Middle School updates

[186momx]

How are things going with all of your tweens/teens now that school is all started?

[186momx]

DD got put in the opposite cohort from all of her friends. The first 2 weeks her school BFF was sitting with the cool group that is all in the same class and they were excluding DD. DD has been eating alone. I don't know if BFF mom said something or what changed but starting last Friday DD said that BFF started sitting with her and yesterday when there was plenty of room at the cool group table she choose to sit with DD. Friends' mom has also been giving DD a ride the last couple days so the girls can have a few minutes to talk.

DD did chat with the counselor and she was appalled at how the kids were split up and said that DD if things were still not going well by the end of the month that she would talk with the teachers and see if kids needed to shift around to make the classes more even. DD says she is fine with being in the other cohort as long as the kids are nice to her at lunch.

[k3am]

Oh middle school. It's a love/hate relationship right now.

I hate our grading policy. Bomb a test? Retake it as many times as you want. They'll take the higher grade. So get a 60% the first time, retake THE EXACT SAME TEST and get 100%. But if you got a 80% the first go round? No retake to get 100% for you. So in this scenario, DD had a higher grade than our neighbor's son who didn't need to retake the test because he got a B. The teachers all say this is in accordance with district policy. Friends at other schools in the district though? Different policy, which they ALSO say is in accordance with district policy.

I appreciate the concept. DD got a 4/10 on the last math quiz and is devastated. I like that she gets the opportunity to focus on what she did wrong and bring her grade up. But I wish there were a limited number of attempts per semester. Or that they averaged the grades. Or you couldn't get higher than some percentage... anything. Or even just give EVERYONE, even those with good grades, the chance to retake.


The friendships and social side of middle school is so damned dramatic. DD is, of course, never at fault, the only one being asked to reflect on if what she said or did could be the reason someone is upset, even if unintended, etc, because she is perfect.

[sandandsea]

So far 7th grade is way smoother than 6th but I think it’s because we pulled him out of algebra and put him into accelerated 7th grade math (Grade 7&8 in 1 year) whereas last year we kept with accelerated 6th grade (Grade 6-8 in 1 year). It’s made this year a lot less stressful and he’s getting his homework done on homeroom everyday which was impossible last year, so it’s a much lighter load.

However, his pediatrician refused to sign his physical which he needs by 10/4 for school soccer because she heard a heart murmur and referred him to a cardiologist. He has anemia (always has had it and went through alllllll the tests when he was younger, and it’s controlled with supplements) so it’s likely due to that but he plays club soccer and has played for his school team too so now we have to rush to see the cardiologist to get the sign off. It’s good to get it checked out but also annoying that we had to wait 2 months for the physical and now are in a rush or he can’t try out for school soccer. So we will see.

[waverly]

The students get to choose their seats at lunch, but then they have to stay there and it is written down somewhere and they can't move for a while maybe a semester? DS has a good group of boys, and I just sent out his birthday party invite, so we are good there.

You all heard the Washington DC trip room drama actually caused by the moms and not the boys though. Ironically, he is not inviting 2 kids from the room he was kicked out of. 1 kid he was never friends with, and the other one he just didn't want to invite. I don't think it is related, but I thought it was ironic. We are creating our own event, the brithday party, without them (ha ha take that). And 1 can't make it from the room. He is doing great in his classes. Still working with the tutor, but just has grown so much. I'm very proud. 

DD sits with 2 friends and most of her soccer team. She is tired from getting up early and all the homework. I did see a couple of missing assignments just today, but otherwise all A's. She was mad at me that she missed the cross country deadline, but I honestly think doing that and soccer would have been too much considering how rough soccer can be sometimes.

Overall it is going great. We have a very good principal, counselor, and VP, so I wasn't too concerned. There have been a few teachers that are not my favorite. But the ones, I didn't like in DS's 6th grade year, DD did not get. I really like DS's math teacher. He is a great male role model and super professional and approachable.

[sdlaura]

DD is a month into middle school. She's in 7th grade but middle school here is only 7th and 8th. It's going OK.

On the plus side - she gets to spend more time with a lot of her friends who went to different elementary schools, that she knew from sports/preschool/camps, etc. She made the flag football team that is mostly her friends and her same coach from spring Friday night lights last year. She's taking some hard classes and I think is being challenged, which she wasn't really in elementary school. And she's learning a lot about staying organized and keeping on top of homework and planning ahead - like on Tuesdays she really doesn't have time to do homework since she has flag football practice right after school then softball 5:30-7:30, so she needs to do her homework in advance. I think that's a good life skill.

On the negative side - she's annoyed to be taking hard classes that have a lot of homework. And it seems like lunchtime is a little nuts. There's only one lunch period for the whole school (800 kids) and limited tables, so the 8th graders kick out the 7th graders from the tables. But I figure at least she has friends to eat with, even if it's not in their preferred spot.

I have her walking to and from school. I think it's a little nuts that so many parents drive their kids from our street that is only a half mile from school in a safe neighborhood/easy to cross streets, and great weather. She tries to get me to drive her almost everyday. She does enjoy stopping at 7-11 on her walks home sometimes for a slurpee

[186momx]

k3am, we can retake as often as needed too. They only force the kids to retake if they failed but all others can retake for a better grade. DD's teachers last year had to tell her she couldn't retake a couple tests just so she could get a perfect score. I also have a love/hate feeling about it. This year her LA/SS teacher told me that she could retake as often as she liked to pass with correct spelling and I said that was beside she is probably never going to be able to spell all the words correctly and stressing her out over and over trying to figure out how to spell Antartica isn't the point.

I also still can't access home access and the district IT hasn't been able to figure it out. I try every year in September and give up by October and just have DD log in via her account if I'm interested but this last year the school refused to send paper report cards because I can see them on home access!

[sdlaura]

That's a little crazy to me that you can retake tests so much! DD's English teacher won't even let a kid make up a test for an absence without a doctor's note. DD is terrified to miss a day of school with all the work from different classes.

[CrazyLucky]

DD is in 7th. Middle school here is 7th and 8th. She has at least one friend in each class, so that's good. The school is huge. Right now we're working through disappointment at not making the volleyball team. Over 150 girls tried out and they only take 20. It's crazy. I went to a small school, so basically if you wanted to play, you did.
The test policy for us is if you get anything less than an 83%, you can retake the test for the questions you missed and get half credit. So if you got a 50%, the best you could get would be a 75%, for example. I usually back the teachers up on their rules, but if one of my kid's teachers didn't let them take a test they missed due to illness without a doctor's note, I'd be up there with a quickness.
My DS just started high school and they all have the same lunch period too (1952 kids!) Most of the 9th and 10th graders eat in the gym because there is nowhere else for them to eat.

[mae0111]

Middle school itself seems to be fine so far. Dd2 is struggling with writing down assignments, specifically in Math, and her math teacher never uses the online portal. So in one week of classes, which included 4 math classes, she did twice as much work as was required.

She has a really sweet group of friends and avoids the popular kids and “queen bees”. They have to eat lunch with their advisory/homeroom, and they split her friend group between 2 advisories, so she seems ok with everything. She joined the soccer team and the play with her buddies.

Her club soccer team is where alllll the drama resides. She has some good friends on the team, but she also has some kids that just aren’t nice at all. They’re not even nice to each other half the time. The coach is trying to address it but they’re very good at being nasty out of earshot. It’s tough.

High school seems to be much better already, just 1.5 weeks in…

[sdlaura]

CrazyLucky that’s insane that they don’t make more than one team! DD’s middle school had more girls try out for flag football than they ever have, so they formed a second team.

[waverly]

Middle school question. How often do you arrange get togethers with the kids? Even if the kids arrange it if that makes sense.

I'm talking about events or a larger get together at a home. Not one on one type stuff.

For example, a group of people go to the pool or the local concert scene together.

I'm thinking that I've been so focused on childcare/ camps in the summer that I have not been coordinating that kind of stuff. I did 1 concert and 1 block party with DD's friends this summer, but that was it. And I coordiated 2 camps with friends one of which was a bust.

I'm moving away from camps next summer (14 &12) because the one sleepaway camp I wasn't feeling, and the Girl Scout camps have either closed or she aged out. So I am thinking I need to do more in this area or encourage DD and DS to do more in this area.

I coordinated nothing for DS but his horseback riding lessons. DH did coordinate a few soccer games.

[supertrooper1]

The transition to middle school is going pretty well for DS. He's in 6th grade. He has two core teachers and then rotates between PE and choir in the middle of the day. His morning core teacher sends out several messages a week on Parent Square and I haven't heard a word from his afternoon core teacher. However, too much communication from his morning teacher caused some confusion last week at his dad's house, where his dad read too much into the message and thought he should have had an assignment done. DS was excited to learn that he was being moved to an advanced math class which is his favorite subject.

I spoke with his private counselor yesterday and she was happy about his transition too, since he had dealt with some bullying last year. So far that hasn't been an issue.

[sdlaura]

waverly coordinating is mostly kid-driven for my DD. She mostly just sees her friends through sports. If my kids ask me to take them to go see a movie, I'll ask if they each want to bring a friend. I got DD relatively inexpensive concert tickets for Christmas last year, and bought four tickets so that she could invite friends (we ended up buying one more so she could bring three friends). For stuff like the pool, she is coordinating that now that she has a phone. For DS1, who is 10/in 5th grade, he'll ask me to text his friends' moms about them riding bikes together or going to the pool together.

I think if I just had my two older kids, we'd probably invite more friends along places. Like my kids will ask to go to Sky Zone or a local water park and I'd probably offer that they could each invite a friend if it was just the two of them. But since I have four kids, it's usually just our family going places.

[librarychica]

k3am, we have a similar policy but it’s at the teacher discretion. The way it was explained to us last year is that the teachers only have so much time and they’re teaching to competency not perfection. We had some seriously aggressive parents who wanted kids to retake every single non-A test and the teachers simply didn’t have the time to proctor and grade all that, they needed clearance to focus on the kids who truly needed more help and a chance to prove competency first.

waverly, MS is hard on the social stuff because some kids just appear out of now where and coordinate completely solo and I assume they have parents but I’ve never met them, and others still need to be checked through their parents. I encourage DD1 to arrange among themselves as much as possible and just dip in and out to confirm things like “yes I will be home/will drive them/etc.” Or the parent and I will have a quick “you know I’m picking Kid A up from school today? That’s okay with you!”

Sometimes she will ask me to text so&so’s parent to confirm once the kids have come up with ideas too because that parent needs to hear from an adult. I ask the same if it’s someone who we don’t have a real close relationship with, “hey have such&such reach out or give me their number so I can confirm it’s alright.”

She will also get burnt out socially and not want to hang outside of school for months at a time, so it’s very feast or famine. A lot of it is -also just running her and whomever up to school events.

[k3am]

librarychica, it's why I'm so torn on how we do it. The teachers don't have all day to proctor or make up tests for everyone, but at the same point, is having a student bomb a test, take the test home, memorize the test, and then get a 100% when taking the exact same test really teaching to competency? With this model, a student can fail 100% of the tests, then memorize the answers of the test they failed, but maybe not the how/why, and get a 100% in the class. That doesn't benefit anyone.

DD is "lucky" she'll be practicing both the quiz she failed and the revised version I made for her with new/similar problems.

[librarychica]

Yeah k3am, I missed that part. On the retake, they can’t get 100. There is some kind of cap, I don’t remember the specifics, so they can’t just keep retaking for full credit. Like the highest you can get on a retake is 85 or something. Also it isn’t 100% but I think a lot of the teachers use a question pool.

[erbear]

Sept 17, 2024 15:58:29 GMT -5 waverly said:

Middle school question. How often do you arrange get togethers with the kids? Even if the kids arrange it if that makes sense.

I'm talking about events or a larger get together at a home. Not one on one type stuff.

For example, a group of people go to the pool or the local concert scene together.

I'm thinking that I've been so focused on childcare/ camps in the summer that I have not been coordinating that kind of stuff. I did 1 concert and 1 block party with DD's friends this summer, but that was it. And I coordiated 2 camps with friends one of which was a bust.

I'm moving away from camps next summer (14 &12) because the one sleepaway camp I wasn't feeling, and the Girl Scout camps have either closed or she aged out. So I am thinking I need to do more in this area or encourage DD and DS to do more in this area.

I coordinated nothing for DS but his horseback riding lessons. DH did coordinate a few soccer games.

I coordinate nothing (kids are 13 and 15). However, this does mean that my kid is now going to a Sabrina Carpenter concert (to the tune of almost $400...) so perhaps my way isn't ideal

In all seriousness, at this age, kids don't need parents to arrange social things. If they want to do it, they'll do it. I often coach from behind the scenes ("maybe don't say it like that in the text. Try x") but I don't reach out to other parents.

[mae0111]

So... anyone have any tips about getting out the door on time?

We have to leave 3 days a week by 7:35. I have 2 drop off locations this year at the same school, so I have to wait in 2 drop off lines, so I moved our departure time up by 5 mins.

DD1 finally got out of bed today at 730. She scrambled, got dressed, brushed her teeth for like 5 seconds, and ran out to the car. No breakfast (ever), no meds (I keep backups in my bag), brushes her hair in the car.

DD1 isn't feeling great so that could be killing her this week, but she got out of bed at around 7, dressed, hair, took forever eating breakfast (necessary because she can't swallow her ADHD pills, so we empty the capsule into yogurt), but just can't seem to move along.

We have constant prodding, reminders, time checks throughout the morning. DH started staying with us during the morning rush so we can divide and conquer. The next step is me leaving someone home to drive the other one, then going back out with the late one... but that's really inconvenient and I'd rather not. Both kids were left home at least once last year, making them late.

Everything that can be packed/set out the night before, is done. Clothes set out, sports bags packed, school bags packed. Lunch is provided at school, snacks are all grab n go or I will cut up an apple for DD2 while she's eating breakfast.

Any ideas? I've told them if they can't get it together, I'm waking them at 630 instead... but it won't help...

[waverly]

Hey all, thanks for the reality check.

Several of my friends (but our girls are not friends) have coordinated at least 5 group events with moms and daughters all summer. We were not invited because I am friends with 2 moms individually but not the other two and because the girls are not friends. When I try to coordinate then we get left out anyway because of this, so I definitely would not be coordinating with their group anyway.

I've been trying to do the behind the scenes thing where I tell DD hey there is a carnival do you want to check with friend to see if they want to go. They do, then they arrange their parents to go etc. Or hey there is a school event do you want to see if so and so is going? I see that is more the norm on this board.

[mae0111]

waverly, I really don't coordinate any group meet-ups. My social anxiety cannot handle anything like that.

We have wound up with unexpected groups of kids coming through our house at different times, but with very little coordination.

I feel like the only time we've done adult/kid group meet-ups coordinated by parents was when 3 families all happened to be on vacation at the same time in the same location. We didn't plan it - it happened quite by accident. So once we each knew the others would be there, we planned 3 different meet-ups that week, plus a couple more with just the kids hanging with one family or another.

[mommyatty]

mae0111- you’re going to have to wake them up earlier. And for DS, his capsule is emptied into ONE BITE of yogurt. Not like into a cup of yogurt. So if DD2 only gets one bite of yogurt for breakfast, maybe she will start hurrying along.

DD is doing well. She’s in what is the third year of Middle School at her school/first year of Upper Middle. She hasn’t had a single late assignment this year, which was her goal. Her grades are all good. She has sweet friends. She’s met some 8th grade girls playing field hockey for her school, and that’s been good for her too.

[mae0111]

mommyatty, if she can taste it, she won't eat it. We've experimented with buying big tubs of yogurt and just having 1-2 bites, but she complains that she can taste it. I don't know why she can't just swallow the capsule since she can take Dayquil liquigels, which are like twice the size... we'll keep working on it...

[mommyatty]

mae0111- we give it like medicine. DH literally puts the spoon in his mouth.

[sandandsea]

We can do test retakes but it kinda sucks. It’s a whole new test and the best score you can get is a 70% and if you get a worse grade than your original you keep the lower grade. So if I got a 68% on a test I’m not risking a retake and am stuck with the bad grade. It makes the retake not worth the stress of another test.

[186momx]

mae0111, is there any other way for your girls to get to school other than you driving them (public transportation)? What would happen if you just left without them and then they waverly,had to figure out how to get to school?

DD got a B+ on her test last Friday. She misspelled Pacific, Atlantic, and Antartica by adding an extra A to the oceans and forgetting the A at the end of Antartica. She was going to talk to her teacher about redoing the spelling of those words to show she can learn how to spell them but knows if she attempts the test again she will end up still spelling something wrong. She is also going to rat out another student who was bragging about getting a 100% because she wrote the words on her arm to copy. She has another test on Friday and again she has to be able to spell things correctly to get them correct not just have them placed on the map correctly. Is writing a scathing email to the SPED department for them not setting up DD to succeed post IEP, okay?

waverly, I set up nothing socially for DD. That would be embarrassing.

[sdlaura]

mae0111 my 3 older kids need to leave at 7:45 am (they walk themselves). DD has a morning routine and gets mad at me if I don't wake her up at 7. I can wake the boys at like 7:20 and they still have time to eat something. Is your DD happy with the current situation, or would she be willing to determine a time that is ideal and ask you to wake her by then at the latest? I think if I could wake my kids 5 minutes before departure and they were happy to eat something in the car, I would be OK with it if they were. But not if it's always a struggle.

waverly I do see some other neighborhood kids on social media (because I'm connected with their parents) who are at every local concert or event with a group of friends (and parents together, too). But I don't think that's the norm, nor do I want it to be for my kids.

[vasc]

So far it’s smooth sailing for DD in 6th. She has friends in all classes and also on the bus. I’ve heard new names mentioned in the mix as well. We are fortunate that they’re a nice group of girls, many of whom overlap with extracurricular activities.

DD is happy that her two electives, PE and piano, are easy with no homework. Some of the friends chose Agriculture, Spanish, and Creative Writing and the work load for those is harder.

[dglvrk2]

k3am, I hear you about the multiple test retake options. One retake? Fine. It promotes growth mindset and reflection. Multiple retakes? What is it teaching?

I'm in the middle school friendship drama muddle too. DD1 can define it better this year: gossip and boys seem to be the biggest problems and some of the "popular" girls are the biggest initiators. She's admitted to gossipping more than necessary, but I don't think I always get the full story from her

We had an intense doctor's/psychiatrist appointment yesterday where the doctor diagnosed DD1 with generalized anxiety disorder with some depression tendencies. This comes as no surprise. DD1 plans to continue seeing her therapist, who she loves. Medications are now also an option. We are weighing the benefits/costs of starting these.

Overall, her social situation seems to have improved a bit. She still doesn't have friend who she really connects with at school, but has gone out of her way to do things with a couple of girls each weekend since school started 4 weeks ago. She also made friends with a couple girls at camp (out of state) over the summer who she still talks to on a weekly basis.

She will be going out for her school's volleyball team in November. She has played on two club teams since the end of last year's school season. I'm pretty sure that she has significantly improved in her skills and has definitely worked harder than most of her school teammates at this since the end of the last season - only two other players join club teams since then... Still, she's not the most natural volleyball player. I do worry other kids could just take a few clinics and pick it up way more easily than she did. I'm wondering if I should say something to the coaches about how much she has worked before tryouts in November. Thoughts?

[erbear]

.

She will be going out for her school's volleyball team in November. She has played on two club teams since the end of last year's school season. I'm pretty sure that she has significantly improved in her skills and has definitely worked harder than most of her school teammates at this since the end of the last season - only two other players join club teams since then... Still, she's not the most natural volleyball player. I do worry other kids could just take a few clinics and pick it up way more easily than she did. I'm wondering if I should say something to the coaches about how much she has worked before tryouts in November. Thoughts?[/quote]


Do not do this. If the other kids make the team over her, help her to move on from that.