My least athletic kid wanted to join the track team because that’s what a lot of the friends were doing. Didn’t make the team during tryouts. I got a call from the coach- “Kid isn’t fast enough right now. Kid has a good attitude. Kid wants to join practice and workouts with the team. Just want to make sure that’s ok with you.”
Ok with me? Kid getting exercise while hanging with friends; no need to kill every weekend with meets and competitions around the region; kid tuckered out at the end of the day? Sign me up!
I thought that was creative problem-solving on the part of the coach!
My kid was athletic and a 2 sport athlete, so there was no need to look for physical activity. However, when there isn’t an obvious physical actuvity, I would suggest trying to find one. It’s important to both physical and mental health to be active - especially later in life - and starting early can not only make it a habit but also eliminate any “I’m not an athletic person” mentality that can creep in and undo/prevent any new initiatives later.
Here are things people I know have gotten into and in some cases, become passionate about:
Country line dancing
Hiking
Rock-climbing
Zumba
Yoga
Running
Cycling
Skiing (alpine or x country)/snowboarding
Skate-boarding
Surfing
Pickleball/paddle tennis
Barre or other gym classes
Sometimes, a more offbeat school activity – crew, ultimate – can be fun.
There are other options, and it can help to have friends who go with you. It makes it social and it makes it easier to keep your commitment to it.
Honestly, it would require forcing her. Which wouldn’t be that hard, she’s a pretty compliant kid, but I just don’t know that I want to be in the position of forcing her to do something every day, especially when she could get her exercise at school. Frankly, if I was picking between getting her to walk every day at home, and getting her to study computer science at home, the latter would be way easier!
Phones are not really a huge issue with her. She is a very avid and talented pianist and spends a lot of time on music. If she’s not playing piano she’s reading, or creating art, or crafting. She likes to help me cook, and to babysit her little cousins.
She doesn’t have a list, it’s just about keeping options open at this point. Her Dad thinks that the selectivity or reputation of a college matters more than I think it does. He was very supportive when my oldest went a different direction, and if she expresses a desire for something different down the road, I’m sure he’ll support her too. But he sees her as bright and full of potential, and wants to keep doors open. I can understand that, but I don’t think that it’s going to come down to her elective choice.
How much of dance is theory vs. actual (in the class). I’m just wondering if the PE class is really the type of exercise you expect. Most PE classes don’t seem to be.
Awesome she plays the piano.
I wish you luck whatever you decide but hopefully she can find an out of school hobby to get her exercise.
Just to be clear, she’d probably enjoy computer science. She likes coding. She’s great at math. I think if asked to pick what she thinks she’d enjoy it would be pretty high on the list, higher than dance.
Right now, we insist that she does a couple physical things each week outside of school. This past year, she took a dance class, and went swimming once a week. Once she expressed some interest in dance, we told her she could drop those things (which she had been begging to drop) if she was dancing at school. But without that incentive, I think she might well have chosen computer science.
She in a family that is very active. Her siblings do all the sports, and their idea of fun is to go rock climbing, or snowboarding, or for a long bike ride. She’s never wanted to do organized sports, but when she was younger, she danced several times a week, and rode her bike, and played in the pool, and went ice skating and skiing. But like many kids when puberty happened some interests got stronger, in her case music and art, and some fell off.
Some of it is that she has things she really wants to do. So what would feel like “just 30 minutes of walking” to me, feels like 30 minutes less of practicing, or reading. Some of it is that she’s a pretty introverted kid, and by the time she gets off the bus she’s ready for a break from people. She has friends, and she’ll do things with them, although she prefers 1:1 time to group activities, and she has some group music things she does outside of school, but she also seeks a lot of alone time, or 1:1 time with her Dad or me.
I’m not sure what PE class you are referencing? Dance is not PE in her district. It meets the fine and performing arts requirement. She’ll have one semester of PE, which is a change from middle school where she had it every semester. I agree that PE isn’t a huge amount of exercise, but it’s something.
AP CS principles in 9th grade may be suitable for a student with strong or potential interest in CS, but it should not be prioritized over other courses of interest just because it is an AP course. I.e. if she is more interested in dance than CS, then she should take dance.
(If it is AP CS A instead of AP CS principles, I would not recommend it to 9th grade students generally. It is mainly for prospective CS majors who already have programming experience and/or previous CS courses.)
Most other AP courses, if taught at the appropriate (upper high school honors, beginning college) level, would not be suitable for most academically oriented 9th grade students. The only possible mainstream exception may be AP human geography, which is commonly offered as a 9th grade social studies honors option and is generally considered very easy for an AP course (although even then, the AP score distribution is not that high). Rare students highly advanced in math or foreign language may be appropriately placed in the AP level courses in those subjects.
Note also that some colleges prefer or require high school applicants to have at least one year of visual or performing arts, which dance would satisfy.
AP Human Geography was recalibrated recently. Now about 2/3 of test-takers are passing with a “3”, falling in line with an expected 65-75% pass rate for most AP subjects. Before the recalibration, there were some years where fewer than half of the students were passing the AP exam.
Interesting - my kids and all their friends got 5s. They really enjoyed the class, even my STEM one. I wouldn’t have thought the pass rate was low but would have thought, well above other APs as it’s not considered rigorous. Thanks for the info.
I would more worried about math sequence and having “honors” in core courses (math, science, english, foreign language, history) than an AP in an elective.
Also, you do NEED an arts elective and to graduate in many places AND moving your body helps your grades and mental health:)
Agree. If she is strong in CS already, it is probably easy, but if not it won’t be. My kid (who wasn’t a super strong student) did take CS P as a 9th grader (only AP allowed as a 9th grader) and it was an easy A but taught themselves to code well in elementary school…the smart seniors in the class with no CS background didn’t find it super easy (if not not super hard).
APCSA teacher here. If the AP computer science course she is allowed to take is AP Computer Science Principles (not AP Computer Science A), my opinion is that it is worth taking in 9th grade. It’s less for GPA boosting but more for exploring the field. APCSP is introducing multiple CS related topics, coding included. Pseudocode is part of the course, so is hardware, networking, data collection and analysis, and some more. In both the private school and public school I’ve taught APCSA, the students who have taken CSP have a better understanding what to expect in CSA or other non-AP programming courses.
In recent years, many middle schools offer opportunities for students to explore CS fields and most of the time it’s done in a fun way, such as making a wheeled cart follow a line or making a small drone hover or animating an avatar to dance. Many students are encouraged to say that they enjoy coding and want to study computer science. APCSP is the right course for them to get a better idea on which topic(s) in CS they enjoy. Comparing to other AP courses, my students (those who actually do homework and pass the exam) say it’s not demanding, only slightly more work than AP pre-cal.
The other important fact is the teacher. If the APCSP teacher knows their stuff and can actually explain (instead of just showing slides from a canned curriculum), then the course is worth considering in 9th grade; otherwise, she can go over the content from a number of online curriculum options in the summer after 9th grade to see which part she likes (network design and configuration, software design, algorithm, data analysis, etc.).
This is very much like how my daughter changed. She took online PE course to satisfy the requirements. Her exercises in high school were daily walking between classes and clubs, riding bike to friends’ homes, washing and walking dogs at humane society, volunteering at foodbank, etc. In college she picked up jogging, Yoga, and Pilates.
This jumped out at me. She should take the class she finds the most interesting. It sounds like you are the one drawn to dance? Frankly, I’d be miserable in a dance class.
I don’t think AP or not is going to make a difference for college admission. But if CS becomes more of a passion, that could make a difference in where she wants to apply and what academic priorities she has. It also could help her find “her” people, and that could lead to activities outside the classroom.
FWIW I spent years volunteering in youth sports, particularly one that parents pushed their kids into to “keep them active”. Those kids were often counting the minutes until practice ended. Not a fun way to spend precious childhood minutes.
She likes dance. She likes her dance class well enough when she gets there, but in the moment she consistently does not like it enough to put down her book, or stop practicing, or give up her plans to get together with a friend to craft. So, she wants to drop it. She is very much a homebody, and likes to stay home. But if the choice is between dance class at school or other class at school, when staying home isn’t an option, and when she needs to be in a group either way, then she’s happy to dance.
She picked up a second instrument in middle school, with the thought that she would do band but it turns out that band has a mandatory marching component at which point she lost interest, so she decided she’d do dance or choir instead, and when we told her that dance would mean she didn’t have to exercise outside of school.
So, I’m not forcing something she doesn’t like. If she was saying “I decided I really love computers, how can we get that in the schedule?” I would feel differently.
When I say it would be easier to get her to do computers than dance at home, it’s because she could code at home in her pjs.
But would a similar pass rate from a cohort with a lot of 9th grade students (71% of the total for human geography in 2024) suggest that it is still a less difficult exam than most other AP exams?
No other AP exam is taken by mostly 9th grade students. European history, seminar, and world history are mostly 10th grade students, while chemistry, English language and composition, physics 1, precalculus, and US history are mostly 11th grade students.