Shifting Gears

This morning Bryan and I took Madeline to the high school she will be attending next year.  It's a school that several people we know either send or have sent their kids to and all of them have been happy with the experience.  Today we had a meeting with the guidance counselor to go over her current classes and what she would take for next year.  I'm very pleased that between the curriculum from Seton and the two independent studies that we added to her course load that she won't be missing anything that is required for her to graduate.

The only question is whether or not she will need to take biology.  It's a freshman course at this school, and with Seton it's a sophomore year course.  She's presently taking Earth Science.  The guidance counselor thinks what she has will be sufficient, but she's going to double check to make sure she won't be lacking when it comes time to apply to colleges.

Madeline spent the day shadowing a sophomore so she could get an idea of what the classes she will be taking will be like next year.  She had a good day and is looking forward to next school year.  She got to meet several of the girls who play for the soccer team and they were happy to hear that she plans to play with them.  Apparently the team needs more girls, and from what they were telling Madeline, it sounds like she'll get play time.

I'm hoping that this will be a good switch for her.  She's not particularly thrilled with the Seton curriculum, and for some of the classes I can't say I blame her.  I do feel like some of the classes are a bit on the impossible side and I've grown tired of the very obscure seemingly sneaky trick questions Seton likes to toss out in their tests.  Even with me using the test to create a study guide, I've found that there are lots of times where the correct answer to a question seems to be nowhere in the text or lesson plan.

So while I'm not entirely thrilled that we won't be homeschooling for high school any more, I do think the switch has the potential to be a good thing.  I'll know better once the school year starts and we see how things go.  What I do like about this school is it is small, has a great reputation for turning out students who are well prepared for college, and has a very good priest who used to be at our parish as a religion teacher for sophomore and senior year.  Daily Mass is even available on campus at the end of every school day for students who wish to go.  I think that's pretty cool, and I suspect it's part of the initiative started by our bishop a few years ago to foster a Catholic identity in the diocese high schools.