Try it and see how you feel! I recommend while you're playing around that you track how you feel compared with what you ate so you know you're not seeing correlations that aren't there. I think "try it and see how you feel" is so incredibly underrated even though it seems so obvious. If you feel like warmed-over dog food on a diet, it isn't the right diet for you, no matter how wonderful it is for everyone else.

If it's baked, but not enough, you can also alter your dessert -- scoop out the underdone center (this can actually probably be re-baked later) and use the "done" edges as a shell for fruit, top it with frosting -- or scoop out the underdone center, and use the "done" edges to make a trifle, or make them into a layer cake. Best of luck.

You can skip the cp/nt classes, and people have also compacted int algebra/precalc (there is significantly more in there than is required for moving to calculus class), so it really is doable. If she is begging to continue I would highly recommend letting her try it, at least for 8th grade. Even if you don't finish the entire book, she should be ready to transition to any other curriculum if at that point you guys decide it is necessary -- the aops beginning algebra book covers more than a standard algebra 1 class.

"Welcome to Illinois -- where our politicians make our license plates".

The other thing I personally recommend is -- if you have "treat foods" that you're in the habit of eating (especially pre-prepared foods like potato chips where all you need to do is pop them into your mouth), making them at least temporarily less accessible while making the foods you want to eat more of more accessible can go a long way towards changing habits. If you're in the habit of "I feel peckish -- there are the chips -- open mouth, insert chips", not having the chips around can push you to stop and think about whether you're actually hungry for potato chips, whether you're hungry at all, or whether you're just bored.

If what he were proposing was a system that gave all these kids access to counseling to help them figure out something that they are interested in, that they could do, or something that they could tolerate doing while they follow their real interest that's difficult to capitalize on (for example, one of my friends is an aspiring writer who works at a big-box store because he doesn't have to think about his job very much and instead thinks about his short stories he's writing), including access to job shadowing, career exploration, technical schools, and the like, I'd be all for it. But what I'm afraid it's going to end up being is the overworked and jaded counselors who are already there having one more box to check off with a rubberstamped admission to a community college, where a large number of underprepared students (let's face it, CPS really isn't getting them college-ready -- here I have direct, personal experience with students who came from there) who don't actually have an idea of what to study and are just following a general ed program because they were told "you should go to college" drop out and have nothing to show for their time other than some loans that they can't discharge and a few semesters of financial aid eligibility gone. And the government keeps tightening the rules on financial aid eligibility, making it much harder for someone who's had a bad couple of years at a young age to go back and start again. And this makes me so sad, because I believe that we should HAVE access to a "restart your education" option.

Some have bad results with eating about that number of carbs and felt they did better with either far lower or far higher. I did fine on about that level. Most of my carbs at that point were coming from vegetables and dairy. One thing that I'd recommend whatever you do is having something that you can go to when you're in blow-it-all mode -- something that's not at all calorie dense. When I was first starting to cut weight (having a history of uncontrollable eating) I went for frozen broccoli as a go-to, because at least I was getting nutrition and I could ingest a massive amount without doing more than possibly giving myself indigestion.

This varies by college but ... freshman writing skills tend to be weak at open-admissions colleges, so the course is not taught assuming that they know everything. I would still, though, have him chat with the instructor about his skills.

What a crock of ... excrement. So the kid who wants to take some time and work for a while and think about what to do can't get a diploma. The kid who needs to go directly into employment because his family (I mean, some of these are parents) can't get a diploma. Frankly I think it's unconscionable that we're trying to make sure everyone graduates from high school AND make high school mean "universally college-ready" at the same time, and the last thing we need is to push for more of that.

Does the CC have geometry in the fall? You might consider doing geometry in the fall and precalc/trig in the spring if you can't find a summer class that suits you.

Yep. But beginning/introductory is very cheap on amazon.

Hang it behind the toilet. :D

Personal recommendation for testing through w/something like Lial's: Take every chapter test, working every problem. If the student scores an A, explain and re-work any missed problems and move on. If they score a B/C, explain and re-teach any missed concepts, and work the chapter review as well for extra practice. If they score less than that, work anywhere from part to all of the chapter sections, based on the problems that they missed (don't do every problem, select them), then do the chapter review and evaluate knowledge from there.

This is a common area of struggle and is usually something that just needs more practice until it really becomes intuitive. Camp out there for a bit and continue practicing until it seems more intuitive. Also, get rid of the multiple-choice display by having him copy down the problems and then leave the computer, work until he gets an answer, then compare his answer to the multiple-choice. Or can you turn it off? In the learning software we use at the university we as instructors can toggle whether problems are multiple-choice or not, and we have it turned off for exactly that reason.

That is a good point -- I should have added "in some areas".

Sorry, I missed your replies -- I'm not on general board much. Yep. This is exactly what I'm talking about when I say unschooling. You and I are in complete agreement about how unsuited to children's learning the push towards early, formal classroom education is. It's terrible, and it turns kids off learning before they can even get started. But I've seen some significant issues w/students for whom unschooling apparently meant "play world of warcraft all day every day" until they got to be 18-20, at which point they wanted to start university and had little background to do it. I think that a lot of parents interpret "they'll learn when they need to know" as "No matter how little they know at 18, they can start university and they'll do just fine in whatever they want to study because they're self-directed learners" which just isn't so. Your second post is exactly in line with my thinking. I am sad to see that the UK is also moving towards making it more challenging for students who have simply never been taught or never cared to learn and so forgot everything to "come back" from it. It is also becoming far more challenging here to become anything other than an entrepreneur without formal educational credentials, because so many employers are using a bachelor's degree as a proxy for a certain degree of literacy, numeracy, and critical thinking, and so there are many jobs which really don't require more than a high school diploma and some ability to learn that are closed without either an "in" or a bachelor's degree. This is not directed at you, but it is really, really unfortunate when advice is given based on what could be done 30+ years ago (when there were still a lot of remedial options available in community colleges, or night high school that granted a full diploma, and there were a lot more entry-level jobs open without a degree) when these options are increasingly scarce.

"I'm gonna PROVE that she's wrong. I'm gonna get her some wall art and she's gonna LOVE it OR ELSE"

I have heard incredibly good things about using RightStart at least with their oldest child from formerly math-phobic moms. A lot of them said things like "It takes too much time to do as written for me to do with my fourth, but I understand it so much better now that either I don't need to do it as written/I incorporate the strategies from there into a different curriculum".

It is super sad. Especially in my case where they are really only cheating themselves. I mean, cheating on the homework worth 1/6 of the grade does not help when you fail the tests worth the other 5/6 of the grade.

Heh. When I was a kid, the private school accelerated me from K into 1. Then, when I changed states, not only did they refuse to accept the acceleration, but because the age cutoff changed they were very insistent on placing me in Kindergarten (which is where I would have been by the cutoff in the new state). They did reluctantly agree on "only" repeating first.

Other instructors don't want them used in classes because: Students use them for social media and surfing the web. Students watch videos or play games on them, which distracts not only them but everyone around them. Most students retain less from typewritten notes because they tend to transcribe rather than take notes, which reduces thought and engagement with the material (this is a "most", some do better with typewritten notes of course).

1) Well, no, past experience has shown I can't if I expect to maintain the integrity of a degree granted by our institution. 2) It's not hiring someone to write essays (you are correct about that) but getting a well-meaning friend or an inappropriately "helpful" tutor to do so much editing that the essay is unrecognizable. 3) If they all understood at the end I would be absolutely fine with that. As a matter of fact I strongly encourage collaboration when it involves explaining. But there are two kinds of undesirable collaboration. i) Outright copying. ii) Again, we run into the well-meaning friend or inappropriately helpful tutor. A conversation like the following: "Then what do I do?" "Square root both sides" "And then what?" A student who has worked in this manner feels like they did their own homework, but is unable to solve similar questions without their friend's assistance.

This opens a lot of ground for students who simply can't write a full essay by themselves to pass using the work of others. Similarly, frankly in many math classes I'd much prefer to cut back on exams and have much more weight on homework, with more challenging and open-ended questions and access to a textbook, but collaboration is rampant at all levels.

Requiring cursive would be very unusual as most students aren't taught it. Spelling is going to vary -- it is highly likely to be marked off in (for example) foreign language classes, or on a vocabulary quiz (especially if the spelling error results in a different term). (amusing story: I read someone's post a long time ago where she mentioned one of her anatomy students wrote 'scrotum' for 'sternum' and was very disgruntled when she wouldn't grant partial credit for a 'spelling error')

Frankly, I think it's rather presumptuous to assume that anyone who disagrees just doesn't understand the concept. I was unschooled myself for everything but math. I understand the concept. I just disagree with the idea that self-teaching is usually better. Being self-motivated is ALWAYS better, true. But there are times when someone works and works to try to understand, and someone who understands the subject far better can pinpoint precisely WHAT they're missing. There are quite a few things I started learning as a kid, got to a difficult transition and just quit, deciding "well, I didn't really want to do that anyway", because I had no idea how to fix what I was doing wrong or how to persevere through difficulty. There's also a large difference between "I want to learn this because it is fascinating" and "I want to learn this even though I don't like it very much, because it is necessary for the career I want to pursue".