There were lots of things we wanted Vincent to do before leaving for Denmark, before or during this one week he has between school ending (Friday) and flying away (Monday 10 days later). It turns out that he won't be able to finish his on-line second-semester Algebra 1 class, because he had trouble acing the practice final exam, which you have to get an 85% on before you can go in to take the final. But, it turns out that, if he can get that score Sunday, he may be able to take the final on-line, as long as he can get his Humanities teacher (Carrie), one of the Danish teachers, or even one of his host parents, to proctor exam. The on-line class staff usually wants students in to take finals so they make sure that no one else is taking the final for them and that they're not consulting the book or the notes or other people during the exam. So Vincent may be taking the SAT at Copenhagen International School next Saturday and his Algebra 1 final next Monday and Roskilde school. For better or worse, this probably won't top some of his classmates, who are going to Hamburg, Germany, the next week, to take the ACT. We did buy Vincent a cheap digital camera, and so hopefully we'll get to see some pictures of the slew of sites that he and his classmates are slated to see in Denmark (including Elsinore, the castle in "Hamlet," the birthplace of Hans Christian Andersen, Sweden, and a three-day music festival that draws people from all around Europe, which they're going to camp at. Vincent's teacher is going to be blogging (blog address above and to the right), and now perhaps Vincent can contribute both photos and text to the blog.
A major requirement of graduating from Vincent's school is completion of a senior project. The projects typically have written and other activity components to them and feature an advisor and essentially a defense before a project committee (much like a college senior paper or M.A. thesis). They have increasingly been pushing students to make community service a big part of their projects, and this year some students barely did anything or at the last moment. So in the new system, students must complete a total of 20 hours of volunteer work during the summer, which they and their supervisor and their parents must attest to, and this volunteer work is supposed to help lead them into a project, which they are essentially supposed to complete by New Year's. Doing volunteer work is something Vincent - at least officially - loathes, and it's not easy for him to get it done anyway, since he's slated to be away for all but about three weeks this summer, to Denmark, church camp in North Carolina, and in Ohio with his father. Vincent and I arranged for him to volunteer at the local branch library (which Frisco and I walk by on one of our morning circuits - St. Matthews-Eline library - picturd above - which shares with the St. Matthews city hall and police station what used to be an elementary school). But it's been a little tough to persuade Vincent to follow through. I don't want to let Vincent leave it all until the end of the summer, when he ought to already have it done. Vincent did go in on Tuesday and Saturday and volunteered for about three hours each (he's almost a third of the way there). He packed bookbags for kids involved in the summer reading program and helped set up things for the new Anime club at the library there (which drew a pretty sparse crowd) Tuesday, and Saturday he shelved books in the kids' and teen sections ("busy work," he called it) (before he got in the car with me to go to a movie). Vincent always needs massive quantities of rest/sleep, and as it starts to get hotter and he craves rest between the school year and the Denmark trip, he resents having to be a little busy during this off week (he also mowed the lawn and twice went for two-hour ACT math review sessions with his math teachers at school this past week - but he didn't go at all to martial arts classes). He came home Tuesday and took a two-hour night, saying he'd been working hard all day (that is, stuffing the back packs - for about two hours).
I've gone ahead and started packing for him, which he doesn't like, but hoepfuly he - and I - will be ready to go - Monday.
A major requirement of graduating from Vincent's school is completion of a senior project. The projects typically have written and other activity components to them and feature an advisor and essentially a defense before a project committee (much like a college senior paper or M.A. thesis). They have increasingly been pushing students to make community service a big part of their projects, and this year some students barely did anything or at the last moment. So in the new system, students must complete a total of 20 hours of volunteer work during the summer, which they and their supervisor and their parents must attest to, and this volunteer work is supposed to help lead them into a project, which they are essentially supposed to complete by New Year's. Doing volunteer work is something Vincent - at least officially - loathes, and it's not easy for him to get it done anyway, since he's slated to be away for all but about three weeks this summer, to Denmark, church camp in North Carolina, and in Ohio with his father. Vincent and I arranged for him to volunteer at the local branch library (which Frisco and I walk by on one of our morning circuits - St. Matthews-Eline library - picturd above - which shares with the St. Matthews city hall and police station what used to be an elementary school). But it's been a little tough to persuade Vincent to follow through. I don't want to let Vincent leave it all until the end of the summer, when he ought to already have it done. Vincent did go in on Tuesday and Saturday and volunteered for about three hours each (he's almost a third of the way there). He packed bookbags for kids involved in the summer reading program and helped set up things for the new Anime club at the library there (which drew a pretty sparse crowd) Tuesday, and Saturday he shelved books in the kids' and teen sections ("busy work," he called it) (before he got in the car with me to go to a movie). Vincent always needs massive quantities of rest/sleep, and as it starts to get hotter and he craves rest between the school year and the Denmark trip, he resents having to be a little busy during this off week (he also mowed the lawn and twice went for two-hour ACT math review sessions with his math teachers at school this past week - but he didn't go at all to martial arts classes). He came home Tuesday and took a two-hour night, saying he'd been working hard all day (that is, stuffing the back packs - for about two hours).
I've gone ahead and started packing for him, which he doesn't like, but hoepfuly he - and I - will be ready to go - Monday.
1 comment:
What about getting Vincent to mentor Stephanie's students? God knows those ELLs need all the help they can get outside of school hours! For the past 2 years, I've been working on developing/partnering with Spanish teachers (Erica Hughes and Lucille Torres, Stephanie may know them) at Rickards HS for their Spanish as a FL students to mentor my Hispanic ELLs. It's been on/off so far but next school year, we have an idea to have the Rickards students meet my ELLs at an evening parent meeting at Pineview. This way, we hope, they will feel better about meeting families in an organized manner rather than calling the parents on their own and trying to meet the kids.
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