D23 just signed up for all of her community service for honor society this weekend and the school arranged for all hours to take place “in house” this year.
They have to tutor for a mandatory 10 hours and then an additional 10 hours of working at a school event (concessions, open house, tours etc.) for the year.
That was the answer I got!
I got a “good” from my S23 on how was the PSAT, which is about the response I expected. He took the SAT two weeks ago so may be a little burnt out of tests.
Also feeling the weight of the Junior year workload, any suggestions on things to ease the pressure? He’s cut back on some of his sports practices. Been driving him to school vs taking the bus which gives min an extra 30 minutes of sleep.
Nice that your school coordinates volunteer hours. Ours requires 12 hours per year and you have to find them yourself. Also requires 4 organized activities, only 1 can be a sport, for at least 2 consecutive years. This can be very difficult for a “pointy” kid who is seriously time invested in one major activity. My ‘23 (who is now at a boarding school) used to dance pre-professionally with regional company affiliated ballet school, danced 16-20 hours a week (plus 10 hours commuting). Did some clubs at school but switched one of them and despite being too 5% in a class of 300ish, did not qualify. They also did not make kids aware of these requirements Freshman year so they could plan for them. Glad I am more aware for my ‘25 kiddo!
D took PSAT this morning and all I got in response to my text asking how it went was “good but long”
I got a “fine” and I have learned that means not to ask any more questions 
Now she just has to finish one more project and 1st quarter will be done.
Are PSAT scores reported the same as when my D17 took it years ago? The school received scores and gave them out in December.
yes, I think they are projecting PSAT scores to be released Dec 6-7
PSAT was this morning here, kid said it was “fine”, later on said the problem with the math section was that she wasn’t certain she remembered everything since it’s been a couple years that she was taking that sort of stuff. She thinks she probably got everything in that section except for one specific systems of equations problem (“And I know how to do systems of equations!!” she exclaims) where no matter what she did, she kept getting absolutely bonkers results. She eventually picked a random bubble and decided she didn’t really care.
All the best. My kid is taking it later so have some more time to prepare. Also taking the SAT next month.
Curious—mental health and courseload balance to support mental health is a big topic at ourschool and is addressed on some recent threads.
How many hours a night do your kids spend on homework(actual work not goofing off)?
How many hours on after school extracurriculars?
When do they go to bed? Sleep is important for health and especially mental health, and we are working on maximizing it in our house.
My C23 is in a DE program, and has learned the workload secret about college courses—that college workloads in terms of homework-type stuff is actually generally lower than high school workloads, but that it requires a lot more effort keeping up with it and consistently performing at a high level. (For the 12 credits she’s taking this semester, I’d say she spends about 20–30 hours per week outside of class, at the higher end when there’s something big coming due. of course, she’s in class less than if she were taking high school classes.)
My C25 is in regular high school classes, and spends a solid 10–15 hours per week on homework, which isn’t bad til you add in 5–10 hours per week of music-related stuff, and the close to 30 hours per week actually at school.
I feel like the pendulum was pretty intensely over on the too much homework side when my C17 was a HS student, then it swung back to the sane amount of homework side (possibly even too light, but probably not really), and the year of everything being outside of the classroom has pulled it back to the more-homework side, as teachers got used to saying “Okay, now work on this thing online before our next class”.
My Kiddo at BS says she has 2-3 hours per day of homework plus about 20 hours per week spent on her co-curricular activity (required).
D23 has an after school job from 3-6:30 2x per week, and a few club extracurriculars after school on the other days. She’s not in the most challenging classes at her school and her homework takes 1-2 hours per night if she’s really focused on knocking it out. She’s really great about sleeping and her light is off by 10:30 pm 99% of the time. She likes her sleep. She has some subjects that are just very difficult for her - math, mostly - and our goal there is to just get through the year with her sanity intact and a passing grade. Might sound like we are setting the bar low there, but I know how hard she tries.
I was just thinking about this today. Our student went to school early today for a club service event, then after classes has practice, then works as a junior coach for small kids. They won’t get home until ~8:30. The coaching/volunteering is only 2x/week but the sport is every day now since being cleared to play. We sure don’t want any breakdowns due to the stress of trying to squeeze too many things in. I’m thankful the season is almost over. Usually the weekends are pretty stress-free so that helps.
My guess is that DC’23 spends about 20 hours on ECs weekly but that’ll decrease after the season to about 10 hours. We are letting our student set the pace and choose the activities. However we will intervene if we see it impacting mental health. I think hw is about 2-4 hours per day.
Visited UofSC, NC State, and Duke over the weekend while on a short family trip. We visited the Duke Gardens and it’s a beautiful place; DC was impressed. It was family weekend so lots of people walking around. Talked to some parents and students at the schools and heard a lot of good things. Our waiter at dinner was a UofSC tour guide so we got some good info also. Trying to hit all the schools on DC’s list before application time. Six down, 5 to go.
My kid also has long days at school but isn’t putting in much time for homework.
I’d say maybe 5 hours a week doing homework.
One choir is 2 hours a week.
Other choir is 3 hours a week.
Football is 15 hours a week (June-October). (Substitute equal amount of hours in winter for the musical and track in spring).
Voice/piano lesson 1.25 hrs a week.
Job is 8-12 hours a week.
He will fall asleep when he gets home sometimes which screws up his actual bedtime.
C23 spends 3-4 hours per night on homework and another 15 hours per week on extracurriculars. C23 is usually in bed by 10:30pm. Saturdays are a solid 6-8 hour homework day though. Teachers at our pressure cooker high school have finally realized heavy workloads affect mental health and now assign less homework. C19 had a similar junior year schedule and easily spent 5-6 hours per night plus lunch period doing homework.
I honestly have no idea how many hours D23 spends on HW. She has tennis afterschool and does not get home until 5:30 every day. She eats dinner with us every night but other than that, she is up in her room. I know she is doing HW during that time, but I also hear her on Facetime with friends/classmates, some of that is collaborating on group projects. She is in the IB Diploma Programme which I know is rigorous and she is always talking about how much work she has, but I really have no idea exactly how many hours per week she spends on HW. Definitely plenty!
Up until a week ago, she also worked 18 hrs on weekends (more during summer), but she decided to quit. Between work, tennis, academics and Model UN, she rarely had time to see her friends so decided to take a break from working (she started working at 15 y/o summer after sophomore year).
I am anxiously waiting for band season to be over next week.
The competitions are on Saturdays from early morning usually until about midnight.
She manages to do homework in between school and practice and at lunch so she has less homework in the evening.
Junior year is the final year for the AP Capstone program and it is very rigorous.
In addition to the research project they have to pass 4 additional AP classes with passing test scores 3+ to earn the AP Capstone diploma.
So far, I’m really glad my D23 elected to do this program. Let’s hope we still feel that way here later this year when she is continuing to work on that AP Research project - it seems like great preparation for college, and D23 is really engaged in it as she got to choose a topic in which she has such authentic interest. I hope your D is enjoying it, too…it seems as if it has the potential to be really rewarding for the students.
I, like @4kids4us, don’t know how much time my D23 spends on HW for similar reasons. She does comment on having a lot to do and on being stressed. When she’s home, she eats dinner with us and as long as she has time, she comes downstairs each night to watch one show with us (right now, it’s an episode of Modern Family each night. She’s been doing this with us for years, so together we’ve also been through Friends, The Office, and Schitt’s Creek together, among others. Since she does spend so much time at school, at activities, and in her room, I really love this time when we are all laughing at the same thing every night. My S21 has no patience for sitcoms so with him it was more along the lines of The Newsroom and West Wing).
I think one of the biggest issues in our case is sleep. Our high school has a horrible schedule - the bus comes at 6AM (have to be outside by 5:55AM), so I drive to school most days which allows us to leave at 6:25AM. This still means D23 is up around 5:15, and that just doesn’t match up with an adolescent’s sleep needs. So she comes home tired and naps in the afternoon, then stays up too late, and the cycle repeats. I can’t remember if she napped daily in 9th grade, but I think it was remote school for all of 10th grade that embedded the napping habit. I think an 8AM class in college is going to feel comparably like sleeping in for her! I’ve tried to get her to try skipping the nap and going to bed earlier, but that just hasn’t worked for her.
Her school seems to assign a bulk of homework on weekends which isn’t fantastic for balance either. I’m hoping senior year is going to be a bit easier than junior year (as long as she gets a lot of application work done over the summer).
Ugh, we’re with you in the horrible early schedule club and I agree, it’s just such a bad clash with the natural rhythms of kids this age. We live in a small town with no HS of its own, so D23 has to be on the bus at 6:20am for the 30 minute ride to the HS in the larger town nearby. This can make the sleep thing a real struggle. Fortunately, she’s a relatively morning person by nature, but a 5:30am wake up is beyond what comes easily to her.
D23 works from 3-7pm Mon & Wed and from 12-5pm on Saturday, so a total of 13 hours a week (this is down from 18 hours a week in summer.) She also has a regular 2 hour volunteer gig on Saturday morning (at the same library where she works) so she’s in that building 15 hours/week total. She can walk there from the HS and I drive her home and also take her there on Saturday mornings. The job and volunteer service are both tech related and she wants to study CS or engineering so she really wants to keep them both.
Tuesday after school she’s got a girls in STEM club for 2 hours and on Sundays she’s got an hour music theory/composition lesson. She tries to spend at least a few hours working on her music - how much time she can devote will depend on how much homework she has piled up from the week, but I try to help her manage her time to at least carve out the time on Sunday morning before her lesson so she’s got something that’s just hers.
She also meets every Friday after school with her therapist, so Thursday is the only day that she just comes straight home from school with no other obligations. But having the therapy session on Friday is nice because it lets her kind of go over the week and discuss any issues that cropped up.
Homework averages about 2-3 hours a night, and she tries to get some reading done on the bus as well. She’s also doing the AP Capstone, and I’m sure Research will start taking more time as the year moves on, but her teacher does give them a lot of class time to work on assignments which cuts down on the homework. Mostly it’s been good luck that her heavy assignments have been spaced out instead of all being due on the same days, and there’s usually some catching up on something pushed to Sunday afternoon. It’s a lot - reading this I’m kind of amazed she finds the energy to do it all, but there’s nothing she wants to drop so I do what I can to help her.