merlyn_4401 | (no subject)

Blech.

Just filled out my calendar for the week, and I have evening stuff 3 nights, and a weekend obligation. Monday is scouts (missing DWTS), Tuesday is a meeting about AVID at Thunder Ridge, Thursday is the adult gymnastics class, and Saturday Evan has his 1st communion retreat.

Anyone ever heard of AVID? Jamey was recommended for the program. It's Advancement Via Individual Determination. This is from the brochure: Students will practice organizational and study skills daily, be challenged to develop critical thinking skills and as probing questions, be encouraged to seek help from peers and tutors, and actively participate in enrichment and motivational activities. AVID is a year long elective in which students learn with college tutors, improve writing, note-taking, and organizational skills, develop strategies for success for high school and beyond, visit college campuses (wut), meet, question, and interact with guest speakers, and collaborate with peers to understand and improve learning from other classes. Students must desire to work hard in school, commit to 1 hour of homework each school night, behave in class, maintain at least a C average in core classes, attend school regularly, learn study habits and work habits, achieve average and above average test scores, and enroll in rigorous college preparatory sequence of courses upon entering high school.

Basically, it's a heavy duty college prep course/track kind of thing. He has to fill out an application and get two teacher recommendations, despite being invited. I want him to do it just for the study skills/organizational stuff. He was down on it when I first brought it up - he's not interested in putting more effort in at school. But....this may be something that I push him on. I usually let him make his own decisions in terms of electives and so on, but...this could be extremely helpful for him.

Finding that line of guiding while promoting independence, which is between controlling your kid's life or letting him do whatever he wants, is blurrier than you might think.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Might help if we couch AVID as something that will help him keep JR's "B" average requirement for team WITHOUT us being on his back about grades and schoolwork - give him the tools to do so independently and in a style that works for him. Dunno...worth a try.

That is a hard line. You don't want to force it and have him do poorly because he resents it. On the other hand, it sounds like it could be really helpful for him. If you want my opinion, I would push the issue. I think it will be really beneficial long-term, and it's working on skills you know he needs. Of course, you can take it or leave it.

One of my college friends is now an AVID trainer. She posts a lot about it in FB (before I had to hide her for unrelated reasons :p). It sounded kinda like a study skills / life skills kind of thing.

Sounds like something I would have hated at the time, BUT might have been really useful when I got to college. I skated through high school getting all As without doing any of the reading and as little homework as I could possibly get away with, and got to college with ZERO study skills. I failed several classes. It wasn't until my Master's degree, when I was dating Robbie and could see him modeling good study skills in his PhD program, that I figured out that oh, hey, maybe I should do the reading. *sigh*

That said, I bet if they told me it'd be important for college I would have done it anyhow. I just would have rolled my eyes and done my best to ignore the "study skills" part - but maybe some of it would have sunk in somehow.

This is something I worry about with my kids - I've struggled my entire adult life trying to figure out how to focus and have a work ethic and finish what I start when I never ever ever did that or was taught/encouraged to as a kid/teen. So I'd probably really push my kid to do it. If they resisted every single argument I had, and had another elective they REALLY REALLY wanted to take, I'd probably drop it, but they'd really have to convince me.