Hi!! My D26 started HS last Thursday! I have an older D19 who is about to start senior year at UCLA and another D22 who is starting at Cal Poly Slo in a few weeks!
My D26 has played competitive club soccer for 7 years but has been playing since she was 3. She also does fencing and track & field. She is president of her freshman class. They had to run for student council during the spring of 8th grade year.
She took honors Algebra 1 in 8th grade and took online PE over the summer. The HS requires kids to take one online class so most girls get PE out of the way over the summer. It is actually Health and Personal fitness. Our school does not allow Freshman to take any APs. Which Iâm actually thankful for! Lol! Excited to get the ball rolling with my last one!
Her classes are:
Honors Geometry
Student Council
Spanish 1
Art 1
Honors Biology
Honors English 9
My D24 is a similar âtwirl the pencil for awhile before getting work doneâ sort of person. It drives DH & I bananas. And itâs been the source of many an argument in our household over the past few years. D24 is also the sort of kid who wants to know WHY X, Y, or Z has to be done. But once she understands the âwhy,â sheâll actually do whatever the thing is.
D26, on the other hand, just sits down and GSD (gets stuff done). She says it because she wants to do âfun stuffâ (watching TV, playing video games) and doesnât want the HW hanging over her head, stressing her out, so she just does it to get it out of the wayâŠand then she doesnât have to worry about it.
In 10th grade last year, D24 finally started to figure that out and her grades improved as a result.
Itâs interesting how kids all come out different than each other. You think youâve got something figured out with 1 kid and then the other kid does something totally different!
D26 brought up college on the drive into school today. Was surprised by this since sheâs just a freshman, but I think itâs probably coming from the fact that the topic comes up fairly often w/D24.
D24 definitely does NOT want to go to ASU (we live in AZ). D26 mentioned D24âs dislike for the school and said she wasnât sure if she should, also, not like ASU because of that. I told her that she should make up her own mind and that just because her big sister doesnât like a place, doesnât mean that she should also not like it. Also told her that the sort of thing that she, D26, wants in a college might be totally different than what her sister is looking for.
Thereâs no reason for a freshman to take the SAT/ACT. Ditto for a sophomore. When examples of students do pop up of students who took either of the tests early on, they end up scoring significantly better a year or two later with no special prep at all. Was it because they took the SAT/ACT one or two years before? Or was it because they learned new material in high school and had their brain mature? Personally, I think itâs the latter.
As far as when to take the SAT/ACT, Iâd go with spring of junior year. If you feel more comfortable with a late spring test so your son has most of the semester to prep, then thatâs perfectly fine. Also, many high schools have some kind of test prep during junior year, so there may not necessarily be a need to do outside tutoring.
Greetings from California! My younger brother will be starting his first day of HS tomorrow. Large public suburban Title 1 high school in the Southern California region. He expresses a strong interest in UCLA. Luckily there are no SAT/ACT requirements, but now heavy importance will be placed on the GPA factor.
He will be taking the following classes:
AP Human Geography
English 1 Honors
Algebra 2
Biology
Spanish 1
Swim
Oh, that could be X26 !!! (Or, let me draw this very complicated anime scene rather than getting my work done)
First week of HS in the books and so far seems to have gone better than expected. Everything is âfineâ and even the geometry teacher that everyone else apparently hates has gotten the thumbs up. Interesting seeing othersâ courses here. Our school allows neither AP nor honors in anything other than an honors math course in freshman year. Everyone takes English 1, Bio 1 (itâs called something else but itâs bio), world history/geography and PE. Xâs electives are Latin and Chorus. Apparently chorus always has the cool kids (the kind X thinks are cool, anyway) and that hasnât disappointed so far.
@sbinaz agree at how different kids can be. D19 was /is much more a just get the work done type. Plus, many other differences! They see the world in fundamentally the same way but the way they interact with it is very different.
DH went to Meet the Teachers night at school yesterday evening. D24 & I went to a college fair, so DH & I couldnât do our normal yearly âyou go to ODDâs teachersâ presentations while I go to YDDâsâ thing.
Learned some interesting thingsâŠ
D26 is on same math track to take AP Calculus AB by end of high school. She has same math teacher now that D24 had for 3 yr in a rowâŠthis teacher is SO GOOD. D26 understands the material this year so far much better than last yearâs teacher.
The calculus teacher also is 1 of the advisors for the Robotics team. So Calculus Teacher said to DH, âOh! Youâre the _last_name kidsâ parent!â Both kids are doing Robotics this year.
Senior year at our HS involves âcapstoneâ classes which are in special topicsâŠthey have to take 1 in math, 1 in humanities/english, 1 in history, 1 science, 1 foreign language. D26âs history teacher is teaching a capstone history class for the 12th gradersâŠcalled History of Food. DH suggested to the history teacher that he consider doing something like âHistory of Warâ when D26 is a senior because war history is her favorite flavor of history. LOL. History Teacher said heâs going to seriously look into it. Many times, the capstone subject courses end up coming from suggestions from students.
D26 had her freshman orientation today and says she is âexcitedâ about High school. She was excited to see many new faces - we have about 240-250/grade at our HS, same as her middle school but several head off to private and several feed into the HS from other schools so it is nice for her to see new people. Official first day is not until 9/6 but she has been there all week for cheer practice and same next week.
Because her older sister is in 11th grade and thereâs talk in our house at times about college, D26 asked this evening how you can find out if a college offers classes about WWII. WWII history is her favorite part of history.
She also asked if any of the subjects sheâs really interested in (history, anything involving tech/computing) require you to take a bunch of math or physics in college.
So I showed her how to look it up. We went exploring on a couple of college websites. Showed her how to interpret the major & minor requirements info, what does it mean when it says âhours,â âcredits,â or âcredit hours,â and all that. She wanted to look at course descriptions, so showed her how to find that.
We learned that some affordable out of state schools have better history department course options than our in-state colleges do. Sheâs now ruled out computer science as a major because âyou have to take too much math.â Engineering is out as well. So MIS is a big contender at the moment.
A lot can change between now and graduation, of course.
If a college has a decent MIS program AND a history class about WWII, my kid would be a happy camper. Even better if itâs a history class about US history of WWII.
Well, tomorrow is the big day! D26 has her first day of school. They have the senior girls stand out front and cheer on the freshman as they enter the building at 7:45, then they have freshman orientation until 11:00. The upper classmen all show up at 11:00. Hereâs hoping for a wonderful and safe school year for all of our kids!
Excited to see this thread! My S26 started high school a couple of weeks ago.
So far, so good. His school doesnât allow freshmen to take APs, and they offer few honors courses (they even dropped honors Geometry this year). Heâs taking the normal freshman load, except we have signed him up for private Japanese lessons as his forgoing language (transferable to his high school for credit). Heâs passionate about all things Japanâfrom anime to history to the language.
He also is on the rock climbing team in our county and he is an exceptional illustrator. Heâd like to study astrophysics or aerospace engineering. He wants to work at NASA or SpaceX, etc. But he adores history too.
How he will do in high school is a mystery. He has ADHD for which he takes Vyvanse and he struggled a decent amount in middle school. A breakthrough in 8th grade led to good report cards but his middle school doesnât offer letter grades so was somewhat hard to tell how things would translate in a more traditional environment.
I hope he does well bc heâs hungry for knowledge and loves talking about what heâs learning. However, heâs not really someone who does what the teacher wants. He learns because he wants to, not because heâs told to (which sometimes translates into missing assignments because he âthought it was dumb, got boredâ etc.)
His older sister just graduated from the same school and it was a good fit for her. She is going to UCLA next week. My son didnât pay too much attention to her college search, other than he liked Boulder for its top aerospace engineering and rock climbing scene. He might like University of Washington too. For in-state, Berkeley piques his interest. He prefers cold weather so we will look closely at the PNW, Midwest, east coast (tho he hates humidity and heat)
So far, so good! Her least favorite so far is Social Media Marketing. This was an elective she was really excited about so she is super disappointed. The teacher has been there for 27 years and is just not the right generation to be teaching this class. She stands at the front and reads from a textbook in a monotone voice. Huge bummer. Otherwise she is happy. She is on varsity cheer and wants to try out for gymnastics team for her winter sport. She has only ever done tumbling so love that she is trying something new. She also expressed interest in starting a health sciences club so we are trying to figure out how to make that happen and who she should approach at the school. We are enjoying a four day weekend for the Jewish holidays so she gets a nice little reset break and some family time for the holiday.
So far everything has been going well. Making all Aâs in his classes. I did sign him up for PSAT/NMSQT just to get a feel for it. Heâll be taking the PSAT in 2 weeks! His school recently had club rush, which he enjoyed.
I just found this thread. I have S22 whoâs been at Alabama for 2 months now, D24 whoâs starting her college search and now S26.
So far he seems to like high school week enough except I think he was hiking for something more. I donât know what though.
Our school has no honor classes at all, but allows AP as freshman and offers the IB diploma. So he is taking: English 2, Chinese 3, biology, PE/health, AP US history, pre calculus, marching band and mechatronics 1. He hasnât complained about much other than mechatronics bring a little boring.
Weâve had some college talks just because his siblings are in the thick of it. But nothing specific. I think heâll end up in engineering or computer science which works for me. I have a handle on that.
Good so far. It wasnât his first choice but it was way more affordable. Heâs in the marching band which he loves! Thatâs given him friends quickly. His schedule is light this semester because we werenât sure about being new to college and in the band. He ended up with a lot of classes that are kind of review from high school or from being on the robotics team. At midterms he had solid As in everything with 100% in most. Next semester will be more challenging Iâm sure. Classes are not very big. The largest is the first year honors class, which is a bit ironic. Heâs in honors calc with 20ish students.
And itâs been the source of many an argument in our household over the past few years. D24 is also the sort of kid who wants to know WHY X, Y, or Z has to be done. But once she understands the âwhy,â sheâll actually do whatever the thing is.
