Summer reading! S only had one book- Fahrenheit 451. Read it the week before school started. He had many friends who only got to page 50 before school started so now they have to add it to all of their other homework this week. One boy put a photo on his Snapchat story of his holding a lighter to the book. LOL. Guess it wasn’t his favorite.
At least it wasn’t long. I saw one thread here where kids had to read Crime and Punishment over the summer. THAT would not be possible to pull off in the seven days before school!
@payn4ward I agree to an extent with your son. Good for it to be fresh…but kids have to be realistic about how long it takes to read some of these books. And, at least in my house, estimating how long something takes and planning in advance how to get it done is not a strong suit of the teenage set! (And Crime and Punishment is a brutal summer assignment. Come on. Russian lit during summer? Intense!!)
DS19 came home from his first day of school in a fairly good mood, but is somewhat anxious about his first AP class, World Geography. His teacher has a reputation of being one of the hardest teachers in the school. He gave a "boot camp “'style speech basically saying “I’m going to throw you into the deep end of the pool. You either swim and survive or not. It’s up to you if you survive " Then he proceeded to tell the students” In the winter, I grow more facial hair. That doesn’t mean I’m Santa Clause. I don’t give gifts and it doesn’t make me jolly” DS19 loves history and geography , but he is a little anxious. I’ll be curious to see how many students withdraw from the class.
@carolinamom2boys ok. Get this. Our S came home yesterday and told me that his AP Computer Science teacher told them that this class is going to be like learning how to swim by being pushed off the high dive. Maybe all AP teachers use the same analogy!
DS19 is driving the golf cart to school. It only took me like 6 years to finally figure out last night that if the golf cart is backed into the garage I don’t have to move 2 cars in the morning in order for the golf cart to get out of the garage.(We have the other cars stacked on the left in the driveway behind the golf cart so DH can get his car out the garage in the morning. unbelievable… #-o
That would be the coolest thing ever to drive a golf cart to school around here!
Homework for the second day of school is already rough. S finished French and some Chem in study hall but then still had pre-calc, comp sci, English, and more chem after XC practice. His phone was in the charger in the kitchen the whole time he was working in the dining room and he still didn’t finish up until 10:45. I dropped in on him a few times and he was pretty focused. 4 1/2 hours of homework on day two. Are your kids given this much homework?
Hello parents! Back here after two months off, dealing with the usual summer madness, compounded by my stepdaughter’s wedding this Sunday, so it’s not really over yet. I’m glad to see our kids are all the same not reading their summer books - hah! My daughter had three books to choose - anything - just had to be at her reading level and one has to be nonfiction. She first spent about a month arguing for the new Harry Potter, saying it was grade level, to which I pointed out that she was ABOVE grade level, so that wasn’t gonna work. She has started and stopped two nonfiction books. We have two weeks to go and she has to read two of them still!
Last night she snuggled with me and talked about taking Geometry next summer so she could get on the track for all kinds of AP/honors math and science courses. (She got a C in Biology at the end of last year, so I’m at a loss for where this is coming from). She swears this year will be different. Ummmm, the summer reading behavior isn’t giving me a whole lot of confidence.
Her school doesn’t offer any AP classes for sophomores, and only a couple of honors math/science courses, neither of which she qualifies for, so she get one more year of “easy” work …
Speaking as a teacher (though a college one), there is much value to be had in making your students a bit nervous about you at the outset. Better to have them paying attention to that first major assignment than have them think they can skate right through it, after all…
D19 asked me to be with her and talk and cuddle before going to bed. I guess she must have received some of that “expectation setting talk” from her APChem teacher on her first day!
Had the back to school night last night. They gave out the reading list for English. The “summer reading” book is different from the one listed on the web site! We have no idea if she read the correct book. Guess we have to wait until school starts to find out.
(Our back to school night isn’t about meeting teachers, it’s about receiving your schedule, making corrections to it, and signing up for extracurriculars. So she didn’t get a chance to ask the teacher if she read the wrong book.)
@carolinamom2boys@dfbdfb I don’t think the AP Comp Sci teacher was over-estimating the work load. Last night, S finished all other homework except Comp Sci. Homework for the class was to “just” read the first chapter. Thinking that would be a cake walk, he prioritized math and chem and did those first. At 9:30, he dove into chapter one of his JAVA textbook only to find that it was 30 pages long and all new to him. NOT a cake walk.
^^Maybe that’s the reason to be a little scary on the first day, @dfbdfb. Teacher ends up with fewer students.
S19 finished his book (The Grapes of Wrath this summer; Crime and Punishment is next summer) and essay a few weeks ago and insisted I read it several times to give him feedback during the busiest week of preparations to get D16 off to her prefreshman program. For once, I wish he had procrastinated more. It would be a welcome distraction right now–she left yesterday.
@EastGrad The theory is that he does this to weed out the students who are “lazy”. We know the APUSH teacher very well because he is the Academic Team coach. He said that it is a hard class because the teacher has high expectations. It is usually the first AP class these students have, and he sees it as his job to prepare them for future AP classes . The Academic team coach says that this particular teacher’s students are consistently better prepared than the students from had another teacher. DS19 knew this prior to registering for this class, so while it may be a difficult year , he wants to continue. I guess it will give me some distractions while DS16 is at school.
