S23 twins have their first AP test today…Human Geo!! Good luck to everyone else taking AP tests…they’ve got AP Bio next week and then the school year is pretty much DONE!!!
Some happy news to share - my D23 received notification yesterday that she was selected for U of Iowa’s summer “Between the Lines” program which meshes creative writing with cultural exchange. Of course she’s incredibly disappointed that they won’t be doing it on campus - it won’t be nearly the experience she was originally hoping for. But, at least, they are still planning to do a virtual version, so she’ll have a structured program to immerse herself in virtually for two weeks this summer when little else will probably be going on. Her self-esteem got a bump, and she seems reinvigorated to work on her writing. We’re very happy for her.
I am in agreement with @dolemite and @dfbdfb around the things that are disproportionately valued. This is one of the reasons my D23 has an easier time than her older brother. Her talents happen to line up with English Language Arts. The desire to recognize, support, encourage, and grow all interests and talents was a factor in our choice to homeschool starting partway through elementary school. In fact, we “unschooled” for a number of years - followed the kids’ interests and presented a diverse collection of resources, materials, and experiences (which included classes when those were the resources that appealed to them in a particular area). We were striving to break away from grades, rubrics, timed tests, a prescribed set of things to know and talents to value. D23 went back to school partway through Middle School (her choice) but with a more developed sense of her authentic self and a clearer feeling for what she values and prioritizes. In some ways she is now very much embedded in the institutional academic machine, but she does seem to have almost an outsider’s viewpoint on it all that she can call on from time to time to put things in perspective.
Hope the AP exams are going well for those kids who are taking them. My older daughter, D23 , had no issues with the Calc BC exam, but D23 took the Calc AB exam and her answers would not load for question number one. There was a browser error and the page started reloading on her as she was trying to upload her photos. She had taken the demo test with no issues. She was extremely upset as she felt she had done very well on the first section, and she spent question number two choking back tears while trying to finish the exam. She uploaded the answers to question two just fine, but when the test was all over she got a screen saying her test was not complete since there was nothing submitted for question one. She has applied for a make-up test, and she explained on the form what happened. She is extremely unhappy and upset, because she is the type that gets very anxious before exams and was very much hoping to be finished today. Arg.
Oh no @JanieWalker ! Did she happen to take a screenshot of her answer for question 1? My daughter took Calc BC today, and had a classmate who couldn’t submit it successfully. She screenshot her answers with a timestamp and is hoping CB will accept it, though I have no idea if they will. Just one more challenge for these kids to face!
Milestone: D23 got her first official bit of unsolicited college junk mail yesterday! (That is, aside from the stuff the University of Alaska System regularly sends to all middle and high school students in the state—most years we have the lowest college-going rate of high school seniors in the country, so they’ve started doing a lot of outreach—and Mississippi State’s periodic “Don’t you want to go to the college your sibling is attending?” postcards.) Somehow Northern Michigan University got her address, and apparently decided to get on her radar early.
She took it on her iPhone. I don’t think CB will let them submit those after the test, because perhaps they are too easy to edit after the fact…?
Thanks for your response. 
She has now come to terms with needing to retest and feels better. She needed to be angry and sad about it for an hour or so first. Now she is okay.
@JanieWalker - Make sure she takes the practice/demo tests. She needs to convert it from an iPhone to a PDF in order to submit, I think.
She did. The practice tests went well. Her older sister took the BC exam today and had no issues. It was a weird browser thing/glitch…?
@JanieWalker - That is SO frustrating! No one needs any more stress/hassles!
It’s wonderful to read so many positive updates. Our district cancelled finals so today is S23’s last day of online classes. Although his teachers continued to assign homework and projects, those grades don’t impact his final grade. His grades were “frozen” when they switched to online learning so he will end freshman year with straight As.
We don’t have much planned for this summer. He was supposed to attend USNA Summer Stem Camp in June but it was cancelled. Summer swim league has also been cancelled. He is working on a couple of passion projects but not much else is going on.
Our D23 took APush this year as a freshman. And today, had a technical difficulty and couldn’t upload in time. She is so disappointed. 
It was user error, but she couldn’t correct it in time and figure out what had happened. I can tell she’s bummed.
As far as summer things for her, I’m trying to come up with ideas. And I’m an “ideas” person even! her swim leagues, pools and camps are cancelled. Everything’s closed. . . she’s not really interested in online learning and classes but I’m hoping there’s something that will spark her interest besides her dance.
Any fun ideas to keep a kid engaged over the summer?
@bgbg4us sorry your D23 had trouple with her AP upload. S21 took it today and successfully uploaded, so he’s glad it’s over. Will your D23 retake in June or just skip it?
I don’t have any great ideas for summer…D23 is doing the creative writing program mentioned a few posts above, but that’s an online class. And she just signed up for the online Splash program (again, online classes, and they are only for 2 days). Her karate sensei told her he will be trying to come up with fun things to keep the kids engaged since their summer is usually so full of karate with seminars and a retreat in addition to regular classes (and D23 teaches at both the seminars and at the retreat since she is a black belt, so it’s usually such a great fun leadership experience for her). So far her karate is still doing zoom lessons…not the same. Sigh. She’s not much of an outdoorsy kid, though we may try to get the kids to go kayaking a few times before the water level goes down too much around here - that’s something we usually manage to do just a few times a year.
She just got a summer assignment for her AP Seminar class and is practically looking forward to it even though her finals just ended yesterday…at least it’s something to do.
But I really want some fun stuff on the calendar - I’d love to hear other ideas.
Anyone else have a month of school left?
I wish my child would do something more academic for college apps but this quarantine has him mostly tapped out. He really is not a great online learner.
He is doing 2 online summer classes through the district but they are required classes for graduation. He is doing online PE and one of his history requirements. This allows him some flexibility in his schedule his sophomore and junior years to take some of the electives he is more interested in.
S23 regular schoolwork has finished so I guess he is officially a sophomore! (Time slow down!) Like someone else said his grades were frozen when we left campus in March so although he has to turn in assignments online as long as he did them correctly he passes - yea for all As!
He is taking the AP World History this coming Thursday and has been practicing writing essays and studying and stressing about that; getting lifeguard certified this weekend, but as of yet no job prospects; his year-round swim team started practice again last week - our team has it’s own private pool, so very limited contact, one swimmer/lane - but all the meets are cancelled as of now. Our summer league swim team hasn’t cancelled but probably will next week as the city pool doesn’t open until 5/18 and then will only allow 5 in at a time - summer team typically has 250+.
He did get a challenge from his Model UN advisor to do some research over the summer and to help recruit other delegates as the local convention is set for October… we’ll see if he’s motivated for that. Summer is looking bleak, mostly us fighting about how much video game time he is allowed… good times, thanks corona!
School is over for us. Honestly, this spring was a disaster for our low SES school. I’m looking into options for next year; my D23 doesn’t know this yet. I like the idea of online PE. . . . thanks 2plustrio.
SO - I am making a list of things for this summer. Each week will have a small focus where we accomplish one or two things. Like baking. Crafts. coding/website building. Golfing. Exploring. Service projects. Maybe reading a book with friends and having an online discussion. and of course dance. I’m sure I’ll find more ideas once we start looking. Nothing stressful or pressured. . . so she enjoys.
S23 twins have their AP Bio test today…and then it’s pretty much a wrap on this school year! The “official” last day of school is Friday.
Good news today on the D23 front! But it’ll take some setup, so this is long. Quite long. Apologies for that. But it’s kind of a big deal for us as a family, so I’m feeling voluble.
First of all, for scene-setting, my D23 deals with moderate to severe seasonal affective disorder. This is a particularly big problem because we live in the subarctic north, and so the winter isn’t just dark, it’s DARK. But in March she was coming out of it, properly turning the corner back into her 8-months-of-the-year self.
And then the schools closed, and she was cut off from her friends. (She couldn’t even do something like walk down the street to do a socially distanced visit with them, because she’s in a magnet program that draws students from across our 1,944-square-mile school district.) This threw her back into a depressive phase, and it was basically all she could do to crawl out of bed and do the minimum required for school. Some days changing her clothes was an accomplishment.
However, the increase in light—and particularly, once the snow had melted enough by mid-April, the chance to pull out her bike and actually get out and be active in the sun—finally started to pull her back into a normal springtime path. She’s not there yet, but she’s back to the point that by the time school ends Thursday she’ll end up with a 3.6 at the lowest, and she’s good (as are we) with that outcome, since it’s way better than what looked probable in late March.
But, important detail for the story, as part of her drop in emotional affect, she had gotten especially hopeless about college. (Early for stressing out about that, yeah. I agree. I’ve posted before how this has been a bit of a stressor for her for a while, though, because she ends up comparing herself to her hyperfocused-on-a-field-since-early-years sisters.).
Anyway, last night I sat down with her to clear out the small pile of college junk mail she’s gotten, both in email and by post. She’s been getting postcards from her one of her older sisters’ colleges, and somehow recently ended up on a list somewhere for a small handful of places. None of them are places she wants to end up at (too far north—she’s self-aware to know that with her issues she needs to go somewhere in the sunbelt), but along with that I figured I’d show her how college websites tend to work, how to check what majors they offer, where to find scholarship listings, and so on, and in the course of poking around we ended up looking at a couple music programs.
Now, D23 has been taking private music lessons since 5th grade (started out with tuned percussion taught by a local vibraphonist, but that’s morphed into more of a focus on songwriting and mixing the past couple years), but had zero interest in majoring in music, because she’s not really into performance, at all. But in looking at music offerings, she discovered something she’d never known (and that I hadn’t ever mentioned because I hadn’t thought she’d be interested in it)—that it’s possible to major in music theory and composition.
And she just lit on fire.
For her, the possibility of learning not so much how to make music, but the details of how it works and how to create new music turns out to hold the makings of a perfect world.
She even sketched out the beginning of a plan for getting her performance chops back up to speed once she realized that she’d still have to make an audition tape for most programs, and that bar to entry is worth overcoming—and she’s going to talk with her music teacher at her Zoom lesson this afternoon about what exactly that’ll entail for her, and how to develop a solid portfolio. She’s not happy that she’ll almost certainly still have to be in various performing ensembles to major in theory and composition, but she’s willing to put up with that to do what fascinates her.
Seriously, I never knew my kid was the sort to light up at the possibility of a program requiring six semesters of music theory courses. But it takes all kinds to make a world, and I’m just happy (and, I’ll be honest, a bit relieved) that she’s realized that that’s the sort of person she is at this point rather than three years later, when it would be much harder to ramp up to being ready for auditions.
@dfbdfb I love your post so much. 
That is great. Not many kids find something they are truly passionate about at this age.
@dfbdfb I lit up when I got to the part of your post where your D lit up. This is so great. Even if, ultimately, she ends up choosing a different program or major, she has something that is exciting her now, and that means so much. Happy for her and you. ?
Finding something to learn about that makes you happy is awesome! So great your daughters spirit is uplifted by possible options!