Finally after several days of rain. The sun is shinning! I am so excited to share some amazing news! First I will start by saying that a negative person attempted to destroy my joy yesterday so today I just have to take a moment to brag about my son.
Yesterday we had to take him to the campus to get his placement testing done, this is something that needs to be done every year that he attends this online school because they need to see where he is and what he has learned. Well we sent him to this school because he wasn't able to have several 8th grade classes in the 7th grade at other public schools and he was testing way higher than IB classes for middle school. So the only choice was to pull him from public schools all together and homeschool him. But then the MPS Home schooling program sent papers about this new online schooling option allowing middle school students to take the grade level of work that they test at verses what grade they are currently in. So we ended up at the online school.
He loves it. And it has been challenging but one thing this did was get us (his parents) even more involved in his education. And so what we did is start to look into more information about stress and testing and ways to help our child not be so stressed when it came to taking tests. Well we noticed immediately that the methods that we selected worked very well for him. And we kept working with him so that he could learn those methods (that fit him) so that he wouldn't be so nervous or stressed. All this information was found on the internet and through self help books that I read with him during the school year!
We have seen 110% increase in his testing since then. Last year we knew that he should have tested much higher than 8th grade levels but at the same time we didn't judge or belittle that accomplishment. We just wanted to make sure that we found something for him to handle the anxiety he feels when he takes tests. And of course without medication, but just a way for him to calm himself.
Ok I'm getting to the details I promise... yesterday after testing almost for 3 hrs (with some breaks in between) we received the scores. But what was so amazing was that he came out of the testing extremely happy (without the scores) and that is an immediate change that we noticed before too. He wasn't worried about what scores he got, or how he might have gotten questions 1 or 15 wrong or anything. He was happy. He said he did his best job and that he was glad that we had found a way to make taking tests easier. We told him that we were proud of him no matter what test scores that he got.
So the scores...my 7th grade son tested at a 10th grade reading level and an 11.9th grade math level! Let's just say we were amazed! Completely amazing! So now the issue is what grade will he actual be in next year? He had a goal, he wanted to graduate highschool at 15. I didn't discourage his plans at all, but now I see that this might actually be something that he does.
So today there will be some conference calls and some planning being done per the school with us. I mean what can they do? He tests extremely high on the state tests, he gets extremely good grades, and now he is testing well beyond the grade level that he is in.
So I had to take a moment to share that little bit of good news because I rarely brag or talk about my kids' educations and where they are at with anyone. Just because honestly to me grades don't really mean as much as them doing their best! And feeling good about what they did!
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