<p>FAP, this teacher is such a sweetheart. He sure doesn’t present this way, and, iniitially, I didn’t even want ds in the class because the teacher came across as gruff and macho and not at all warm. But I now know that’s all for show, and he is a wonderful person who does, in fact, bend over backward to make sure the kids succeed. He’s the only teacher who has ever e-mailed me to let me know he was worried about ds’s grades (of course, he’s the only teacher who ever NEEDED to e-mail me about grades! lol), but I think it was step beyond. Also, he makes himself so available to the kids for tutoring or alternate testing situations, like today at lunch for ds and one other child. Oh, and he loves my baking, so I am a sucker for a good “customer.”</p>
<p>I was thinking of writing a note to the principal (who I know well) about how fabulous the teacher has been to accommodate the kids. Would that be too brown-nosy? I just figure principals mostly hear from parents who are unhappy about teachers, and this might be a nice change of pace.</p>
<p>ZM – To reiterate, my thinking was to sidestep the GC’s rudeness and attribute it to a misunderstanding, subtly remind the GC that you and she had discussed this, and let the GC connect kid and parent. If that fails…Plan B.</p>
<p>Well, in the spirit of posting colleges, and I think only DougBetsy has done this before (thank you very much-your list was extremely helpful to D and me), I am going to post a very preliminary and highly subject to revision list that D worked on yesterday. I appreciate all comments:</p>
<p>Reaches (and boy are they ever reaches):
Barnard
University of Chicago
Emory</p>
<p>Matches (some are more matchy and some more matchy-reachy):
Agnes Scott College
Georgia Tech
Miami of Ohio
RPI
Tulane
Case Western</p>
<p>Safeties:
University of Alabama
Florida State</p>
<p>They do seem to be all over the place, but actually are in places where we have good friends or relatives to make D feel more secure that she has a safety net in case of inevitable “freak out” and have a half-way decent Jewish community either on campus or nearby.(except for Alabama, which for some reason just appeals to her).</p>
<p>Yeah I think you’re all right. One more shot. I’m just irked because it seems that she “yes’d” me to death and then promptly forgot what she said. I don’t have a good feeling about this at all.</p>
<p>BengalMom: No, it’s not just juniors; my 8th grader was very ill last week with a 104 fever and a funky red rash that took up most of her forearms. There aren’t many juniors that I’ve heard of that <em>haven’t</em> been sick yet, but I think that going from snow to 78 degrees back to a high of 39 with expectations of a “wintry mix” all within 10 days can’t be helping the matter. DH got the funk from our 8th grader last week. I somehow can’t believe that I’ve been spared. This is the 1st year I’ve ever had a flu shot, but both my kids tested negative for the flu, so that can’t be why I’m still standing. The ped office yesterday said they’ve had tons of flu & strep here, plus a bunch of viruses. Spring Break can’t come quick enough :)</p>
<p>Queen’s Mom: our DD’s have a few of the same schools overlapping; namely Tulane and Alabama. We are also encouraging the same strategy when looking at schools re: friends & family close by. It will make my DH much less twitchy if he knows that we have people we trust close by just in case.</p>
<p>Just registered my youngest for HS this morning. Yay! I am so ready to be done with middle school and so is she.</p>
<p>Send that note. I am absolutely in favor of “atta boy/atta girl” notes to the higher ups. I will make you feel good, for starters. As a manager, I know I loved receiving such info on my employees. We put them in the employee’s permanent file.</p>
<p>I don’t know that I’ve succeeded, since I haven’t keep strict track over my lifetime, but I do try to balance out the complaint/compliment letters. Especially in times like these, it’s important for those complimentary letters to come in.</p>
<p>Hey RobD, I have to go register D2 for middle school next year and I am dreading it. I don’t know anyonne who actually enjoyed their middle school experience.</p>
<p>zm, I wish I could get D to look at Bryn Mawr and Mt. Holyoke. They have much better acceptance levels than Barnard while being absolutely top notch schools and more realistic reaches, but, as you can see, her list is more concentrated in the South. It’s the weather thing!</p>
<p>I’m jealous, Queen’s Mom. If I could get my little angel to look South, I might do like ParentofIvyHope’s wife and join her! I don’t think Miss Priss is going to go any farther than New Jersey or Pennsylvania.</p>
<p>Zoosermom: You sent a shudder of bad memories down my spine when I saw Seton Hall. I started my undergrad there a loooong time ago and ended up transferring. It was definitely a case of not looking at “fit” not that my parents or I had any concept of that back in 1981. A kid who was marching in “No Nukes” rallies and reading Abbie Hoffmann should not have gone to a conservative, Catholic university :)</p>
<p>Class of 2013: It seems so far away, but based on how quickly things have gone with #1 I know that time will fly. DD2 is friends with a lot of “oldests” so I am looked at as an “expert” with their moms since I’ve walked this walk before. Alas, TN has implemented new graduation requirements for the class of 2013, so there will be a few changes. I just wish that #2 would pay a little attention to what her sister is doing re: college. Of course, #2 assumes that she will be waltzing into Princeton 4 years from now. Sigh. </p>
<p>I don’t actually dislike our middle school & we’ve avoided most MS drama. This class of 8th graders has gotten a little screwed over by the upcoming curriculum changes though, and had honors physical science taken away as an option. I’ll be happy when she’ll be in an environment where she can choose to take more challenging classes. </p>
<p>My junior is being very sweet to her rising freshman sibling and has already recruited her to be on the Mock Trials team for next year. I think it will be good to have them together next year.</p>
<p>My angel isn’t even into looking outside the borders of CA at present. We’ve suggested the advantages of doing so and requested over the next two weeks that he come up with some out of state options. H and I were reviewing the “tuition exchange schools” to see what was available. </p>
<p>Tuition exchange is a consortium of schools that have agreed to waive tuition for children of faculty from participating member schools. I don’t know exactly how this works because, per H, there has to be some kind of balancing over time. For example, it doesn’t work if a bunch of qualified students want to come to USC, but fewer children of USC faculty desire to go elsewhere.</p>
<p>And, of course, the student would have to gain admission, there’s no dimunition of admission standards. Many of the schools on the list I’d never heard of before, in spite of my haunts on CC. (I found one called Pfeiffer College in NC, so I had to send a Facebook note to my old HS boyfriend of same name (he’s a CS prof now) … of course, he’d already heard about it.) There’s not a whole lot of schools on the list that are USC caliber. There are some good LACs, moreso for the lucky girls (e.g. Smith.)</p>
<p>Yeah, ds1 has already said he plans to hug ds2 in the hallways. I doubt he’ll ever do it, but he loves to gig ds2, who cares about looking cool. Ds1 obviously doesn’t.</p>
Ha! That was the best endorsement that it might BE a fit for D. She’s pretty conservative, herself, although the reason she likes is is because it’s half an hour away from home and she thinks she could commute.</p>
<p>Right now S’s list is University of MD, UPitt, UDelaware, and Syracuse. I have no idea if those are reaches or matches since he won’t take the SATs until Saturday, and I want to see what his GPA is at the end of this year (nor have I calculated it unweighted yet - I’m a bad CC mom!) One definite reach he’s considering is UNC, which is very, very tough to get into out of state.</p>
<p>We are having a hard time figuring out safeties, since he wants to be in either the mid-Atlantic or New England at a medium-to-large school with decent sports teams he can root for in basketball and/or football (i.e. no small LACs), as you can see from the above.</p>
<p>D couldn’t understand Obama’s slogan during the election. “Who likes, change? I wish everything would always stay the same. I hate change!” Is that a Conservative in the making or what?</p>
<p>D does not even want to look at Catholic colleges though. I am hoping that might change. There are some good schools out there.</p>