B12 Report

Well, he's doing fine in 7th grade at the public school, but he's not lovin' it.

He says the kids are fine, the teachers are fine, he has friends on the bus and at lunch, and he knows his way around now, but he wishes he were still doing iQ Academy.  His main complaint?  He feels like he doesn't have time for anything else.

And it's true.  He gets on the bus at 7:40 in the morning and doesn't get off it until 4:25.  Two days already I had to pick him up to school because we had to go somewhere--the orthodontist, theater classes.  By the time we got home and he practiced his piano and finished his homework, it's been way late for bed.

I do feel sorry for him. And a bit amused at his genuine remorse that he didn't work harder when he had so much more control over his time.  He's already promising me that things will be much different if I let him do the virtual school for 8th grade.  I will certainly open-enroll him again, to keep the option open.  (iQ Academy is becoming eAchieve Academy for next year, incidentally, for anyone who is interested.)

I wonder if he'd be feeling better about things if he didn't feel so overwhelmed by the math.  They are doing pre-algebra:  linear functions and graphing lines and whatnot.  He had just covered some of the same things in iQ Academy, but I don't know if it was making complete sense to him even then, and I was helping him a lot. He's overwhelmed because the other kids are all so fast at their homework, and he feels like he barely knows what's going on.  I spent a couple hours with him last night trying to make sure he fully understood everything (at least as much as I understand) and could do it alone.  Hopefully that will help.

His comment after the first day was, "It was a LOT of school all day, and not many breaks."

"Better than lots of breaks, and not much school," I responded with a wink.  "That's how you've been operating!"

Yeah, I feel a little bad for him.  But he needs this struggle.