DS15 started last week, and right off the bat he had either a problem or a blessing. A scheduling snafu had him making some choices, and he is out of his AP history course. This is probably ok, because he doesn't like studying history at all, and it's a really tough course and teacher, and I hear the test is one of the tougher ones. He'd been up till 3am the night before the first day of school finishing the summer prep work...so I can only imagine what the rest of the year would be like. Instead, he's in a contemporary issues social studies, where he will learn the importance of history in understanding contemporary issues. It's only a semester.
Another impact of the snafu is that he moved out of the "ideal" pre-calc/calc with all his buds into another section, same teacher, but mostly upperclassmen. He's bummed about that.
He has three classes where, in different contexts or languages, he had to present an "all about me", which is excruciating for him. Not a good start,he's worried he'll have to do that kind of thing a lot in two of the classes, just because of their "themes".
He's so different from me: I asked if it's a challenge to have his two hardest classes at the end of the day. "Mom, AP chem and pre-calc/calc are the EASY ones, French and English are hard!"
Everything else is fine, although it will be a busy year. Thanks to this board for suggestions earlier this summer for SOAR, scaffolding, and reading the teacher. We've used those tips to prepare for the school year. As you can see from his 3am catch up, I can build the scaffold but he has to climb onto it, but now that the year is under way he is appreciating SOAR, and with daily checks he may keep clean with turning in homework.
