Poor Andrew!

Now I try to keep this blog focused on foster care. This particular post though has nothing to do with being a fostering family, and not even anything to do with Andrew being a fostering child. Right now this blog is just functioning as a place where I can express my feeling of sympathy for the poor kid. (Although it is the sort of thing that makes you laugh at the same time.)

Andrew is in Jazz Band at high school. He plays the trumpet. He will never be a professional musician, but he enjoys it. He really does. In order to be in Jazz Band you are reqired to be in Marching Band in the fall and Concert Band in the Spring. He likes those okay.

But that just leaves four periods in the regular school day, and he is on a college-prep schedule. In order to do it all, he has had to have zero period (you know, the hour before first period) both his freshman and sophomore years. This year he did not want to do that. He wanted a break. We talked about the options and he did the heroic thing. He asked if he could take pre-calculus on-line during the summer. He probably would not be able to get through the whole year, but he could do at least one semester. At least for the fall, when Marching Band is taking up so much time, he will get a little more sleep and have a little less homework.

So we got permission, and he went to work. He has really worked hard, though many different things have popped up unexpectedly to get in the way. Who would think that the new AP History teacher would actually mail out summer assignments in the middle of summer? Read two books, and write a paper on one due three weeks before schools starts??? But Andrew just slugged along. There are seven units and it looked like he was only going to get five of them done. The last two he would just have to spread out over weekends during the fall.

Today was registration. We waited in lines. Half an hour in line to tell the people that we lived in the same house and had the same phone number; another half hour to pay for the activity card; then yearbook photos, agendas and schedules.

Schedules....OMG.

Marching Band is sixth period of course. That makes it easy to keep the kids after school for practice.

However, Jazz Band for juniors and seniors is now (drum roll.....) ZERO PERIOD.

So Andrew held up the schedule line for 10 minutes (well, maybe it was just five) while they talked about what to do. He can't have an empty period. No there is no study hall to sign up for. Did he want to take Art? How about asking the pre-calc teacher if he wanted an aide?

It is not all bad. He can work on those last two units when he is not helping other students figure out how to use their graphing calculators.

Poor Andrew.