S/o: what are you doing to prepare your kids for college?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
essnce629
What community service do your kids do? I think think that is a great idea, but I don't know where to start. I volunteered in the hospital ER weekly for all 4 years of high school and LOVED it! At the time I was wanting to either be an ER doctor or OBGYN (and started undergrad as a biology/premed major) so it was a great opportunity for me. I volunteered at a University childcare center as well because I've loved working with babies/kids forever and that volunteering in high school prepared me to be able to work at my university child care center my entire 4 years of college which I loved as well. I will encourage DS1 to find something he is passionate about and stick with it instead of bouncing from place to place. This includes sports, clubs, activities, community service, etc. My friends in HS who bounced from activity to activity, never sticking with something for more than a year or two had more issues getting into their first choice schools than my friends and I who did less activities, but all were ones we were passionate about and had stuck to for 4 or more years.
Yes to this. I will encourage good study skills, organization, and encourage DS1 to speak up to his teachers/advisors to ask for help, etc when he needs it. This is his first semester of middle school and he struggled with staying organized and remembering what assignments were due when. We're working on that and I've been really pushing for him to communicate frequently with his teachers and to talk with them on how he can improve his grades, what's expected of him, etc. I tell him it's his job to email and talk to all his teachers, not me. My best friend is a middle school teacher at a private Catholic k-8 school and it's insane the amount of emails she gets from her students' parents about their grades, assignments, etc. I'm sorry, but I've never emailed DS1's middle school teachers and think a 11-14 year old is totally capable of handling such a task. These are the same parents that will still be emailing their kids' high school teachers, etc and I think that is a disservice to their kids.
I started 4-h in 7th grade. I would like to get my kids involved in Girl Scouts or Campfire and would love if they could do it through middle or high school. In middle school at our current school they have required volunteer hours. If we move back up north I will encourage 4-H as well. I wish it was more known here in SoCal. Athen nearest club is 35 minutes away in a horse community.
Parents at my kids school have way too much input on school work (ie: it seems like there is a lot of hand holding), although I do have to admit that requiring 80 some middle schoolers at our school to participate in the science fair, which in the past has been optional was a little crazy. Some of those projects were pretty advanced and at the high school level IMHO.