Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Proud or a big sigh?

Every year we hear that school will be more challenging. Grade acceleration didn't seem to offer more difficulty in grade school. Middle school? Nah. We moved to a school that families claimed was so hard and did offer an advanced math track- I was a bit worried. 9th grade is almost at an end, and I have seen loads of homework but not much brain work needed. DD somehow does all her homework during school (where is she doing this??? During lectures?). Older DD gets the same grades but spends a lot of time studying and writing ("perfectionista").

The other day DD took a major history test. She claimed she had no idea how she did. Today I get online and see she received a 102 out of 100. I tell DD what she got, and she says, "Really? I thought I did really badly. I just bs'd my way through the test. I didn't even study". I wanted to bang my head against the wall. Some parents would be so happy (and I am), but I'm wondering if next year in AP's she will have to try harder? Honestly, DD is buckling down and taking school seriously, but she needs to get some practice in studying.

Well, I’m sorry but this story is very familiar. The promise that things would get more challenging every year, and every year being disappointed. DD actually came home crying one year after the first day of math- she was surrounded by the same kids ‘who don’t get it’ and whom she spent the previous year helping every day in class...

I wish I could be more positive, but no, I suspect at least in APs that your kid will not have to study. My DS’s online gradebook experience is eerily similar, as is his response (though as a junior this year, he is no longer surprised by the 102s). The workload experience we have has been different than what you describe, but it rarely involves what you describe as brainwork, with the major exception of writing assignments, Our English classes and parts of history (essays and research paper assignments) did require brainpower, at least to get a high grade (or so my kids believed).

The main times my kids really exerted themselves intellectually were for their extracurriculars. I have mentioned my distaste for the competitiveness of science olympiad, but it did make my kids want to work hard, whether for the pressure of not letting their teammates and partners down, or because the competition was fierce and these other kids were formidable peers, or because the challenge of learning such in-depth material was pretty exciting. My kids both also exerted themselves, to different degrees, in music, though that’s somewhat different.

(Class projects, open-ended presentations and long-term papers are also exceptions, where there is room for a kid to show their true colors. My DD was basically a teacher-pleaser if she respected the teacher, and she could work her tail off for these kind of assignments- and it showed. DS, however, could rarely bring himself to engage even on these things, and therefore often settled for an A, doing the minimum he needed to get by).

At times I guess we felt proud (or more like you, happy that one thing in their lives is easy) but never of the basic classwork stuff- mainly because our kids were not proud in the least- they knew they did ‘nothing’ to earn the high grades or the subsequent awards, etc, so they actually felt some embarrassment, and in my DS’s case, shame. He particularly struggled with watching how hard his classmates worked, for lesser outcomes, and he still has a lot of difficulty handling that. In the end, our kids grew to be solidly cynical about their high school experience, and mistrusting of authority.

I find that what develops better study habits is when they have to delve deeper in their research projects. It has been really easy so far and suddenly they get 3s because they didn't dig and really think. I find that is the difference in DD's school and where she came from. The teachers expect the effort. And it is like exercise, you start somewhere. My kid had horrible study habits but somehow developed them this year. I was horrible into university. I could do the math in my sleep but the problem is not learning. Though somehow I am a great problem solver -- as I made my money that way in the last 10 years of my career. Don't know where that came from. I do logic problems to pass the time. Maybe that is just the math part of me. Just saying, being able to do it doesn't mean you learn and study habits are about going deep, more learning.

I have a bit of a different perspective.

Because of DD's LD and processing issues I insisted on a no homework policy through elementary school. She's a humanities kid and would listen to high level audio books or watch historical documentaries all day if we let her. But the tediousness of doing homework would have been counterproductive for her. School was the work part of her day and outside of school learning was pure fun.

Neither we nor the school district could find an appropriate school for 7th grade so we put together an outside the box composite program - part targeted services, part homeschool (really selfschooling...), part bits of specialized programs. We got hold of a syllabus for a high-level 7th/8th grade history class at a nearby school that was really more of a high school course. DD didn't have the text referenced in it so did her own research on line to learn the material. She went from a kid with a homework exemption to a kid who did SO many hours of research I would sometimes have to tell her to stop and go do something fun. But for her learning IS fun.

That spring we started her at a school that offers 1-1 classes. She walked in the first day and handed her history teacher a packet of short papers she had written on all the ancient history topics she self taught. Once he picked his jaw up off the floor he knew just how to approach history with her, at what level she was learning and just how eager a student she was. He focused on teaching her how to make her research more formal. Basically the angels sang...

She now does homework for all her classes at this school but not hours and hours of it. Because all classes are 1-1 things are adapated to her LD issues and how she learns. It wouldn't be easy to do in a regular school setting. She still does some research on her own on outside things that interest her but not as much as she had in the past.

So I guess my suggestions is find something your DD is passionate about and encourage her to work on that. Find something that challenges her to reach just a bit outside her comfort zone. It doesn't have to be school that challenges her or teaches study habits. DD spent 100's of hours researching a topic for a hobby. She never understands "what the big deal is" when she does some of the extraordinary things she does. It's just normal for her. I'm guessing your DD may be similar. Even if she does some amazing work she will probably not see it as anything special. Just guessing.

Oh and as a freshman at a highly ranked university, surrounded by some of the best and brightest who graduated at the top of their respective high school classes I distinctly remember the week the first round of test grades came back. They landed like a nuclear bomb. Hundreds of kids who skated through HS doing minimal work for top grades had their worlds impload. Scores of 29 or 36 were like daggers in their hearts. Partying came to a screeching halt, people learned to study. Not everyone made it - there was a very high attrition rate. Very high. So your DD is not alone.

Just my 2 cents...

I find that now that DD is in high school, the homework tends to be research based. They do get math sheets in class, but many tend to get them done in class. But in Spanish she had to research a spanish speaking country and do a presentation on it in spanish. That is the homework. And trying to deal with so many subjects (her school is 10 subject based, 5 on each A & B days) So I am not sure what is busy work here. You have to do time management. The Spanish thing is over a few weeks, the history was researching Great Lakes treaties over time. Science tends to be rote, but it was broken down into bio, chem and physics, over 3 units. You have to learn the basics. So I am not sure why it is irrelevant to do homework. You have to learn the rules in trig in order to answer the questions. You have to know the formulae in science. You have to learn the language for computer. She has to learn thousands of Chinese characters. I think learning how to manage homework is a skill best learned in high school, not college. I do not think homework is a bad word in high school.

Sometimes it doesn't become hard enough to demand study skills until graduate school. And then, I can name one person (my PG sib) for whom even a STEM doctorate wasn't enough challenge. This doesn't mean that there is no way to learn executive functions, though, as others have mentioned. Everyone will have to work hard and be self-reflective about something at some point. It's convenient that school does it for most people, but we're not talking about most people here.

I would agree: find an open-ended topic, project, or field about which she is passionate, where there is always more to get out of it, when you choose to put more into it.

How can you possibly get 102 out of a hundred. 100% indicates perfection which should be pretty much impossible anyway. Are they using multi-choice or something?

... extra-credit questions. If a child has time left over after finishing the test he/she can attempt the extra credit question (which is usually challenging or an extension to the subject matter covered).

Also weighted averages/grading on a curve. DC had a 108 on a recent assessment without even attempting the extra credit.

The very idea of extra credit questions annoys me. By all means make the last question a challenge question but it should still be part of the 100%. If you grade to a curve then surely the top should still be 100% the bottom 0% and the median 50%. More than 100% is just a nonsense. You can have a 200% increase but you can't get 108 out of 100.

ETA. Sorry but it seems like a grade inflation system. You make the basic test fairly easy so a lot of people score really highly then to reward those who actually are doing well you give them a whole extra section to score even higher. Really many of those people doing really well on the basic test should be getting 70% on a proper test and when I was at university 75 to 80% was a very good mark, 90% was amazing and I think the highest I ever heard of was 98% because no one actually is perfect.