lol at the lavender room background. And when my kid did that mock trial competition, he came upstairs so he could have the gravitas of our stone fireplace wall behind him, which meant that we had to talk in whispers for two days, from 8 am to 7 p.m… brutal…
@Gatormama My son does not seem to understand that you can’t just push a button and submit an assignment instantly, especially if the device has been off. We were up at our lake house this sumer where wifi is not always the most dependable and his final was literally minutes late. Yes my son was technically late. I didnt realize until weeks after that teacher put a 0 in. My son had tried to email the teacher but was not getting a response at that point. I thought well, my son was late and I have to get him to advocate for himself so if he ends up with a C on his transcript, thats on him. With Covid and many students having issues, the district I guess had told summer school teachers to allow some leniency but this teacher did his own thing. My son truly was just minutes late but as a college professor, I get rules and I refuse to be the parent who is going to beg for my kid to get more points.
You would think lesson learned but nope. Last night, he had a zoom voice lesson scheduled. He wanders upstairs 1 minute before his lesson and then of course is a few minutes late because his school laptop doesnt connect right away. Sigh. Teen boys.
I need to send my son’s friends dad a thank you card. It isn’t a huge jump but changing 1 C to a B+ does truly help the GPA a tad. My son actually would have earned an A in the class but without access to actual assignments the asst. principal was only able to factor in half points for the final and calculate that into the percentage of the grade. I guess that summer school teacher isnt invited back (they were an out of district hire).
Joining in if that’s OK! I have a son who is a theater kid but also very academically gifted. @2plustrio my kid is very similar to yours from reading your stories. I go from thinking he is the most awesome child, student and human on the earth to wanting to throttle him at least twice a day. He wants to go for a BFA in musical theater. It is is generally not academically hard to get into good schools. But if he wants to go to any of those good schools, he is going to need good grades to get merit scholarships. I have very definite limits on what I will pay. I feel like we are playing a long run of chicken right now where he is testing my limits on getting good grades!
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@Theaterforme - welcome! My older kid is doing a BFA in theater tech. If you haven’t already, starting haunting the musical theater subforum. Lots of great info there. And start fretting about auditions 
My kid had portfolio reviews and those were bad enough - fingers crossed for you!
@Theaterforme He commented once on going into acting or theater but that was just a passing whim which seems to be the case for this kid. He has so many interests its hard for him to pick just one thing.
Right now his interest is possibly music education (and daytrading on the side-his words). I could see this kid working in finance or business but numbers alone bore him and he hates complicated math (hes struggling in precalc).
I feel you with grades. Its going to really limit my sons options and his TE chances go to more slim. And currently he is against staying in state. I may end up saying beggars can’t be choosers.
ETA: He is a huge lover of music. He sings and is in his 6th year of doing the school musical. He plays flute pretty well (5 years now). Plays a bit of guitar and needs work on his piano skills (hasnt played in years and only took lessons for a couple months). He doesnt love marching band as it conflicts with football (which he also loves and he will need to decide if he wants to play in college. our high school sends quite a few football kids to d2 or d3 teams each year who are at his playing level). So him saying music education actually makes a bit of sense really for him.
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Jeepers - I tried to catch up - didn’t realize posts were being made here - not getting notifications of any updates. Anyway, sounds like everyone has a lot on their plates. We had planned on doing visits next year - are we supposed to go sooner? He’s collecting the mail that he receives and filing away - he has already commented on starting a spreadsheet of schools to look at more closely - this is way more interest/initiative than my older two had at this stage.
On another note, I am concerned with the course load S23 is taking next year but he seems to be excited:
AP Chem
AP Physics
AP Computer Science
AP Calculus BC
Adv Engineering
Dual Credit English (will take next summer)
Dual US History (I think?)
A bit much do you think? He absolutely adores science, tolerates math (he’s good at it, just doesn’t love it). Will only do dual credit in English and social sciences. I’m dreading that AP exam bill lol.
AND he FINALLY joined Robotics and guess what? He LOVES IT!! Just as I knew he would! He’s already proving to be an asset. He’s also looking for a job. That’s all in a nutshell.
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that’s quite the course load for a junior, but junior year is usually the toughest.
my S20 took 5 APs his jr year. it’s hard! (physics, calc, CS, lang, Whistory). at his school, Ap Chem was worth two classes of credit as it’s demanding. If your kid is taking all of those, would he consider a study hall time in there?
my D23 is at a private school this year. we still haven’t decided if she’s staying or going back to the local public school. This thread is making me realize that she’ll need to register for classes shortly wherever she’s going. . . . .
We start 11th grade course selection this week…eeekkk!!
Thing 2 is pretty cut and dry…he wants to take AP Humanities Block (APUSH & AP Lang together), Honors PreCal, AP Physics and Band of course…since we’re on a 4x4 accelerated block schedule that leaves one open spot each term…he wants to take Journalism and get on the school newspaper! That makes me so giddy!!! I always wanted to major in journalism myself but life took me another direction lol. He won’t acknowledge it, but I see the makings of a future PreLaw undergrad in a couple years with this one.
Thing 1…we’re going to have to do some creative juggling with him. He wants to start exploring some of the specialty programs (robotics or engineering)at the Career Center (separate campus with the career and vocational classes like health care, engineering, audio/visual etc) which are a 2 period block…so that pretty much means he will have to take a core class dual credit over the summer to make room since band is also a full year class. I’m thinking about having him knock out his english or us history dual credit (DC is the same weight as AP for GPA in our district). He’s definitely doing Honors PreCal as well…and because covid/virtual vs in person scheduling fiascos messed up his schedule this year and he got put in Honors Physics as a sophomore when you usually take Chem in 10th in our school, now he’ll be taking Honors Chem in 11th lol. Oh well! Depending on his schedule goes we’re going to try to work in Comp Sci as well. Since our district counts it as a foreign language credit (he’s wrapping up Span 2 right now) it goes toward class rank/gpa.
Hooray for your S joining robotics! Collaborative fun with nice kids—it’s been a rewarding experience for S23. Is your son’s team participating in this year’s competition? Although this FRC season will look different (like everything else this year), I’m happy there will be a season.
NOOOOO!!! How did become time already for Junior year schedules. Can somebody slow time down please!
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Junior year schedule done here (actually finalized before Christmas break which seems crazy). D23 is just plugging away at school and her activities - some days much easier than others. Her dance team looks like they might actually have a season (shortened) she wass excited to pick up this year’s competition outfit and find out the dates they are competing.
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Well, the die is (beginning to be) cast: D23 submitted the first step in her application to the school district’s DE program (submitting a nondegree application to the host college).
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Junior year class selection will happen soon here too. S23’s schedule will be a mix of AP and IB classes with a fun, mindless elective thrown in for a mental break.
I’m not planning any college visits for this year. I’m shooting for summer/fall of next year after he has an SAT score and, hopefully, when in person tours have resumed.
Edited to add: I agree that visiting colleges when they’re in session is optimal. We may schedule some college visits for next spring if students are back on campus and we feel it’s safe to fly.
D23’s junior schedule is all set - AP English, AP Calc AB, IB Biology HL, US History, Physics, French 5, Band.
I’d love to do a few visits to close-by schools over Spring break but all the ones I’ve looked at either have no visits or for seniors only. Looking at a range of schools in 10th was really helpful for my S21 clarifying what he wanted in a college (and turned out to be a huge blessing when everything was shut down last Spring). We’ll have to find some times in the Fall since summer visits when students aren’t on campus don’t seem very worthwhile, although, would that be much different than going now? And, Fall will be hard for visits if marching band happens. Anyone have a crystal ball?
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We probably won’t be able to get in any visits until next Spring. Fall will not be possible because of marching band, and I don’t know if any tours/visits will be resuming over the summer?
We can only do summer visits and doing those requires a lot of pre-planning due to our location, so I’ve been watching reopenings carefully. Most colleges on my D23’s longlist are already doing in-person visits (though in some cases only tours, not info sessions), and more are clearly planning on opening them up in the summer.
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any thoughts on what my D23 should do? she’s the youngest of 4, but this is a new situation.
she took foreign language in 8th & 9th . She switched schools in 10th. they did not have her language, so she took none. If she goes back to her original school she could take another year of that same language. If she stays at her new school - she could only get in two years of a different foreign language. I guess my question is: do colleges let in kids with 2 years - 1 of which was in 8th grade?
@bgbg4us I’m sure there are colleges that do that. I think, though, the issue will be whether the colleges your D23 is interested in do that. You may want to dig in a little bit on the schools you think might be of interest ?
If you find that for her specific college list she’d want to take more foreign language but also that she wants to stay at her current school, maybe there’s a way for her to take the 1st level of the new language over the summer and then do level 2 junior year and level 3 senior year?
We’ve had some issues with foreign language choice for our D23 also. Her path won’t be exactly what some schools may want but makes sense for who she is while also setting her up to be, we hope, not at a great disadvantage for the colleges she’s interested in. Our state offers some language courses virtually over the summer, and they have some DE language options over the summer, too. Maybe you have some options like that which can allow your daughter a little more flexibililty ?
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you know, those are two good ideas. summer + 2 & 3 at new school; or even summer for yr 3 of the original language. thanks. good luck to your D23.
this last hour I’ve been calling around several colleges on our radar and finding the answers all DIFFER! (eg: “whatever level is on HS transcript” , “8th grade does not count” “FL is recommend but not required, we can waive things with all of the situations going on due to CV” ) My guess is that there will be many situations like this due to the pandemic. She won’t be aiming for a top elite school.
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Most colleges don’t have high school language requirements.
The ones that do, two years is often but not always fine.
For those that require three years, that almost always means level 3—so one possibility of getting that would be for her to do a distance-learning (but accredited) high school class in the 9th-grade language.
Example: My D23 took through German 2 in middle school, and if she had gone to her older sisters’ high school, where they only have Spanish, that is what was recommended to us. They use BYU’s and Middlebury’s high-school-level distance language programs for such students if I recall correctly, but they said there are other options, too.