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UCGal
ParticipantIt’s too late for this year – but the registration is in April. You need to sign up for a family account ahead of time and they email back with when your registration slot is. The slot is determined by the age/grade of the student as well as whether you’re a returning family. If you have more than one kid – in different grades, you’ll get different registration date/times.
The classes range from pure fun, to educational. I try to mix it up for my kids so they don’t hate the program.
I’ve got my soon-to-be 8th grader taking
– Magic (fun)
– Rocketry (fun)
– Engineering (less fun but he’s excited)
– C++ (less fun but he’s excited.)I’ve got my soon to be 6th grader taking:
– Fencing
– Chess (he loves chess – this was his choice.)
– Engineering
– Architecture.Classes they’ve taken in the past: The physics of roller coasters, quizlets (math/logic puzzles), cartooning, debate, guitar, sumi drawing…
You can see descriptions of the classes at gatewaysschool.org – and select “programs” then select the grade level.
For future years – make sure you have a family ID ahead of time – it stays the same through the years… then they’ll email when it’s coming time to enroll.
Participant[quote=flu]
Gateways Program?[/quote]
It’s a “fun” summer school program for kids grade 1 and up. It’s taught mainly by teachers on their summer break.
http://www.gatewaysschool.org/
But talk about tiger parents…. It’s VERY challenging to get enrolled. You have to enroll on exactly the right day at the right time slot. They’ve improved their servers – but it used to be impossible to connect, and by the time you got into the registration site most of the classes were booked. (This year was much better.)
ParticipantHi Flu –
We’re having our kids do 3 things to keep their academic chops up during the summer.
1) 30 minutes a day of Khan Academy.
2) 30 minutes a day of Code Academy (one is learning python, the other Java – they both want to learn swift – as well.)
3) 30 minutes a day of Rosetta Stone Spanish.
(Their middle school, since it’s IB, has a foreign language requirement – so this will give them a jumpstart.)Other than Gateways and 1 week of sailing camp – they are “free range” this summer… so I want to have their brains involved in more than just video games and shooting basketball.
June 17, 2014 at 6:52 PM in reply to: ICELAND’s Pots & Pans Revolution…Virtually no US Media coverage #775308ParticipantI knew about it. They had a major currency crisis. It wasn’t just the housing/financing collapse – their banks were offering HUGE interest rates for deposit accounts. A friend was getting 12% for a savings account and didn’t understand why the US didn’t offer similar. (Any European could open an account.)
That money went poof when their banks collapsed – and it was a HUGE deal in Europe.My friend owned her condo and was super underwater when it collapsed – but so was everyone else. Because she and her husband had good income, they were able to “move up” – by assuming another underwater owners mortgage – and had someone assume their’s. Those were the only real estate transactions happening as the housing prices collapsed. For them – it ended up being ok because banks ended up writing off portions of the loans.
Participant[quote=CA renter][quote=UCGal]I think we can all agree that some teachers are excellent – even life changing for their students. And that some teachers are suck-tastic. Driving the love of learning out of a student and making them hate school. This has nothing to do with tenure.
That said – experienced teachers tend to be better at classroom management (keeping control of the class and keeping them focused on learning.) This is because if they haven’t mastered classroom management by a few years in – they will be driven batty and be driven to quit, themselves.
I’d live to see ALL districts run a program like the Map tests. I know PUSD uses it – and San Diego unified does not. This is a test administered at the beginning of the year, and at the end of the year. It measures where a kid’s level is. And by comparing the end of the year to the beginning of the year you can tell if improvement was achieved.
This is important for kids who are not in the middle of the bell – you want your bright kids to improve – but they may be starting out ahead of their grade level… teaching them topics they already know won’t lead to improving… just stagnation. Conversely remedial students may be starting out behind grade level. It’s unreasonable to expect them to achieve the same end of year levels as someone who’s at grade level at the beginning of the year.
These tests could be used to show if a teacher is effective… Improvement for all kids assigned to that teacher.
It requires the teacher to differentiate more than the current system does… but that helps the students.
In SDUSD – there have been some high profile cases of principals being punished for taking on their bad teachers. Dr. O at Lincoln is a recent example. I’ve heard through the grapevine that the principal at CPMA middle might be in a similar situation.
Currently there is no recourse for principals to fire bad teachers in San Diego Unified. I don’t think it’s a union thing – I think it’s a structure thing in the district. I’d like to see teachers have a voice in any discipline – but I’d also like to see principals able to effectively run their schools.[/quote]
UCGal, I agree that we need to test for teacher accountability, but one of the greatest differences between a gifted vs non-gifted student is the ability to learn things quickly, and then to retain that information, and then to be able to apply that learning in a variety of ways and in different situations. Students in poor schools are less capable of this, generally, than students in the better-performing schools. This is because IQ is highly correlated with SES and both are highly correlated with how well a school performs. This is why “bad” schools tend to be concentrated in poor neighborhoods, and “good” schools tend to be concentrated in wealthier neighborhoods.
In addition to this, a class in a high-performing school will remain rather stable throughout the year, while a class in a low-performing school is much more likely to turn over. You can easily see up to half of a class leave by the end of the year in a lower-performing school because these families tend to be much more transient than families in high-SES areas.
Then, there is the issue of assistance at home. How do we account for the difference between the resources coming from home in the high-SES vs low-SES students and schools?
This is the problem with accountability. The issues are a lot more complex than most people think. It’s not a matter of teacher quality so much as it’s the demographics, SES, IQ, and parental support for the the students in the different groups.[/quote]
I agree that students have different abilities to learn.
But with no metrics in place – teachers are not judged on whether the students learn anything. If there is a positive delta in what the student knows at the end of the year, vs what they knew at the beginning of the year – REGARDLESS of where they started – then the student made progress.
I have a friend with a child with significant learning disabilities. My friend has had to push hard to make sure that appropriate material is given to her son… Some of the teachers would just park him in a corner. My own experience is that a less than stellar teacher can stagnate the learning of a gifted student. Rather than giving more depth/breadth, or alternate material, to a student that has already mastered the grade level material – he was parked in the corner. My son ended up hating school because it was boring and unchallenging. (I changed schools after this. He totally changed his outlook after I got him out of that environment.)
If a program is developed where students are pushed to learn from where they are – to improve – then all students are learning. Right now the system is set to teach to the medium… and fails the kids at either end of the spectrum.
Obviously there could be factors put in for kids with 504s and/or IEPs so that the teacher is given a pass if the improvement is less for the kids with learning disabilities. But improvement and learning should absolutely be the end goal for every student. Not parking in a corner.
ParticipantI think we can all agree that some teachers are excellent – even life changing for their students. And that some teachers are suck-tastic. Driving the love of learning out of a student and making them hate school. This has nothing to do with tenure.
That said – experienced teachers tend to be better at classroom management (keeping control of the class and keeping them focused on learning.) This is because if they haven’t mastered classroom management by a few years in – they will be driven batty and be driven to quit, themselves.
I’d live to see ALL districts run a program like the Map tests. I know PUSD uses it – and San Diego unified does not. This is a test administered at the beginning of the year, and at the end of the year. It measures where a kid’s level is. And by comparing the end of the year to the beginning of the year you can tell if improvement was achieved.
This is important for kids who are not in the middle of the bell – you want your bright kids to improve – but they may be starting out ahead of their grade level… teaching them topics they already know won’t lead to improving… just stagnation. Conversely remedial students may be starting out behind grade level. It’s unreasonable to expect them to achieve the same end of year levels as someone who’s at grade level at the beginning of the year.
These tests could be used to show if a teacher is effective… Improvement for all kids assigned to that teacher.
It requires the teacher to differentiate more than the current system does… but that helps the students.
In SDUSD – there have been some high profile cases of principals being punished for taking on their bad teachers. Dr. O at Lincoln is a recent example. I’ve heard through the grapevine that the principal at CPMA middle might be in a similar situation.
Currently there is no recourse for principals to fire bad teachers in San Diego Unified. I don’t think it’s a union thing – I think it’s a structure thing in the district. I’d like to see teachers have a voice in any discipline – but I’d also like to see principals able to effectively run their schools.
ParticipantFWIW – I’ve never had any issue riding the bus to/from downtown. Most folks are reading books or newspapers, listening to headphones… I don’t ride the bus often – but a few times a year.
Joec – when was the last time you rode the bus? It’s not as scary as you might think.
I’m strongly considering having my kids ride the public bus home from middle school (near the zoo) to UC, this year. I rode the bus (by myself, at age 12) at their age from UC to balboa park to take ballet classes – it’s a good life skill. And this was when Horton Plaza was a place the wack-a-doodles went on rants – pre mall.
My biggest gripe with the bus is that it doesn’t run often enough or close enough to the places I want to go.
ParticipantSounds like you’ve done a great job raising him right.
Congrats on his job.
Participant[quote=Blogstar]We put more and more kids on Meds about the time this kid was young and we have more psyhco young men going on killing sprees than before and we think them getting off meds is the problem, not putting them on meds in the first place? Man I would have been really angry if my dad and the system succeeded at putting me on meds shortly after their divorce and my moms death , knowing what I know now that would have been a travesty of justice of a high order.
Living with the stigma of mentally ill, 6,7 ,8 years old, with all the normal expectations and a prescription is really a raw deal. It doesn’t set these kids up well in anyway. Most adults can’t even go out in public if our car isn’t late model …how about living with your being not good enough through grade school and forever after?
The kid going off his meds is just part of his decision to finally say fuck you. But the decision was likely made before he quit the meds BECAUSE THEY DID NOT WORK! Big pharma must love it when society at large deem the meds successful and getting off of them being the cause of tragedy. I don’t believe it.[/quote]
I struggled with the medication issue for my son. All the “experts” were saying it was the right thing to do. I researched like crazy and was very uncomfortable with using drugs that effect brain chemistry on an undeveloped brain. I’m really glad I listened to my instincts.
It’s very hard for parents to know what the right thing to do is. Every authority was telling me one thing and my instincts were screaming the opposite. I understand why parents do it – they are told by experts its the right thing to do. They may not have the resources, intellect, etc to educate themselves and they might not have the personality to stand up to authority/medical personnel.
As mentioned before – my son did have a brain chemistry issue. But now that I know it was due to an enzyme problem – I also know that the meds would have been ineffective. That’s one of the issues with this MTHFR mutation – SSRIs and other psychotropic drugs are much less effective.
But – you have to cut parents some slack. The vast majority of parents are doing their very best to do right – and it’s very hard to figure out what “right” is.
ParticipantI’ve seen this mentioned on the early-retirement blogs. Pretty crazy.
Participant[quote=AN][quote=flu]The thing is though my w2 income didn’t really change *that* much this year from last from the previous year…. Why now? Or was I just randomly selected by my employer? Lol[/quote]It didn’t change *that* much, but it did. Maybe you were on the edge before and now you’ve crossed over that edge.[/quote]
In my case a big bonus pushed me over one year – and I got nabbed the next year. (Not the year of the bonus.)They look backwards. The year I had the DCA cut in half, was a year I was under the limits… but it was based on the previous year.
As far as your plan to augment income with 1099 income… I get that. It takes some finesse to max out the w2 income to the sweet spot for max gain, least stress, etc. (It’s why I’ve consistently turned down managerial roles – it would push me out of my sweet spot.)
ParticipantI’ve hit that limit a few times when I’ve had big bonuses or a lot of stock options. It’s not new.
It sucks. But it’s not new. Just means you have to use post-tax money for dependant care.
ParticipantWow. Just wow.
ParticipantWe were able to get the data we needed from 23andMe.
My husband and I got tested prior to the FDA (ridiculous) ruling. But we had our sons tested after.
For us – our concern, initially was some specific markers. It’s VERY easy to get that info from 23andMe even with the FDA ruling, since these markers were not part of the original health data.
You get tested, you get your results… You log onto 23andMe, Then you plug the snp you’re interested into the search button. You’ll get whatever discussions are about it – but also a link to the raw data for that marker.
Another approach – do the 23andMe testing – then download the raw data as a zip file. You can then upload it to a program called promethease – and it will interpret your markers for you, with links to the research. (Promethease costs $6 – so your total output is about $105 with the $99 23andMe)
We were able to see everything about the kids with the promethease tool.
Here’s a link to how to do it.
http://blog.stickyrice.net/archives/2013/decode-23andme-for-mthfr-genes/I looked at lab tests for the MTHFR gene – and they run about $150. Why it costs more to test less, I have no idea. But being frugal and not knowing what we’d find – I wanted the complete genotype for the lower price.
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