Parents of the HS Class of 2019 (Part 1)

Parents Forum Class of 20xx Community
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@eandesmom Yep. You are right! I know…

It only took me about 25 minutes to look up the 15 schools that are on his “very” early list and four have absolutely no FL requirement for graduation. Ten of them take an AP score of 4 or 5 as fulfilling the requirement. The last one is the biggest pain - even if you get a 4 or a 5 on the AP, you still have to take one class at the university to fulfill their requirement. This also happens to be the school that has eight extra questions on top of the Common App and “highly recommends” an interview. Any guesses? It’s not Chicago.

Tomorrow is going to be rough. XC meet after school and kids won’t be home until 8:00. He’s trying to do any homework that’s due on Wed right now but not much was assigned two days in advance. And he’s got two tests on Wed. It’s silly. His race is at 5:00 and then he’s required to support his teammates in the other races and cool down as a team. It will be a late night of homework!

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^ EC’s are a pain when the kids get home late and still have homework to do. DS19 is in marching band and for some unknown reason they are having some away football games(the band has to go) on Thursday nights! last Thursday I picked him up from school at 11:30 pm. I don’t know how the kids do that for sports on a regular basis.

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@MichiganGeorgia What happens when you mix sports and a heavy honors/AP workload? NO sleep!! Very few kids can take it on at our high school anyway. It takes a bright and very organized student to pull it off. I hear junior year is the absolute worst for the honors student athletes. They just suck it up and and plow through and tell themselves it’s only nine months of their lives. :frowning:

I look at some threads and see kids who play a sport (or more than one sport!) year round and are still stars on Model UN or class president or editor of the newspaper. That is not an option for our kids. Each of those things would be full time at the high school. I try not to worry too much about it, though, since kids from our school tend to do pretty well when it comes to college admissions. Good GPA, lots of rigor, and deep in maybe two activities seems to be enough to have good college options.

Our S19 is definitely feeling booked up with XC/Track and art. Our D21 will face a bigger challenge though. She’s studying ballet at a competitive studio. Already in eighth grade, she spends 20 hours a week there for class plus probably another eight for rehearsals during Nutcracker season and in the spring for a spring show. As a freshman, she will have class/rehearsal from 5:30-9:30 every night plus Saturday rehearsals all day long. I’m hoping she needs less sleep than her brother.

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Kids are amazing creatures but it really does require time management skills which don’t come naturally to most. 3 out of our 4 kids have had insanely busy HS paths, with varying degrees of course rigor but all relatively rigorous, especially jr/sr years.

SD14 did HS Soccer, Club Soccer, Recruited Athlete so sports year round, Choir, rigorous courseload, excellent GPA. She is one of those who made it look easy.

S17 has theater tech, significant volunteer tech hours for the school in non drama needs, jazz band, marching band, 2 jobs (8-20 hours a week once school starts), additional church related community service, fun performance related band, very rigorous course load, (a bit more so than his big sister). He has an average at best GPA. Not due to his overall load but rather due to poor test taking/adhd. Changing the load wouldn’t change a thing and he does best very busy.

S19 wins the most rigorous courseload award of the bunch but has his own issues so the gpa is not where it needs to be. While I think I know the source, some fall trials will help give us a path to see if certain things help him or not. As with his brother, less other activities would not change the result. He has XC, Track, Jazz Band, Marching Band and Scouts as well as church related community service. In theory he gets a “break” in the schedule during the winter but does plan to do a screenplay for the winter production. We will see how that goes! He does do much better with the more difficult classes, tends to tank the mainstream/boring ones so I am really hoping that holds true this year as his schedule scares me a bit.

My kids to a LOT of homework on the weekends and really have to plan ahead on due dates and be on top of their calendars. Google calendar, and in S19’s case, a homework app, is their friend.

It’s a lot. But I will take busy happy fulfilled kids doing stuff they love and choose to do anyday over a perfect gpa.

But yeah, junior year is brutal!!! I’m glad to take a year off this year.

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@eandesmom Great analysis of all three kids! And I wholeheartedly agree with the difficulty of an honors type kid taking regular classes. We didn’t want to overload S19 last year so he took regular French 2 and regular social studies. Not good. Because he perceived the classes as “so easy”, he put little effort in and then always had to buckle down to get the As that should have been a piece of cake.

And the complaining that ensued about the teachers! I don’t know if it was just his experience in these two classes, but we’ve found the the harder the class, the more engaging the teacher. We are sticking with all honors and AP for the rest of the time. If he gets a B here and there, so be it. When the material is harder, he applies himself!

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Now, we’re dealing with the problems that come from going to an underperforming school to a school full of high achievers. We first experienced it in volleyball over the summer. In 8th grade, she was the best player on her team. In 9th, she was the starting setter of an undefeated freshman team. We move to Texas and the club coaches are telling her that she simply isn’t good enough to make her school team here. And we can see that the schools here are at a much higher level. E.g,. at her old school, the varsity volleyball team had 3 seniors, none of whom got a division I scholarship. At this school, several players already have committed to elite Division I schools even before the senior season began. (There are rival schools where even the juniors have already committed to big Division I programs).

That’s just sports and we always knew that she wasn’t going to be a sports star. Just something that keeps her in shape that she likes. So she decided to not even try out for volleyball and chose cross-country. The early morning practices messes with everyone’s sleep.

Academics are, of course, much more important. And it seems that she was behind in other respects also. Because she went to underperforming schools, she was always among the best students in class. She’s only received one B in her first 9 years of school, and that was a single quarter of a non-academic subject (iirc, the teacher only gave one A that quarter).

She’s always been a great reader, so we aren’t really worried about English or social studies. But her math lags behind. She’s not bad at math , but she’s not great at it either (she got 88th percentile on the math PSAT last year). And now we see that her old school just didn’t prepare her. She feels like she’s behind in Algebra 2 and just did really badly on the first quiz, which was supposed to be review.

Now she only has until the end of the school day to decide whether or not she sticks with the honors version of Algebra 2 or drop down to the regular version. (Today is the last day to change classes). Really don’t even know what to say to her. Obviously, honors looks better than non-honors. But if she’s going to get a C in it, might as well switch to the regular class. Same effect on GPA, but a B looks better than a C, right?

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@homerdog - have you consider the State Department immersion program to maybe jump-start his interest in a foreign language? It doesn’t even have to be the language taken in high school :slight_smile:

https://exchanges.state.gov/us/program/national-security-language-initiative-youth-nsli-y
My kid is in Chinese 3 and knows it will help her school resume, so we’re gonna give it a shot this year, I think. But she also wants to immerse herself in theater tech, too.
The funeral and wedding weekend was full of emotion, as expected (plus DH’s ex-wife was an integral part, which had me full of something else…ahem…)
Hoping for a great year for everyone!

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@gusmahler - we had the same problem with D19 in math. She was cyberschooled for some critically important foundational years and is now on what she herself calls the “stupid math” track. She finally got up to speed last year, after two years of grim grades in middle school. Now she wants to somehow fit in geometry in summer school (see previous post to get a sense of how unrealistic this probably is) … to get back on track for AP/calculus etc.
I suggest taking it down a notch. The struggle can begin to affect a lot more than that one grade.

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@eandesmom – oh please, tell me about the homework app! And any other time management skills you, and others, could guide me on? I have a hard time getting through to them that this stuff is important, and DH’s forte is not that area, so when I’m not around, it falls by the wayside. Scheduling, I mean. Blocking out time in advance, etc.

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@gusmahler I’d let her drop down. Give her the year to catch up, do a LOT of Kahn academy and she can bump back up next year in most cases. Our school doesn’t even offer Honors Alg/Geo or Alg2 which is super frustrating.

XC is wonderfully inclusive and that’s great that she is doing something, that’s all that really matters. S19 loves it.

@Gatormama we started using this at the end of the year last year

https://myhomeworkapp.com/

Not really long enough to see if it would “stick” but I’m hopeful for this year.

I’m glad your weekend is over actually, that is just too much of everything all at once.

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We also found “yay math” on you tube quite helpful with math @gusmahler and @gatormama

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I’ve been ignoring S19 and D21 in order to settle D16 and S13 in at college. I’m on my way home looking forward to refocusing a little on the younger two. Not sure that they are excited about it. :slight_smile: Tomorrow is S19’s 16th birthday, and we have an appointment to get his driver’s license. He’s done a lot of driving with me this summer, and I think he’s ready. He ended up having 4 APs, 3 Honors classes, and one elective (TV Production). He is my hard worker, and has already started putting in a lot of hours these past two weeks. Hope he can take some time off tomorrow on his birthday. Glad to catch up on the news about everyone’s kids. Sounds like sophomore year is going well for most of them.

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@EastGrad happy birthday to your S! My S19’s turns 16 on Labor Day but no license here yet for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is that S17 doesn’t have his yet. He has XC on his bday but they are making them pancakes after so that’s not so bad.

That is quite the course load! That wouldn’t even be possible at our school as a sophomore. We only have 7 periods possible though and really only 6 for core classes as the 7th is limited to music and PE. He will have 1 AP, 1 College in the classroom , 2 honors classes, French 4 and 2 music classes and his schedule terrifies me.

I hope your kids are all settled, SD14 heads back to her college on Friday, it will be a bit of a sad dinner tomorrow night, no settling in to do though which is nice, that all happened in July with a housing move.

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My kid is in a private prep school but has no AP opportunities for sophomore year. And only a couple of honors opps -science and math (she’s not eligible for either). She’s also only turning 15 in October - we pushed her ahead after an early start to kindergarten at a Montessori school. So probably best that she’s not able to load up on advanced stuff right now. She’s mighty salty about being a year behind her peers as it is, especially as they all get driver’s licenses :slight_smile:

Oh, this is hysterical - we were vacationing and stopped by the Penn State Behrend campus (sp?) in Erie. Very nice, for a satellite campus. Got some admissions material, and the very nice receptionist/intake person asked D some questions, including what she wanted to study. D, being in vacation mode, was flustered and said “Uh, I like space. Maybe astrology.”
I just about died.
Way to impress, girl!!!

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Back to school for my son19 who just turned 15, young kid for his class. Soccer off to a good start and he likes his math classes. He’s taking honors geometry and honors Alg 2 this year so he can take Calc as a senior.
He convinced a friend to join robotics with him so he’s happy. He’s going to check out Science Olympiad next week to sed if he likes it.
My kids are not happy having to wake up at 6am again.

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@Gatormama I forgot to mention one thing to consider is that there are many ways to “catch” up and get to calc if she really wants to. My SD14 was not on the advanced math track in MS or early HS. As she approached her junior year she thought she wanted to get onto it and the only way to do so would be to do Geometry out of cycle. At her HS Geometry didn’t have to be taken “in order” as did Alg/Alg2. Our HS is the same. So she signed up for a summer online course as a rising junior. Which she never finished. Or really, barely even started. If not self motivated those don’t work at all! But over the course of the year for other reasons, she really really decided she wanted to and needed to double up. She took PreCalc her junior year (without having taken Geometry yet lol as it wasn’t a sequence) plus when she’d registered the previous spring her intent was to do that Geometry class online lol. And, while we all think it hurt her for ACT and SAT reasons, it didn’t hurt her in PreCalc…but she also worked hard, got herself a peer tutor and made it happen. Senior Year she doubled up and had Geometry and Calc AB, and did get into the ED school of her choosing. Not a traditional path at all and may not be an option but my point is, there are options and time. I always thought it must look so odd to colleges to see both of those classes in the same/senior year but for the competitive one that mattered, it must not have.

@gusmahler to my point above, dropping down now doesn’t really set a certain path in motion, there is lots of time and your D needs to be able to adjust if she can. I am not sure what you/she ended up deciding but I would definitely agree a B in non honors is better than a C in honors. I’ve got an S17 with a few C’s and they were all either in Honors, AP or language. Our school doesn’t weight or rank and certainly colleges will see the rigor but still, if you can avoid the C’s, any of them, it’s not only better for the GPA it’s better for the self esteem. My S17 has moments where he gets really bummed about his GPA as he has friends with much higher ones. Some of whom have significantly easier course loads and are 2 tracks behind in math. He’s on the right track for his sequencing and has a nice college list in play but I hate that it bothers him like that. While the school may weight the honors class, most colleges recalculate (since many HS don’t weight at all and those that do have all kinds of different scales anyway) and the colleges she is looking at may or may not give weight to it at all anyway. Just not worth the stress if you ask me. I hope it all worked out however it felt best to your D!

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@eandesmom I left the decision to D19. She decided to stay in honors algebra 2. Her reasoning is that the material in the book is a lot easier than the material in the first quiz (which was supposedly review). She thinks she can handle it and still do well in the class.

The sad part is that she’s now really hard on herself. Last year, she was supremely confident, thought she was the smartest person in her school, and thought she could get into any college she wanted. And she never did homework. Yesterday, she was telling me that at least she can still get into ASU. And she talked about doing 4 hours of homework every night. Yes, it was partially a dig at her parents (both of us went to ASU), but I also don’t want a single bad grade in a quiz given the second week of 10th grade to derail all of her plans.

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Had some catching up to do on this thread. Sounds like everyone is doing well. S19 is doing fine in AP World, but not putting forth full effort, so that will be addressed soon. :wink: He also mentioned wanting to drop/change a class he’s not liking. I’m not even sure if that’s allowed. I told him to go into the counseling center to see what his options are. Funny thing with this being my 2nd child at this school…before I would’ve been the one to email a counselor to see what needed to be done. Live and learn. LOL

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@gusmahler switching from an “easier” high school to a more competitive one is easier than going from an “easy” high school to a competitive college. I was a star in high school, was accepted to a very selective university, and then had to face the fact (away from home for the first time and knowing no one) that I was NOT the top of the class anymore. Add that to the fact that my parents were mortgaging their house to send me to college and THERE’S some stress. I think your daughter will have plenty of time to adjust and it’s better that it happens in high school!

As for early bad quiz grades, S19 just got a 8/15 on his first Chem H lab. I guess it’s a little consolation that most of the class got the same crummy grade but still freaked him out. Said the teacher didn’t give them expectations and he didn’t understand how they were supposed to know what to do on their own. Welcome to one of the hardest classes at the high school! We were told early on that this teacher doesn’t give much instruction and expects the kids to figure stuff out on their own. Seems like any time he gets a teacher with a PhD, they run the class like that. One or two quiz/lab grade do not tank as overall grade! Have to just keep plugging along…

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S19 just started school. Oy. This is going to be a tough year. Day 1. Full day of school. Then practice for club sport #1, then to practice for club sport #2. Get home at 8:30pm and have 3 hours of homework. Ack! He took pre-Calc over the summer in order to take Calc 1 sophomore year. Calc 1 and Stats at the same time. “No prob. I’m good at math.” And honors Chem. “No prob, I’m good at science.” Oh, yeah, and he transferred into the HS musical. Hmm, we’ll see how it goes after week 1. Thankfully club sport #1 winds down in October. Fortunately he is very organized and this schedule was his idea not mine, but it’s a challenge.

Last time I posted, he was off to nationals in sport #1 (which sounds more amazing than it is since you don’t have qualify to go). He was trying to qualify for a team that would head to a competition in Europe at the end of September. He did not qualify, and I was so relieved as I wasn’t sure how that was going to work with school (well, that and the $$$). But I had to keep quiet since he was disappointed.