More and more I'm turning to the blog for memories. Sometimes one investigation leads to reading other entries and suddenly I'm remembering things I hadn't thought about in years. It is a wonderful source of information about our lives, a slice of history from 2002. Traveling to New York City and wish I could remember the name of that restaurant I'd love to visit again? There it is on the blog from my travels in 2013. Thank god I'm a detailed oriented person.
I don't have tons to write this summer. I hope it isn't an indication of what will happen to this blog, but this morning as I thought about my entry and perused my camera roll photos I was reminded that my youngest just received word that she had passed her IB exams and received her IB diploma. Cause for celebration and certainly worthy of a blog entry, and so I went to the archives to search what I wrote about when her sister received the same. There was nothing. No word. No blip. No mention. HORROR. We were, funny enough, in England when we received the news that Madison had passed her exams and received the coveted diploma, but there isn't even a mention in those entries. Not sure why I didn't brag, but maybe because everyone is tired of my spouting on and on about the IB program.
Well, too damn bad! I'm not saying my kid is smarting than your kid. I'm not knocking your school program or AP classes or accolades that your little Susie or Johnny has collected. Kudos to all of them because they deserve it too. But as time marches on I've come to realize, as I said above, that this darn blog is a peek into our history, and by golly, my kids passing the IB diploma program is worthy of going down in our history so I'm writing about it here and now.
The IB diploma program is different. Its hard to explain exactly so here and here are two good explanations, although I think the second (Wikipedia) really cuts to the chase. I had no idea what the program was about despite it being the biggest thing in our county's school system. Even after Madison enrolled in it I had no idea. The first two years are the "pre" periods, the exploratory period, where you ease into what is going to happen when you enter the program your junior and senior year. When we attended the informational portion of explanation before her junior year, I came out of the meeting sobbing. The amount of workload and requirements overwhelmed me, and thinking that my child was going to spend two years doing this was huge. I thought maybe I'd never see her again. She, of course, in her element since she walked through the high school doors her first day, rolled her eyes, patted me on the back, and told me to breathe. She had this.
It wasn't easy. Not by a long shot. People ask me the old adage "if you had to do it again", and my response before they get the final words out of their mouth is, "yes". And I mean that. Despite the long nights of little sleep. Despite my youngest's stress levels. Despite it all, I would push my kids to do it. I lived it with them. Our zoned school was given the IB program Madison's first year. Her class, the parents, the teachers, and the administrators were the guinea pigs those first two years as we all navigated through the rigorous path to receiving accreditation from the IB organization. A small group of parents and our coordinator at the time created and formed a group that included parents, students, teachers, and administrators and together we worked to make our school's program different from the others and a great success. Our coordinator included us in everything from the hiring and firing of teachers to the ups and downs of the students. I feel I've got a pretty good knowledge of the program and the way it works, and yes, I would send my children back into the program if I had to start over.
We didn't plan on sending Darcy. She was a different kid in her learning than Madison. She will tell you that Madison has always been held to a higher academic standard, and maybe she is right. Madison loves learning. She soaks it up and can teach it to others, and she hates that she has to chose one major that will set her up in life doing the same thing when "there is so much out there, and I want to learn it all." Darcy is my sports kid. My social butterfly. My organizer, my storyteller, and my go-getter. School is secondary to all of that, and so despite wanting her in the IB program we didn't push it. Not until we went to visit the other high school magnet program during her 8th grade year. There we discovered that everything they taught, including the books and materials, was exactly what she was currently studying in her private school. To enroll in that high school program she would be repeating a grade. We told her she had to do IB.
She had no trouble in the program. We told her we didn't care if she earned the diploma or not, but that the educational value would be beneficial to her in the long run. As she continued through the years, she kept bringing home straight A's. She got more sleep than Madison. She swam on the high school swim team all four years and involved herself in various clubs. She socialized. And each year I remembered her first grade teacher telling me that Darcy was a special kind of learner from the rest of her class. "Darcy actually takes what she learns in class and applies it with her outside world. She truly understands how it works in relationship to her life and the world around her." Funny, looking back on that now because THAT is exactly what IB teaches.
I never worried about Madison passing. She is a test taker, and despite her slowness and crazy have-to-be-perfect mentality, I knew she would do well. She did. She scored high, earned her diploma, and got enough college credit to skip over more than a year of college. In the United States, each college and university accepts different things in IB, and her university gave her tons especially for her history higher level exam score. She earned one of the highest scores on her EE paper, a requirement, and was points away from a perfect 7 in a couple of subjects. We couldn't have been prouder of her. We jumped up and down and celebrated in England and beamed for months. It was a huge accomplishment.
I worried about Darcy. Not about passing, because I didn't care one way or the other, but I worried about her feelings if she didn't do well. She feels she is second fiddle to Madison academically. She doesn't talk much about that, but I know. I was the older one, but my brother was always touted as the academic kid. I was secondary in education and patted on the head for my "C" grades, which since I kept everything weren't really in that category at all, thank you kindly. But that was the word in our house and so I know Darcy's feelings. She learned, but she didn't care about keeping all of that information in her head. Not that she can't pull it out, she can, but she didn't feel like wasting brain space to retain a bunch of stuff she doesn't feel she needs (i.e. Francis Scott Key). Not receiving the diploma would be devastating to her, and she worked her butt off studying. I worried about her mental state if that damn diploma escaped her.
I shouldn't have worried. She passed. I was at work, but she called me with the news, and what news it was. She scored high. She scored a perfect 7 in English. She nabbed three 6's including one in Math. The kid did well. She was on cloud nine. Madison was on cloud nine for her. We celebrated with pizza that night, but I'm telling you, her happiness, her relief at finally feeling she was worthy was the reward for me. Because sometimes in life, despite those around you telling you are great, you have to do something on your own to discover that for yourself.
MY KIDS ARE IB DIPLOMA KIDS! They kicked butt in a program that kicked theirs, but they came out with that little piece of paper and the knowledge that they DID it. So dammit, I'm bragging and recording it. Because for sure this is a huge historical moment in their lives.
I'm super proud of both of them, and you should be too! By the way, after our May visit, I googled it, and our new school has IB :)
ReplyDelete