Parents of kids who take AP courses, do your kids have a job?

I probably should note that while mine goes to sleep at 2, her school has a 9 a.m. start time so she doesn’t even get up until 7:30 or 8. Plus, she has never been much of a sleeper.

My kids (10th and 12th) do summer jobs only. They are both lifeguards.

Some AP classes in some schools really overload the students with work, far beyond what is needed to ensure a 5 on the AP test. So although AP is supposed to be a uniform designation of class level across the US, it does not connote the same quantity of work everywhere. It’s not really possible to generalize about the time a student has–you have to look at the demands of the specific AP classes in the specific school.

There are some important biochemical processes that occur during sleep. Immune response is one of them. I believe that different people can cope with different amounts of sleep, but there are indications that 6.5 hours is the minimum for the average person, to be able to drive without impairment.

Nancy Kress wrote a series of science fiction novels about the “Super Sleepless,” people who were genetically engineered to require no sleep, and who accomplished a great deal more than average as a consequence. There are benefits, and there are costs. The benefits don’t necessary accrue to the same people as the costs.

Four to five hours of homework per night here with four APs. S19 runs XC so he’s not home until 6:00 every night so there’s not any time for a job on the weekdays. He does, however, ref soccer games on the weekend to the awesome tune of $50 cash per game. He decides how many games he signs up for. Some weekends, it’s only one. Some he may do up to four. It works perfectly. No games in the winter, just fall and spring. He won’t work in the winter.

Perhaps the amount of work for APs differs depending on where you live. Schools that start in August have an entire month or so longer than schools that start after Labor Day. This was mentioned during curriculum night at my D’s school. Her school in the PNW has 5 week less time to learn material for test than her school in Atlanta did. That may be the difference right there.

Both of my kids worked ~8-10 hours/week from 10th grade on during the school year (in addition to a variety of ECs), and did 2-4 AP classes/year. They really liked the money, the community, and the different skills that work involved.

One worked in a flower shop, and it gave her an outlet for artistic talent she didn’t develop much in school. She got very good at flower arranging. Most of the arrangements the shop sold came from a central workshop, but they would let her do arrangements with stem flowers that were not selling and were about to expire, and she was very successful at getting people to buy flowers that way. (A dozen years later, she sometimes does the flowers for friends’ weddings.) She worked all through college, too, in a variety of jobs (barista, editor, interviewer for an oral history project), sometimes simultaneously. Over the years, she developed excellent time-management skills. She started working when she decided to drop ballet, going from 10+ hours/week of classes (plus travel and rehearsals, etc.) to one tap class per week.

The other worked behind the counter at a cheese and gourmet food shop. He adored learning about cheese and selling cheese to people! Learning their tastes and needs, giving advice about pairings, getting them to try new things, trading local gossip. He had a lot of ECs, so there was plenty of juggling, and his time management skills were never quite as good as his sister’s. He worked through college, too, but almost exclusively as a theater tech, and in fact had a substantial part-time job in theater on the side for four of the first five years after college.

Different strokes for different folks: My daughter-in-law’s first ever paycheck was as a medical resident! (She did have better grades than my kids in college . . . ) She was 27.

That’s part of the explanation, Veryapparent. But it doesn’t cover the work that is just based on teacher demands, and is not needed to do very well on the AP exams–nor to be ready for the next level course in college.

Also, did your local school have summer work assignments for AP classes? The school here started in late August, but there was summer work for AP–and quite a lot, for some of the AP classes, to the level of being burdensome.

No, my son is in pre-AP everything and he plays football and studies like crazy each night so right now there is no time for a job. But, if he wants to work this summer I think that would be great. I learned so much from summer jobs but with the amount of homework they get now I have no idea how you would do it.

D17 worked 40 hours a week in the summer following 10, 11 and 12 grades as a life guard/swim instructor. During the school year she lifeguarded about 6 hours, weekends only. (Pool was open 12-6 so she usually picked up one shift)

D20 has a job at same place but cannot lifeguard until she turns 16, so she has just picked up a few substitute instructor shifts.

The only one I can think of that assigned work before school started was AP Chem which coincidentally was the only 4 my D ended up with (all the rest were 5s). Assigning work in the summer here would not go over well at least at my Ds school which is title 1 so most kids work over summer. In a class like APUSH which is so labor intensive those 5 weeks would have helped. Unfortunately Sophomore year teachers went on strike and school started in late September which was a real struggle for a lot of kids. We ended up with week long study groups over Feb and April breaks to get through material. That year in Chem they went into testing without completing two chapters in book.

Some of our AP classes have an insane amount of work over the summer. We are a later starting district. (3 days before Labor Day)

Well, OP here… my kids were told for their AP Euro class that if the teachers feel that they - the class- are too far behind, the kids will have to show up at school on Saturday mornings to catch up. I never heard of such a thing… but that is how crazy an AP course can be at their school.

The bulk of D20’s work is AP World … about 80 pages of textbook reading a night, not to mention the charts, projects, tests, etc. In fact, I think the work in that class is about the same as all of her other classes combined (and she has a total of 8 classes).

My son who is high school aged has had a job since he was 16. Work hours vary but have averaged 10-12 hours a week. Last year, he had 5 APs; working didn’t interfere with his grades. This year, he has 4 APs and although he’s busy with school, college apps and work he’s doing well.

Both my husband and I came from very poor backgrounds, so both of us worked a lot of hours in high school and throughout college. Neither of us would want our children to have to work like we did, but we also think that there are lessons and skills people learn at work that are important and different than what they learn at home or even at a business the parents own. We didn’t force son to have a job - he has plenty of spending money - he wanted to get a job because he’s an independent booger. I’m frustrated and proud of him at the same time.

I agree skills to be gained from working and my spouse and I too came from poor background and huge families. But I will say getting into a top college back then only required good grades and high test scores. It is a whole different ballgame now. It your kid is aiming really high he or she needs a resume of accomplishments outside the classroom. Of course a job can be part of that but there are only so many hours in a day. Hard to find the right balance these days.

It really depends on the kid and class. In a class of thirty you will have a range from where one student does not need to study to the other end of the pendulum where they are studying nonstop. Results or should I say test grades do not necessarily coordinate with time spent. Some kids in certain subjects just get it. Hence, some students have plenty of free time on their hands while others are sleep deprived. I dont think my son ever opened the ap world book or studied and got a five. Then again he loves history and reads for enjoyment.

My son is in the 11th grade and taking 5 AP classes. He just started a job last week. We really didn’t want him working during the school year but he really wanted to so we agreed. I think he did it so I’d get off his case about SAT prep. I have a feeling he thinks if he is around the house less he will have less chores. Guess he figures he’d rather be working for money than folding clothes as they come out of the dryer and doing dishes. I told him if his grades suffer he will have to quit. He really does not usually have much homework.

In some classes, this is true.

But in others, the teacher assigns a lot of work that requires the student to produce actual products that get turned in. These take a certain amount of time to produce, even for the student for whom the subject comes easily.

@Tribruin wrote

We give the girls $50 every two weeks for incidentals like clothing, makeup, movies. We pay for food, gas, insurance. We’ve been doing this since they were 14, and they’ve had debit cards since that age where we put the $50 electronically. The first year or so they blew it on stupid crap constantly, then were sad when something they really wanted was out of reach, so now they both save up and have apps on their phone that monitor how much money they have, and they check it constantly. I think older kid (freshman in college) is well into the 4 figures now in her savings from that debit card.

Younger kid is more of a spendthrift, but knows it and that’s why she has the job, which she loves and says is the most fun part of her day.

FWIW, both H and I worked several jobs through high school, and we neither value not devalue it as an experience. It was just work.

The local school did not seem to offer many classes where just getting the material was enough. There was a lot of required “production” as Marian said.