@OP, from the ECs your kids are participating in, I infer that you are not poor. Have you considered engaging a private college counselor for your kids? Then you won’t be at the mercy of an an understaffed counseling office at your kids’ schools.
My kids’ private HSs have excellent college counselors, yet some parents still supplement w a private counselor.
@MiamiDAP read the thread. There is no grounds for firing this person. This is an EIGHTH grader whose parent is annoyed because the HS guidance person isn’t dropping everything to help a student who is not in HS yet.
To the OP. Perhaps you would be happier hiring a private college counselor to help your daughter with the college search.
Re: the online course…why was this necessary? To impress college admissions folks?
Miami,
The OP isnt trying to change the PERSON, they are trying to change FROM the counselor.
OK, so I’m going to disagree with some people and say that there are some things that a public high school GC would reasonably be expected to do for an 8th grader during the spring prior to starting HS. I’m not saying that includes getting some online class approved by the district or school board, however.
We are at a reasonably good public with a mix of high and low income kids. The GCs have 400-500 kids each, assigned by last name so that they stick with you all 4 years.
My son took a class at the local community college the summer before 9th grade. There is a form that has to be signed by a school counselor to have that work. We originally had the jr high counselor sign it, because she thought that would work. The CC said it had to be a HS counselor. We sent email to our GC, and she said, “Just stop by.” So we stopped by the HS and one of the GCs (not ours) who wasn’t in a meeting was happy to sign the form.
He also took an AP test during 8th grade, and we got that set up through the assistant principal’s secretary.
There were also several emails with the counselor on summer duty to work out changes to the classes he was taking based on some that had opened up.
But, all of these are not out of the ordinary requests. They sign up lots of kids for dual-enrollment summer classes and for AP tests every year.
We may need to get an online class approved for next year (11th grade), but I’ve been careful to have good relationships with the counselors, so I don’t expect it to be a huge problem.
@Ynotgo Reasonably, aside from something mandatory for a program, they have no obligation to them. These are all inquiries from a tiger mom. There is no urgency to her emails.
@CaliCash I understand this is likely a tiger mom situation. I just don’t want all 8th grade parents reading this to think that they are not allowed to contact their kid’s HS GC for reasonable requests that are worded politely.
Our school has a problem with mixed messages going out to incoming parents. From some sources, they get the message that “Your kid in in high school now, so you should let your kid handle all the communications with teachers and counselors, otherwise your are a helicopter parent.” While this is true, especially for most communications with teachers, this sometimes gets in the way of parents seeing the competing message that GCs would like to schedule meetings each year with each of their students together with their parent(s) sometime between Jan-March to discuss their next year’s courses, testing they should be planning, college plans, etc. (Of course, 400 meetings is impossible, but I gather that most families don’t take advantage of these meetings.)
We were dealing with the high school in 8th grade as my older son was taking math classes there already with a handful of other kids. He didn’t have a GC assigned to him until 9th grade. In 8th grade the middle school GCs worked with the high school ones to make sure the kids all had 9th grade course requests that made sense. We did make an appointment with the math department to find out if my oldest could take AP Comp Sci as an elective and made sure that the high school GC would okay his schedule. Of course what happened that year, and every single year after that was that my oldest’s weird schedule (a combination of being ahead in math and taking Latin) meant that he had to sit down with the GC and revise the schedule the computer spit out over the summer. One year it only gave him three courses! It all worked out in the end.
But the OP needs to realize the public school GCs have huge caseloads. Even when they are doing their best this sort of thing is going to fall to the bottom of their to-do list. If this plan really makes sense (not sure it does) she may actually not be talking to the best person to deal with it.
I had to get some answers from our high school when my kids were in middle school. It was quite normal to have to wait weeks or even months to get the answers if it involved anything that wasn’t routine. In fact I never did get an answer to one rather important question, just had to make a decision without it.
The OP is sending a very clear message to the counselor that her child is one who is micromanaged, pressured, and packaged to impress colleges by a tiger parent. (School board rep, seriously, is it the passion of an obviously very overscheduled child to sit through tedious budget, redistricting and remodeling discussions?) That will probably be reflected in the GC’s letter. So I stick to my assessment that the best possible thing this parent can do is back off and let the GC get to know the child not the overbearing parent.
Check out “How to be a High School Superstar” by Cal Newport. He tells you how to instead of picking ECs you think would look good for colleges, pick ECs you love, and expand on that to show leadership, etc.
I disagree with several of the posts in this thread - I see no problem wanting to advocate for a child, and wanting to work with whoever we need to in order to best meet the child’s needs. It is becoming more and more common for advanced students to have special needs - accelerated classes, IEPs, scheduling challenges, etc. and technology allows many more solutions that didn’t exist even just a few years ago.
It is completely reasonable for OP to want to take the steps now to allow the best options for her child’s future. When I read the OP’s child was in 8th grade, I assumed that the MS GC likely advised her to contact the HS GC or HS principal because of her special needs - it is perfectly okay to ask for help/advice when there are so many unknowns.
It is also very frustrating to deal with unresponsive people when you know the consequences can be missed opportunities. It is ridiculous to be told “be patient” when it the problems could have been prevented weeks ago. And you can’t wait until summer begins to start to ask these questions, as most of the HS (including GC) staff is often gone for the summer. What she is trying to do is to avoid having to hear an aoplogy later.
And we know that some GC’s are better than others. Some just know more about college planning, some are better suited for the students who have had behavior problems, work with them through school discipline programs, etc.
Some schools make it easy to change a GC. Some allow siblings to automatically be assigned to the same GC, for family continuity. Others assign them randomly. They usually don’t like to change, but most can be changed if there are other options.
Those accusing OP of being a helicopter or tiger parent probably haven’t felt some of the frustration dealing with this kind of unresponsiveness. My expectation is that the OP is teaching her child an important lesson through this process - how to begin to advocate for herself - learn who to talk to, and when meeting or corresponding with someone, what expectations you have. When a response finally comes, and it doesn’t address the initial questions - there is a polite way to follow up and demonstrate a sense of urgency. We certainly explained to our pups what we were doing, and why, along the way. In 8th and 9th grade, we wrote more emails and had more phone calls than S or D did, but by 11th and 12th grade they were doing more of this advocating for themselves and copying us in where appropriate. Our pups were among the first students in their HS to take virtual, online courses, and they started doing this in 9th grade - they ended up with more AP courses than anyone before them, which naturally presented challenges.
I do like several of the post here that stress reminding the OP that it is best to (at least appear that you are trying to) work WITH the HS team instead of against them. Reminding them you all share the common goal, and remembering to thank them (when they do their job) always helps.
When you respect the GC, they usually learn you are someone to be respected as well, instead of blown off.
@cxhw0005 feel free to PM me if you’d like to discuss my experience with my pups’ special needs, and some of the GC challenges we had. While the challenges at first were stressful, I am sure our GC’s would rather wish more students were just like my pups (S at Columbia, D going to Stanford)
Around here they are snowflakes, not pups.
Sorry puppies, the OP would have gotten a faster response by going directly to the policy person at the district level who makes these decisions. (Likely someone who reports to the Superintendent of Schools). It is burdensome to assume that a HS guidance counselor (who doesn’t have the authority to make this decision anyway) is going to take up the cause of a middle school kid and run the gauntlet of approvals on behalf of a kid who may not end up enrolling anyway.
You can advocate all you want. But you have to advocate with the right folks…
Oh @blossom, I think you just made several lives a bit more miserable…
I’m the first to acknowledge that there are many overworked and/or incompetent GCs out there. I wouldn’t have a business if that weren’t true. And it can be helpful if the high school has the resources to offer support to 8th graders. But the OP’s child is not a student at the high school. Any support offered by school staff to non-students is a gift and should be requested and received on those terms.
I think if the OP had sent her questions to the HS GC a LOT earlier- as in Jan when GC’s have a break in the college admissions time line- she might have received answers, and quickly. As I understand it, she posed the questions RECENTLY- right in the middle of college acceptance time, when Seniors often need the undivided attention of GC’s.
Timing is everything!
Congratulations on winning the rat race.
My graduating senior has taken BIG FAT ZERO AP courses. His school doesn’t even offer them, and doesn’t even weight GPA for honors courses.
Actually I disagree with many of the parents on this thread who are saying that a high school GC has zero obligation to an 8th grader. If the question pertains to the high school, it is in their domain to answer. However they will likely view it as lower priority than serving the current hs students. I know our school is relatively generously staffed with only about 200 students per counselor–many counselors have far more students to deal with, and yet even for my kids currently in hs it is not unusual to have to wait a few weeks for a response.
“Those accusing OP of being a helicopter or tiger parent probably haven’t felt some of the frustration dealing with this kind of unresponsiveness.” Actually, the OP’s frustration is a drop in the bucket compared to what I have dealt with, which is why I think the OP’s reaction is a bit much. Likely the GC doesn’t have authority to decide whether to award credit for this. Probably it has to be referred to the school superintendent’s office. The OP should have asked farther in advance. I can tell you that our school system doesn’t award credit for outside courses. The chance that we would get the positive answer the OP is outraged she hasn’t received within a few weeks–is zero.
The tiger parent comments are based not just on this particular issue but largely upon the long list of quotations from the OP compiled by one poster earlier on in this thread.
It does take time. My kid is a junior, and just rose to 1st priority on May 1. lol! Though I suspect the GC is still swamped with seniors and waitlist decisions even now.
We make appointments. We send an email and wait. And if very impotant, I make the kid go see her. When a kid comes in, they are much more likely to get her attention than a parent. She has been pretty helpful, esp in saying things to my kid I am not able to get through (i.e., mock interviews, sat subject tests, looking at LACs, as he finds the concept too hippy…)
GC actually called me yesterday!
To answer a specific OP question about piano, she could give monthly performance at a nursing home/assisted living facility? The folks there like to see a grandkid, even if not theirs! But commit to it over a long period of time.
Also, a mom agressively pursuing this stuff is not bad, but be careful…colleges can smell this a mile away…they want to see a kid doing what they want, and then to judge whether what they want to do has been done with committment, caring, etc. My GC and folks on here have told me it is about the depth of the ECs, not just how many they did…I get bored after the 5th EC here reading chance threads. Club after club, 20 hours community service…commit to something instead of building a resume. Like it was a job, you commit, and if you hop around every month, they can see you are out for yourself. All general, not based on what OP said. And of course there are reasons people are firced to job hop…
Perhaps if the OP hadn’t called the counselor all sorts of names in the title thread, responses might’ve been different. Perhaps now the OP recognizes that the counselor wasn’t as irresponsible or incompetent as she may have initially considered and that no one is blameless in this interaction. Best of luck to the OP.
Our high school will grant credit for certain outside courses if you can prove they meet the requirements of an equivalent course in the high school, but they won’t give you a grade. My older son took CTY’s Fast Paced Chemistry. He just has CR on his trancript. They let him take the Regent’s exam for it so that also is recorded and was factored into his GPA. CTY, by the way, makes sure that the course covers the labs that NYS requires and gives the NY kids a record of those labs.