I am in Denver right now, and I just dropped Kat off to hang out with her boyfriend who lives in the area. We have a People to People meeting this afternoon to learn more about what she’ll be doing in Australia. If you missed it, Kat (The Teenager) got excepted in to the People to People Student Ambassador program. Her delegation is going to Australia this summer. It’s a great opportunity for her to travel abroad and earn college credit while doing so! We need help raising the funds, however. That’s where you come in. If you enjoy reading my stories here and would like to help us out, please find the Chip In badge to the right and donate what you can. I completely understand how the world is right now, so if you can’t give we’ll still be friends.

We received a call yesterday from Kat’s aunt. She held a garage sale and raised $850! You’ll see that reflected in the Chip In badge as soon as we receive it. I just got too excited about that to not tell you now!

Thanks to everyone that has contributed so far, every little bit helps.

I’ll be posting later about what we learn today, for now I’m going to take advantage of Whole Foods’ Wi-Fi and the lack of children to do that research I was talking about above…

Registration is on the 10th, so even though Wal-Mart is already pushing the last of the school supplies out the door, it hasn’t even sunk in for me that it’s back to school time at all!

Another weird thing is that even though she’s a Sophomore, this will be her first year in a real high school.

I probably shouldn’t say ‘real’. How about ‘traditional’. Last year, she went to an ‘expeditionary high school’. This meant that the students didn’t always stay in the classroom. If they were studying geology, they’d climb a mountain and find rocks, they took a trip to Denver to explore different careers, etc.

The teacher to student ratio was somewhere in the ball park of 1 in 12, meaning that no kid really got lost in the pack.

The classes were pretty cool, too. They would study a topic and the teachers blended subjects in to that one topic. For example, they could be studying World War 2. Naturally, there’s history and social studies in there, but you could also discuss the workings of the Bomb and nuclear energy in science. Pretty cool.

The thing was that it actually seemed to not challenge Kat enough. She did great, but it was a small school with really no extra-curricular activities.

So this year she’s going back to a traditional environment, where the teacher to student ratio is probably 1 in 30, classes are completely separate from each other, and Kat can spend all her time after school staying after for play practice or whatever other interest suits her fancy.

I can’t help but wonder if we’re doing the right thing. This was a choice we all made together, and Kat is excited about it.

But is all this change good for her?

Then I think of all the changes that have felt forced upon me in my adult life. My job has been restructured so many times that I’ve lost count. I adapted and evolved, albeit begrudgingly. At least she’s getting a choice, and this is what she chose. I trust her and know she’ll excel in whatever she does, I just like to be the worrying father every once in a while.  ;)

Good luck, kid!