You can try telling him, but maybe the best choice is to let him give it a shot, and be there for him if he fails? He may succeed spectacularly.
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I agree with this. After a year of telling my kid he was taking on too much and having him prove he can handle it, I’ve finally settled on being zen about it and repeating my mantra “I love you and will support you in anyway I can.” OK so I might not actually be totally zen, But I’m working on it.
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I can’t remember if I have posted in this forum yet, but I’ll go ahead and introduce myself. I’ve been on CC for years - I have two older kids, HS Classes of 2018 and 2021. Here for my final kid, Class of 2027.
Kid’s school basically assigns all kids into their upcoming courses except electives and anything with Honors or above needs to have a teacher rec and department head approval. There are very few AP courses and those are only allowed for 11th and 12th graders. They have been recommended for:
Honors Chem
Honors Math 2
Honors US History
English 10 (no honors option for English until 11th grade)
French 3 (no honors option for LOTE)
They will also take health and will choose an art elective. They are also looking to add an additional academic elective in like Neuroscience, Forensic Science, or Comparative Religions. They will have to get school approval for that, though, as kids aren’t allowed to take more than five academic classes per term without special permission.
Adding that this kiddo did not get to visit any colleges with older siblings. Oldest was too old and middle one was applying to college in the middle of Covid. Kiddo was online due to Covid restrictions from March of 5th grade through October of 7th. Such a tough time for our kids! We are starting to casually visit colleges this summer, though, with a tour of 6-7 next month.
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Class scheduling was easy for my 27 too. There are no levels (all considered honors - and truly are a lot harder than LPS honors), every kid takes 10th English, 10th Science, 10th History. There are a couple of language options, and kids are in different math courses (e.g. Algebra II or Calc) and everyone takes an arts elective. There is a brief health thing too (no choice all take). There are no additional electives available or slots to take them. They have the 5 core subjects + an art. This changes for 11th/12th, but early years are easy in this way. The classes are not at all easy, but the selection process is:)
I also have an older, but '27 one was only dragged to 1 official tour (though saw a couple of other campuses w/o formal tours). It is a good thought that I could bring them to a couple more this summer locally…
So my S27 is a bit of an odd spot. They had a teacher die after the first day of finals last semester, and ultimately finals were made optional and he opted not to take them because he had all As.
This semester, well, we live in Houston, and we had that big storm a week ago and their school didn’t have power for days and some of his friends were staying with us because we had electricity and they did not. Not everyone has power even now. I think his school has done the best it could have in terms of equity between those who have been severely impacted by the storm and who was not, in that final exams are mandatory for underclassmen (Senior finals got canceled because they were this week and graduation is Saturday), but they can only benefit and not harm your final grade in the class. This leaves my son with only one real exam to study for, Math.
Did I mention his math teacher got fired 3 weeks ago for a fairly inappropriate Twitch stream the kids found, but also that he apparently did not teach them math either??? So they are trying to create some major grades for his class to improve their grades. DS thought he had a high B, and it got mysteriously lowered 10 points yesterday because the weighting hadn’t been set up properly in the online grade book. It’s a punch to the gut to see you are 10% lower than you expected, through no fault of your own.
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Oh geez, that is a lot. I am sorry.
Hello! Just checking in to see how summer is going for our 27s!
Our school year goes into June so my son has only been out of school for about two weeks. He just started his summer job this week. He works as a CIT for a theatre summer camp for kids ages 4-8. He’ll do this for 4 weeks and will also spend 4 weeks as a camper at the session that they have for kids ages 9-18. Other than working, he spends most of his time on his computer either playing games or watching history videos. I need to make an effort to get him to the library a few times this summer - if he has a stack of books he’ll read them. He’ll also take a few dance classes this summer, and will start Driver’s Ed next month 
So glad that he could fit that in this summer (he doesn’t turn 16 until October so barely makes the cutoff) as he has no time to take it during the year.
He got his final schedule for next year right before classes ended. He got most of his first choices, so that worked out. The state added a financial literacy requirement that starts with his class, so that was added in place of the Business class he requested. So next year he’ll take:
Honors English 10
Honors World History
Honors Algebra II
Honors Chemistry
Orchestra
Spanish III
Financial Literacy (1/2 credit)
Intro to Public Speaking (1/2 credit)
Intro to TV and Film Production
He’s looking forward to continuing with drama club, Model UN, and Interact next year. He was elected secretary of Model UN and is excited to take that on.
Overall he managed to keep his grades up but is still struggling with being organized and getting work turned in on time. So we’ll still be working on that next year.
D27 has also been out for about two weeks. She doesn’t have a job (there are precious few opportunities that are walking distance from our house and I can’t drive her around every day). She’ll go to an art camp for three weeks later this summer. We’re doing a long-overdue declutter/overhaul of her bedroom, and she’s spending a lot of time hanging out with C24 while she can. Oh, and practicing driving in anticipation of getting her license early next year.
Our school doesn’t tell kids their schedules until the week before school starts, so she’s still not sure which classes she got.
One thing that delighted me in the last weeks of school: D27 was in the drama club show (this is a totally student-run show, and so 9th graders are sometimes cast in speaking roles). She had one line, but also some silent physical comedy, and she had a blast! She’s now really excited to continue theater next year and may even try out for the spring musical.
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The Kid is having a chill summer. They are continuing with their archery classes, volunteering at the food bank farm harvesting vegetables, creating art on their tablet, playing video games, and reading cookbooks and astrophysics books. On top of their usual chores (laundry, dishes, etc.) this summer they are preparing two family dinners a week, so they should have decent cooking skills by the time they leave the nest.
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APWH has a 64% for a 3+ in 2024.
Going great so far! A couple of camps done (one was 27’s absolute favorite thing they have ever done, so that was wonderful), currently at scout camp, family vacation done, and visits to grandparents as well. Also got in a couple weeks of volunteering at a local library close to family. We live overseas, so traveling back home after scout camp is done and then will visit a couple of historical/cultural sites before school starts again in September (Angkor Wat and Hellfire Pass/River Kwai). 27 will also volunteer at a local thrift shop/donation center that uses its income to support scholarships for children across the country where we live. Looking forward to going back home as I have been in the US for over two months now and I’m ready to sleep in my own bed!
Class assignments likely won’t be available until August, but they should get everything they asked for.
College visits went well. We visited a wide variety of small/large, urban/rural, open curriculum/core curriculum, etc. Just to give 27 an idea of what is out there (visiting this year even though it is early because we had an extra week in the US). They liked two of the six we saw, so that was good to get some solid feedback on what resonated.
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It’s been pretty quiet in here this summer. Hopefully all of our 27s were busy enjoying their summers!
S is working his last week of camp this week. Next week we bring my D23 back to college for her sophomore year and we’ll stay in the area for a few days (it is a six hour drive for us). It’s hard to believe summer is coming to an end already. 
S got confirmation of his final schedule -no changes from June, thankfully. Classes start here on 8/27 but he’s already started back for some of his activities and of course the first fundraiser of the year (selling Mums for Interact) has already started! 
Over this summer, S wanted to start talking about colleges so we started a list of some schools that might be of interest to him that we can check out over the next two years. Right now he wants to find a school where he can pursue theatre and tap dancing, two of his passions. He also wants to find someplace where he can continue with fencing, which he does right now at our local Y. He also wants to major in history or economics. It’s fun to look at what schools might fit all of these interests now, knowing that he’ll likely change his focus somewhat over the next three years. We had hoped to do a few local visits but we’ve been so busy this summer that there hasn’t been time.
Hope everyone else is enjoying the end of summer and looking forward to supporting our kids through their sophomore years!
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Sounds like S27 is off to a good start @Starski. I think students with older siblings are willing to talk about college earlier as it is already talked about in the home. We have been discussing also…started last year as we went through the process with S24.
Hopefully with school starting this thread will start getting more traffic. I’ll start…PSAT registration is due in a few days. D27 created her college board account with her personal email today. We need to register tonight. Who else is taking the PSAT sophomore year? I think it will be good practice, especially since the format has changed to digital.
Editing to add that the registration is through their high school. The college board account was created for their AP class registration.
Today we received the notification that S27’s school was locked down because of an anonymous threat made online. About an hour and a half later the campus was cleared by the police, and the rest of the school day was canceled. There was police presence at pick up, which will remain tomorrow.
When I was in high school we went through a period where we had regular bomb threats until they just took to moving everyone outside and continuing class. I went to school in a community with cause for heightened security, but it was assumed the threats were bogus and they were always tied to nice weather when people would play hackey sack in the sun. It all seems so innocent in retrospect. A time when actual school violence was literally unthinkable.
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Happy new school year, everybody!
Poor S27 had to deal with some pretty serious scheduling issues.
He gave up a volunteering opportunity this summer so he could take chemistry at summer school, which is a prerequisite for AP physics, only to be waitlisted for physics and put into AP environmental science. There were several other issues with his schedule that have since been resolved, but he’s so incredibly bummed that he’ll have to wait to take physics. Math and physics are his jam so it took a lot to convince him to not take it personally.
Anyway, his schedule now appears to be:
Jazz
Marching band
Sophomore English
World history
PE(cross country practice)
Honors German 3
AP pre-calc
AP environmental science
It’s a lot, but since he’s finally OK with it, I’m trying to be Zen.
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My D27 also ran into some scheduling challenges.
So it turns out that her new BS (which she got in last June as a new sophomore with a late application) uses an alternating block schedule, which means that not every block meets every day. Each block’s length also varies from 50 to 70 minutes. There are also many classes that meet before school, during lunch, and after school. We had to figure out how to fit in her piano lesson, and also choose between Crew, Dance, and Fall Play (since all 3 happen at the same time), which proved to be an incredibly difficult decision to make for her. In addition, she is only at her current math class with a condition – her teacher emailed us that if she did not do well on her first exam or miss any homework, she will be changed to a lower math class; she did not get to choose any of her arts or history electives, and her advisor hoped that she would drop some classes.
Anyways, it took us and her advisor 2 weeks and 3-4 add/drops to sort everything out. Her schedule for this semester is:
- AP Calculus AB
- Chemistry
- English II
- French 4
- Grade 10 Seminar
- Latin American History
- Public Speaking
- Special Projects in the Arts
- STEAM Research 10
- Tech Essentials
- Intermediate Contemporary Dance
- Intermediate Ballet
This was a bit overwhelming and confusing for all of us at first. I hope we’ll eventually get used to this!
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That is a packed schedule!! I hope she is adjusting to life at BS. My S27 is also at a BS - his schedule this year is:
Sophomore English
Algebra II
Chemistry
World History
Spanish III
Filmmaking
Fall Play (big part so a lot of lines to memorize) he will also do the Winter Musical.
He is also fairly involved with Film Club and is doing Science Olympiad this year. He is still learning the fine art of time management (as most 15 year old boys are I think) and has had a few late nights of getting homework done already!
On the plus side he is in a dorm with some senior friends from theater and they seem to be motivating him. He has brought up the topic of college a few times in conversation with me, as he sees his dorm mates working on their essays.
All sophomores at his school are required to take the PSAT in October.
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Wow! Some of your kids have intense schedules! My S27 is our youngest of three, and I can’t believe we will be thinking about college for him before we know it. He is getting to do some college tours this fall, thanks to my S25 who is in the process of applying right now. We will see what S27 thinks. He is a stronger student than S25, so he may have a different list when the time comes. Too soon to tell.
This year he is taking:
Honors Sophomore English
Algerba II
Honors World History
Accelerated Chem
Spanish 3
Theater/world music (each of which runs one semester)
AP classes are not available until junior year.
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School seems to be going well so far for our '27. Classes started earlier this month so they are in about week three and so far so good. They seem to be enjoying Honors Chem and Forensic Science the best, which is great because there was a time in middle school when they really didn’t like science and now it seems that has changed. Their school focuses a lot on experiential learning, so I think that has made science much more hands-on and interesting for them.
PSAT is also required for all sophomores at their school. We reassured them it doesn’t count for anything this year and there is no need to study - just do their best and get a baseline for standardized testing in general. We also warned them they would likely not know a good chunk of the math and not to get frustrated or worried about that. Their school does Integrated Math, so they had a little Algebra, Geometry, and Algebra 2 last year. They will do all three together again this year and next, so there are likely many concepts they haven’t yet encountered that will be on the PSAT.
27s school also doesn’t allow AP classes until junior year and only has a few, which is nice. The kids don’t feel pressure to take a ton of APs and they aren’t penalized in the college process for what their school doesn’t offer. It really leaves them open to explore and take whatever seminars and topics they want (their school has a lot of really interesting offerings for science, social science, English, math, etc).
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Sophomore year seems to be going well for S27. So far (knock on wood!) he seems to be more focused on making sure he stays organized and gets all of his work turned in. As a part of this process he decided not to use a backpack this year because he found that he just stuffed papers and notes in there and then lost them. So this year he asked for a large binder that has a strap and a pocket for his Chromebook and that’s what he carries to and from school. So far it seems to be working OK. He hasn’t had any missing or late work yet.
He was cast as John Brooke in the drama club production of Little Women so he’s pretty excited for that. Model UN is also going well so far and they are planning their first conference. And he’s been doing and enjoying his two service activities a month for Interact (most recently he did a roadside cleanup and staffed a water station and cheering squad for a local marathon).
Our HS used to offer the PSAT10 to sophomores but don’t any longer. I wish they still did as I thought that was helpful when my daughter took it, but I decided not to try to talk my son into taking the PSAT anyway. So no plans here to take any tests this year.
Good to hear from this group again! Hope all of the sophomores continue to have good years!
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