Keeping up grades in order to do extra curricular activitie.

I don't have answers for you, but I empathize. My eldest is in a ton of extracurriculars, and he's been having a hard time with grades. The kicker is that he's in high school already, so both the grades and the extracurriculars are important. If he drops an activity, he will also lose his leadership roles - but he is also used to having a very high GPA, and he doesn't want to lose that, either. We are working on time management.

If your DD is planning to resume her full load of activities after her grades come up, then it might be more important to address her time management skills - otherwise, the grades will likely drop again when her activities resume.

HOW you teach time management skills is the $64,000 question, of course. I haven't a clue. I can only tell you that hollering about it does NOT work.

I don't think you're out of line to cut something at this point - you don't want her to miss steps in her learning that will come around to bite her later.

I can see a grade slipping because you are struggling with a chapter or some concepts, but when more than one grade is dropping, it probably has more to do with effort. I was a teacher and once in a while I had a parent come in and talk to me about their kids slipping grades. Often times an extra curricular was taken away and it was very effective. In my experience, parents who are the most proactive see the best results and if parents are consistent, the results usually show up right away. As the teacher, I was always on the side of the kid and did my best to make sure I was checking for understanding and giving extra help for that kid. If the kid was willing to give it their best to get that sport back, so was I. As an educator, school was the most important thing and always came first.

My dd dances 3 days a week after school and once on the weekend and our rule has been 3 As and 1 B+ in her academic subjects or no dance. She has been able to maintain this so far - she is in grade 5 - but I find her dance is time consuming. If she has a test the next day and hasn't had enough time to study to our liking we'll have her leave dance early to come home and study (on a regular dance day - not before a performance although the situation of a test before a performance hasn't come up yet).

Generally our rule on marks applies to the next year - you want to continue with dance next year then show us the marks this year. We haven't had her marks slip but we have brought her home from dance early maybe 4 times this year to complete school work / studying. So if she dances 4-8 then we might bring her home at 6 when we pick up younger dd. We do find that her dance schedule helps her focus / prioritize at school. She knows she needs to do her work on non dance days.

Next year she's switching to a more academic school. DH wants her to give up dance but I want her to keep it as a constant in case school is not what she expected / hard to make friends. Her plan is to do it for one more year and then switch to the less demanding recreational program for grade 7. She has made such good choices in life so far that I'm inclined to let her follow her plan.

I'm not sure I'd pull my dd out of classes I already paid for unless her grades were terrible. My dd does have a math tutor to keep that grade at an A. Sometimes it isn't that the material is too hard but that the one on one experience is better. Good luck,
P.

I think cutting back while she is committed to a show, is reasonable.

I'd look to the future. In 7th grade, here, the grades don't matter. You might fail but you'll be promoted regardless. But you will miss a good foundation for later years.

Which is going to matter more in three years? The break your daughter is currently taking from school, or a break she should take from musical theater?

I've had so many students in high school like your daughter. Sometimes it is sports, a lot of times it is musical theater, a lot of times it is gymnastics. Sometimes kids can excel at the activity and school. Sometimes they only excel at one. I've taught two professional athletes, one professional actor and one professional dancer (they were working on their careers while they were in my classes). They were all A and B students. The dancer dropped out and got her GED then moved to NYC to pursue her dreams. Her brother told me she was doing quite well. The actor graduated, moved to California but didn't get the grades to get into his school of choice. His fallback school has been good for him though. One athlete was a really strong student would be gone for 2-3 week periods and ended up doing poorly in her core classes. Her counselor expected me to re-teach the girl every single class that was missed, privately, so the girl could maintain her average. I wasn't able or willing to do that. She's smart and beautiful so as soon as her career runs dry she'll continue to be successful. The other athlete chose school over his current career and is at UNC-CH. Last I heard he is hoping to go into sports medicine. It came down to personal choices for them. But they could not have it all.

What happens more often are students are really busy with practices/rehearsals and they think that one week blowing off homework/projects won't matter. Then when the show is over, they are willing to get back to academics and find they are way behind. They can't understand the current material because they've missed the foundation and they get further behind. They say that they'll come to tutoring but quickly learn that the teacher's focus is on the students who are struggling with the current stuff, not the students that blew off the other. I can't dismiss six students that need help with yesterday's assignment just so I can reteach five days of material to one student. This is especially true with math, chemistry and physics teachers.

I personally have no problem with families not making school the priority in their children's lives. I'm glad we have the awesome variety in careers that we do. But I want the families to be realistic. It is the very rare student that maintain an A average in advanced courses while having a passion that requires 30 hours a week in practice/rehearsals. Only the parents know what their thresholds for success are. Great dancer and C student? Good dancer and B student?

I'm glad you got some good advice here, as have nothing to offer. But I wanted to let you know we're having the same issue with our 8th grader. This is the first, and last, year that he has 2 extracurriculars running at the same time, he has track 4-5 days/week and basketball 2-4 days so depending on the week he could have something every single day, and a day or two where he does both. It's too much and we've said it can't happen again. Thankfully he managed to boost his grades enough to get by and track is only a couple more weeks (for multiple reasons we didn't want him to give up either) but we all learned a lesson this spring semester.

I don't think it is too harsh at all. If grades come first in your house then they come first. You have to enforce the rule for it to be effective. I think it's good that you are allowing her to perform in the already scheduled performances. It is not fair to the rest of the crew to pull your daughter and punish all of them for something your daughter did outside of that group.

I would do the exact same thing.

I agree with this post, and RosieKat's. 

The thing is, she may be hitting the 'math wall.' Some kids, up to about this age, are equally good in math/science & English/socials, etc. But then Math reaches a point where the creative types get lost. If you take away the things she is good at, and  gets joy from, that may exacerbate her problems in math. The focus on only the things she isn't good at, with no balance by taking away what she is good at, could backfire. 

My cousin hit her math difficulties in Gr 8. Her parents finally decided to take her out of the more academic math & have her do the easier, business & consumer math (I think we actually call it Workplace & Apprentice, or something like that). It meant risking that if she chose to go into a university program like a BA she'll have to upgrade (which ultimately she doesn't - she's going the route of a trade), but that was better than putting her through what the algebra & such were doing to her. 

The only thing I would add that I haven't seen (and, I admit, that I skimmed the responses) is to make all of this a conversation with your daughter. She is in the 7th grade and needs to be a part of this process. Perhaps her knowing that you are prepared to substantially limit her extracurricular activities will be sufficient motivation for her; perhaps you and she can explore why her grades are slipping - is it lack of understand the subject matter, time management, just overall 7th grade bad attitude, boys ... what?? But whatever - she should be involved in the process and not have only the consequences imposed. You'll be working with her to set her up for success later in life!