Tween School advice

[houseelf]

I have hungrily read the college confusion thread. I'm a couple years behind you all in this. Give me your best advice on guiding my kid through curriculum choices, tracking, and testing. What have you learned along the way that you can share with me? Reading that thread makes me realize that I know nothing about this stuff. Help. My sons' friends were over the other night and I found out that their older brothers have all had tutors just to keep up with the AP curriculum. Uh, when did this phenomenon start happening?

Also, give me your thoughts about middle school and high school sports teams. What do you wish you knew about try outs, schedules, preparing for this level of team sports, etcetera. Do you really have to do more than just rec league to be able to make the cut for M.S. or H.S.

Holy crap, I know nothing about any of this. Hit me with everything you got. If you've got any good reads for the upcoming teen years, I'm all ears.

[SoonerTexan]

Also, give me your thoughts about middle school and high school sports teams. What do you wish you knew about try outs, schedules, preparing for this level of team sports, etcetera. Do you really have to do more than just rec league to be able to make the cut for M.S. or H.S.

Depends on the district & school. In Texas, it's harder than other states, especially in the large districts. You pretty much need to start your desired sport in elementary school (or earlier) to keep up. Most kids get on select teams in middle school to get on the high school teams. I only know this because it burned me (swim team) and it was a never ending source of drama with my little sister. "But if I don't play Select I wont get on the high school team..whaaaa!"

As for AP, it has its ups and downs. I enjoyed a lot of my classes and got a lot of credit in college for them. However, some colleges don't take AP credit at all and in some cases the AP version of the course is harder than it would be in college. I will never regret not taking AP Calculus or Spanish. Some of those courses are real beatdowns. School districts and teachers can also go a little nuts with them. My AP US History teacher once went on a rant about how you SHOULD expect to have 20 hours/week of homework in his class and if you had to stay up all night to do it, so be it. That was overboard. I never even spent that much time on a history class in college!

[ladymoreta]

My US History teacher told all of us not to take the AP test for his class because it was ridiculous.

I didn't have a typical HS experience, so I'm not much help, but I think it's worthwhile to try to get some credits before starting if possible. These can be done through AP tests, summer college courses after senior year, concurrent enrollment during senior year (not all schools have this option), or CLEP tests once your child is enrolled in college.

If you're considering a school that offers National Merit scholarships (OU!), that would be worth investing in some PSAT study materials or a course geared towards the test.

I know nothing about the sports.