(no subject)

[cahn]

E:
WELL E MADE MOP
OKAY THEN LET'S GOOOOOOO
That is to say, she is one of... around 60 kids (around 10-15 girls) in the country who did well enough on the USA(J)MO (she took the USAJMO) test to attend the Math Olympiad Program (basically Olympiad training camp). This is pretty crazy stuff. It's sort of surreal. As some of you know, she's wanted this for a while and has worked pretty hard for it and is really really happy about it. She did not think she was going to make it and had mostly-convinced me she wasn't going to, and we had had a ton of talks with her about how it was really okay if she didn't make it and the vast majority of kids don't make it and were and are fine and etc. (We knew she had the skill level that it was possible, but also that she didn't have the skill level where it would be a foregone conclusion, and she felt bad about the first day (see below), and in fact she did have a lot of luck again with the problems breaking well with respect to geometry, which is her nemesis.) As far as we can tell from the thresholds kids have been collating online, she made the girls' cutoff but not the general cutoff. On the other hand, she realized she had screwed up something dumb with five minutes left on the clock the first day, and on the second day hastily sketched out what she is pretty sure was a correct solution to another problem that got no points but that she feels could have with more time to rewrite her solution, so she feels she could have also easily done better in a very slightly alternate universe :) I hope it is as fun as she's made it out to be in her head :P

Also, E and I need to work on her social skills SO much, omg. For various reasons I've been spending more time with her in the last couple of weeks seeing her interact with others and ack.

Also, why does my child not want to tell me what her friends' names are?? This is irritating because I am doing things like coordinating travel with a couple of other families and I know one of them she knows from camp but I don't know which one!!

A: A is also (we think) going to a math summer program! It's a week long, a parent goes with the kid, and apparently they do cool stuff like hiking and white water rafting. D is going with as he will enjoy all of that immensely. I say "we think" he is going because we got the notification that he had been accepted and then we haven't heard anything else for, like, almost a month. I wrote them after a week asking if we'd missed anything and got the response that we hadn't, so... I guess... that's OK? Maybe I will ping them again? And/or I guess I will just buy them plane tickets and if they end up somehow not going to the camp maybe they'll just... go camping? [ETA: Welp, apparently posting this and perhaps comment good wishes were the key! About an hour after I posted, I got the registration etc. info. So I guess he's going!]

...it is going to be a mess, logistically speaking, to get both kids to all the places they are supposed to go. It is possible with two adults! But today I had to make a spreadsheet to keep track of all the travel and which tickets I've bought already and which ones I still need to buy.

Also, A's school is... as far as I know... not imploding, but the 7/8 teacher is not coming back next year. My vague understanding is that half the parents are up in arms about this and the other half are relieved. But hey there are a few weeks left of school, there's time for more implosion to happen!

Also also. A's school does Measures of Academic Progress (MAP) standardized testing twice a year. The results come out as percentages compared to other kids who take this test. This week was testing. A came out with a 99% "achievement" score in math (typical for him -- presumably meaning he scored higher than 99% of the other kids taking it) and a 1% (!) "growth" score (...not so typical! -- presumably meaning he learned less this year than 99% of the other kids taking it), which made both D and me howl with laughter when AwesomeTeacher, very concerned, emailed us these results. (We have both observed a ton of growth in his math ability this year, partially because he's learning geometry which he didn't really know anything about before, but also he's particularly gotten much better in written and oral communication, which I suppose MAP wouldn't measure at all.) Apparently all the other grade-level classes did what she expected, but the few kids in this one class which works above grade level all had anomalously low growth scores. She found some evidence that MAP has revamped their algorithms so they give more "grade-level" questions on a subject, and it seems reasonable that this would then lead to lower-than-usual scores for kids working above grade level.

Me: So I've been teaching youth (11-14, in this case) Sunday School for the past 2 1/2 years. A couple of months ago the Church announced that they were letting Sunday School presidents be women for the first time ever. (My church! Vaguely trying to get with the twentieth century here! Did not get the memo we have been in the twenty-first century for a while now!) Two days later I was asked if I could meet with the bishop, which turned out to be him extending the call to be the Sunday School president. Your question probably is: what does a Sunday School president actually do? Well, I guess I'll let you know when I find out. I know I am supposed to run teacher training ("Teachers Council") meetings, which I am going to start figuring out this week. And be an all-purpose sub when that's needed. And some other little random things, like making sure that roll gets taken and collected. So it's not that much! I think it's likely to be less work than actually teaching, because prepping lessons takes a lot of time for me. But in the weird sort of hierarchy that is my church, it's sort of this big deal? Especially because women couldn't do it before!

Comments

[thistleingrey]

Congrats to both kids! Congrats to you! And good luck to everyone, esp you and D, with summer logistics.

(Heh, re: buying plane tickets--I guess it's an issue that the camp organizers don't have, but agreed, getting something set up seems wise.)

[cahn]

Thank you for the good luck wishes -- we will need them I think :) And perhaps your good wishes tipped the scale, because literally a few minutes after you commented the camp emailed registration info after several weeks of silence, lol!

[thistleingrey]

the camp emailed registration info

Ah, a relief!

[cahn]

Yes! :) <3