Episode 293: Adjusting to Highschool with Ella Greene

Hello everyone, this is Rebecca Green for the Winey Foose Podcast, and this is an extra special episode because my daughter Ella Green is joining us today. Hi Ella!

Hi Mom!

Thanks for doing this with me today.

My pleasure.

I'm putting her to work, everybody. I wonder what time this is on the podcast. Is this number 3? Number I'm gonna—

it's 2 or 3.

I think this is number 3. That is my guess. And my little one Lily is like, hey, what about me? So I'm gonna guess that Lily will be joining us soon. But Ella, thank you for coming and being willing to talk to us about high school because Ella is my 14-year-old. She is my middle child. I have a 16-year-old Max who's a junior. I have Miss Ella Bella who who is 14 and a freshman, and I have Lily, who is a 6th grader in middle school. And Ella has made what I think is a fantastic transition from middle school to high school. So we're gonna talk about that today. And I think she's going to help us. I think she's going to help parents and kids, um, transition into high school. And I think this is gonna be a beneficial conversation. So should we jump in?

Yeah.

Okay. Do you have any questions for me?

Um, I will get back to you on that.

Okay, so I'm gonna ask you my questions, and after we get through my questions, we're gonna see if you have any questions.

Okay.

Okay, so let's start with, can you share if you remember how you felt on your first day of high school and how that compares to how you feel now.

Okay, so my first day of high school, I was really anxious. I think that's obvious because of course you are. But now I sort of feel more comfortable about it and it isn't really a big deal anymore because I know what I'm doing.

Well, that's amazing. We're gonna talk more about that. I think that one of the keys to helping kids transition to a new school is to take them to the new school and do a tour. And what I said to Ella, because my son is a junior there, it took me 2 or 3 times of walking the school for me to learn the school. And I'm still not perfect at it, but I still don't understand upstairs. Okay, we'll talk about upstairs then, because I think Max and I understand upstairs. They have an even side and they have an odd side.

Yeah, I got that. I also think it wasn't just going around the school. It was also like, who am I going to talk to?

Oh, honey. Like, who is in my classes? Who am I going to talk to? Have you found friends in your classes?

Yeah.

Have you made new friends? Not really.

I mean, there's really not many new people.

So I think that taking a tour was good, but I think you still felt anxious because a tour isn't going to help you know how you're gonna get around and who you're gonna find in your classes.

Yes.

Well, so before starting high school, what were some of your expectations or worries and how have they matched the actual experience?

Um, so I expected it to be harder than middle school and harder than everything I did. And yeah, I would say that pretty much holds true. I think there's more expectations, and I'm so sorry, what was the second part of the question?

No, you answered the question. I think it matched. I think it matched your expectations. You thought it was going to be harder, and it is harder.

Yeah, it matched my expectations.

So how are you handling that it's harder?

Um, I just get better. I just work harder.

So what does working harder look like? And I'm asking you for specifics because what I was explaining to Ella before the interview is just because she's doing well doesn't mean there's another kid who might listen to this or a parent whose kid is struggling who's gonna listen to this and learn from Ella. So you work harder, what does that look like?

Um, maybe spending more time on my homework to make sure I understand what I'm doing. Um, studying if I have to, and taking my time more on tests. Oh, so I think that is the definition of working harder.

Well, that's amazing. I definitely see you working hard, and I see it paying off with your grades. You just got your first report card, and I could not be more proud of her.

Thank you.

Let's talk about the social dynamics. One of your favorite topics. Have you noticed changes in your friendships or the way that you interact with peers compared to middle school?

Well, in my friendships, I haven't really noticed a change other than the fact that I don't have classes with a lot of my friends. So that's been the biggest change, is having to put more effort into seeing these people and talking to these people that I love so much. And with interaction with my friends, I think I don't really care about who's listening to my interactions as much as I did in middle school because people don't care anymore.

Less, less self-conscious.

Yes.

I call middle school the awkward years.

Yeah.

I think you're coming out of that. Yeah. And I think that you are in a different social circle and I think it's been good for you. Yeah, yeah, I think that you're finding your people for sure. So for people listening whose kids don't have any people, how do you think they can find some people?

Join clubs.

Excellent. That's where I met my—

come in early, stay after, be on STUCO, do stuff. That's how you meet people.

What's STUCO?

Uh, STUCO, it's the student government. They make all the decisions about everything.

Are you, are you part of that?

No.

Are you going to go to that?

Probably.

Um, how do you—

the problem is they don't tell people when the meetings are, but anyways.

Oh no. So how do you learn? That was my question. How do you learn when clubs are meeting?

Um, pay attention to announcements. I think that's been the biggest thing. It's definitely paying attention to announcements, figuring out who the club advisor is, and which mailing them, emailing them, talking to them, something like that.

Who's the advisor of SUKO?

No clue. I have to figure that out.

Okay, well, I have some connections with who is the president of the SUKO, so we can talk to her. I think that's an excellent place for you to get involved, and I love seeing you get involved. Ella just did the play. She was fantastic in the play. She worked her buns off. I'm wearing her shirt now. Radium Girls. It was— if you're watching this on Facebook or YouTube, you can see her shirt that she just showed you. If you are listening to this, she is wearing her shirt, Radium Girls, from her performance. She worked so hard. The whole cast worked so hard. They met every day after school, and man, was it fantastic. Very, very sad topic, but the acting was excellent. Yeah. So, um, I think that you're doing a great job putting yourself out there and getting involved, and I hope that you'll still continue to join more clubs. I think that you have had to experience some rejection in a couple areas this year.

Yeah.

So, so for the kids experiencing rejection, it's not easy. It's part of life, but it's not easy. Um, what advice do you have to them?

Um, cry about it, feel your feelings, but eventually accept that there's nothing you can do about it now. And just eventually you have to reach the maturity of, okay, so I got rejected. How can I learn from this and how can I move on? Because there's nothing I can do to change that initial reaction, but what I do have control over is making sure that doesn't happen again.

Well, you can try to not have it happen again. And one of the ways that you're trying to not have it happen again is by getting feedback. And I think that's, I think that's really mature of you to ask for feedback.

Yeah.

Yeah. So you win some, you lose some. We're, we're definitely riding the waves of happiness and, and good stuff and maybe some not good stuff too. With my middle schooler too, she, um, she has experienced really high highs, and she also has experienced rejection this year, right? It's part— unfortunately, it's part of life, but we learn to deal with it. So who do you feel like you can turn to for support when you have challenges that are academic professional or personal?

Um, my parents. I can always turn to my parents. My friends are really supportive and they help a lot. And there also is a fantastic guidance department at my school.

So I was hoping that you were going to bring up two people. So I just want to remind you about two people who are there for you. You will learn this in your next four years. Number one is your fabulous guidance counselor, who I love. She's wonderful, and you will love talking to her. I know, I know that you two are a great fit. And the other person is your fantastic chorus teacher who is going to be a real key in your life at high school. And I think what's fantastic is that you found a couple teachers who you really connect with at high school. Yeah, I think that's wonderful. She has such great teachers. Yeah. A couple who are definitely your favorites.

For sure.

For sure. What about time management with the increased workload?

How—

I mean, you had the play every day, you had homework, you had school. What is your time management advice?

Use your free time to do your homework rather than talking. And Google Calendar or the Apple Calendar where you can schedule things to give you alerts at certain times to do them. Those are my two biggest things for time management.

Okay, so back up, back up. So what's really funny about what Ella said. So there's Max and Ella and Lily, and Max and Ella are more like their father at school, and Lily is more like me. And I'll tell you why I'm saying that. So, and, and it's not like she doesn't get her homework done in study hall, but—

right.

So Max will choose— Max is like Ella, and he will choose to do his homework during lunch instead of talking. Ella chooses to do her homework and get stuff done and uses her time wisely. If you have a full night of activities, which a lot of kids do, I think that's excellent advice to tell them to use their time wisely in school. However, if you're like me, you want to connect with your friends and you want to talk, right?

And I think there's a time to do that.

Yeah.

And I would say do that after you finish.

Yeah, I, I want kids to use time in school to connect with peers, um, and I also think that if you have a really busy schedule, I'm thinking of someone in particular, um, you need to use your time wisely in school. Yeah, I think that's really good advice, Ella. So how do you think that you've grown or changed since starting high school?

Um, I'm more mature, I guess.

Do you think so?

I mean, high school has been like 3 months.

September, October. Well, 3 months is a long time to change.

I haven't— I'm gonna be honest, I haven't really changed that much. I feel like people around me are changing more than I'm changing.

Really? How come?

Everyone's growing up and I've always been this way, so you're right.

Maybe you're ahead of everybody.

Probably, yeah.

Are you just an old soul?

I don't know.

Just very wise for your age, beyond your years. That's probably very hard to deal with, I would think.

Yeah.

So do you have advice to students who haven't started high school yet? Like, if you were talking to your 8th grade friends who you will be excited to have in high school next year. What advice do you have for them?

Um, pick your classes wisely and get involved.

So what is picking classes wisely versus not wisely? Any, any advice there?

Um, I would say picking classes wisely would be doing electives that you know you want to pursue in college, doing the right challenge level, and also scheduling with like how you're going to fit free periods in with your schedule and making sure you're not overworking yourself.

I think that— so as far as Ella's schedule, this was a huge challenge for us this year. Because she's taking 2 chorus classes. So as a freshman, you're supposed to take mixed chorus, correct?

Yes, you kind of have to.

And she also wanted to do Choraleers, which is—

which is an advanced all-girls chorus.

So I wanted her to have that opportunity. So in order to have that opportunity to do 2 chorus classes along with 1 other elective, and you're doing journalism, which you really wanted to do. So what that led to was Ella only has lunch every other day. So we weren't sure how that was going to look. Um, I don't know. What do you, what do you think?

I mean, I think it's only okay because of the classes I'm taking. If I was taking, say, advanced bio, it might have been more of a problem.

Yeah, well, and I think that you're right in the fact that you have to be careful of how many hard classes you pack into your schedule.

Like, next year I'm probably going to take less electives so that I can take the harder classes.

Well, you have so many electives that you want to take. We're going to see how this works out. I do think that it's great to either try to have a lunch every day or to make sure that there's teachers who are going to let you eat in their classes.

Yeah.

Yeah, because I definitely worry about you when you don't have a lunch, and I hope that you find time in your classes to eat.

I do.

She never eats as much on the days that she doesn't have a lunch, which concerns me, but I really wanted her to have this opportunity to take the electives she wanted. So it's a real fine line of What are your kids capable of handling?

And every kid is going to be different.

Every child is different. And I think that it's okay when you do do the schedule and maybe it doesn't work out to try to maybe rework your schedule. The only thing, the huge issue that we have had is if your child takes Regents Bio or Honors Bio. If you start the school year in one of those classes and decide that maybe Regents Bio isn't hard enough, or maybe Honors Bio is too hard, the issue that we have seen is it might change your whole schedule.

Exactly.

So, so that's the only thing that we— I want to warn people that you may go into Honors Bio thinking, we'll see how it goes, Well, if you see how it goes and it's going too hard and you want to switch, that doesn't mean that you can slide into a class at the same time.

And there is also lab when it comes to science that you have to work around as well. So I think the biggest part of that is the initial planning has to be like, I'm okay if this is set in stone type of thing.

Well, and tell— I think you're right. And I think you should tell everybody about the lab. In Regents versus Honors?

Okay, so lab is sort of this extra period of science that students in our area have, and you do extra work and extra more hands-on work because it's a smaller class. And in Regents, which is normal level where we live, you only have lab once every 6 days. But for Honors Bio, you would have lab every other day. So to change from say Honors to a Regents, or more from Regents to an Honors, you would have to then find a way to fit in that every other day lab, which is part of the reason why I didn't personally move up.

So I personally thought when we were going into high school, so see, this is the kind of stuff you gotta work out with your kid and their counselor. I thought personally as her mother, that she could easily do honors bio. I'm still, I'm still—

Yeah, I would.

Her grades are amazing. She could easily have done honors bio. And the only reason that I didn't push for that is because Ella has all these electives she wanted to fit in, which meant that we couldn't fit in a lab every other day.

And a lunch. I have the time where there could be a lab. It would just mean I have no lunch.

Yeah, no, I think you made the right decision. And I think it's okay to not take honors classes. I think that you are taking honors classes. Yeah. And I don't think that every single one of your classes needs to be an honors class. No. So I think that that is something to really think about is what classes do your children love? 'Cause Ella loves social studies and ELA. So those are the classes she should 100% do honors 'cause she loves it so much. But then the classes like math and science that you don't love so much, maybe you just do the Regents level.

Yeah.

Yeah, that makes total sense. We're learning, and you have, you have so many electives that you want to take, and it's so exciting to be able to take electives that you're actually interested in.

Yeah.

So as we look ahead to the rest of the school year, um, what kind of goal— I mean, even thinking about the next 3 years of high school, so 3 and a half years or whatever you have left. What do you think some of your goals are? What are you excited about?

Um, well, one of my goals is to take theater at some point because I'm big into theater. Um, take theory and AP theory for music, um, and graduate with honors.

I think those are excellent goals that you will have no problem accomplishing. The only issue we have is theater. So Ella signed up for theater this year and really wanted to take it, and I really wanted her to have that, but they told her they didn't have enough kids in the class.

So yeah, so that is the problem we are running into is if not enough people sign up for the class, it doesn't run.

So let's, let's do, let's do a shout out. Right now to please—

if you are in our area, take theater.

So if you know that your child goes to Ella's school, we would love for you to encourage your child to take theater next year, or to maybe tell someone whose kid you think would enjoy theater. Maybe it's not your kid, maybe it's someone else's, and encourage them to sign up. Because I think they want like 18 kids to run the class. So maybe you need to do like a, um, what is, what am I thinking of?

No, no.

So what do you think? We're gonna start with what we've done well. What do you think your parents have done well to support you in this transition?

Um, you've been there for me.

What do you think that we can work on?

Um, I mean, you guys are great parents and I don't really need you as much as some other kids would, so I'm not really sure.

Well, I'll tell you some really good advice that you gave me this week. So, um, in the ups and downs of life, when our kids have ups, we celebrate with them, and when our kids have downs, we get sad with them. And it's re— and it's really important for us to give them space to have their own feelings, right?

And let you— don't feel my emotions for me.

Well, that wasn't your emotions. That was my emotions, but I need to give you space to feel your own feelings because I don't want my— because I'm such a feeler, you know, this is parenting advice for me and everybody is if you're like me and you have lots of feelings, you don't wanna overshadow your kids' feelings. So I had to kind of control myself. And how I was feeling. Um, I think it's very okay for parents to feel sad for their kids. I'm not gonna lie to you. I'm not gonna try to act all the time. I was sad, and I think that's okay for me to feel that way, but I just have to make sure that I give you room and space and whatever you need with your own feelings.

Yeah, I totally agree with you.

So, I mean, you are really good at telling us what you need from us. So I think just keep doing that.

Yeah. And for the kids, don't be afraid to tell your parents what you need because they can't read your mind.

That is really good advice. And I like when you say to me things like, just listen. Um, you don't need to fix it. Just listen. Or I need your help to fix it. Listen and help me. But I want to tell you, and I hope that you already know this, that I am incredibly proud of you. I see you. I watch you. I see how hard you work. I see the grades that you bring home. I read your amazing report card, and you want to know what I liked even better than the grades?

Hmm.

The comments. Did you read the comments?

Um, I did, but I don't really remember what they said.

So I really struggled with conferences this year because we just had conferences for high school and middle school, and you can pick who you want to meet with. And I felt kind of like a slacker not going in at all. So number one, if I want to go in and meet the teachers, go in and meet the teachers and talk to them for a minute. And don't feel bad about that. If I don't want to go in and meet the teachers and I don't have any concerns and my kids are doing fantastic, that's okay too. So what I decided to do— my husband didn't care, so he was like, whatever— I decided I was going to meet with Max and Ella's science teachers only because those are their hardest classes. So I did have a fantastic conversation with Max's AP Bio teacher. And then we went over to Ella's teacher, and Ella's teacher was like very perplexed as to why we were there. So yeah, that was probably a waste of her time and my time, but that's okay. My point is, your teachers love you. They think you're doing fantastic. They all think you're doing fantastic. We think you're doing fantastic. And we know that your grades are amazing, and we're so proud of you, and we just want to see you keep getting involved in school and finding things to join.

Thank you.

So I am so glad this transition is going well. I am so, so happy for you that you are out of middle school.

I know!

Ella could not wait to be done with middle school. So you have arrived. And you have big goals for high school and you have big goals for college, and I'm very excited for you.

Thank you.

I'm along for the ride. Well, thank you for taking time with me today and for recording this with me.

Of course. Thank you for having me.

This won't be the last time.

I know.

And, uh, I want to take a moment to just ask you all to share this with a friend. Share this with someone that you think would benefit from listening, or share this with a high schooler that you think would benefit or enjoy this. And I would so love for you to rate, review, subscribe, share, comment. I so appreciate it. It means so much to me, and it helps get this out to more people that we can help. Right?

Right.

This is Rebecca Green. Forgot my name. I want to remind everyone to spend every day laughing, learning, and loving. Thank you for tuning in to the Winey Palooza podcast. If you like what you heard, please be sure to subscribe so you never miss an episode. While you are there, leave a review. I love to hear your feedback. Thank you so much for listening. Until next time.

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