It was a rough last quarter of the school year. I am so glad it's over although grades are NOT where we want them to be and thus all his classes are going to be dropped from the honors for next year. There is a psychological aspect to this, when he started doing badly in a few classes his moral went down and it affected everything. Math & Science will still be accelerated but not honors. I don't feel I can fight it because while many of his finals are TOP A's, it just doesn't compensate for say.. NOT turning in most of the lab reports over the past 3 months. In Social Studies he did get an A on on the big project and an A on the final but it doesn't pull your grade up enough when you only get a 50% on homework/seatwork. The good thing was ALL the writing from the past quarter of school has been A's. He can write well, he just has to have something to say.

Just had a talk with him that all is not lost as it's freshman year. And many colleges don't really look at freshman grades. But next year the grades MUST be A's or he will be locked out of classes he will want Junior year.

I have testing scheduled for next week and I am anxious to see what it will show. Psychologist told me yesterday that I am probably going to have to give him more scaffolding that I expected to at this age. Still helping him plan his homework schedule, teach him study techniques, break larger projects down. We also talked about alternative options for school for Junior year.

It's just so disappointing. This kid has SO much potential.

I give an F to any grading system that includes things like this. What are these schools thinking? Ridiculous!

The school should be recognizing the ability, and THEY should also be scaffolding. Those As mean something, and so do the low homework grades: high ability, missing skills.

Working on it. First step is to get this testing done, so we can better explain to others what is going on.

What 22b said!

If mastery of the subject is demonstrated in the exams then that is all that should be needed.

I can understand the school taking a dim view of non-completed lab reports but that is it.

Sometimes I think that the high weighting on the final grade given to fluffy project work is only there because the teachers can grade it themselves (and therefore award full marks) and thus avoid being exposed as bad teachers by poor final exam/state testing results.

In the community for which my DW teaches (always within the top 100 PHS in the country) there is an ongoing parent rebellion against too much busywork style homework like projects. Having read some of the posts here I am beginning to understand why.

Bluemagic, your post is almost identical to the one I've been debating putting up here.

DS ended his freshman year in a grade abyss. His freshman and sophomore honors classes do not have "busywork"; the assignments have clear purpose. He just didn't do them or turn them in. I can't fault the teachers on their grading at all. I am very grateful to the teachers who contacted me to get final work in and make final presentations. I'm grateful to the ones who let him take the brunt of his own actions, including failing to show up for one-on-one conferences, yet also angry that they didn't contact me.

When grades arrived, the faculty was already gone for the summer. I have sent emails to all of them, hoping they will check email over the summer. (I did have a conversation with one before he left) Mainly I want to plan a management system with and for DS, and me, for next year. I told DS last year I wasn't going to be checking the online grade book, but I did remind him to check himself. That is one thing that will change.

He is registered for two APs next year. While I fully expect the school to keep him in honors classes, the APs are another story. I don't know what they will do with that. He has the summer materials, and will start work on them when he gets home from camp. If they give us grief about it, I hope his showing commitment already will help.

Bluemagic, do you have plans for managing and keeping up with the homework status?

Haven't figured that out yet.

Because he was in honors this year for most of his classes there wasn't a lot of busy work. The big problem with that was the outlines & notebooks in S.S. and the second semester Spanish teacher who gave no tests till the final. Science labs aren't busy work. A lot of work that wasn't turned in was not because he didn't know it was due, but rather he has had this mental block all spring and couldn't seem to output even short paragraphs of writing like the conclusion of lab report. In addition I think the teacher told the kids (and my son missed it) that labs were always due some set time after the lab, and my son missed this memo.

I'm not sure of my plan yet. It's just sinking in that he has zero chance of honors science, or math. Because of his writing grades, S.S. and English honors were off the table a while ago. School has already promised me that the counselor will hand pick his teachers. Next week we are testing him to see if he has a processing problem, or it's just some sort of writing anxiety. After we know more it will be easier to form a plan.

AP Classes aren't really in the picture till Junior year. The only AP class that he could take next year is AP US History, and I do not want him in that class because while he would love the in class discussion that class is a mountain of work the way it is taught at our H.S. It is simply not worth the amount of stress involved. It's the math & science I am most frustrated about.

bluemagic and Notherben, I do think that the take-away message with kids like ours (mine is one, too) is that they DO need more scaffolding with skills that other children tend to learn and take to heart when they are in early middle school.

The real problem is that at that point, note-taking and an assignment book seem so incredibly useless and redundant to kids with high cognitive ability. I really saw that with my DD. Honestly, she was able to ACE AP US History without taking any notes. I left it alone, quite frankly, because with the virtual school, the assessments were all that mattered, more or less, and she was acing those handily using her idiosyncratic method. Whatever works, yk?

She did the exact same thing with geometry when she was in 8th grade, incidentally-- she overestimated her recall, tanked the first exam in the second semester (due to her procrastination, frankly) and then realized that it was weighted SO heavily that there was no way to earn an A in the class... and then she stopped TRYING. She resists doing enough practice in math for the material to truly STICK, and then struggles on assessments sometimes when she gets in over her head. It's maddening to watch.

I was pulling my hair out over that class for the rest of the year. It was awful.

On the other hand, she needed the supports of me being on top of when things were due, and helping her to put them on a calendar that she checked on each day, etc. I had to spot check her notebooks in every class to make sure that she was taking adequate notes. I did that until she was a senior in high school.

My friends who have a pair of children (HG+) did this with their older son-- the one that we claim is my DD's Sith twin, btw...
until he was into his second semester in college. He was just YOUNG. Their younger child is still in secondary, and they are also doing it with him, though he's less "difficult" this way than my DD or their older son.

All kids seem to need about two to three years of demand/load on some executive function-related academic skills, and until they get that, they NEED scaffolding.

It is a real bummer to me that schools don't understand that GT kids usually don't GET "load" placed on those things until high school. We ran into that ourselves; the school interpreted any concern on our part as "well then clearly she doesn't belong in ____ class/grade." To which I countered-- yeah-- but it's not the MATERIAL that is the problem. It's the work-output and expectations of independence/study skills.

DD still needed the same supports that middle schoolers get in abundance, and so did her Sith Twin. I'm realizing that many HG kids seem to. It's that delayed executive development that comes as part of the package deal. We have every expectation that we'll be hounding her not to leave assignments to the last dying minute NEXT year (her first in college) as well. {sigh}


{hugs}

My advice? INSIST that you be given complete transparency on any electronic messages, assignment websites, etc. I hold all of our DD's passwords, and I use them to check on this stuff. Regularly. It's the only way that I can casually ask after things that I know to be on the horizon, and for which I'm seeing no effort or attention at all on her part. It's not perfect, but it's better than it would be otherwise. I leave her alone about stuff that she DOES seem to be doing, and it is getting better over time.

All of that to note that this seems to be somewhat norrmal for HG kids, and that there IS hope.

Having one DS as a HS Soph. and one as a college Soph. right now, I've got really mixed feeling on grading practices and how to best guide GT kids through HS.

While I agree that often HS grading practices are unfair, illogical, and often don't reflect well the students actual understanding of the material......I also have to shrug my shoulders and ask, "Do you think it's going to be better in college?"

Trust me, I've had the same thoughts as all of you when it comes to my boys and their grades in HS. I've been severely frustrated with group projects in particular (I swear, I just felt steam coming off of everyone who just read that about group project grades) I often have been literally pulling at my hair when it comes to HS teachers and their inconsistent and illogical grading practices, however, college professors are as bad if not worse with absolutely zero expectations of compliance to a grading standard or common practice. Worse yet, the majority of college professors have had little or no credit hours in actual educational practice.

We can go all commando on HS grading as parents, however, if we do then we need to push the point just as much with college educators, otherwise, we might just be better off having HS education be just as inconsistent and discombobulated in grading, at least they'll be accustomed to it.

Perhaps as parents of HS students, the best thing we can do when it comes to helping our kiddos is to help them start each class on the right foot by teaching them to ask some key questions about each class and that teacher:
1. How is this class graded? (Weighted grades, behavior, homework, etc.)
2. What is the teaching style of the teacher?
3. How much of the class grade is based on behavior?
4. How is extra credit earned if there is any available?
5. How firm are deadlines? (is late work discounted or simply not taken?)
6. How important are notes? Are they allowed to be used during tests?
7. When is the teacher available outside of class?
8. Is there a class syllabus available?
9. Will feedback be given on homework or is it graded on completion? (Believe it or not, some teachers still do this )
10. Are rubrics available for assignments?
11. What are this teacher's pet peeves?

As much as I HATE to say it, knowing how the game is played is the first part of doing well in it, knowing how any system works is the first step. When your child goes to college, they'll quickly learn for example that the website "Rate my professor" is one they should frequent and can save them serious grief.

YES.

EXACTLY the kind of scaffolding I'm talking about.

Employers care about conformity, diligence and reliability, not just smarts. If grades are more useful to them if they contain a homework component, that's an argument for basing grades on more than exam results. It's my impression that few employers look at high school transcripts -- either you graduated or did not. But some employers do look at college transcripts, and college grades depend on "homework" (problem sets and term papers), not just exam scores. My eldest son got A's on all his final exams but in only about half of his classes, because of missing or poorly completed homework. He is very smart, but employers and therefore colleges would be rational in preferring someone equally smart but who also has his act together. I turned the corner in 7th grade, which he enters this fall. I hope he will too.

Sorry he is going through this. As a parent it can be painful to watch a child flounder. These articles may be of interest:
from the Davidson Database - Tips for Parents: Executive Functioning at Home & School
from SENG - Gifted Education, What I Wished I Knew Sooner

The articles above are just a few of the many available which give some tips on addressing issues of asynchronous development, potential learning disabilities, and/or poor executive function while helping children develop an internal locus of control. By contrast, there are also articles (and cartoons) on helicopter parenting, available from a wide variety of sources including psychology today.

Thanks for the suggestions/support. He really needed very little of this last year in 8th. (Except in his easiest class science.) And this year.. I did get the memo this spring to add the extra scaffolding but a bit too late. And I didn't quite figure out why we had the missing science labs until the past week.

Last night he told me he really has no idea how to study. Many of the kids is his classes were studying for weeks before finals but he is clueless what they do. He did very very little studying for the English & Social Studies class and Aced them with little effort (without needing all those outlines that didn't get finished correctly) and this makes it hard to teach these skills. I agree it really is a waste to study for days for no reason.

I agree. Homework can be useful and helpful. There is really no way to be good at higher level math without butt in seat doing problems. Even those who are intrinsically excellent at math need to do problems. Science LABS need to be written. These are not busy work and need to be done and the teacher SHOULD take off for not turning them in. Learning to write a well designed project is a useful skill for college classes & the working world.

My son didn't have too much what I would call "busywork" this year. The homework load was really not that high until the last 3 weeks with the end-of-year S.S. project. Although that is another issue.. that project took my son 25-30 hours and was only worth as much weight as the final that he studies for 30 minutes. It was more this processing and/or anxiety that was getting in the way. For example in Spanish the homework that wasn't turned in was an assignment to "write 8 sentences using some rule" (like vocabulary for a chapter, or a in certain tense.) He couldn't do this without my talking him through the project. He seems to have a good grasp on the grammar and vocabulary. This is why were are looking into the processing issues. This problem was really consistent problem in all but his math class.

In middle school I did this and more with the support of DS's teachers. He was happy to have me back away, but when he got in too deep he didn't want to ask for help. He is, perhaps, afraid that if he asks for help, even coming up with a topic, that the teacher will think he doesn't belong in the class. I know he's afraid of appearing irresponsible, and yet that's exactly what happens. Hhe knows he's not an "imposter", it's the teacher's perception he is worried about. I'm glad to know this is not uncommon.

I like the term scaffolding, good metaphor.

Old Dad, I think your list is a good conversation starter for a school year, and one to be repeated periodically during the year to learn how the syllabus and the class year mesh. The teachers do give good syllabi (?) but if we talk about it in terms of those questions, together, it will help us (student, teacher, parent) get started on the same track.

This is not uncommon. A resource from the Davidson Database may be of interest - http://www.davidsongifted.org/db/Resources_id_11291.aspx The Study Skills Checklist may be a great place to begin.

You may wish to share with your son that although there many ways to study, the goal is to ensure that you have absorbed, processed, can recall and make connections with the material presented. Some may prefer rote memorization, others may enjoy reading/review, some may take notes, others may list what they believe are interesting connections or questions. Studying can be in the form of quizzing one's self. Being able to summarize/articulate overarching ideas and also recall details such as a sequence of events or technical terms often means one has completed studying and will perform their best on the test.

When the material may seem meaningless, you may wish to help him learn to make connections. For example, interesting/relevant news stories and scientific advances may be good sources of material for connecting to a particular piece of literature, history, math, etc, which he may not otherwise relate to.

Best wishes to your son, I believe he will soon excel.

Not really true, at least at my university, and I think at most of the good ones. The syllabus is considered to be a contract between the student and the professor. If a professor tries to spring extra assignments not stated on the syllabus, or grade an assignment based on anything other than academic quality, the student can initiate a grievance procedure and will probably win.


Guilty as charged. However, most of us are deeply passionate about getting our students to understand the material that we care so much about, and we learn from experience what helps students to "get it" and what doesn't. I will admit though that the first several semesters of students I taught did not get the most awesome teaching experience ever.

Notice I didn't say there wasn't a guide as to what is expected of the students by the professor, I said there was zero expectation of common practice and grading policy. In short, each professor can pretty much dictate what makes up a students grade. If they want the final to count for 75%, homework to count for 5%, and class attendance to weigh in at 20% so be it. If the next professor wants homework to account for 75%, the final 5%, and bringing a pen, paper, and text book to class each day to account for 20%, that's fine too. In short, no reasonable standardization of expectations.

Thanks for responding to my concerns, however, I'm afraid being passionate about getting students to understand often doesn't equate to having the tools to be able to do so just like my wife often says about certain teachers at school, "He's a really nice man.".....which doesn't equate to them being a good teacher either.

In public school we assume that teachers have had a reasonable amount of training in teaching methodology, differentiation, educational psychology, etc. I think expecting the same thing from those who teach at the highest levels isn't unreasonable. While I understand that after a few classes a professor will gain skills, they should START with a basic set of teaching skills and best practice of teaching only honing those already learned skills rather than learning those basic teaching skills after numerous classes / years.

I don't think a degree in education really prepares someone for teaching, except in meeting legal requirements. I've read that Teach for America recruits with only a few weeks of training do at least as well as new teachers with education degrees. See for example https://www.teachforamerica.org/sites/default/files/what_the_research_says_oct2013.pdf , although the source is TFA .

I agree with your statement there and I've written as much in this forum previously, however, a degree in education prepares someone to teach much better than having taken few or NO credits in educational practice as is the case with the mass majority of college professors, I think that's pretty much a given.

Most of the REALLY good educators I know would also agree-- and I've seen it too often to discount it as anecdote; good teachers can be shaped, but they cannot be MADE. It's an inborn trait. Some people have it, and others don't. What's a real shame is that teaching programs don't put teachers into teaching settings SOONER in their college careers. In STEM, at least, and frequently in other disciplines as well? You're IN the classroom teaching sections of students from your first terms as a graduate student. It's called being a T.A. and it's how most graduate programs function. I was in a graduate program where Gen Chem was a MACHINE-- and there were 25 T.A.'s for that class alone. All graduate students. By the end of that first year, it was already clear who had it and who didn't.

So yes, I did get training in educational and classroom practices during my years in graduate school. Not everyone does, I suppose. But then again, at least we know more about the subject than someone with a secondary teaching endorsement does.

Yes, classroom autonomy is a thing. Then again, that's what college teaching is about-- the freedom for the professor to do what s/he feels works best for his/her instructional style, the material at hand, and the course coverage. There is oversight, btw, into what particular courses must cover. I couldn't just opt to teach Faradaic electrochemistry in an upper division Instrumental Analysis course-- because ACS said that wasn't what that course needed to cover.

I could, however, decide that an "A" in my class meant anything that I liked with respect to demonstration of mastery.

So back to our DSs. If we work on study skills and homework completion, will the turning it in happen more often, too?

I thought I was done checking the online grade book 3 times a week, but I'll be back to it, and emailing when I see inconsistencies with what he is telling me.

In the meantime, he'll start on his summer work. I just happened to be on the school website when I saw that a textbook for an AP could be picked up. He never told me about that, and he had the handout about it in his papers. We need to use Old Dad's list for every handout, I think. DS also missed a field trip that was the culmination of a unit, though of course not required. I just found the permission slip in his papers. It is something I can take him to myself this summer, and I think I will. Besides, there's a boat ride involved

I check the online grade book often, but it doesn't help if the teachers only update once every 2-3 weeks. I often don't find something hasn't been turned in until weeks later.

My son isn't that bad about knowing what needs to be turned in. Or what paperwork I need to see. But has started not doing thing he thinks are "hard". My son doesn't have any summer work except reading, since he isn't in any AP classes. Except he is taking a writing class/clinic starting next Monday. And of course practicing his clarinet.

bluemagic, do you think that it would help for him to get a dose of what his adult reality will hold in store if he continues to practice this sort of laissez faire approach to academics?

I mean-- maybe it IS "good enough" for what he wants, ultimately. Maybe.

But he should probably know where this particular road goes. Maybe a job outside the house this summer might be helpful? That was certainly a potent motivator for me at that age.

Blue magic, we have the same child, seriously. Mine also plays the clarinet. And the same gap in teachers logging grades. Not all, but some. I may start emailing every week to check.