We moved to Canada from China last year, and part of the reason was school. But after a year and half, I am NOT enjoying the regular school experience here. My daughter is finishing 7th grade and doing great but,,, Busywork, lack of structured study plans, standardized tests and quality of instruction (lack thereof), are all driving me nuts. I have worked hard to establish a certain standard of efficiency in my professional and personal life. Hate that she has to be a follower. I hated high school myself for being forced to be someone in a cohort that I didn't belong to so likely that experience has something to do with my decision.
Likely school is not going to be rosy anywhere else, now that she is hitting that age where anxiety and peer pressure kicks in.
So I am deciding to let her start online high school and head out to practice locational arbitrage. Anyone else with college bound/teenage kids out here doing the same?
I noticed that the schooling quality changes a lot starting in grade 10, when they are selecting more courses for themselves, and there is more focus on specifics for graduation / college.
Goldilocks, thanks for your comments. In our city in Ontario, I moved her to one of the better schools once already, and the school is next to a high school ranking 90 percentile within ON.
I thought I had taken care of everything and could relax, but we have a neighbor whose kid is in that school, and listening to her, I realize that the school is probably good for STEM major candidates but not for much else. The girl is very bright and can handle AP math if not physics, but has decided to pursue digital animation, and to her, the school's rigid academic requirements are now a burden, and like so many of her peers, she hardly sleeps, cannot have a life and still feels insecure that she is not doing well enough. She missed the deadline cutoff for a transfer to another school with an arts concentration, and they are being very bureaucratic about the Transfer Rules.
Similarly, it feels equally hard to gauge the other high school options. I have looked at some nearby schools, but in the end, you have to dive in and see if your kid likes it and if she can thrive there. It's so hit or miss for something parents have to change residence for or apply for etc.
In contrast, the online high school that I am looking at has several options for Math, English and Science, some of them being very basic, so you can choose a more difficult course for subjects you are good at, and choose basic ones for those you don't want to focus on without being told to do otherwise and still get the diploma. For instance she loves Earth sciences and even star gazing, but I don't think it is translating to a love of Chemistry from what I see. The online high school has a course offering in Astronomy which I don't think is typical in a regular high school.
The good thing is that if she wants to go back to a regular high school, we can do so anytime. My current plan is to try to let her study with a realistic and solid workload but expect near-perfect grades, finish high school early and have her enroll in community college and then continue to pursue harder academics there like Algebra II if she ends up deciding it is necessary for a transfer to a 4 year college with a major she would choose at that time.
