I hope makeup SATs do occur by mid-summer, as I’m encouraging my D to keep prepping. She will have plenty of time…I don’t think our county will continue with online classes because a huge proportion of students don’t have internet access at home. I will continue to insist she do as much work from her textbooks as possible just to learn materials if the school year is finished. My H can tutor her in pre-Calc and physics. I can help with Spanish and she is pretty functional with other things on her own.
We may have an additional reason to hope for the SAT make-ups and higher math scores. We were prepared to be full-pay parents if need be, but with the stock market dive we may need to hunt for merit. We are a moderate-income family but live in a low COL area and have a paid-off house, no debt. We both inherited investments from extremely frugal middle-class parents on both sides that will put us in full- pay territory. a week ago it would have paid college costs and left enough for a modest but comfortable retirement fund. if the downward spiral continues without coming up this could change drastically, and necessitate D to limit her school selection to one where she gets a good chunk of money for her efforts. So many uncertainties… I am sure there are many other families in this situation
Yesterday my D and H went to play tennis on an empty court (dark and a little cold and I’m surprised my H was able to get D out of couch potato mode). Then she helped make a large dinner (cooking usually doesn’t interest her). After that she surprised me by getting out an origami kit she got for Christmas years ago and never opened. She’s not normally terribly craftsy but she spent several hours learning to make colorful paper butterflies, which raised my spirits quite a bit. We will all have to get creative! I guess the silver lining is that our kids will develop resourcefulness and new interests that they wouldn’t have otherwise.
I wonder how many students will become interested in careers in public health or government after this fiasco!
@evergreen5 I absolutely agree that GPA is going to be harder than ever to compare from school to school, even in the same district. Our D21 and D23 go to two different (but very similar) public high schools, and they are offering/expecting is dramatically different things from both teachers and students. We were barely a month into the second semester – no idea how they will make up half a year of course work!
I think it’s possible that some/(many?) HSs will give only Pass/Fail grades for second semester and not impact students’ gpas at all. But who knows…or let students decide if they want P/F or a grade…will be interesting to see what happens.
Colleges will just have to figure things out…frankly I think this will be the least of their issues.
To those of you worried about APs, it might be time to take control of it yourselves. Get some AP books on Amazon. Kids do sometimes self study for these tests. At least our kids got most of the content since they’ve all been in these AP classes for the school year up until now.
I think our school does practice AP tests at the end of April and that learning content ends maybe mid-April, so there might not be too too much left to learn content-wise and then kids need to practice if the teacher has not been giving practice tests yet.
Some colleges have started virtual info sessions, some even with student panels and some with chat available so students and parents can ask questions. I just signed D21 up for one at Richmond next week. Davidson’s website says that they are working on one as well. Just a heads up in case you guys had visits cancelled. Check the schools’ websites.
This is so school- and kid-dependent. No requirement to attend class will be a godsend for us. Give our kid a few weeks with any commercial prep book and they will be fine on the test.
Put them in class? Totally depends on the teacher - some classes have been a total waste of time that is for sure.
I ordered AP Exam Prep Books for all three of my boys 2 days ago from Amazon…While we wait for our district to figure out this online schooling thing I need to make sure they keep up with the curriculum the best they can
@homerdog D goes to a Title 1 school, I am sure there are households without the internet. Thankfully a cable company is going to supply internet for those households in need for the entire school district. The schools sent home Chrome books on last day before spring break. … It takes a village in many schools and districts across the nation. But it is great your D continues to receive a high quality education… Meanwhile I have ordered D AP prep books for Chemistry and Physics.
Definitely a good idea to have the AP prep books at this point in the year - regardless if school is in or out. I think my daughter is pretty much done or has only around one unit left in all her AP’s. Chemistry is done for sure - she said they just finished their last unit before school was out. And she just recorded a video today for APUSH that had to do with concentration camps, so they are already on WW2 for that class…
We also go to a Title 1 school. All student grades 4-12 have school issued iPads but that only goes so far if you don’t have internet at home. Sprint have a grant to our district for mobile wifi and Spectrum is also working with the community to provide free internet to those in need.
I spent yesterday printing elementary level worksheets from home for some families in my area that I know don’t have internet and printers at home.
I can hear D21 talking with her earth science teacher via Google Hangout. Class is over and they are just chit chatting. He’s telling her about his kids and his dog. She’s laughing. She needs to socialize and this teacher senses that!
Technically our kids are supposed to have no classes until March 31st when they start online. A few of D21’s classes have had assignments though so I hope all the kids thought to check. She had to be up to watch something with her APUSH class this morning at 9:30 which sounds easy but after staying up late the last few nights she wasn’t happy about having to get up “early” again.
@momtogkc D21 HAS to get up and sign into each class. So up by 7:45 at the latest to sign in for 8:00 class. She usually gets up at 6:30 so it’s a little extra sleep. I’m glad the school is doing it this way. Honestly, D has been really busy with school from 8-4. We only see her for 30 min at lunch time. Classes are a little shorter and they only have half of their classes each day but teachers expect homework to be sent by 4:00 so the kids have to “go” to four classes each day and get all of that homework done by 4.
Our kids’ classes are not “live”; classes are updated at 8:00am and they simply have to sign in for the day (once) by 1:00pm.
Currently, as a household, we have decided that high schoolers need to be up, showered, dressed and ready for school by 9:00am, which means about an 8:30 wake up time. Earlier in the week, it was 8:30 ready for school, but I pushed it back because I figured they could take advantage of being able to wake up a little later - I definitely don’t want them waking up at noon though.
They have had some live portions of class, but not every day, not necessarily during their class time, and not even necessarily during the school day. One day this week, my daughter had a Chemistry review session from 8:45-9:30pm - teachers are in the same boat as a lot of parents (watching young kids while trying to work from home) - so she scheduled the live session after her kids went to bed. I’m happy to report that 90% of the kids attended the live session. Flexibility is key these days.
There will be no live classes at either of our kids’ schools, which are now closed through April 21. Unless something drastic changes, the teachers are allowed to assign work but not require it. D21 is doing her work; D23 does only what she feels like doing, which isn’t much. We’ve tried to explain that missing half a year of course work means she won’t be prepared to move to the next grade, but nothing seems to motivate her. Not sure how to force her to do anything at this point. It’s not as if we can ground her!
S21 has had no live instruction this week, but some of the kids have…I guess it’s teacher and class dependent. I am sure everyone is still working stuff out.
He also has to check in to advisery every morning by 8:30 and then complete homework from every class (even gym) by 3:00 pm. That’s mostly for attendance. He’s had one take home math test (covering concepts they learned in class last week).
Online grades can be counted only if they help the student’s grade. We will be online thru April 13, as of now.
I am ready for the kids to not go back to school this semester (last day right now is June 13). Hopefully all the teachers figure out a way to teach the kids new concepts…especially in math. S21 is in pre-calc with AP Calc AB next year, so missing an entire quarter of pre-calc would mean we need a tutor over the summer. Sigh.
