Ha, presidents as the biggest manipulators! Good shoot!
Cym, good luck today in your meeting, let us know how it goes please. We are learning so much from each other on this board!
Cym,again, thank you for the nice words about him being brilliant and me underestimating him. Of course he is and of course I am! It takes probably ten statements like that to undo the damage that is being done by the school/teachers/friends, all well meaning people. But is seems like they all think I am a pushy, pushy mom, who can't understand that the kid needs a life!
He has a life for God's sake! He has a very rich after school life, but he also has a HUGE potential and if people other than me do not realize that that potential needs to be nurtured, we are in deep, deep trouble. Of course we are!
The school means well, the teachers mean well, they really try to challenge him, but what they consider a challenge, is not a challenge at all. Extra worksheets from Science - how challenging is that? He can do them in 10 minutes before the school starts (that is actually what he has been doing, forgetting to bring home his science binder on purpose I am sure). An essay a week? It should not be a challenge, it should be a requirement when one is in 7th grade!
The most challenging class for Ghost right now is History. The teacher is great, he lectures. He did teach them at the beginning of the school a certain way to take notes (it is called something, but it eludes me as it means nothing to my brain :-), and now he just does 50 minute lectures, with frequent quizzes. Ghost loves that, he loves the subject, he says himself that this is probably the only class at school that he is learning in, besides math. I think that every subject should be like that!. He still has PE and computer every day to unwind, is it too much to ask for a solid 5 hour core every day?
There is also a problem with Spanish. He is by far the best off all the kids for which Spanish is the second language, but he is not on par with native speakers. They did try to put him with the native speakers, but it was too much. So now Spanish is really a joke! What do you do? I am already lining up a teacher that will give him conversational Spanish all through the next year. But it will have to be after school - and I am not liking that idea too much.
Everyone, everyone that I talk too at the school gives me "the look" - you know what I am talking about. Even if they don't say it, they mean it with their eyes, their body language. Those are the same people that tell me he is phenomenal! And when I try to convey that finding a proper way to go is really a challenge, they all look at me as if I was lunatic.
We talked with DH last night and are thinking that we should change our approach and be very, very frank and open with the school, not hiding our deepest thoughts. We should say that he is a Harvard (or MIT, or whatever, but not the local college) material and he is not going to get there unless he is allowed to proceed ahead. There is a reason physics, chemistry and so on, are not taught till HS, they require some basic algebra knowledge - but he will be doing pre-calc next year, so doesn't that change anything! He is smart enough to challenge himself with science olympiads, but he is not going to acomplish much if he is not allowed to fly!
As to AP classes, if the BYU course is truly self paced, I think Ghost can fly through and then decide if he wants to apply himself further. I am going to e-mail the science teacher, ask her to look at the course and make a call.
I do not like to brag to teachers about him, at least I like to think so, but during the last P/T conference I was so much against the wall that I finally blurted out, that he is being courted by Andover and Exeter. Their jaws dropped (it is a really smalish town, where 90% of college bound goes to local U and the rest to the state flagship), and then they were like :the one in Mass.? Yes. The one in N.H.? Yes. Philips Exeter? YES. Are we talking about that famous Philips Exeter? YYYEEESSS!!
That did not change anything though:-)
