And, one last thing, if homework gets rough, it’s the volunteering that goes. He does plenty of volunteering in the summer. Grades and sleep are a priority!
@collegeandi my son has a similar schedule. H-Eng, H-Chem, AP World, UW (DE) Pre-Calc, French 4, Symphonic Band, Jazz Band. XC, Stage Crew, Track, Scouts, 2 different private music lessons (practice, recitals, competitions etc), Youth Group/Volunteer.
I expect 60-90 min for AP World, 30-60 H-Eng, 30-60 French 4, 30-60 Precalc and not much for Chem. Assuming 2-3 hours a day combined, and some days much more. Likely 4-5 hours each weekend day. Hard to say though on Chem and the Precalc may come in lower as it comes easily to him and I am based that on his brothers timeline. However, Chem-H may not be offered if not enough kids picked the honors track and his back up is AP Physics. Which has no actual homework but requires a lot of self study to do well.
We will also follow the volunteer stuff goes first, then scouts. If needed. He has asked about working and I just don’t see there being time for it during the school year with everything else unless it was weekend only. As the workload increases they need to learn how to juggle all of it and for this one, I think it’s too early.
Plus, at least here, no one will hire 15 year olds even if they can as there are just too many 16+ available and they can work more hours. I’d rather he put the time into finishing up Eagle first.
Good suggestions @homerdog. Thanks. We will discuss and cut down on 2-3 activities probably the job, volunteering and 1 EC. 2 of the remaining 4 ECs are yearlong and 2 are seasonal. So that she should be home by 6 and can finish her HW in time. She is an such a sincere student that her teachers tell her to cut corners, lol. She needs to learn that too.
Your sons’ experience will be helpful for us too. Thanks a lot for sharing, @eandesmom. D finds Math easier too. So I guess she will be ok.
We just met with a counselor at D19’s new school (we just moved to TX from out of state). We inquired about any gifted programs they have. They said that they basically don’t take any testing from out of state to be admitted into the gifted program.
Moreover, they don’t really have anything in high school for gifted students. Even the classes are the same. The only real difference is, for example, most people in Algebra 2 will take “Algebra 2 PreAP” while gifted students take the exact same class (literally the same class, they are in the same room being taught at the same time). But the transcript for gifted students says "Algebra 2 PreAP/GT.
Seems to me there is absolutely no benefit for my daughter getting tested, right? Or will colleges look at the transcript and rate the person who takes"Algebra 2 PreAP/GT" higher than the person who takes “Algebra 2 PreAP,” because they won’t know that those two students were actually sitting next to each other in class.
@gusmahler - If I am not mistaken, the gifted testing works if your kids want to attend specific magnet or vanguard school. In Texas, most large public schools support the regular, college level or dual and honors/Pre-AP/AP curriculum. In our school district it essentially means that there are students who are following a lower level curriculum with a standard GPA, dual program where they take honors classes followed by classes which are given credit by the community college, and Pre-AP/AP program where they take classes leading upto AP classes. Both dual program and AP program have an extra point for their classes and so if someone gets a B, their GPA stills says 4.0 but otherwise some of the graduating seniors have about 4.9-4.95 at the valedictorian level for taking all Pre-AP and AP classes.
I have not heard of a Pre-AP/GT designation class. Both my kids were in GT program when they were in elementary and middle school but the GT designation disappeared when they reached high school. Most high schools let you test out Pre-AP/AP classes but selectively drop your level in specific subjects after trying out one full grading period (6 weeks here). I remember my daughter’s freshman biology Pre-AP teacher sent out an email to all parents saying that if your kid is scoring under 70 (a D) it is best drop down to a regular level Biology class because it may not be worth pursuing the Pre-AP rigor while getting a very low grade.
Our large school district has one vanguard school and one medical professions school both of which require a test. In addition, different magnet schools have their own tests. I believe the gifted testing is done mainly for the Vanguard school.
@eandesmom I think we have similar kids! Ours does XC as well and art instead of band (couldn’t make band work with sports at our school as the kids are required to do marching band in the fall and running XC and marching band in the fall leaves NO time for homework. It’s a bummer.) Art is a big commitment so it replaces band. AP Studio Art, competitions, and eventually AP Portfolio senior year. I figure a sport that he loves, an “art” that shows his talent, and good grades may have to be enough. He wants to try Model UN so we may give it a go after XC season and see how big the commitment is.
He volunteers with the grade schools in town, tutoring the kids. Sometimes, that’s rough to fit!
@homerdog our kids are required to do marching band (and pep) as well. You may not be in jazz unless you do a concert band and then concert band comes with MB and Pep. That said, I don’t recall the fall schedule being horrid band wise (although it is possible I have selective memory). They practice for a couple of weeks before school starts and then it’s really just the games, and only home games. Kids aren’t required to do either till 10th grade though. S19 went to all the home football games anyway.
Pep band was more of a pain than anything as it was an inconsistent schedule and it did conflict a lot with theater stuff last year for S17, we will see if it does or does not for S17.
I figure kids should do what they enjoy and if it happens to look well rounded on an application, great. If not, well that’s ok too to be honest.
I loved MUN in HS and have been surprised S17 didn’t attempt it but it’s not big/popular at their HS. They do have it but the kids weren’t even aware it existed until they saw a picture of the group in the club section of the yearbook!
S19 used to do some music tutoring at the elementary but it was too hard to fit in.
@eandesmom I think it’s terrific to stick with music. Our marching band has practice twice a week from 6-8:30! So…S19 would have XC practice, change, and then go right to the football field. He’d have about 15 min to eat something and he’d be all sweaty! Not to mention that he wouldn’t get home until 9:00 on those nights. Oh well. He played guitar and saxophone for years so we figure he can always pick up an instrument after high school if he’s interested. 
I just find that it’s hard to do more than two year-round things and still get homework done. I don’t know how some of these honors kids with so many ECs do it!
My d19 played flute from 4th grade through this year. But she really wasn’t happy playing anymore this year. She decided there are other things she would rather do, compounded by her skin reacting to the metal of the flute, so she is quitting. To clarify, she’s always has issues with her skin reacting (metal allergies) but refused to quit until this year. She had a terrible eczema rash in 4th grade from it on her face. Since then we put medical tape on the mouth piece and she would lotion her hands before playing. Usually she would only have some tingling from it. It just got more annoying this year since in the high school, band is a daily class. I’ll miss it a bit, mostly her earlier enthusiasm, but I’m glad she will be more physically comfortable.
My younger d played viola from 1st-4th grade. She hated every second. Sometimes a parent just has to pick their battles.
I think many kids find different interests when they hit high school. Some change up sports, or find a new one. Some try school plays for the first time or find an academic club that is new to them. I figure it’s all good! Experimenting is fun and they get to meet new kids. Unless you’ve got a student who LOVES their ECs from middle school, why not take these four years to try something else?!
@homerdog well for better or worse, our MB really doesn’t “march” in the way that many bands do. It makes me sad as when I was in HS, same school district, we certainly did. Instead they just march out in formation onto the field, do a few small super basic things and march back. In our general area that’s what it has turned into and there are actually very few local schools that even have MB’s. It does help though. Some kids drop band to avoid it (and pep band), I know one rising senior that was seriously contemplating dropping band. He’s keeping it but thinking of playing football go get out of MB! Which is silly if you ask me. It is interesting though, our MB competes and does quite well in parades but on the field…boring!
XC goes until 6? Yikes. Ours goes until 5 unless it’s a meet day, same with track. Still, between scouts, meets, concerts and the like there is usually one day a week he’s not home until 9 or later and sometimes multiple nights.
We have the same issues with ECs, compounded by the fact that D’s school is an hour away. She does tech most of the year, which goes until 5:30 nightly and also weekends, and outdoor education in the fall, which consists of hikes and kayaking/rafting a couple times a week and then lax, which starts modestly in Feb, but ramps up to six days a week, practice until 5:30 and two or three games a week that can start as late as 7, oftentimes farther away in the wrong direction from home. That goes through the end of May. There’s no after-school activities bus, so one of us has to go pick her up every day. To this point, she’s been using the car ride for sleep, as she gets up at 4 every day (her choice - bus doesn’t come until 6:30). She might be using it for homework before too long. She has said she’s been keeping up with study halls and such, but after her grades this year, we are dubious of that strategy.
Yeah. XC intense. Team tends to win state. Each week in the summer they will run between 55-70 miles. In the fall, the mileage is the same! I think everyone has to know their own limits for sure. If our son got home at 9:00 and had to start homework, he would be a stress case! Our middle school daughter, on the other hand, is a night owl who seems to need less sleep and she might be ok with that.
@Gatormama I’m stressed out and exhausted just reading your last post!
@homerdog We try to help him plan homework around those nights. I have to be careful not to assume he’s thinking ahead. Tomorrow he will have running club till 5 and trumpet at 6:30 so really can’t start anything to 7:30 and has to eat at some point. Though he doesn’t have anything due till Friday he doesn’t have enough time Thursday to get it all done so I had him start tonight.
Not that he had much time tonight, running club till 5 and scouts tonight lol.
Our XC will add Saturday practices to supplement. Kids are expected to log 100-200 over the summer.
@Gatormama no fun on the commute! A bit jealous that tech ends that early though. Ours is usually 6-9
On required marching band, an amusing story: My sister took up percussion in middle school (over the objections of an openly sexist band director), and very quickly ended up zeroing in on tuned percussion, particularly the [url="<a href=“https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marimba%22%5Dmarimba%5B/url”>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marimba"]marimba[/url] as her instrument of choice. She was good at it, too—got a full ride scholarship to major in percussion performance and all.
However, our high school required any non-strings player who was in any music classes to be in marching band to get credit—but the marimba isn’t really an instrument you can carry around a football field. So she’d wait on the sidelines while everyone did their marching and playing, and then sometime in the middle of it she’d walk out into the middle of the field while a couple other people brought her marimba along, and then she’d play with the marching back for a couple minutes, after which she’d walk back to the sidelines while a couple people carried her marimba back off the field.
She said the most amazing part was when it was raining—the keys of a marimba are rosewood, and thou shalt not let them get wet. So the whole time (when she was on the sideline, when she was heading out on the field, when she was playing, and so on) she and the marimba would stand under a big canopy, which four additional people would carry so that it stayed over the marimba as it got moved around.
I still don’t get why the band director didn’t just say that maybe, just maybe, some instruments weren’t meant for marching band.
Moving back to the present, my daughter’s school doesn’t have a marching band, but if it did there’s no way I’d be letting her be in it—she plays the oboe, and that’s another instrument you don’t want to let get rained or snowed upon. Good ones are grenadilla wood, and don’t take well to quick temperature swings. We dropped a few thousand on that thing, and so I’d like it to last a while, you know?
@dfbdfb in our marching band Marimba is in the pit, so they stay on the sidelines. We have Marimbas made especially for rain–don’t know what the keys are made of. The two kids in our band who play oboe ironically play Marimba. Our band is consistently ranked superior in contests. My kids got/get a lot out of it.
@dfbdfb that’s pretty funny about the marimba. Our main marimba player had a special HUGE xylophone with carrier, just for marching band (he is now the registrar and a VP at Pepperdine so it clearly worked out for him lol). That thing was massive. Our kids often changed instruments from concert band, to jazz, to marching. I played clarinet in concert/symphonic band but bells in marching one year which was an absolute blast. The bells were heave enough, I can’t imagine the xylophone! We would do formations and I have one very special memory of a MB competition my sophomore year (the only year I played bells) where the 3 of us (xylophone and 2 bells) were at the center of the formation performing a wonderful mallet solo. I wonder what happened to those instruments, they are not part of our line up now. Of course, our school is a little different…we have bagpipes!
Currently at my boys school many of the kids move and mix up what they plan, around and they encourage it. They actually take pride in it. We have flute players doing sax in jazz, oboe playing clarinet or sax in MB, lots of movement in the lower brass and some really interesting movement in the drumline. It makes it fun and interesting for the kids and yes, protects valuable instruments! We have a “marching band” trombone and then the “real” one that is used for wind ensemble. MB is hard on instruments. The trumpet has been single use only for both bands, it is less likely to get whacked and dented than the trombone. I have to admit I refused to let S19 mix it up as it would have meant more lessons, he was considering french horn for concert band and stick with trumpet for jazz and 3 private music lessons was just more than my wallet could bear!
@eandesmom sounds like your school has an incredible music program! I wonder how many kids go on to play in college?