himself in the Honors class and make a better impression.</p>
<p>If he wants it, fight for it. He has been doing a lot of maturing over the year, and it is beginning to pay off. Don't let him down.</p>
<p>You may think that he should not overreach. I think kids like to be challenged. A non-honors class will have so many problems your son will not thrive in it. The kids will often have discipline problems; the teacher will a priori not think highly of either their abilities or motivations; the pace will be sloooow. And, the class will not position him for more advanced work later on. </p>
<p>Colleges discount freshman year grades as they realize that it is a year of adjustment. Take advantage of this policy and take advantage of your son's eagerness to rise to the challenge. And do not second-guess your son. You sound like your don't believe he is capable of delivering: he might prove you right by being demoralized and giving up. Why should he try harder if you don't believe in him?</p>
<p>Agree with marite. And if by "falling a little short", you mean that he was 1.5 points off the threshhold for Honors, or that he has more B's than A's, I wouldn't base a decision on what's right for him on these two factors. He is clearly a good student and, perhaps, a typical boy who does what's necessary and not much more. But these boys do often up the effort level as they grow and based on their peer students.</p>
<p>Non-honors is likely to be a set of de-motivating peers and environment, as so many have outlined above. Also, showing your support of him, confidence that he can do it (even if you have to talk yourself into it) can be very powerful factors in how he does.</p>
<p>"He will definitely have more chance of success in the regular class."</p>
<p>Not necessarily.</p>
<p>In the regular class, many of his classmates will be kids who don't care about school -- the ones who gave up long ago and who consider school a six-hour-a-day sentence that takes them away from their real lives, whatever those may be. </p>
<p>In the honors class, many of your son's classmates will be kids who consider anything less than a B to be an embarrassment. </p>
<p>If peers influence him, as they influence most kids, he might well do better in the honors class.</p>
<p>In some groups of kids, there exists an attitude that says "school is pointless." Most of those kids are in non-honors classes. I think it's best to keep ninth graders away from this attitude as much as possible.</p>
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<p>In the regular class, many of his classmates will be kids who don't care about school -- the ones who gave up long ago and who consider school a six-hour-a-day sentence that takes them away from their real lives, whatever those may be. <<</p>
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<p>I don't think this is necessarily true - it's very dependent on the school in question - and the OP will have that information about her son's school. At my son's school - 99% of the kids go to college. Obviously, not all pursue "select" colleges and not all make academics their first priority - but, even in the non-honors classes, the kids do care about doing well.</p>
<p>It seems the theme here is that a student should take every honors class they can get into lest they be doomed to a life among the regular class slackers. I agree that all of the top students will be in the honors classes. What I disagree with is the attitude that the general population of the regular classes are all kids who are "serving out a sentence" and feel "school is pointless". Surely this is true in a lot of cases but I think the overall generalization demoralizing to those students who are good kids (and students) who just are not quite up to the level and pace of certain honors classes. It is a shame to make kids feel like they are somehow a failure if they are not at the top of the heap (or beating their brains out to get there).</p>
<p>Every kid can't be in NHS or the top ten percent of the class or a budding genius (no matter how much every parent wishes it were true).
The truth is there are way more pretty average kids than there are super achievers. Just because they won't graduate with honors and end up attending a third or fourth tier state u instead of a prestigious college doesn't mean they don't care. There are many paths to success.</p>
<p>My experience is with a very socioeconomically mixed school system, where there is a definite subgroup of the population that is not focused on academics at all. In a different school system with a more academically focused population, the non-honors classes might not be as discouraging as they are here.</p>
<p>That is exactly what I meant about falling a little short, but the thing is there are a lot of boys getting C's and C+'s so I guess my son getting B's is really not that bad. I do think he tends to get pulled down by other kids as well. My gut feeling regarding him is that if he puts a little more elbow grease into his studies he will do very well. I don't think he is going to be a straight A/A+ student, but I do think he will be a solid B+/A-/A student. And that's not a bad place to be.</p>