<p>I am jealous of the 7 periods too! D only has 6 and so room for only one elective after this year. It’s a shame because there are so many classes she’d like to take. She will be finished with Calc by junior year, and I’m sort of hoping she’ll pick an elective that interests her senior year instead of AP Stats. It’s a long way off and will be her call.</p>
<p>Us, too, with a 6-period day. They used to offer PE as a fee-based 0th period class (with TitleI subsidy for low-income kids), but had to stop that after the [ACLU</a> public school fees lawsuit](<a href=“http://articles.latimes.com/2011/may/10/local/la-me-extracurricular-20110510]ACLU”>Unable to charge fees, schools brace for shift in extracurricular programs). </p>
<p>We’ve also lost a bunch of other fee-based programs that used to be offered through the schools. So now folks with money & time to schlepp their kids around pay more to private companies for off-site enrichment. And the kids with fewer resources do without. :(</p>
<p>Pepper03: Great statement about the B being a good thing to happen to your daughter. My high schooler shows me things on private Facebook groups kids from her school have set up for asking AP questions. There are 10th graders writing things like “I’m now dead to my parents” and “***** my life. It’s over” about getting an A MINUS(!!!) for a grade in a class. I was totally one of those parents when my first born started high school and the temptation still exists to be one but reading stuff this like is really upsetting. These kids are hurting badly all out of fear of disappointing their parents.</p>
<p>Momsings, One way to be creative about foreign language is to do Concordia Language Villages’ high school credit program. My son took Spanish there for a month before his 9th grade year. He learned more than he would have learned in a year in high school Spanish and received a grade. His high school tested him and then gave him credit for a year of Spanish. Now he is in AP Spanish. He owes his speaking ability to that one summer two years ago. It is fun, highly effective and competitively priced for an academic summer program (about $800-$900 per week).</p>
<p>D2 is done with a successful freshman year. She is sooooo happy. Role on the summer. Summer temps have arrived here, so she is heading to the pool shortly with some friends.</p>
<p>Apollo, Where is Concordia Language Villages? It sounds interesting. It’s residential? So they can sign up for multiple weeks? D. is committed to CTY this summer. (Chem.) I’ve always wanted her to do a summer French program. maybe we’ll look into that for next summer.</p>
<p>[Concordia</a> Language Villages - Concordia Language Villages](<a href=“http://www.concordialanguagevillages.org/newsite/]Concordia”>http://www.concordialanguagevillages.org/newsite/) has most of their camps in Minnesota but there are a few locations in other states. My son had such a great time that he is hoping to be a counselor there when he is in college. Students fly into Minneapolis St. Paul from all over the U.S. and abroad to attend the camps. Because my son was underage, my husband flew out with him and we drove 600 miles to pick him up at the end. We took advantage of the opportunity to visit Carleton, Macalaster, St. Olaf and Grinnell on the way home. They offer many different languages and many different term lengths. They are known for creating cultural immersion experiences with delicious authentic food, native speaker head counselors and culturally authentic experiences including sports, music, drama and dance. I hope to do an adult camp there some day. It looks like so much fun!</p>
<p>Apollo6: Loved reading your enthusiasm about CLV! I have a child attending for the first time this summer…a two week session although gosh, it sounds like the four week sessions offer an incredible language learning opportunity. The full price of the camps are not in our family budget and we were initially turned down for scholarship money, which was fine…our child knew that was a possibility. But then a few weeks later, CLV came back with a scholarship offer to attend a camp in a language that was not my child’s first choice but she is certainly excited about it now!</p>
<p>I recently heard about the Concordia Language Villages because a friend of DS15 performed well on the National Spanish Exam, and won a course. Sounds like an awesome experience.</p>
<p>college4many, Congratulations to your child on the CLV scholarship! I understand about the $$ concern, after all, I have 6 kids of my own. We have only ever paid for one academic summer course for kid #2 and kid #3 and found that the summer before 9th grade was perfect because it inspired our kids to see high achieving kids from around the country. Kid #2, now DD’13 went to Northwestern’s Center for Talent Development and took a 3 week psychology course. She found out that kids from around the country were much more dedicated students than the kids in her gifted classes at home. She came home, studied AP psych prep books, proudly scored a 5 her 9th grade year and talked her way into the Higher Level IB psychology course with seniors her 10th grade year. She ended up eventually applying and winning a scholarship for a two year international IB diploma program at United World Colleges. Kid #3 considered CTD and the Davidson Think Institute courses and decided that CLV sounded more fun. He was the youngest student in the high school credit course but loved it and found out that he had a talent for learning languages. He did a StarTalk Chinese course last summer for college credit that was nearly free and is heading for China for a year this fall through NSLI-Y, totally free. He is now “S’15” because it will be a “gap” between 10th and 11th grade. I have found that doing one, well chosen summer academic program early in high school was a great investment.</p>
<p>Sorry I was so long-winded I forgot to ask what language your child will be studying!</p>
<p>Arabic. </p>
<p>WOW! Your kids have been and are involved in some really neat things!! We actually have another child with an interest in language learning who has been awarded an NSLI-Y scholarship but for summer study, not a year long program. While this child did express an interest in year-long study, I pushed back on a bit just because of lack of travel experience. If this summer trip goes well, I will support the pursuit of longer endeavors in the future.</p>
<p>And afterthought…</p>
<p>With the gap year between 10th and 11th grade, Apollo6, are you concerned about him academically and socially outgrowing high school? Is he young for his grade level?</p>
<p>It has gotten to be pretty common where I live to hold kids with summer birthdays back in school so there are lots of older kids in each grade. I did not hold back my summer birthday kids because they seemed ready for school to me and now I know it would have been an academic disaster if I had done so. My youngest summer birthday child(late summer) is in a self-contained GT program for highly gifted children(other GT kids are serviced in cluster classrooms). While this child is quiet and a tiny bit of a thing that could pass for two graders younger, meeting the academic needs would have been all the more challenging in a lower grade level.</p>
<p>Ha! And now I better get back to the groups I belong in…2014 and 2016. ;)</p>
<p>@Apollo6,the Ayn Rand essay competition is “Anthem” for 9th & 10th graders in March and "The Fountain Head " for 11th & 12th graders in April.The CLV sounds interesting.</p>
<p>Both DH and I had our education outside of US.The system here looks so complicated and we have to worry about so many things.Since we are not familiar with the system it makes it even harder for us.CC has helped a lot with that.</p>
<p>D15 loves journalism so she is willing to sacrifice one class for it in junior year.
@mihcal1,Our district started fee based summer classes only last year.But the kids have to get approval from the counselor for impacted schedule to take PE,Health and visual arts classes in the summer.And the school does not give credit for courses taken for personal advancement outside of school.</p>
<pre><code> We have to go through school to take classes in the CC which are harder to get into for HS students these days due to budget cut in CA.
</code></pre>
<p>Good morning. Weighing in on Val/Sal here. S15’s school does not rank and does not do the Val/Sal thing. It is an IB/AP school and competitive enough. Even without rankings and Val/Sal, we send our fair share to Ivy every year and to the next tier schools. I would hate to see the competition if we had to deal with rankings. </p>
<p>FWIW- I think the best thing is for kids to take classes they enjoy and focus on learning. Val and Sal is just one title and isn’t really worth the additional stress.</p>
<p>I so wish our school would not rank either-how can it really measure anything anyway unless the kids take the same classes at the same time with the same teacher.</p>
<p>My daughter has a mid-summer birthday and the only thing that bothers her about it is recently when she realized all her friends are going to have their licenses a lot sooner than she does! However, I am glad my son wasn’t in the same boat since it wouldn’t have worked as well for them.</p>
<p>I love reading about these summer programs! My daughter wants to learn Chinese and this would be a wonderful experience-but she refuses to even think of doing anything in the summer-not anything organized anyway.</p>
<p>@pepper, “Force” her to do one summer program. Make sure it’s residential and has good reviews. I’m sure she will love it. (I don’t know why I say this, I don’t even know your D. but I’m still sure. :D) My D. did several summer programs in the past years. She loves every single one of them. Some programs last 3 weeks long. She loves to be with other kids her age with similar interest. Being away from home and parents and independent are +s. </p>
<p>My daughter is a very young high schooler. It poses problems in many places. I wish we didn’t let her skip a grade. But at the time that seemed to be the only choice. She has late birthday too. (toward the end of the year.) So she won’t be able to learn how to drive until she is a senior. There are other problems caused by the young age that give me headaches. :p</p>
<p>Re. “gap year” for exchange midway through high school. In our state one of the best options for gifted kids is a state boarding school for academically talented juniors and seniors that is on a college campus. At this school students may take whatever courses are at their level. Since it feels like college but has the supervision and support of high school, our kids don’t feel burned out on high school if they take an extra year. College do not care. Other options for study abroad are missing a year of high school = fewer AP courses or a gap between high school and college. My S’15 entered high school with half his high school coursework completed due to dual enrollment and online courses but we didn’t want him to graduate early from his current, mediocre high school. His chances at a good university will increase with a diploma from our state boarding school.</p>
<p>Ok, one year finished.
Those with experience - is sophomore year easier or harder in comparison to the first year?</p>