Push, meet Shove

It seems I have the next couple of months pretty well mapped out for me, thanks to the up and down fortunes of Elder Teenaged Unit [henceforth "ETU"] as he continues his winding way on the path to graduation from high school.

I’ve just spent my lunch hour trading emails with his two AP English teachers. The class is what they call ‘team-taught’, so the students spend equal time with teacher Wally and teacher Ole [no, I am not making these names up] . Here’s the email I just sent off to Wally and Ole:

Thank you both for the detailed response. It’s
exactly what I was hoping for.

Monday [ETU] and I went through the list of this week’s
assigned work from the calendar on your class site.

As I understand it, [ETU] is currently supposed to be
completing the assignments for the “Oles” , is that
correct?

I saw that he had already completed the pink quiz
sheet for this week. Monday evening he did the Hamlet
reading and completed all of the purple quiz sheet.
We also printed out the packet about the position
paper, and I asked [ETU] to begin planning the position
paper.

I converted the list of class assignments that’s on
the portal into a pdf and printed it out. [ETU] and I
are going through the list hi-liting the work up to
this point that he has rec’d zero points for.
We have been wondering how many of the past
assignments he can still get some credit for if he
turns them in.

Now with the information in your email, I know the
relative weights of the papers, journals, and daily
work in figuring the class grade.

At this time, April 19th, I’m thinking the best plan
for [ETU] would be to concentrate on the remaining
papers, complete all of the journals, and do all his
daily work going forward from now through the end of
the year.

Do you think that’s the best approach? Please advise
if he should be doing anything else, or anything
differently.

As of now, [ETU] has dropped AP Physics so he can
concentrate on his remaining classes. He needs 3
credits to fulfill all his requirements for
graduation, so AP English and Government are absolute
MUSTs for him.

Going forward, I’ll be monitoring his progress as
carefully as I can.

I know this is not going to be easy for [ETU], not from
a lack of ability on his part, but more from a lack of
good study habits.

As you both can see, he’s a very bright kid, but like
some bright kids, all through his school years he’s
been able to ‘wing it’ successfully through many tests
and assignments and even entire classes without doing
a lot of the studying.
Having been there, I know that ability to BS your way
through stuff can’t last forever. It comes back to
bite you eventually.
I think this might be that bite-back moment for [ETU].

I won’t do the work for him, but I’ll do everything I
can to see that he turns things around in your class
with the hope that he can come out with a passing
grade.

And again, thank you for your response. I appreciate
it more than I can say.

So that’s my life for the duration. Work, manage the kid, and sleep [maybe]. One of the few times since labor and delivery that I’ve ever had to really step up and work hard as a parent, so I’ll give it everything I’ve got. Comes with the territory.