Posts by stormymarlin22

Chill out 🙂 I totally forgot that in private high schools it’s an elective, but I guess it’s mandatory in public ones.

mellowskipper said:Well, I didn't sign my daughter up for elective German because the schedule here in our district is just... poorly planned. It's in a completely different block than her other classes. Computer Science is also in a conflicting slot, and since she actually wants to take that, there wasn't much choice. Between that and her sports practices, I just figured it would be way too much for her to handle—it might have been overkill, I guess. Besides, she never really expressed any interest in it herself.
A friend of mine teaches English and another foreign language, and she mentioned that the general guidance—or at least the recommendation—in middle schools is to give encouraging grades for electives, regardless of what the student actually knows.
But now that my daughter has suddenly decided she's dead set on attending a competitive prep school, I'm starting to second-guess everything. I'm wondering what happens with that second language requirement, and if I made a mistake by skipping it. Will kids who stuck with it for all four years have a massive advantage over her? I suppose it's hard to say.

Not really. She won't be at a disadvantage, I guess. She could always just check which electives that specific school offers. It doesn't even have to be a language course.

driftingranger2 said:I've been grinding away at German for four years now and I’m still barely scraping by with the basics. It feels like nobody puts in the work; most people I know are just coasting with a 2.0 GPA.

Same thing happened with my kid in elementary school. I heard about it ahead of time, so I just told them not to even bother signing up for the class. It’s not surprising that kids pick beginner German in high school when they already know they learned basically nothing in middle school.
From what I can tell—and I only know a few examples—most US high schools won't let advanced students take the beginner track if there's another option available. If a school offers two electives but one is blocked off, it doesn't really feel like much of an elective choice, I guess.

Maybe they just have bad teachers?

Can't colleges just set their own admission requirements? Like, deciding how much weight to give high school exams or what GPA you need to hit... I guess they should have more say in that.

I used to commute all over Washington, D.C. back in the eighties, and even though traffic wasn't nearly as insane as it is now, I still wouldn't suggest it. I mean, if a kid is dead set on a specific school, fine, but commuting from a suburb like Gary all the way to LSE just to hit a 3 PM high school schedule? Seems pretty pointless to me.

At my kid's school, they’re all just sitting in class eating during breaks. I’ve seen enough photos from the classroom lately to know that at least half of them aren't even wearing masks. I’m not saying they ditch them during lessons, but just because I can't walk into the building without one doesn't mean they aren't taking them off later on.

Yeah, true, some teachers don't even bother with masks.

Hardly anyone, I guess.

Wasn't it basically the same thing last year with self-isolation? Like, you just deal with being sick, take your SATs in the fall, and get into college if your score hits the cutoff.

https://www.amazon.com/books/classic-literature

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/space

https://www.scientificamerican.com/chemistry

Since she’s already an eighth grader, maybe it'd be worth seeing what she's actually into. I guess if we knew if she's more about art, science, or just some random hobby, picking the right book might be easier.

It’s not really a race to sign up; kids basically just get assigned to a specific school based on where they live. I guess you can submit an application to try for a different one, though there's no guarantee it'll stick—not that it's usually that hard to get into a school outside your district.