My senior son was supposed to be on a kayaking trip this week as the culmination of his history class, but dislocated his shoulder last week and now needs surgery, so no trip. I think he’ll end up having a fun, relaxing week on campus - but he’s sad about the trip.
My 8th grader has been over things for a while - she is ready to move on to boarding school.
My 9th grader is happy as a clam with a dance coming up!
I haven’t heard about anyone who liked the block schedule at the schools that did it.
Kiddo is reporting a similar end of year grind. Projects, APs, all of it. The past couple of months have been … a lot. Junior year + covid = Stress. I am going to be glad to get him home in a couple of weeks and hug him way more than he wants.
But summer is going to be a grind, too. Summer job, an online class and working on essays. I wanted to take him to tour some colleges, but not sure that will work out. At least he is done with the SATs. I really don’t remember it being this bad back in the day.
Sorry to hear about your Senior @comtnmom - that is so sad!! I Hope the shoulder surgery goes well.
Block schedule was SO HARD! My daughter said it was drinking from a firehose… very very difficult to do APUSH, physics, Anatomy/Physiology, etc in 9 weeks. And while she enjoyed the fact that managing homework was easier since it was only 2 subjects (and her school gives relatively little homework anyway), the lack of depth and the speed with which they had to move was very hard for her.
Lots and lots of kids have gone home since March for med/psych reasons, and that is also hard, as she feels that come June 4 she will be “last man standing”. She asked me to come get her a day early, on the 3rd, but we talked it through and I reminded her that she would miss one of the most beloved traditions if she did that - sunrise on back campus - and it will be her last sunrise since she’s a senior next year (usually sunrise takes place the last morning, which, in normal years, is after Seniors have left campus after grad). So, she will stay, but, like so many of your kiddos, she will literally be crawling to that finish line this year.
@comtnmom I hope his surgery and recovery go well; sorry he had to miss the trip.
I too am struggling with the end-of-year push. School here ends on the 4th, so we’re approaching the end quickly.
Crammed sports seasons, end-of-year projects / essays, AP exams, and finals, all within a month. Definitely an adjustment from the quarantine pace of life. It’s nice to hear that the experience is fairly universal though 
And @comtnmom I hope your son has a quick recovery!!!
Thanks for sharing and validating. Our students must leave campus on Monday afternoon. Those taking the AP tests on Monday & Tuesday will have to scramble home or delay travel. The Block Schedule curriculum has been very challenging in AP courses (especially) and totally inconsistent with preparation for the AP Tests.
Here is what my kiddo expressed to me that she would like parents and her faculty to realize (maybe this will resonate with some of you):
“Everything changed - you changed my courses, you changed my schedule, you changed my dorm, you changed the rules for socializing, you changed how we eat at school, you changed sports, you changed how we even breathe - having to use a mask during sports, you changed or cancelled events in our lives, you changed how we spent vacations, you changed how we studied, you changed our courses or classes, you changed what we learned, you changed how we ate (mostly alone in our rooms), you changed how we even went to the bathroom (scheduled shower times), you changed the testing schedule (many times), you changed meetings and ceremonies, you changed or cancelled school traditions, and you changed how we could even say goodbye to parents. Do you know what you didn’t change? You didn’t change your exceedingly high expectations of us. You still expect us to get all A’s and score above 1500 on the SAT. You changed the entire game on us, yet expect us to not only excel but to thank you for it.” 
:
My kiddo is also feeling the strain these last few weeks. The school is allowing kids to go home and take final exams remotely, but we felt she was better off staying at school. I now wonder if she’ll be one of the few students still on campus. She won’t even discuss summer plans with me because she’s already “too stressed”. Two weeks to go!
Many kids have already left - before final exams or final papers due. That way they can also get help at home, IMO.
Several students we know went out on medical leave this year. We know a couple of students who left and decided not to return. Students who have stayed on campus, have done all the work in person, have had tougher experiences IMO. Yes - my kiddo did have COVID and suffered symptoms for 2 weeks but returned to school after the “all clear” report.
So many kids leaving…some missing graduation even…
Gee…why do you think so many students left skid marks they couldn’t get off campus fast enough?
Ummm…I know at least one school where that didn’t happen this year.
I think many/most of these schools found that kids were simply unable or unwilling to meet the high expectations this wacky year.
In related news…video game average performance levels have substantially improved this year.
IMO, many are in a bit of a PTSD-like state and just want this year over ASAP. It doesn’t help that most still have to wear masks, while much of the country, including their friends and family back home are returning to very normal lives.
I am also glad to put the year of the block schedule behind us. The fall was a huge adjustment for my son. Taking honors pre-Calc and AP Chem in 9 weeks (with the first + week online) lead to a rough beginning. By the end of the term the Chem teacher conceded that they had not gotten through all the material that they would have done in a regular year. With such a fast pace my son struggled to truly absorb the material, and as a result decided not to take the AP test this spring. There was just no point in putting in so much effort to learn some information for the first time, and review what information he had been given during the fall term.
I’ll admit to being completely unaware of how many students have left this Spring, aside from what I have heard from @hellomaisy . My son is a social butterfly, and being home over winter, in the height of the pandemic, isolated from his closest friends, was more difficult than anything that the spring term could throw at him. He has a tight group of close friends, and all of them have stayed on campus this Spring.
Being a boy, he doesn’t give me a lot of news about that kind of thing away 
. But I am grateful for his strong friendships at school that have helped him get through this very challenging year. I think it would have been a much more difficult for him if he did not have that support network. I can imagine that it was especially hard on new students, who did not have the usual avenues of making new friends. Dealing with quarantines, masks, disjointed meal times, lost sports seasons, and strict rules on moving around campus is a really hard way to begin your boarding school experience.
I’m so heartbroken for the kids and all they went through this year. The amount and degree of mental health issues is astonishing, to say nothing of the academic fallout and falloff.
WRT the block schedule, the sad thing is that those issues were ones we all pointed out when it was announced, and which you could see coming from miles away. (Talking about here on CC…our school did not use the block schedule). Anyway, ugh.
For our part, we have one sprinting to the finish and another who bonked about a week ago. I fully expect the sprinter to collapse 1 second after the finish line.
Thank you all for your authentic and supportive posts on this subject. In a few short days Kiddo will be in my arms. It’s supposed to rain hard this weekend for commencement. I feel sad for the Seniors and parents who were hoping for at least a sunny finale to a dreary year.
This year has been hard in some ways, easier in others.
No exams was a huge bonus, we had no midterms and no finals. WOW!
I am surprised people are taking APs now, ours were weeks ago. My kid said, you know what I hate history and I am not taking the AP. Fully supported by me. He was doing great in the class so didn’t need a good AP score to validate a B or anything.
The lack of a winter sports season, and continually being more conservative than many of the other ISL schools has really hurt. No season means that college sports are sliding away. Injury now means it’s even less likely. You have to be really lucky at this point and that stinks when you have a kid who has worked his butt off. ESPECIALLY when many public schools had full winter seasons with almost no covid fallout.
The separation between borders and day students has been socially REALLY HARD. Not being allowed in dorms has meant that at times your social circle is only the few day students who are still on campus. That has been at times borderline traumatic because of shifting social scenes.
The constant message from the school that they are “following the science” except that they are not at all has gotten to feel quite grating. Still testing everyone despite vaccination status, masks still required everywhere, still talking about not allowing off campus activities next fall.
Day students are once again kicked out the second school ends so the borders will have time on campus to say good bye as they leave over a couple days with day students watching their friends hang out on instagram. Disappointed that Groton seems to continually forget they actually do have day students.
Thanks for sharing @one1ofeach . I had no idea your school did make the students take midterms or finals. Most students we know at DA did have exams. Cramming an entire year of AP Bio into 9 weeks was tough. Foreign language was completed in November and it seems as though I will have to find a tutor to do “catch up” before resuming it in September.
Our Block Schedule made it difficult to sit for the May AP tests that were offered in person. Some students would have only been half way through their course in early May. Kiddo and friends took a review course$$$ that was a total waste of time & $$ for a couple of the AP courses. Other students we know have hired private tutors. There has been so much homework piled onto these kids’ desks the last few weeks that it’s been difficult to study for AP’s. There is some resentment brewing among students at our school about the Block System its impact on AP’s. Don’t expect the 4’s and 5’s that were earned last Spring. We know kids who took APUSH last year online and had one 45 minute essay to write.
Oh, that makes so much sense re block schedule and AP tests. This year homework has been INSANE but I think homework is always insane. I did think that they would go a little easy due to the stress of covid but nope. My kid is strongly looking forward to not taking history next year and assures me that his life will be easier despite taking 6 AP tests next year (see without history everything is easy including AP BIO/PHYSICS/CALC, I am trying to bite my tongue). Somehow the last two weeks have been not so crazy with work though - not really sure how that is possible. It seems like teachers or schools are really bad at planning and spacing major tests and papers. They all seem to be due the same week, over and over again. Makes no sense to me if what you want is really strong work.
I’ll admit that I have 0 experience with the Block system, but I did have 4 years of the Module system back when dinosaurs roamed the earth in the Reagan era.
While I can see the problem of the lack of coordination with the AP exam schedule, I can’t see that the Block system is inherently bad (as long as you don’t get sick and miss class). I suspect that it’s difficult, even for a gifted teacher, to retool the standard syllabus into the Block system and get the pacing exactly right the first go around. When all the teachers in a school have to make that transition, there’s likely to be a lot of uneven classes.
Honestly, in the beginning, I got the impression that kiddo’s school was going to ramp up the homework just so kids had things to do. I remember asking the dean of students what was going to keep the kids busy during the two week quarantine at the beginning of the year, and his response: “We are going to give them lots of work to do”. I don’t think that ended well.
I have heard rumors of a lot of first year students not returning next year, and I can’t blame them. I know kiddo was on the fence for a long time…and while I think she’s set to return, I’m almost scared to ask.
Wondering where those kids will go if they withdraw. Do they think other schools will be better?