What is the best way to guide your child through high school to be a success in college and in life? What are the success factors you need to instill in your kid?
I don’t know.
If that’s not the best way to get you to quit reading right now, I don’t know what is. But I’ll follow that by saying that these posts are about my looking for the best way to guide my kids through high school. And as with anything I do, I always research it. Thoroughly.
I first started thinking about this when our oldest was in 2nd grade. We were trying to make the decision about whether or not to have him tested for GT. My husband and I had both been in GT programs, and we had mixed feelings about them. We weren’t concerned so much with whether or not our son earned a label, but whether or not it would be beneficial. So I started talking to some parents with older GT children.
One call in particular stood out to me. As I made my way down a list it was getting fairly late; it was approaching 9:00 pm. The mom I called had time to talk because she was waiting for her son to get home from Boy Scouts; he was close to completing his Eagle Scout requirements. She had everything laid out and ready for him. There was “a history project that we have to make a model for, and then we have an English test to study for and math homework to do…”
We went on to talk about the GT program (she was a fan) and I gained a lot of insight from her. But even more than the GT discussion, what stood out to me was that little glimmer of what high school might be like for a bright kid at a moderately competitive high school. It sounded like there was a good three hours of homework – at least – laid out that wouldn’t be finished until midnight and beyond, and it sounded like a normal occurence.
And there was that comment “we.” Now, I think this was an exceptionally bright kid, and the parents were just doing what they felt they had to do to keep his head above water. And I know this kid got into a great university. So I can’t fault the parents on their approach. But still, I wondered. Is a full load of AP classes (Advanced placement classes) and extracurricular the best approach for success in college, more importantly, success in life?
If a kid can’t complete all their homework on their own, shouldn’t that mean that there’s too much homework? Or am I just being lazy – because I was finally done with school and wasn’t ready to start back up again?
What do you think? What’s the definition of too much homework? How much should parents help their kids with their homework?
My kids are in middle school, so while we’re certainly thinking about high school, we have another year before we really have to start planning. However, both of my kids are highly involved in extracurriculars and so far I’ve been incredibly grateful that they don’t have very much homework. I don’t know how we would do it. The homework they do have already feels like a time consuming, stressful, and frequently not helpful chore.
I’m a former teacher from a long line of teachers, so I really do value education and academics. But I’m far from convinced that it’s better for my kids to spend their afternoons and evenings on homework rather than dance, music, drama, and tae kwon do. OK, I’m not being truthful – I totally convinced that they gain so much more from those activities than any homework that could be assigned to them. And I really don’t want to give up the time we spend as a family playing games, or the time they spend reading for pleasure, or the time they spend doing crafts or inventing things with office supplies.
We did already decide for our daughter to take an advanced math class rather than a super advanced math class, mostly because of the homework and stress that class would have entailed. It wouldn’t surprise me if we follow that precedent into high school. I hear so many stories from other parents about how stressed out their kids are by the amount of homework they have, and I’m hoping we can strike a more healthy balance.
I suppose if the point of school is to prepare kids to have a career that takes up their entire day so they have no energy or time to pursue hobbies, then homework does its job. But that’s another argument.
I can definitely relate! Our kids are in “advanced math” but they have a few classmates a year ahead of them (being bussed to high school for Geometry in 8th grade etc.). Our goal was simply to have our kids be able to take a year of calculus in high school, not become a math expert before college. What we’re finding, though, is it’s more difficult to walk the “easier” path than we thought it would be.
My kids are elementary and middle school, so I can’t speak directly to the GT high school experiences. But I know when my husband interviews engineers for his company, he fishes around to find out if the person interviewing has real world experience working on machinery — gear heads who liked to fix old cars, work on motorcycles, or farm boys who grew up fixing farm equipment. He has a spread sheet that proves that hands-on experience has proven to be a better indicator of success on the job than grade point average. So enough with the obsessing over numbers! It seems pretty common sense that kids need a wide variety of experiences to function in the world. But every kid is different, their goals and gifts are different. Hopefully we are looking at our kids, seeing them for the complex individuals they are, and deciding what they most need based on who they are rather than arbitrary externals.
This is great information! I know some kids thinking about engineering and this will be good information for them to know. Grades are a tricky business. Yes, they do show a dedication to a task, but they don’t show everything. My husband is in tech and he says that often in an interview, once you show that you can program, your enthusiasm – your true interest in programming – is what gets you through the door. So your husbands experience speaks to something I’m really puzzling about. With the current demands of high school, how do we help our kids find the time to do things like work on machinery? And if they don’t naturally have an inclination to do something like that, how do we help them develop it?
One of the questions is if we kind of “ruin” kids who take any task given to them seriously by how we train them in school. Our own school has many positives, but I worry about that point. Since my kids are serious students, what I’m trying to figure out is how I can help them adapt their high school experience to get the most out of it. It might not be the obvious path of do your best and take the hardest classes.
Just to clarify for those who might not have kids in high school yet: At our school, and typically other high schools, there are many different levels of classes:
“Regular” classes (There might also be a level before that.)
preAP classes – Classes in high school (and now in middle school) that are supposed to be a higher level, deeper thinking, faster moving class than the regular classes to help get kids ready for AP classes.
AP classes – advanced placement classes where the curriculum is determined by the AP test, which kids pay to take at the end of the semester. Most AP classes are offered only to upper classmen. If they get a passing grade on the AP test, a student might get credit for a college course.
GT classes are different yet again. You have to qualify for your school’s GT program to be in a GT class. At some schools, this is a different class entirely. In our school, they are a few GT students in a designated AP or preAP classes (the highest level available for that class and grade.) I won’t get into the (ever changing) specifics of how that works, but the point is that GT is different from AP. You don’t have to be a GT student to take an AP class.
Wow, great topic! And that comment from M.G. King was enlightening. It says something about our society.
Anyway, I don’t have any break-through ideas about the best route for a gifted learner, but the topic reminded me of a recent conversation. I have a friend who took AP English in high school. His teacher (let’s call him Mr. English) taught both the AP class and the remedial class. My friend later found out from Mr. English that both classes were taught the exact SAME way, the only difference being that the AP class got more credits for it. Just some food for thought.
I went to a Podunk school that didn’t offer AP classes, and, when I went to college, I found myself stuck taking basic classes that felt like repeat high school, while other friends got credit for these because they had taken AP level classes. So, I’d say there certainly is benefit to taking the higher classes (whether or not they’re actually “higher”). But what course you take should depend a lot on you and your child. I have another friend who is considered a genius. But he failed in high school (and eventually dropped out) because extra homework was such an un-motivating drudgery for him.
I also didn’t have AP classes available in high school – that’s part of what makes this such new territory to me. Interestingly, my research so far indicates that colleges aren’t letting kids test out of as many classes as they used to. However, it is great to get basics out of the way in areas that you aren’t really interested in. So you’re right – it really depends on the particular student.
So how successful is your genius friend now? The disconnect that sometimes happens between school success and life/job success is something I’m looking at.
After years of drug use and p/t job hopping, genius friend has since become a career student (just keep going to school and don’t actually get a “real” job).
Does your state use Common Core? Because I heard that this curriculum is going to have a severe impact on state colleges (and thus, probably, private universities) because of legislated requirements. So that’s something else to look into.
Oh, that’s sad for your genius friend. Psychoanalyzing it (hah!) I would blame it on the education system telling him he’s a failure.
Common Core is on my list, but it hasn’t been implemented at our school yet so it’s not something I’ve gotten to. I hadn’t heard that it might affect the college level as well. I’ll keep that in mind