Ahhh, ok, that makes sense for the athletic period. My son’s school waives the PE, Health, Technical Arts, and Fine Arts credits required for graduation for kids doing the IB diploma as there is just not enough time in the day to get it all done. He still took a year of fine arts to make sure he had that for college admissions, but he’s waiving everything else.
Hmm…our district has 6 academic periods. PE is required for two years so they schedule athletes into the 6th period PE which then continues after school until 4-4:30-5 depending on sport. Juniors and seniors typically take a 0 period class to fit in the academic period they lose by being an athlete. My son, of course, wants no part of that, so he will be taking his foreign language 3 online this summer which has the potential to run over into the school year, but he’d prefer to do it later in the day or on weekends as opposed to going to school every day at 6:56 am.
Our school system does not have an athletic period and all sports practices are either before or after school. And our school system also does not waive any graduation requirements for kids doing the IB diploma so they still must take PE, Fine Arts, etc. It makes for very full and hectic days. DD is at the moment still working on IB Chemistry homework after not getting home from soccer until 8:00.
Meanwhile, DS is home for one night to interview for a summer internship. He got in from the airport around 9, interviews start at 8:30 tomorrow a.m. and then he flies back to school tomorrow night. We got lucky timing with this interview as today is his birthday so I got to see him for the big day! We will have his birthday dinner tomorrow before he flies back.
So funny how different schools work. S’18 is not in an IB school, so he doesn’t have those longer class periods you all discuss. PE is only required for one year and he did that as an online course the summer before 9th grade (also fulfilling the state mandate for all HS students to take at least one online course). No athletic periods here. All practices are either before or after school. Since he got his license a few weeks ago, S’18 has taken to walking home from school and then driving himself to the tennis courts for practices on practice days. It is a little strange having our youngest child driving, but it is definitely easier.
Glad you were able to see your son on his birthday 2014novamom. Hope his interview goes well. Would he live at home if he gets the internship?
Hello, Everyone. I had some really great news to share. At school, there was an announcement about Lockheed Martin’s Minorities in Engineering Day. For those who do not know, Lockheed Martin is an American global aerospace, defense, security, and advanced technologies company with worldwide interests. Basically, up to 10 students are allowed to apply and I was the first. I’m actually really excited as I’m very interested in engineering and STEM. Here’s the letter:
Lockheed Martin Mission Systems and Training is pleased to invite one chaperone and ten of your 9th - 11th grade students (per each school) to our Annual Minorities in Engineering Day on Friday, April 1st, 2016.
Minorities in Engineering Day has been created for students who are freshmen, sophomores, and juniors in high school and is designed to encourage them to investigate the world of engineering and the variety of career paths it can offer them. Our team has developed a series of sessions that will challenge these students to dream and imagine. We have created a network of support and encouragement to nurture these interests and allow the students to participate in interactive sessions designed for personal and professional development.
The schedule is as follows:
7:30am - 8:15am - Registration/Breakfast
8:15am - 8:30am - Welcome Speaker
8:30am - 10:30am - Engineering Project
10:30am - 11:15am - Speed Mentoring
11:15am - 12:00pm - Lunch
12:00pm - 2:00pm - Engineering Workshops
2:00pm - 2:30pm - Closing/Evaluations
We will honor the first 100 students that sign up, so we urge you to respond promptly. Please note that for security reasons all attendees must have U.S. citizenship. If our registration capacity has not been reached by the registration deadline, we will permit schools to bring more than ten students. Additional students will be registered in the order registration forms are received as space permits.
And yes, it is not an April Fools Prank, my counselor verified everything.
Our school is the same as @1518mom high school for athletes, basically lost 6th period for athletes and not many useful courses are offered in zero period. Our school doesn’t accept online foreign language classes, so for my DD’18 who plays JV Golf and taking Chinese language classes, she only has 4 other periods to choose. Right now she is doing English 10 Honor, Chemistry Honor, AP World History, PreCalc, Chinese 2 and Golf. Next year she wants to take AP English language, AP US History, AP Calculus AB, AP Environmental Science, Chinese 3 honor and Golf. I don’t want her to take 4 APs cause that’s a lot of work, but she insists on taking them. She said all her friends are talking those classes and she doesn’t want to take regular classes. My DD is not strong in reading comprehension and doesn’t like memorization. English and History are hard for her. She also doesn’t like Science and not excel in Math either, but she was able to pull As and Bs on those challenge classes. The only area that I know she would enjoy is in Art/design, but due to her course load, she can’t squeeze the class in the schedule. Her counselor suggest that she takes Art class in senior year or She will need to take the Art classes during summer in local community college. I know that I need to start planning for the summer.
congrats @ak2018 looks like a great opportunity!
Thank you! @1822mom
Well, we’ll see what the scores say, but DS came home very confident about the practice ACT he took today through his school. Much more than the SAT. He actually fairly accurately predicted his SAT score on the practice test a couple weeks ago so hopefully he’s right about the ACT. It would be nice to know we’ve “found his test”.
He said the reading was fine and the math was MUCH easier than the SAT. Let’s hope he was right! Score report on Tuesday night.
@RoonilWazlib99 Well that’s definitely good. I plan to the ACT along with the SAT and feel I would prefer the ACT. Do they also give their score reports that much earlier?
@ak2018 - his school does official practice SAT and ACT tests in coordination with a local test prep company. It costs $25 and all proceeds go to the school. You get an official practice test at the testing facility and they score it and give you the detailed score report a few days later and spend an hour going over it with you.
There was no pressure to buy one of their test prep programs, but they did have pricing information in the back of the score report information. It has been well worth the $25 fee for our family!
@RoonilWazlib99 Oh I see. My first choice university actually superscores ACT scores, so that makes me feel better about it all.
Hi to all. My DS18 is my oldest and I am happy to find this thread.
I also have a DD20 and a DS31. Yes 31. When DS18 starts college, DS31 will start kindergarten! I bet I am the only parent in this thread to have children born in three different decades and two centuries?
Looking forward to sharing the ride with you, following your stories.
Welcome LOUKYDAD. I do have a gap between oldest and youngest (5 school years - S’18 is the younger), but I’m pretty sure you deserve an award of some kind. You’ll be attending PTSA meetings for the rest of your life.
@LOUKYDAD - we’re close, but I have a DS18, DS21, and DD27. My DS18 was born just on the wrong side of the 99/00 to be in a different century! 
And my DD27 was one year too early to be in a different decade! Welcome to the forum!
I have been introducing myself that way going on four years now, and I am still waiting to meet my equal in that regard! (1999, 2002, and 2012 BTW).
Our daughter has a surprising number of friends with siblings in college (or who have graduated from college). She’s six. Last year there were three kids in her kindergarten class who had siblings either in or already done with college.
I hope that our daughter doesn’t grow apart from our oldest when he goes away to college. She will be 8 when he graduates high school. He better come home and visit. On the plus side, she should have it pretty easy once she’s the only one left in the house! She’ll be an “only” child at home for six years before graduating hs!
Saw that your son is a runner. DS18 also runs cross country and track. He is decent at it, but it is sort of a love/hate relationship he has with running. Right now he is telling me he isn’t running CC next year, but it is like him to be saying that right now so I am not listening yet.
Yeah, our son isn’t the best on the team, but he loves the team, his teammates, and as he told his college counselor, he likes that he is competing with himself. He likes having goals and achieving them. He has been working with a coach in the off season this year and is hopeful that he will have a good track season. He didn’t do track last year so he doesn’t quite know what to expect. He’s not the biggest fan of running in circles, but he decided to go for it. He would like to run in college, but that’s probably only feasible at a couple D2 and D3 schools he is looking at.
We like to look at the school rosters for where he wants to go and then check out those kids on Athletic.net to see what their high school times were to see if the coach would even be interested. He is right on track with one of the schools (the D3 school), so there is hope that he might be able to run at the collegiate level.
We will have him fill out the recruitment forms on the school websites once he has some decent track times. They just did a “trial mile” at his school practice and he ran a 4:50. Not bad, but not great, either. Hopefully he will be able to get that down somewhere around 4:35-4:40 and then he will fill out the online forms and let coaches know he is interested in their school.