When Good News Depends on One's Perspective.

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When the school year began a couple weeks ago, John took a pretest in his math class. He scored over 80% on it. At back-to-school night, John's math teacher told me about this, and I asked what he planned to do to keep John challenged during the year. The teacher kind of glanced around his classroom, then shrugged and said they didn't have anything set up for that. I encouraged him to figure something out so John would continue to learn and grow in math this year. So the math teacher gave John the class final. He passed that as well, again with over 80%. After consulting with John's math teacher from last year and his school counselor, they decided to bump him up to the next math class level. So they tweaked his schedule last week and John is now in Ms. Petrakis' 6th hour calculus class. Good news! Right?

The thing is, Hannah also happens to be in Ms Petrakis' 6th hour calculus class. Not being one who really enjoys math, she took statistics last year instead of calculus, and hoped that she wouldn't have to take another math class. But after discussions with her counselor, she ended up taking calculus this year after all. And since it has been a year since she has done that type of math, she is finding it a bit of a challenge, although nothing she can't handle. But then to have her smart aleck younger brother in her class suddenly? Well, you can probably imagine how she feels.

How will this affect their relationship? I don't know. Will they work on their homework together? Probably not. Will they compare test scores? I hope not. Each of them is an individual with different talents and learning styles. I would rather they not compare how they are doing in this class, and I hope that it doesn't become a competition - for either of them.

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