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So I read through the responses, and I liked what Ferrar said...
I also have another option- could you just require ONE decent 5 paragraph Essay, ONE decent 5 page research report, and just give him for each, stapled:
ONE page expectations, ONE page rubric....for each.
My thought is, could he just be bored out of his mind?
.....Also, does he have other hobbies, friends, and activities? Video gaming is very addictive but also very depressing because you don't have real humans to interact with. It fulfills the short term endorphin high, but not the long term human need for actual friends and interaction. So they keep going back to it over and over and over for that short term endorphins but it doesn't actually ever fulfill what they really need as a human. Video games also affect attention span.
Does he have things to look forward to ? Family trips, vacations, visits to relatives that he enjoys, sports or hobbies?
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We decided to try Keystone 🙂 I’ll update with how it goes.
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Looking specifically for AP Eng Lit and AP Modern European History
AP Art Studio is a must- would prefer asynchronous but also looking for “best of” recommendAtions
ideally the teacher or programs would have pre recorded lectures that have been beta tested and or used for years and the class is not subject to the whims and personalities of the teacher. But if the teacher is awesome we’d love referrals. -
Congrats on her great scores! I bet she will get a full ride somewhere.
We have a young friend who is at Union in Tenessee and they also give generous merit aid. She got something like 20K per year. She is very happy there! She is in the Honors program and she absolutely loves it. She loves the professors, the small group studies, the field trips for the Honors Students and the Mentor program. She thought the room inspections were a little weird but other than that hasn't found it too legalistic or strange. They have standards for some things but it seems to be with the true spirit of making everyone safe and happy. In fact, she loves it so much she is planning to stay on for her Master's there. The campus is safe and beautiful but not too far from a small town city (I forget which one)...
Good luck!
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On 11/7/2019 at 1:27 PM, JenneinCA said:
That is odd. My son did a hackathon before he was 18 and it wasn’t a problem. His team even won a prize and it still wasn’t a issue. Maybe it depends on the school?
No it depends on the hackathon not the school. My kid did lots of them as a teen but the hackathons that have investment from major corporations can offer students all kinds of things that only an 18 year old can accept- or they want to retain the right to keep the code that is submitted and turn it into a huge idea.... and it has a lote more to do a lot with intellectual property rights
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The competitive environment of a hackathon boosts participants’ creativity and inventiveness. In itself, this is a huge accelerator of innovation. But hackathons raise an essential question: who benefits from the intellectual property (IP) rights to the resulting projects? Participants are the inventors, designers and coders, so you might think that all the rights are theirs.
But hackathons’ conditions of participation may include alternative arrangements, such as exclusive rights, first-look rights, or shared IP rights. What’s more, the finalists and winners are generally given prizes or sums of money – essentially in exchange for the participants’ ideas.
The more revolutionary an idea is, the more coveted it will be – and the more care its creators will need to take when they reveal it to the public. As such, hackathon participants need to make sure that they properly read and understand what they’re signing up for before they agree to take part. Sometimes, only some projects will be given prizes, whereas the IP rights to all the other projects will be transferred to the organizing company with no prize in return."
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The points is that if the hackathon organizers what to retain the right to actually use the student's code to start new amazing things, the students have to sign a form understanding that what they submit might ultimately not belong to them. (or there could be buyout clauses and such) and in this case, they want to be sure that the student is over 18 and therefore legally responsible to sign the form.
Some hackathons are afraid of getting sued for accidents, medical issues, food allergies etc. and that is why they don't allow under 18 to attend or participate.
The one at PSU allowed under 18 to attend, eat, attend workshops and even stay overnight without any waivers. So apparently they are not concerned about that issue. BUT they allowed only 18 and over to Hack, and they had to fill out numerous forms. SO my guess is this particular event was IPR issues. 🙂
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2 hours ago, regentrude said:
you will be reporting which courses the students takes in senior year. Taking AP classes demonstrates rigor.
OTOH, I would never choose a class only so it can look good on the transcript. There have to be other motivations.
There are...dd is starting to run out of classes available to her locally. CC's aren't really convenient and she'd also have scheduling issues which affect vacations, college visits and visits to and from relatives as well as just getting a break. So we really will need to fill in and I figured we should look at one or two AP courses since she's doing very well with some hefty academic courses which are time consuming and in depth. I don't plan to have her take the AP test though.
But, she could also just take some electives through Monarch and I assign projects and writing assignments which are very worthwhile and grade using a rubric, so they have some merit and are college prep with additions. With some finagling she could do a mix of one homeschool class center, another one for English, and some Monarch courses and still have a well rounded transcript and actually learn things. So we have to weight the pros and cons of the expense as well as the extra time and learning investment of choosing an AP course or two in the mix
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Thanks Lori D. It's always good to gain perspective.
I guess with her future major being art, she should be doing more art, so maybe we will just look into her taking AP Studio Art. 🙂
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Is there much point in taking AP Classes senior year only?
I'm thinking ahead for next year. We have some great classes at one school (paid homeschool class situation with certified teachers not sure what you'd call it but not a co-op really) and also a really good writing class available at another available to my dd for next year. There are more slim pickings for senior year, so she will have to take a few online classes, and isn't super excited about community college (the commute, and the fact that having two different schedules means you can't travel or have time off.) ...
I would be interested in her taking AP Modern European History and AP English Literature or maybe AP Art Studio. She would do well with both. Not sure how well she would do with an online class, and we'd definitely try to find one that met twice per week and had timely teacher feedback.
But for now, I am just wondering if it really makes a difference what we put on the senior year transcript....?
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I had a friend that did HOnors College at a small liberal arts school. She is in her senior year and loving it! They had so many perks- small class sizes, one on one mentoring, most of her classes were with the other Honors Students, and even a special dorm option, as well as group meetings to encourage each other and two big field trips per year to other colleges across the country, in a bus (affordable IOW) as well as local trips to museums and such. Honestly she absolutely loves it and has felt 100% at home with her university from day one. Some of the classes were really challenging but as a Humanities/English major, it's challenging as far as major workload but never impossible.
I know the Honors college at Pennstate the big U where my son is, is amazingly hard to keep up with, and doesn't offer as many perks as the small liberal arts college my young friend attends, but they do offer group meetings weekly, a special adviser, a nice dorm dedicated to them, and priority registration as well as invitations to special dinners, events and other things.
You should look into it at your son's U and see what they offer!
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I don't know if this helps but whole families, several generations each, had attended Baylor and were on the 5th generation of all the kids and grandkids going there - all the way from FL. The families were wonderful, normal, educated successful people- kind, humble and enjoyable. NO super uber religious stuff, legalism etc. Just nice people who served in church and raised their families. They wore Baylor sweatshirts, tee shirts, hats, etc. It was a big thing.
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8 hours ago, frogger said:
It does seem like UAH is easier then we expected. The price was right though.
I was super surprised that they didn't have to do real lab reports. DS got well over 100% because he answered the honors college questions on the lab report form before he paid attention to the fact he didn't need to do them. He later did an extra lab with a report that wasn't required because the Physics teacher was going to use that to narrow down the pool of applicants for a tutor for future classes. He has an interview tomorrow.
I reminded him that he needs to not get lazy doing Calc homework on the computer because it lets him redo the problem if he makes a mistake. Something he couldn't do when he took Calc 2 here last year. Everything was a paper quiz. It was so hard to train him to be careful and not make silly mistakes back in Algebra. He understood concepts fast but made silly mistakes so I provided incentives to make him pay attention. I hope he doesn't get lazy. I reminded him to try not to lose the skills he does have. Hopefully, things will ramp up soon.
Your daughter is in honors so that is probably harder but I think my son's classes at his really low ranked school here in Alaska were actually harder so I'm not going to jump to conclusions. It depends on the teacher more than anything. Well, and if you are prepared for the specific class.
My son is definitely working hard for his Calculus grade. Penn State does NOT mess around with their freshman and sophomore math classes and now I see why they call them weed out. They grade very hard, (no partial credit), they do not allow a calculator, they base a huge portion of the grade on only 3 exams, they adjust the grading scale (76 is a D), and they report GPA rounded down by .5s. OH and they ALSO put all the edge cases on exams that were never in any of the assigned homework. The only way to get a handle on those edge cases is to attend either the free (but possibly inconvenient or impossible due to your schedule) Group Study sessions the math department offers or the paid local tutoring center's study sessions which both give Exam Packets with lots of extra edge case problems.
So in order to pass you have to
1. attend a 5th class each week 2. do the packets that group class offers 3. Go back and figure and ponder about the ones you missed 4. Have extreme attention to detail (no partial credit, no calculators) and 5. Want to put in the extra 10 hours of study per week (extra class plus about 6 hours of extra work)...
It is absolutely brutal. My son literally has a 100 average in MacroEc, (which half the class dropped as this is the weed out for business and finance majors....) CompSci and Philosophy, and a solid B in Latin. He is unusually smart and hard working and accumulates knowledge pretty well, and makes charts, flashcards, takes notes etc. etc and yet Calculus is really a struggle which is notable becuase he already took this exact same level and got an A in community college..... So honestly, if you ask me, there is something extra extra hard about Engineering, at least at this school. They are currently ranked above Harvard for engineering so I guess they plan to keep it that way.
Meanwhile, my son is being recruited by the Philosophy professor, writing a book on Philosophy, and has been encouraged to add a minor. Hubby and I had to talk about what to do if he wants to change majors, and thankfully we are on the same page. We'd like to see him give CompSci a try for several semesters first, and then if he wants to change we fully support that, but would like to see him go "all the way" and would want to talk to him about the perseverance it takes to get a PhD so he can be a prof. Being an engineering major is three years of hell, but getting a philosophy degree takes an extreme amount of long term cumulative effort and knowledge, and the fun will have long passed before he would actually earn it. Or maybe, if not passed, the fun will ebb and flow. So being ready to discuss these things is good. 🙂
My son is not stressed though. He will say he's very busy, or that he has no time, but he seems happy and chill.
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Yeah, it's stressful 🙂 But if they make it through they have an amazing program. If not, they have lots of other majors to choose from 🙂
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22 hours ago, Lanny said:
My DD is very happy at UNC. I believe that one should not lump all large schools into seeing all the students as a number, or that all small schools are going to hold the students hand all the time. Universities with a large student body can also provide wonderful help and opportunities to their students. One thing that came as a surprise to me was that DD signed up for Swimming 2, which was a mistake, because she hadn't been swimming for a long time. Hopefully she will take Swimming 1 and not be in "over her head" next semester. She dropped Swimming 2 and joined a Martial Arts club. Well, in addition to learning the Martial Art, the club works as volunteers occasionally and is hosting a regional get together for people from Martial Arts clubs in other schools in that region. So, she is getting in some Volunteer work and providing hospitality, along with the Martial Arts classes. She is working part-time in a university job. Her roommate is wonderful, which is truly a blessing. We are not sure if a human or a computer selected her roommate, but truly wonderful for our DD and for her roommate. Both of them are from Tropical areas and new to the USA. Her roommate is an International student and DD is an Overseas American, so they have a lot in common and are going to learn what Cold weather is like, together.
Awesome!! My ds is super happy at Penn State, and has had many great experiences (notwithstanding the frustrations with advisers.) Awesome room mate, three awesome clubs, professors that know his name and take him aside to suggest connections for him, events etc. I don't want to give it a bad rap!
But in honing on on some of the frustrations, it's important for me to ask questions regarding my next one coming up. Turns out, I was off base anyway. Smaller doesn't necessarily mean that they have everything figured out and streamlined...so I guess it has more to do with where the kid just wants to go and feels comfortable going to.
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My dd earned four levels of pony club certificates in both horsemanship and riding as well as owning and riding and caring for and cleaning the horse 6 days per week....
We counted that as 2 years of PE
and 2 years of "Equine Behavior and Care"
Pony Club is super legit, very high standards, very hard to pass, very detail oriented and makes them learn about anatomy, health, diseases and problems of every kind, care, and even weights and measures of pounds of horse to roughage and concentrate feed...it's a heck of a lot of work.
If your child does decide to take up riding out of a true passion for the sport, be sure to enlist a very seasoned, older, experienced trainer with years of experience and a reputation for keeping kids relatively safe. It's a super dangerous sport.
🙂
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This has been super helpful! I mistakenly assumed that being at a smaller U would erase some of those logistical issues. My dd also pointed out that although she loves her co-op, next year she will be super more than ready to try something new, and she has already tried many of things here locally, etc. She pointed out that a large U will have a lot more interesting things going on and probably take a long long time before the students feel ready to leave.
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So, watching my ds navigate Penn State UP has been interesting. He is doing great, and other than a few glitches it seems like it's a good fit. However, I wonder if he would have been happier and had a better experience at a small university where profs know the names even of freshman.
At any big school, you make the school smaller by
- joining clubs
- attending office hourse
- attending group study sessions
- joining a Special Living Option
- stopping by the prof's desk to ask a quick question
- sitting in front
- answering questions and being involved in the class
My son has done all of these and for some of his classes, he know has a great repertoire with the prof, and for others he is still a number. But, classes aren't the only thing at Big U's that are difficult to navigate when the crowd is 40,000 strong. More examples include
- Your adviser doesn't know you exist
- your adviser is a no-show even for scheduled visits
- you wait for walk in adviser hours and are told to get out because it's Friday afternoon...by the same lady who just told you that his scheduled adviser was a no -show, and the hours were clearly posted as being open Friday afternoon
- you can't get another appointment till after your registration date is already over
- Thus, basically, you are on your own to figure out your classes
- And all the upperclassmen say this is just the way it is, and good luck
- You can't get appointments for weeks at Health Services unless you call and speak to an advice nurse and she thinks it's urgent
- All entrance to major requirements include weed-out classes, so when you are admitted for a certain major you often have two entire years of extreme stress before you find out if you get to stay in the major....trying to maintain high GPA and working through weed out courses. My daughter, even in her art major, would have a portfolio review after freshman year and would be kicked out of the major if she was not chosen as one of the limited few.
Anyway, my son is fine and I think he really likes it nonetheless. But I'm not sure a Big University is the best choice for every student.
I am thinking through this in regards to my youngest, to maybe limit to small universities.
Thoughts?
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9 minutes ago, lewelma said:
Even my older boy who is at MIT only did 30 hours of seat work each week 10-4 each day junior year including "classes" and "homework". He simply could not do more, and if I pushed, he rebelled. But he did read a LOT at night as in 3 hours, and I created courses out of his self-directed reading for his transcript. Now in university, he has had no trouble ramping it up and doing 60 hours per week. I'm not convinced this will be true for my younger as he doesn't work as hard and his night time reading is not at the same level, but it does give me hope that older kids can handle more.
True, it's important for me to remember that the cognitive function and brain development of a 15 year old really is different than from that of a 17 or 18 year old....they do change and grow and get used to things....
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10 hours ago, lewelma said:
My younger son does 20 hours of solid work per week in academics (schoolwork/homework/ all of it). He cannot do more. If I push him at all, he just gets less efficient. The work he does is good stuff -- for example, he just wrote a research paper comparing the impact of leadership on economic and social development in the DR Congo vs Botswana. High end stuff, but he still just doesn't put in the hours. I've considering suggesting that he only take 3 course (instead of the standard 4) in his first semester at college. My older boy's university doesn't count grades in the first semester, so having my younger take a 25% fewer courses is my way of giving him the chance to succeed in college. For him, socializing is a very important part of his life (just read my siggy), and he is using it to hone his leadership skills. Sometimes I think that we as a society only count/value what we can measure, and we can't measure what he is gaining by doing non-academic work. And he is gaining a LOT.
I think our kids are rather different. But still, you have a good point. I know at the U that she is currently most interested in, the number of credits does not affect housing. AND we are full pay, so does not affect payments/loans. That is an interesting idea, to just take 3 classes first semester to ease into things.
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6 hours ago, MamaSprout said:
Even though she's busy, if she is saying she's tired all the time, it would be worth having a blood work up. Checking thyroid wouldn't hurt since she's already taking vitamins.
That's a good idea. She has her annual coming up and I will ask for some tests to be ordered.
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Thanks for your thoughts. 🙂
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DO NOT QUOTE pls
One thing I really hate about homeschooling is that I don't really have anything to compare my dd to. My older son was just a very different kid so can't use him.
My dd, junior year in high school, is doing 28 hours of homework and studying per week, not including class time. But this 28 hours is pretty much her max as far as what she can handle emotionally. She spends about two hours per day reading and cooking lunch, during the week, and about an hour watching TV. She also spends time on her art, that I have not counted here because sometimes she's pushing through to finish a project and sometimes it's more just her drawing on her ipad because she wants to, which is different than completing an assigned art project. So she spends about three hours per day having leisure time, and has most of her Saturday totally off though she does often do homework on Sundays. She doesn't really do a lot of EC's except one art class and one Student Government club.
She feels this is her max, but I worry that if she is going to go to college she needs to learn to push harder and longer. If she takes 12 credits she can at **least** expect 30 hours per week of study and homework time. Not to mention meeting with advisors, sometimes having to go to office hours, etc. and joining clubs to make friends.
She is one of the best students at every co-op class, and scored well above average (85th percentile) on her SAT's. She has no problem learning or focusing or getting things done, but as the academics pile up she will appear tired and say she's tired. We do give her a lot of vitamins for focus issues and she sleeps a LOT, like 10-11 hours per night and wakes up happy 🙂
I know other kids that get up at 7, go straight from school, to swim practice to Play or Band practice or choir or whatever and keep on going until 9pm till all their homework and studying is done. Obviously the hurried and rushed lifestyle isn't for everyone and not necessary, but my concern is that my dd has it too easy and won't be prepared for life. Should I push her a little more next semester? (aka maybe add one more elective or class?)
After discussing we think maybe she can add the Khan 20 minute SAT practice and do more of the art that she has been putting off (still lifes) 🙂
Thoughts? How have you ensured that your kids are doing enough, just as far as being busy enough, and learning to manage time and workloads?
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SO there was one bummer this week, and your kids who are 17 freshman year may run into these sorts of things. The Hackathon is only for 18 and up (has to do with intellectual property rights.) My son was not able to hack or submit a project but he was allowed to attend, do the workshops, see some friends, learn about some new clubs, and get ideas for next year or the Spring one, when he will be 18.
SO just something to remember - there are occasional 18 and up events at college.
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Neither. Seems to me for the vast quantity of time he would spend commuting, he could get an on-campus job (food services is usually well paying and desperate for workers) and earn about half of his room and board. Working over the summer could net him the other half of room and board.
Are you or dad able to take in any extra hours at work to put away a little for the difference?
I just feel like a one hour commute is too much.
If these truly are the only two options, I would pick number one. A one hour commute for a 20 year old young man is truly soul-sucking. Sitting still doing nothing two hours per day, and also being stuck on campus in between, killing time sounds truly dreary. At least with the other one he would have the option to pop home and back sometimes, or at least have less of a commute.
But I still think picking up 10 work hours each week and therefore being able to swing living on campus is preferable to 10 commute hours!
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in High School and Self-Education Board
Posted · Edited by Calming Tea
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