Assessment 2024--Nature Angel

 

This photo would not be her first choice for me to include in this end-of-school-year post, but I love it.

Yes, she can be more traditionally pretty--gorgeous, actually--but all I see is really real beauty.  

And she's in her element.

(This location happens to be the Chicago Art Institute.)

Nature Angel completed her 11th grade year with almost too many credits to record on one form.

This is a cropped screenshot of her official transcript.

There is one blank line left, and she's actually still working on that credit.  I told her I was closing out her 11th grade transcript, and that I'd save the credit for that course for 12th grade.  

This year she spent time recovering from our hard summer of 2023, and she spent a lot of time coping with the ongoing effects of that hard summer that have only been resolved in the past month or two.

She says she wasted a great deal of time at the start of the school year.  

She says her time management was poor.

She actually told people that she didn't finish everything she should have for 11th grade!

She's ever so ambitious.

Yes, she's still working on Financial Literacy.

Yes, she gave up on her self-designed geography class.

Yes, she had a longer reading list for her Great Writers course.

But she did so well!

She participated regularly in Morning Meeting with the family.

She completed her third year of seminary with flying colors as well.

She grew as a reader, as a writer, as an artist, as a citizen of the world.  She annotated difficult reading passages to make them more understandable.  She wrote a long-term research paper and many brief response essays, proving herself a capable writer.  She wrote poetry, experimented with a variety of art forms, and designed and crocheted projects of inestimable beauty and charm.  (That single credit for fiber arts bothers me--her hours extend into the hundreds.)  She discussed current events in the light of historical events, social trends, and spiritual truths. She is a thoughtful, caring, capable young adult.

She does not yet have a post-high school plan.  

I'm not worried.

(She is.)

I know that doors will open at the right time and in the right place because she is prepared.

I keep telling her that she's far more ready for life than she gives herself credit for.

That information seems to just pass over her head through the air, refusing to land and take root.

I will keep trying, and hopefully, she'll grow to see that she is a remarkable human being.

(Because, really, what other 17-year-old brings Aristotle to the table to share the quote that cracked her up so that her mom can share in the laughter!?!?!?!)