change of topic, but i had to report the results of my self experiment…third week of school and i have not yet logged on the online grade site to see how it’s going. in fact, i have no idea how the grades are going…it feels strangely good! who knows how long this will last?
@thingamajig you are a stronger person than I am!
My husband has GradePop on his phone so he lets me know if something is really awry. I don’t login often.
I didn’t realize the high school program would send me emails about progress, problems (or lack thereof). It seems like I’m getting 6-8 emails a day letting me know about changes to the grade book, upcoming homework, etc. Not being the most the savvy - I’m trying to figure out whether I can disable the notifications because I hate feeling like I’m back in high school and I don’t need to know that homework was turned in at every class period.
This is my first child in high school and I am surprised by the level of information the school assumes a parent wants/needs. I don’t remember this at all back in the dark ages when I attended high school. :bz
Our grade system doesn’t send emails. I’d kind of like it if it did, but only for certain criteria like an F or missing assignment. Especially as some teachers have been known to misplace them!
First h.s. cross country meet is Saturday, they got their uniforms today. D is hoping to make varsity. The first couple of meets are run by grade level, all seniors run, then all juniors, etc. So she needs to show what she can do at these. Hoping for a top 5 finish in the Freshman race.
No need to check grades here since DD tells us how she is doing. Such a refreshing change from DS and easing the adjustment to DS being away at college.
The problem I have with D20 that I didn’t have with D17 is that sometimes she doesn’t know how she’s doing because she forgets to turn in an assignment and since she’s not checking the grade system she may be getting a much worse grade than she thinks she is
That’s why I wish it could be configured to just notify me when an assignment is missed
@VickiSoCal, does your D have a planner? Its what got my unorganized S through HS. My older D, now in grad school, can’t live without one. D20 is just learning how to properly use one.
There’s a great sense of accomplishment when you can check items off a list in a planner! Good time management and organization are often overlooked skills.
Yes, she has a planner. She’s just an organizational disaster. Her room, backpack, binder always looks like something exploded. We’re working on it! Middle school started out very poorly, but got better. An D in PE for not turning in exercise log when you swim 6 times a week, for example.
But hey, she always has an A in math. There’s more to life than math.
@VickiSoCal that sounds just like my D20. She is a terrific kid and a straight A student, but she’s a very disorganized person. She has tried using a planner but can never stick with it. She checks her school portal at the end of each school day to see if she’s missing any assignments. It’s a little backwards way of going about it, but it works for her and keeps her on her toes. And lucky for her she has had very kind, understanding teachers that let her turn in assignments at the end of the day if she has forgotten to turn them in earlier.
My D17 has color-coded file folders for each class for work in progress, past work, notes, etc. Could not be more different. 
@VickiSoCal, I totally admire people like your D17 who are organized!
@VickiSoCal are you sure you don’t have my child? Sounds so similar on the organization issues, and I just keep trying to remind myself that I need to help child figure out to their own system because they aren’t going to do mine. My younger children are much more organized, this is definitely a case of nature, not nurture.
Just wanted to share, I went to open house yesterday and unlike middle school, was very impressed with all the teachers. It was so fun to “compare notes” and find out the teachers I liked the most didn’t all make to my daughter’s favorite list
Hopefully they set up some flagging allowing you to decide what you want to be informed of. Our school system allowed us to put some thresholds mainly for grades essentially warning us about falling grades. That was not working as well as intended because some teachers had a way they did things which somehow made the next grade they were giving as a zero dropping the grade a lot and whenever the teacher completed updating the grade to an actual value it went back up. So we finally figured out one teacher was doing something quirky which resulted in the kid flunking for a day each time they graded a new homework or test.
@texaspg ^^^^^ that is what we are running into
our school doesnt offer any AP courses in 9th grade. I have heard that u can self study AP courses on ur own and give tests but iam not sure what those courses are.Can anyone name the AP courses that we can self study in 9th grade?
Our high school does not allow you to take AP tests unless you take the class.
The high school’s here only allow AP Human Geography to be taking in 9th grade. And I don’t know if the district allows one to take AP test without the class.
The district has to let you take the AP test; there’s really no way they (should be able to?) can stop you or your DC.