Give Mother Some Credit

The letter from the high school of his choice started this way: Because of Jason's past success in mathematics and his recent qualifying score on the HSPT, he has been accorded the privilege of being placed in Geometry for the 2009-2010 school year. His four-year mathematics program will challenge him with the following courses: Geometry, Algebra II, Honors Pre Calculus and AP Calculus.

Since the four-year math requirement demands he maintain high grades as he completes this courses, mastery of algebra skills is essential as a basic foundation for entry into Geometry. Subsequently, he is required to pass our Geometry qualifying exam.

Here is the clincher from the letter: If he does not achieve a passing grade of 80% it will be necessary for him to sharpen his algebra skills in our summer Algebra I (Honors) course.

The local grapevine has indicated that the test is designed to be really hard since they have high standards and most of those "invited" to take it, end up in the summer program. Jason has already indicated that he does not want to take the 6-week course but that he will do it if needed, in order to advance. Bearing in mind that the test will cover what he is supposed to know as opposed to what he actually knows, I took one look at the topics that the test will cover and realized that I would have to make sure that he had a fighting chance at passing the exam. Me. It fell on my shoulders, since he was the only one from his class who received the letter.

I still remember the Pythagorean Theorem, inequalities, solving systems of equations, and quite a few more topics from the list but I must say that a lot of items on the list involved topics I had not reviewed since I took Calculus many many years ago. What teenager believes that his mother knows better when it comes to addition of polynomials? Sigh. I had to prove myself first by solving the above equation, not that he was mightily impressed.

I can't wait for the test to be over. Neither can he. We are both counting down for Saturday to arrive sooner rather than later.