<p>My 9th grade suburban LA public school daughter needs to decide whether to take Honors Bio or Honors Chem in 10th grade. This year most of the kids in 9th grade track together and she is getting low A's in every course. The only AP class that is generally recommended for 10th grade high achievers is AP World History or AP Euro History. She will be taking AP World... Out of Jr. High testing, she placed into Algebra and not Geometry, where the higher testing math kids placed for 9th grade. So next year she will continue in the 2nd track down math curriculum... plus 2nd year Honors Spanish, and probably Honors English, which requires an essay application in a couple of weeks.</p>
<p>After some vague discussion, it seems Honors Chem is what the "really smart kids" are choosing, as it is a pre-req for AP Bio 11th grade and AP Physics 12th grade. She thinks she can get a reco for Honors Chem from her Algebra teacher.</p>
<p>This discussion brought up so many frustrations about my ignorance in advising my daughter --</p>
<p>-- Is there truly a "Really smart kids" track that, once chosen or not, begins the winnowing process that determines whether a kid is top 10 material or top 100 material? The fact that she refers to others as "really smart kids" is testament to the fact that she is smart, but not "really smart". She works for her As, they come with little effort for some of her friends.</p>
<p>-- Should I attempt to gather the facts to advise her, or let her figure it out on her own and hope for the best?</p>
<p>Can any parent whose kids are in a large, suburban high school comment specifically on this perceived tracking coming out of 9th grade?</p>
<p>thank you in advance...</p>
<p>P.S. We her parents are both Ivy League alums. It just didn't seem to be this complicated back then ....... and our parents were not involved at all! I honestly cannot remember how we even chose the courses we took.</p>
<p>My observations at our large suburban high school. Our school has regular, honors and AP courses. Theoretically ninth grade level courses aren't tracked. The reality is that there is often a secret track. My younger son is quite sure he was not in the "smaller learning community" that had the smartest kid. He's pretty smart, but a bit uneven. He ended up getting recommended for AP World History as a sophomore anyway. So you aren't absolutely stuck in a lower track either. He also says there seem to be three variations of honors tracks. Those who are in the top courses in everything. Then a humanities/social science vs. math/science divide.</p>
<p>In order to make scheduling easier courses often line up so that the honors kids can take all the courses they want/need. My older son got out of alignment because he took AP Comp Sci as a freshman. That meant he couldn't take honors chem, so he took physics. Which meant the following year when he had to take a difference science when everyone else was taking physics. It made for scheduling problems every year. Exacerbated by the fact that his language (Latin) was offered in limited time slots.</p>
<p>In short, in order to avoid scheduling difficulties you may want to consider taking the same courses as most of the other honors kids. She'll have enough math for Chemistry.</p>
<p>The way this sort of tracking works varies from school to school and district to district. Certainly, it did not work for me quite the way you are describing One of the nice things about such tracks is that they are not necessarily binding or permanent. I threw people off by taking bio and chem in the same year (which allowed me to take physics a year early, which freed up my schedule for science electives as a senior that were interesting, but that most of the top students didn't take because they were in physics). </p>
<p>If she likes bio and chem it may make more sense to take chem...a basic knowledge of chem is very useful for bio. Really, in an ideal world, it should be taught as physics -> chem -> bio (as chem is built on physics and bio is built on chem), but that's not feasible in high school because most don't have enough math background to have a reasonable understanding of physics until late in their high school careers.</p>
<p>Well... she just called me from lunch to tell me she's taking Honors Chem. So I suppose she has sorted it out on her own.</p>
<p>Which brings me to a related topic -- where would I find a Chemistry tutor? :)</p>
<p>In all seriousness, several times in my life I have been exposed to situations where I realized that there is a <em>world</em> of difference between an adequate teacher/coach, and an excellent one. I am motivated to look into a private tutor to simply look over my daughter's work for an hour or two per week to make sure she's developing the skills she'll need to effectively learn, prepare for tests, organize her thoughts for papers, etc. </p>
<p>Have other people here used such people? Is it better to hire an junior or senior, or a professional tutor for this? I would like to think I could help, but the parent/child interaction is complicated enough without introducing a tutoring element to the relationship.</p>
<p>Where I taught, chemistry was tenth-grade and bio was eleventh; knowing the chem allows bio to be taught at the deepest level. IMHO, it's not really worth taking "regular" biology because so much chemistry is left out. If your D can get into Honors chem, she will learn the most and waste the least time by doing the honors chem to AP bio route.</p>
<p>Yes, I'd advise a tutor. Your high school environment sounds similar to ours. My 10th grade D, who also sounds like yours, is now struggling in AP Chem. We have never believed in hiring tutors for extra help, but many people here hire them as a matter of course for enrichment and better grades--not just for remedial help. This fact changes the class dynamic of these hard courses, and makes success even harder for those kids who are learning on their own. By the time we realized how much D was struggling, a lot of damage was already done and now she is trying to pull up her grade and at the same time play catch up before the AP exam in May. We just hired a tutor, but it would have been better if we had had one all along.</p>
<p>I would suggest hiring a hs senior who has taken/is taking AP Chem to tutor your Honors Chem student. Much cheaper than prof. tutor, and useful for both parties. :)</p>
<p>Does your daughter want to take a science SAT II in the spring of her junior year? If yes, her junior class list might include the the 2nd year or AP level of bio or chem.</p>
<p>The sequence of science minded kids at our high school is:</p>
<p>9th grade Biology
10th grade Chemistry
11th grade AP Bio or AP chem
12th grade AP Physics</p>
<p>Second the idea to check with your local college...sometimes calling the chem department directly works best, as they can send out an email to upperclass chem majors or to their chem honor society or professional fraternity. My D tutors chemistry (mostly organic chem) at her college, through the university counseling center and her professional fraternity. The tutoring through the fraternity is one night a week at the college and it is free (service for the frat). Sometimes local high school students appear for help. The biggest problem she sees is that students wait too long to seek help, and sometimes it is too late to catch them up. She prefers to start out with her students at the beginning and then if they are doing well, she can scale back the time needed. Good luck to your daughter with her chem course.</p>
<p>DunninLA--do you have a scientific background at all (took chem in college)? If so, you could bone up on chemistry pretty quick using the high school's book (or using another book) and could help your D through any rough spots.</p>
<p>I tutor high school math, but found so many kids who needed a little chem boost that I bought a teacher's edition of the chem book that our local high school uses (it has the answers to the exercises) and went through it. It was actually kind of fun.</p>
<p>I found that it is the math that often trips kids up when it comes to chemistry.</p>
<p>ellemenope... I did make potato vodka in my high school organic chemistry class, but I think drinking the results of my work may have impaired me to a degree :)</p>