Doorway

Night before last found a longtime friend and I walking the short distance from her home to our nearest high school. As we walked, we each mentioned how very odd our destination felt. Too soon, our eldest children are slated to enter their freshmen years in the coming Fall. Stating the obvious, we commented on how it was quite impossible for us to have children old enough to enter high school. Or not so much.
Her child is in our local gifted program and will have already completed sophomore level courses before ever making the leap from middle school to high school. My child will need some technical training as well as college preparatory classes to give him increased odds of being able to support himself without closing the door to a possible college degree. Both of our soon-to-be high school students are highly intelligent, but only one of them is highly motivated and socially savvy. We sat through an hour-long meeting that satisfied neither her questions nor my own because we fall on opposite ends of a broad spectrum of student needs.
Equipped with information from the meeting and found on-line, last night I waded into the murky waters of high school registration and course selection with the Boy. It went somewhat better than expected. There is a fundamental lack of understanding on his part that feels remarkably similar to pounding one's head against a solid brick wall. Grade points? Class rank? Required courses? Prerequisites? There is no interest whatsoever in the more challenging pre-AP or AP classes that might result in college credit hours eventually being accepted to accelerate any progress toward a degree. He is interested in the technology courses that are offered, but he will have limited access to those while fulfilling the course requirements for graduation. At least we have another month to wrangle with these new ideas before final course selections must be made.