Need during-HS gap year ideas for bright, failing son

[marite]

It sounds to me that your son may well have been bored by high school precisely because he is gifted. Gifted underachievers are quite common, especially if they are somewhat immature and unwilling to do tedious work for the sake of a distant goal ( getting into a good college).
If your son manages to get into Simon's Rock, that would be great. If not, I suggest he spends next summer and next year taking community college courses and perhaps working part-time and aiming for a GED. He might even start this coming semester.
Joining Americorps would not erase his bad high school record. But taking community college courses and doing well in them might do the trick both for him and for his record. He should take the board exams (SAT or ACT and SATIIs) to validate his grades.

[TearingMyHairOut]

'rentof2, I was told years ago by someone at the school that DS should really be homeschooled - that no school was really going to work for him. I saw this as impossible at the time, but now that he is older, it could work. The major drawback is the loss of the social contacts at his current school. But if he were to drop out, then those would be lost, anyway. And maybe he could do courses at the CC to supplement, as nysmile suggests.

nysmile, I did see those horrifying numbers. But - guess what? DH has an academic job with an wonderful benefit - they will pay tuition to any college. This would take care of the almost $40,000 tuition.

[pixeljig]

The American and Canadian Councils on Education sets the following eligibility requirements for GED testing:
Residency: Each state, province, territory, or other jurisdiction administers the GED tests to any qualified adult who meets that jurisdiction's criteria for residency.
Educational limitations: Only a person who neither holds a traditional high-school diploma nor has already earned a GED is eligible to take the GED tests. A person who has been awarded a high-school equivalency diploma or earned scores sufficient to qualify for a high-school equivalency diploma is eligible to re-test under certain conditions.
Enrollment limitation: The GED tests are not given to someone who is enrolled in an accredited high school, including any of those accredited by regional accrediting bodies and those approved by the jurisdiction's department/ministry of education.
Age limitation: Test takers must be at least 16 years of age. There may be additional requirements for minors depending upon the particular state or province. Many states require test takers to be at least 18 years of age in order to receive the GED.

[TearingMyHairOut]

marite, that is a perfect description of DS. He has been intellectually an adult for some years now - I remember when the "intellectual growth spurt" took place - but he is immature in other ways. And you are right that the distant goal is not enough to motivate him to do the tedious work right now. He has already taken the SATs before HS, although the scores have been dropped by the College Board because they were pre-HS. At that time, his scores put him in the 94-96th percentile compared to HS seniors. And he took it with no preparation at all. I imagine that his scores now would be even higher - he scores well into the 99th percentile on all standardized tests. There is not a peer group at his school. For example, he will certainly make NMSF on the basis of his PSAT scores (but will not be a finalist, of course, because of his grades. There is no one else in his grade who is expected to make NMSF - and that is not a very high threshold.)

[TearingMyHairOut]

I am going to order that book, 'rent.

[nysmile]

yea--$40,000 in tuition and another $12,000 in board and fees. That's outrageous.

The combo of homeschooling and community college might work but I suggest that you draw up a contract with your son as to the expectations and requirements that you set. You can't allow his lack of motivation to continue during the homeschooling. Set up the rules and consequences for breaking the rules and be sure to follow through with every single breech of the contract.

In our district, a few kids who homeschooled did continue to take AP classes at the high school. They would show up for the AP classes and then go home to continue with their homeschooling.

[Consolation]

Tearing, I was going to suggest Simon's Rock, and was glad to see it come up in this thread.

Homeschooling with some EPGY/JHU distance learning courses thrown in sounds like a great idea, too.

I very much doubt that community college courses are going to be any more interesting to him than high school courses have been. I know it is a solution suggested by many when a kid is unmotivated in HS, but when the problem is that the kid is very gifted and bored stiff in HS, subjecting him to the kind of pedestrian courses I've seen in our local CC may well be the worst possible alternative.

In addition to contacting CTY, I would suggest that you visit the Hoagies gifted website and look through some of the resources there. You will find subscription lists devoted to G/T kids and families, and it is likely that you will find parents who have also had to address this situation.

['rentof2]

Is there a reason your son would have to lose his social contacts if he wasn't in school? Most homeschooled kids have lots of friends who are in school. Mine did. It's not like the school day is optimal socializing time anyway.

But you and your son can figure out ways for him to stay connected to his friends. That's not nearly as huge of a problem as the problem he's having with school. I think if you leave him in there he's just going to dig himself a deeper and deeper hole -- and not just his GPA. It's damaging on so many levels.

Yeah... and about homeschooling with "contracts" and community college classes. No. Whatever you and your son decide to do, don't replicate a horrendously failing model. This is a hard thing to get for people who've bought totally into the institutional ed paradigm. You need to really up-end that whole way of looking at things for the sake of your kid. (Not saying there's anything wrong with cc classes -- just that your son needs to figure out what will work for him.)

Anyway -- read that book. Better yet, your son should read it.

When my son was in the "gifted" 1st grade and my daughter was 5 years old, she was sent to some "evaluation specialist" (or some such title) prior to entering kindergarten. We already were completely fed up with our brief school experience with my son. Not that it was a bad school, I could just tell the whole enterprise was all about something that felt fundamentally wrong. (I have to say it felt fundamentally wrong to *me* -- different people have different values, and it's not my intention to debate that on a wider level.)

My daughter spent about a hour in a cubicle with the nice evaluator lady. This was a person who worked for the public school district where we lived at the time. An affluent community with "good" schools. When she came out she sent my little daughter over to the other side of the room to play, and she said, "My advice is for you to put her in the very best school you can afford."

Well, we couldn't afford any private school, but we had been toying with the idea of homeschooling the kids, at least temporarily until we figured something else out. That meeting sealed the deal for us. It felt like we were about to take the hands of our darling little children and jump out of an airplane.

Funny thing is, when we actually stepped out, it turns out that airplane was never even in the air. We left and never looked back. We didn't know what we were doing, but kind of made it up as we went along. In retrospect it is the best choice I have ever made in my entire life.

So no one can tell you how to do things, or make sure of this or make sure of that. You have an exceptional kid there, and he (and you) have an exceptional life to live. Really, read that book. It will get your mind into the clean fresh air -- and off that airplane.

[CCSurfer]

It sounds as if he is extremely bored in high school and can grasp the material (demonstrated when he aces tests) without doing the practice (homework.) If you were to homeschool using the Stanford program and maybe a couple of CC (Where I live, once you're 16, you can enroll in CC courses irrespective of high school status.) or local college courses that interest him a lot (and don't have a lot of busy work) to supplement, is there some other way he could be around peers in an organized way? Are there out of school extracurriculars -- a youth orchestra, a club sport, a chorus, an improv group, an organization that does good works with lots of volunteers, a robotics group -- that would interest him? Also, in areas with a lot of homeschoolers, there may be organized activities that he'd enjoy. Once homeschooling including a bit of college work is underway and he is doing well, he might also be able to get connected with a research project too. There are a lot of ways to skin a cat...

You might also want to talk with the CTY people. Perhaps they have seen this before. While clearly many highly gifted students do fine in regular high schools, there is certainly a camp of educators who believe that some brilliant children just implode in a regular classroom setting that doesn't meet their intellectual needs. Also, there is that national association for highly gifted children, which might be able to put you in touch with resource people. Historically, Hopkins took a certain number of brilliant, quirky students at a quite young age without their having to complete high school. I wonder if this is still the case? Given that your S thrived in a very enriched, intense CTY academic setting, I wonder if he would thrive again if he were back in such a setting.

[boysx3]

would some boarding schools be an option? Maybe a change in environment would wake him up. financially, could you swing it? But a lot of boarding schools have reputations for turning nonachievers around

[SDonCC]

I wonder about the quality of the testing you had done on him. I find it hard to believe that there are not underlying issues affecting someone like him.

[marite]

depending on the specific community college and the specific course, it can be a great solution for a student who likes being with others while studying; this is why study groups are common in college. A combination of online classes and community college courses could do the trick. The college classes would provide much needed structure to a student who is a bit immature and lacking in self-discipline.

[Dinmor]

What does HE say that he wants?

[PRJ]

I wonder about the quality of the testing you had done on him. I find it hard to believe that there are not underlying issues affecting someone like him.

TMHO - I wish I had known about CC and posted something like this two years ago. My D's story is similar - probably not as off-the-charts brilliant as your S but close, and grades not as bad but disappointing and definitely not a reflection of her ability. We also tore our hair out about her motivational and organizational issues and the fact that she just didn't seem to care about school. She didn't need to do much work to get passing grades, so she did the bare minimum. She saw a psychologist periodically but depression really wasn't an issue - she was happy and passionate about her ECs and pretty social.

This past summer, as she prepared to enter college, she underwent a complete neuropsych evaluation. Long story short: she was diagnosed with executive functioning and working memory deficits, and ADHD. Both the psychologist who did the testing and the learning disabilities director at her college have told us that it is not uncommon for really bright kids to have undiagnosed learning disabilities that don't come to light until they get to college.

Our story may not be applicable to your S but I throw it out there for other parents who come across this thread.

My heart goes out to you. Good luck to both you and your S.

P.S. owlice's son goes to Simon's Rock. I'm sure she'd be happy to help you.

[happymomof1]

While you consider the homeschooling option, find out whether your school district allows homeschoolers to enroll in some classes on a part-time basis, and whether it is possible for homeschoolers to participate in sports, activities like theater, and other clubs. Some districts are very open to this. Others aren't.