A New Year of Possibilities.

My daughters started school last week.  Abby moved into her junior year and Grace made the transition to middle school and 6th grade.  Both girls started school with very different feelings.  Grace was nervous, and anxious about starting and Abby was very nonchalant about the whole deal.

After the first day both girls still had very different feelings about the new school year.

Grace was very excited about the possibilities.  She has a teacher that will text them reminders, a teacher that allows them to use their phones in class for formative assessment, and some teachers who just "get the whole technology thing."   And her Art teacher, oops sorry, her Media Visual Arts and Design teacher has some "cool assignments and projects to work on."  She is definitely excited about the possibilities of the new year.

 Abby on the other hand, she sent me a text during the first day of school; "ok I'm like already done with junior year."  She was not impressed with the possibilities.  She had book notes on her summer reading Things Fall Apart assigned on Tuesday to be completed by Friday, she had a "diagnostic" test for AP US History the 2nd day of school which the teacher said he would count as a minor grade (really?).  A DBQ on the first four chapters of a textbook available only online.  Which led to the request to find her a book or "I'm going to gouge my eyes out if I have to read on a computer all year. Dad literally each chapter is 30 pages, and I have to read 4 of them by tomorrow!"

Grace sees the possibilities of learning new things in a different way.  Abby sees the possibilities of being loaded with unreasonable amounts of homework and dread.

I hope Grace will keep the positive attitude and Abby, I hope she gets into her grove and enjoys what the year brings.