<p>My D is finishing her freshman year next week with possibly an unweighted 4.3 gpa. The dreaded class all year has been her fine arts requirement ART! Her and the art class have just never meshed. She has received high B’s and and an occassional A, which in her eyes is like failing. They just completed a ceramic project, it is graded before and after going in the kiln. If it explodes in the kiln, you get a zero. You guessed it, her’s exploded. She has spent sooo much time on this class, at time, more than on her honor’s classes. But to have a zero inserted at this point seems extreme, especially when she is truly trying her very hardest in a class that she is just not good at. To make it sting a little worse, if she had just taken choir it would be an automatic 96 and requirement fulflled. She has high A’s in every other class, no easy feat and she has worked hard and we are so proud. As a family we have always loved and appreciated art, but now it just needs to be done :)</p>
<p>Ceramics killed my daughter as well. Sometimes somone else’s project would explode in the kiln and ruin hers. I admit her projects were pretty ugly, but I know she tried. At one point her report card was all A’s with a C in ceramics. Her friend was also not a gifted ceramics student but would ask for help at every single step from the instructor to the point that basically the instructor did the whole project, and she got an A. Because she struggled so, I wouldn’t let the boys take ceramics for their art requirement and they both took Drama.</p>
<p>That definitely seems extreme. Is there a way she could firstly find out why it exploded (I assume it must be something related to the way she made it in order to warrant a zero) and secondly, redo it so she doesn’t end up with a zero even though this’ll take more time?</p>
<p>In HS there are sometimes when one simply gets a teacher who’s either incompetent or who has harsh requirements that are out of line compared with other teachers of the same or related subjects and it ends up to be the luck of the draw for the student. I don’t know if this is the norm for a ceramics course or not but other posters will probably know.</p>
<p>Once college (or even just freshman year) is in the past, I think your family will love telling this story. Just think about the contradiction of destruction (the ceramics) and creation (stronger character). Any chance she got to keep the pieces so that she can display them somewhere? (I do agree that the zero is extreme.)</p>
<p>This is high school fundementals of art class and it is funny you talk about displaying it, my parents brought one of my “lovely” creations to show her how bad I was at art. She is going to talk with the teacher, it has been a good experience for her, dealing with something challenging and discussing it with a teacher. Just very frustrating.</p>
<p>The good news is that no college worthy of the name will care one iota about a C in ceramics.</p>
<p>murmur, sorry that your daughter has been frustrated by this class. </p>
<p>FWIW, my friend’s DD had mono in high school. She was pretty sick for a few months. She was out of school for a few weeks and when she returned she was unable (medically excused also) from phys ed. This did not seem to matter to the phys ed department who gave her Fs. Her mother went to the school to do battle. The school’s “compromise” was to assign the young lady an assignment FOR EACH gym class missed. She did the assignments and was able to get Cs. Reports were about things such as history and/or rules of bowling. I am not sure about how many classes were missed, but a good number of reports had to be written.</p>