Parents of the HS Class of 2021 (Part 1)

Parents Forum Class of 20xx Community
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@BingeWatcher hang in there! Our S19 ate lunch at a desk in the science hallway all of freshman year because he had no where to sit in the lunchroom. Really had no group of friends all of freshman year. Long story about how he got to that point but playing competitive tennis all through middle school (which kept him away from all of the team sports and bonding time as well as any time to hang out with kids) paired with his two best friends deciding to go to catholic high school, left him pretty much alone. We are at a giant high school as well.

s19 made the soccer team freshman year but didn’t fit with the boys so much. They had all known each other through club soccer and weren’t very inviting to new kids. All of freshman year was painful socially for us and S19.

At the end of freshman year, I got a call from his math teacher. She told me she knew he was lonely and he was a terrific kid. She felt for him and had some suggestions. Her number one thing was for him to quit soccer and join cross country. She said THAT’S where all of the kids “like him” are. He knew some of those kids from his classes and decided making friends was more important than playing soccer. That summer he signed up for summer running and found his people. He now has a core group of about a dozen boys and it’s made a huge difference for him. He’s more confident in everything he does.

Tell your D that it will get better. Maybe she can try to seek out friendships in her activities. Also, if it’s a dry period friendship wise, maybe make sure you’re available to her as much as possible. We both cried a lot freshman year but we had some really good family times too. My husband and I tried to find fun things to do with him and never made him feel like he should be with friends and not us on a Friday night.

We are so thankful for that teacher who helped him find his way. I hope things look up soon for your D!

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@bearcatfan Sounds like my kids - D17 is a ballet dancer - this is our first Nutcracker-free year in a decade. No more sewing pointe shoes! She will not major or minor in dance but did want to attend college at a place where she could find dance in the curriculum or in the broader community. D21 does martial arts and teaches kids’ classes at her dojo.

@homerdog That is a great story about your son’s teacher! It’s such a blessing when somebody gets involved in that way and makes a difference.

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Thank you @homerdog for sharing your S’s story and kudos to his teacher!

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@bearcatfan Mirletons dancing with stools! I need to get down there and see that! D21 also danced Chinese last year and will probably get that part again. She’s also hoping for Columbine (which is the doll that dances in the party scene) and maybe even a special part in Snow. I love Nutcracker season. I’m backstage for most shows and the company dances in four different locations all over the Chicago area. Seeing those little girls dressed up in the audience and looking for autographs at the end of the show still warms my heart.

This, though, will be the first year D21 is in high school during Nutcracker. For four weekends starting with Thanksgiving weekend, they have dress rehearsal on Friday night and then shows on Saturday and Sunday. There is almost no time for homework. And our cast party after the last show is the Sunday night before finals. We have not figured out how she will balance this. Freshman year might be ok if she can get high grades during the semester and doesn’t need high grades on finals. I know from experience with S19 that classes and finals get harder each year, so I cannot guess what will happen as D21 gets older. We’ve just told her she’ll have to take it year by year and see how it goes. :x

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Luckily our Nutcracker is only one day - two shows. My head would explode if it were more than one weekend.

Turns out she is dancing Mirlitons, but they are calling it something else and having the whole advanced level dance it - seven of them. It’s a neat re-imagining of the classic story.

It’s a balancing act for sure. I hear a lot from the lower level moms about how their daughters want to continue in marching band, softball, dance team, etc. You just can’t do everything plus advanced ballet. Choices need to be made, and it’s okay if that choice isn’t ballet. But at some point you have to accept there are only so many hours in the day.

In retrospect, I wish my daughter had tried other things while she could. But she truly loves it, even though she doesn’t want to major in it. And, to bring it back to college stuff, she wrote two of her three essays about challenges she faced in ballet. At least it was good for something, lol!

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Yes, kids at our ballet studio would have to stop all other activities by fifth grade. There’s no other way to get to all of the required classes and have another activity. It stinks but it does weed out everyone but the kids who are “all in”. That’s for sure. D21 played soccer through fifth grade and did gymnastics through fourth grade. Now, at high school, we are trying to find things she’s interested in that just require time in class or before school. All of the journalism stuff (yearbook, newspaper, literary journal, etc) have their meetings before school plus you can also take them as a class. That might be something she’s interested in.

It’s a very different life being at this ballet studio and going to the big public high school. There’s maybe two or three ballerinas per class of 750 kids or so. It generally means no football games or basketball games, probably no dating, and no extracurriculars at the high school. A child really has to love ballet to miss out on everything our high school offers. At this point, D21 wants to stick with ballet. She’s doing what she can to meet new friends in classes and reach out to socialize with the little time she has free. She’s happy so far. (It’s been a whole five weeks. :))

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Last year was the first year in twelve that we didn’t have a child in the Nutcracker. I was a little sad, but it was also really lovely to have more time! We had lots of turns in the party scene, a couple of times as a buffoon under the skirts, a couple turns as Mouse Prince, and one small solo for D21 in her very last year during the battle scene.

D21 made the other choice in fifth grade, @homerdog. She knew she couldn’t do contemporary and modern dance, soccer, piano, voice, acting, the IB program, etc., and do ballet. She chose the rest of it. She still dances for about fifteen hours ( including ballet and pointe for about four), but not with the professional ballet company, which would have required her to dance only with them for about thirty hours a week. Fortunately, they did cast her in the Nutcracker for another three years–so no hard feelings!

Also @homerdog, what a great story about your son’s teacher. I am so glad he found his people.

@mamaedefamilia, eighteen months or so ago, I noticed that we both reached “Member” status with 300 posts on the same day! How you’ve outpaced me since then! :slight_smile:

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@EastGrad I don’t know if that’s a good thing! :slight_smile: On the plus side, I have now become a “go to” person for many of my friends who have kids that are juniors and seniors.

Ballet is a serious commitment! Without the company hours, my daughter is getting more sleep in college, even with the increased workload.

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Jumping back into this thread. My S is starting his 4th week of school. No AP classes allowed in our school district until the kids are juniors – which means that their junior/senior years can be almost all AP-level courses if they choose. It has been a good adjustment for him in HS – it’s a bigger school and he has made a lot of friends. Right now the majority of his time is spent playing tennis – easily 10-15 hours a week, plus tournaments. In a few weeks, the sessions will begin for Science Olympiad, so he will have a little more work to do. He seems to be managing the transition well – very little homework is brought home, which makes me happy, b/c I’m a big believer in sleep and recreational reading for him.

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My freshman is also enjoying a relatively homework-free life, even with honors classes.

I learned with my older one - always request a study hall. My older one in erh sophomore year had no study halls and no lunch. It was the Year from Hell. I won’t let my younger one do that to herself. She’s not quite as motivated so it probably won’t be an issue, lol.

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Study hall is the best. D21 won’t always be able to have one because some semesters she will have “required” classes to take but every time she CAN take a study hall, she will. One solid hour of getting homework done at school is fabulous. S19 gets one during XC season. They let the kids out of gym and they take a study hall during that time. It’s huge. Means he’s only up until 11:00 instead of midnight. :))

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Drats
our school does not have study halls. once the kids are JRs they can take “office aid” as pass/fail
that is
the closet thing to study hall. And their are 8 periods
I don’t understand why they don’t have a study halls.

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Hi all,

I’ve been on CC for about a year
but seldom post about my daughter. Now that she’s a freshman I feel that I can be a more “official” participant here :slight_smile: A big thanks to y’all ( no, I no longer live in the South) for creating this thread!

D21 (my only) is in the honors/AP track of a medium-sized, average-for-our-state (but a good state) public high school. She’s a well-rounded, bright, conscientious student who made all A’s in middle school. Having said that, she’s not a prodigy, either, (some A’s were low A’s, especially math) and doesn’t tend to stretch herself to go the extra mile just for the sake of it. I fully expect a sprinkling of B’s in high school and that’s OK ( though the first time may be a let-down! ) She’s an insatiable reader of good and bad fiction and always has been, but honestly, a pretty mediocre writer. She’s competent in math once she “gets it” (and she does, thanks to my chemist-husband’s tutoring) but it doesn’t come intuitively. She really likes history, biology and marching/concert/jazz band. She has also played violin for years (casually, though) and is about to join a community orchestra of peers and adults in our small town that meets once per week.

It’s interesting to read all the posts from ballet parents (bearcatfan, mamaedefamilia, EastGrad, homerdog
is that everyone?) My daughter also danced from the age of three to the present
but the lack of adequate ballet options in our community forced the decision for us. We were cobbling together local ballet classes from two schools (nice people, but sloppy with technique) and supplementing with Friday/all day Saturday classes and rehearsals at a better studio more than an hour away as well as the summer intensives, to try to make up for the local deficits. Finally, it all became too much and would have been necessary to do the longer drive daily to keep up with better-trained peers. I know that many ballet families in metropolitan areas spend that much time or more driving through traffic. I would have done that if DD were passionate. The deal-breaker for me was that our drive often terrified me. It involved often-icy/snowy/foggy twisty mountain roads late at night with high-speed truckers whizzing by. My daughter decided she didn’t love dance THAT much to spend her high school years squeezing in homework while carsick on the road. It’s been harder for me, actually, to watch her give it up, but she hasn’t looked back. She’s thrilled being part of our high school’s stellar band . Bonding with other students/meeting upperclassmen during summer marching band camp has made the social transition to high school easier. And, I admit, leaving the ballet focus is freeing for me too!

DD’s schedule this year:

AP US government
Honor’s geometry
Honor’s English
Honor’s biology
Honor’s earth science
Spanish II
Band

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Oh yeah, I should probably jot down the schedule for my daughter as well. They are limited in what they can take freshman year and there is a particular sequence in math and science where upper level science starts sophomore year. They tend to go easy on the freshmen, lol.

Honors Algebra I (she’s not super strong in math but like @inthegarden she does get it)
Honors physical science
College prep English
College prep history
Business Communications (graduation requirement)
Gym (graduation requirement)
Spanish I

Like I’ve said, I learned a lot from my older daughter in terms of what is worth taking at the school. She pushed herself hard, and it was hard on the whole family in terms of her workload. If I had it to do over again (and I do in a way lol) I would focus more on test prep for the ACT. I hate the whole AP-testing industrial complex but it becomes a big factor in college applications 
 probably bigger than even the colleges will admit.

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I agree, @bearcatfan, I’m skeptical of the whole AP thing
I wonder whether it is really any improvement or just a “systematized” (to invent a word
does that make any sense ?) class that takes the creativity out of teaching/learning. I really don’t know yet
maybe it will be fine. I was also a bit surprised it was being allowed, and even pushed for freshmen in good standing at our school. My daughter is taking it because it is a peer thing
all her friends are taking it. I don’t think she is being competitive so much as wanting to have friends in her classes. I told her she could drop the class if it isn’t to her liking but that didn’t happen, so we’ll see. The general increase in homework I was expecting this year has not happened YET (she has 30 minutes of study hall, but that’s not much.)

What would you/will you do differently about ACT prep? I’m of two minds
want D to be ready, but also want her to just immerse herself into life and learning without a test/college prep focus. While I spend a lot of time reading on CC, SHE doesn’t know how much I think about college, lol, and I don’t want her to know quite yet :wink:

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Warning: unpopular AP rant ahead. :slight_smile:

I know a lot of people on CC talk about how AP credits save them money by having their kids go in as sophomores or whatever. But that’s assuming the college in question even accepts them, and that’s a crapshoot. Plus, frankly, I have my doubts about the ability of most high school teachers to teach a college-level class. AP has so much homework here that most kids just take the class at the community college, getting guaranteed credit and avoiding the AP crush.

My husband has a chemical engineering undergrad degree and law degree. He hates the concept of AP sciences, that it can somehow be comparable to a college-level science class. His opinion is why would you use an AP class to get college credit in something that will likely be taught differently/harder at the college level? I have heard anecdotally that AP science is not truly comparable to a college level course - that it maybe covers the first month or so of a college class. His feeling is never skip or test out of the core requirements of your major. The humanities might be different, but math and science build on everything that has come before.

For my older daughter, it looks like at least one program has her taking Algebra I and II freshman year unless she can convince them to let her test out of it through their own tests or CLEP (she won’t be a math major). She’s currently taking AP Calculus - because she enjoys it - so she’ll either test out and receive the credit, or enjoy an easy math year lol.

In terms of ACT 
 I think I would have signed her up for a review class, over her objections. After meeting with admissions counselors and seeing merit charts, she voluntarily took it again last weekend for a better score.

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^^ I wanted to disagree, but I realized I agree with @bearcatfan and her husband ;)) I would still take AP classes for two reasons: I think the material covered is solid and the “rigor” is supposed to be somewhat more than the college prep course. And I think the experience of taking the AP tests and noting your success at them are good experiences and milestones. I loved my AP classes, classmates, and teachers back in HS.

But truly, classes in college tend to be more rigorous (either via volume of work, depth of theory, or both) and there is something to be said about taking the foundational material deemed to be the customized prerequisites for later courses at a specific institution. I was glad I skipped out of freshman english with their 1-1.5 novels per week, but now I wish I didn’t just because I know I missed out. Same goes for the other courses I received credit for. APs and testing out did help me finish on time and on budget though.

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I agree with you 100% about the college credit aspect of taking APs. Even if a given teacher is capable of teaching the class well, most 14-year-olds (my daughter’s age as a freshman) simply don’t have the depth and maturity of thinking yet (even if they are very, very smart) to process ideas as fully as they would at age 18. And while (as you say) math and science build on everything that has come before, understanding the humanities relies on cumulative life experiences and a maturity of thinking that can be catalyzed but usually cannot be rushed. I will let my daughter take APs just because that’s seen as the “advanced” track in her not-so-competitive high school and usually gets the better teachers in the school. Also, I think having at least a few APs is now the norm for getting into selective colleges (though I’m not bent on tippy-tops for her.) But I am not at all thinking of using APs to substitute for college-level classes.

I realize I may be coming from what may be seen as an elitist position here
but I really do not want any young person to RUSH through either high school or college for purely financial reasons. I do not look at college as strictly job training; while I want my daughter to be employable, I do embrace the liberal arts ideal of college as a time for thinking deeply and exploring, as well as learning practical skills. I realize I’m fortunate to be able to think this way. We have only one child to finance an education for, we live in a very low-cost area, and have savings. I realize not everyone is in this position and may need to use the AP credits for college, but I wish this were not a necessity for so many. I guess I just wish that taking rigorous classes in high school AS part of high school (not substitute college) were the norm. I believe in many countries, a high school education can include quite advanced material and still be considered a high school level.

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@inthegarden and @chippedtoof AP is quite the racket, lol.

My older daughter did take them and is taking them now, more to look good for college than any breadth of knowledge.Not sure what my younger will take, but she’ll probably take a couple, too.

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Happy to see more new folks here! @apaj @Veronica02 @bearcatfan @sushiritto @inthegarden

The workload for AP Physics 1 is starting to ramp up, and DS21’s big brother and physics tutor will be heading off to college next week. Overall, DS21’s classes are going well. He’s looking into being a public library volunteer to earn some of the “required community service hours.”

No dance or sports for him, but DS is getting exercise skateboarding across part of town to get to the bus he takes home.

Our school has 40-minute study hall periods on Wednesday and Thursday for all students. DS is also doing some of his math homework on the bus home. With only 6 periods, it would be tough to have an actual study hall and still take all the academic classes. It would have to involve community college classes in the afternoon/evening.

The whole AP thing: I dislike the whole systematization of it, but here it is better than the alternative, which is non-honors classes. We only have 2 levels of any subject. I think our homework levels for AP are typically lower than at many high-pressure schools. We don’t have any AP summer homework, for example.

I doubt DS21 will take nearly the number of APs that DS17 took. DS17 took 8 by junior year and 14 overall, but since he started early it didn’t seem like a big push. Other than AP Calc BC, none of the classes really seemed like college classes. @bearcatfan He would certainly not want to use his 5s on the AP Physics C tests for his major in physics. He thinks those tests were far too easy.

He doesn’t get credit for any of his AP tests at the college he’s attending (or any of the college classes), but they helped him get admitted I’m sure. (And his college is certainly an outlier when it comes to AP and course credit.) He did have other college choices that would have given him loads of credit for all the AP classes and college classes he took while in high school. His college doesn’t allow students to graduate in under 4 years.

I just started a thread about the Pre-AP classes the College Board plans to roll out next year. Now there’s a racket!! http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/2017105-college-board-to-launch-pre-ap-classes-in-2018.html

@inthegarden That’s interesting having AP Gov’t in 9th grade. Our school has it for seniors as a 1-semester class. It was significantly easier as far as workload than APUSH and AP World Hist, so putting it earlier in the sequence kind of makes sense.

SAT/ACT prep: Not thinking about it yet for DS21. He’s a different kid than DS17. Actually, that probably means he will need more test prep than DS17, who did very little. I have to deal with not expecting too much or too little of DS21.