DS12 just finished up with 8th grade today and will be a high-schooler in the fall, which I find mind-boggling. As if he didn't grow fast enough as it is, his grade skips put him rather ahead of where my head thinks he ought to be.
It was a trying year, his first in full-time e-school. It's a good fit for him, better than the regular school, but he has so much trouble keeping his focus that it's like pulling teeth to get him to do his work even when I'm sitting behind him and prodding him (literally). We would think about moving him back to regular school if it weren't for the fact that it's so much worse there, where we don't know exactly what he's supposed to be doing and when. At least in e-school we always have his assignments right in front of us. We tried a number of different systems for keeping him organized and on task, with varying degrees of success, and will still be trying to work that out in the fall.
He managed to pull an A in Geometry, at the last second, so he's actually going into high school with a 4.0 GPA -- I was afraid he would go into it with something lower, for a while there. Not that I have any illusions that the boy will manage to keep it, but it would have been sad to see him blow his high school GPA before he even got there. Now he will be doing Algebra II Honors as a freshman, for college credit, so we'll see if he can blow his college GPA.
He's also switching from Spanish to Latin, to see if it helps him to start understanding conjugation -- he had a dreadful time of it in Spanish. Other than that, he'll have regular 9th grade classes, with Computer Programming as gravy.
Overall, it was a good year, but it took way more effort and stress on my part than I would like. I do hope he can get it together next year.
