Deteriorating grades in high school; Aura of intelligence

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Did anyone else do very well in lower school, well in middle school and then struggle in high school? People are always appalled when they see my grades relative to my very high PSAT and testing scores (on my IEP description it actually mentions "performing bellow potential" and "unequal ability") And also, people always believe that I am a very intelligent person when I talk to them (despite my difficulty with talking to quickly, intonation and pronunciation) but are then surprised that I am in CP courses rather than AP or honors. And trust me, my poor grades are not for a lack of trying. Is this typical of someone with AS? And also, what type of accommodations did you receive?

I developed serious anxiety and depression about 2-3 months into high school, because I noticed I was hurting others' feelings, and I remembered when I started high school and learned a lot of the stupid sh!t I did from age 10-12 and regretted. I dont want to go through it again, so I started caring A LOT and realized how badly I was doing. I sweat and skipped through my school day, once I moved to a different city with 1 big high school (i.e. all teenagers in our city go there, approx. 6500)

It got worse obviously since I did not even realize what "young adult" really entailed.

DUe to the AS, I was still like a kid till like last winter.

That's why my grades went down, because I wasn't getting along, and I was pissing everyone off too.

Okay, a big issue for me was science classes. The way they taught science did not gel for me at all. They wanted us to memorize a lot of unrelated details almost as if it's a catechism (in fact, the debate between creationism and evolution is inconsequential because they're both taught the same way!)

What works for me in science is the case study method and arcing across a topic. In fact, I largely think in terms of narrative and story.

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I might recommend you doing some experiments with pre-studying and undertrying (the zen turnaround). And pre-studying can be as simple as leafing through the next chapter of a geology book ahead of the class, casually looking at the diagrams and photos. It's like a movie preview and you can get a surprising amount out of it in a relatively short amount of time.

If these CP courses are some kind of remedial classes, it may have several types of negative dynamics, for starters, teachers may talk down to you which puts new layers of opaqueness between you and the material. I remember in college, where I took both calculus for non-science majors and then the regular calculus. The calculus for non-science majors was actually more difficult in that they tried to use rather far-out analogies instead of just explaining the material. And plus, I think the regular calculus had like 50 years of developing the textbook, so it was pretty well paced. The calc for non-science majors wasn't.

Last edited by AardvarkGoodSwimmer on 10 Jul 2012, 10:44 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Most of that is pretty similar for me. My test score weren't very high but I didn't study or try very hard on the ACT or SAT. (On the act I wrote b a good amount of times on one of the sections, i was bored).
At work or other places I don't brag or anything like that but people usually assume (correctly haha) that I am really smart

I don't remember completing much coursework, homework or PE. So in subjects that had coursework elements I got a really poor grade. This was mainly a problem organising my time, schedule and noting my homework assignments. It didn't help that I seemed invisible to the teachers, I really can't understand how I failed to complete so much work without getting brought up on it.

A lot depended on how well I got on with the teacher and also in retrospect it was where I sat and who I was with.

One problem with schooling, is that if I didn't understand how and why something was so, I couldn't accept it. I really struggled with maths until my penultimate year of secondary school, a different teacher went back to basics and explained everything from scratch, I caught up pretty quickly.

Jason

It can go either way with AS. There are many very good students with AS. I think any kid with a learning style that contradicts the teaching style in their classes will struggle with grades and achieving their potential. For me personally it was <1.0 GPA throughout K-10 (I was kicked out in 10th grade) to 3.8 GPA in college. The difference was teaching style and more flexibility. In K-12 it's about "This is how you do it and anything else is wrong". In college it's much closer to "here is the data, we don't care how you learn it, just get an A on the test". Occasionally I get a class in college that is run like my K-12 classes were. In every case I was forced to drop the class because I couldn't cope. Now that I think about it, these classes really brought out the same old childhood behavior of frustration leading to having very open conflicts with the teachers in the middle of class. Guess it's in my nature to share my misery with them

I think the difference between AS and all other kids is that the AS group have a higher incidence of conflicting learning style than the general population.

I see a number of things that could be happening here.

One could be that your style of learning does not match the way you are being taught. My son, for example, is hardly able to pass math unless he is in a remedial class along with regular math. They teach using different methods in the remedial math class (use manipulatives, etc). He went from having a D with no remedial math, to an 97% average (in his regular class with remedials added), and then back down to a C- when they took the remedial math away. He simply can't grasp math the way the "mainstream" classes teach it.

I think there are also different types of learning that some people have a hard time holding. I am terrible with names and dates and memorization of straight facts, so I do don't do so well in classes that rely on that kind of processing and are tested in that way. But I do much better in classes where you need to synthesize information, draw conclusions, and more abstract things like that (especially if the tests are more conceptual as well).

The last thing is harder for me to explain, so bear with me. Let's say a typical kid goes to school and they spend 20% of their available "mental power" dealing with the social complexities of school. That leaves them with 80% to focus on school work. Take a kid with ADHD/AS/Sensory issues, etc...they may spend 20% of their mental power dealing with sensory issues, 10% trying to force themselves to pay attention, and 50% of their mental power coping with navigating in the social environment. They've only got 20% left for school work. So, even if they are significantly brighter than their peers, they are starting with a lot less. At least this is my theory about my son and why, although he is very bright, his grades almost never reflect his true knowledge.

Which reminds me of another thing that could be at play. My son had an awesome 4th grade teacher. The best teacher I have ever seen. She explained something very interesting to me. She said that every time my son got his test back, he would argue his incorrect answers with her. She said the very interesting thing was that his arguments were almost always correct and almost always demonstrated an understanding above his grade level. The problem was, his answer did not match the question that was asked. So the answer was technically wrong, although the information he knew was factually correct. So perhaps your tests aren't really measuring what you know?

If I didn't have the motivation from my parents to do well in high school (i.e. WE ARE BANNING YOU FROM EVERYTHING) I would have probably failed a lot of classes through pure disinterest. I hated being with people (most time I sat in the back, with at least one space for my backpack), group projects were loathsome (especially considering after a while I'd just take over and finish it myself), most of the assignments were stupid (read: tons of "tell me a fact from this article" assignments) and I just generally disagreed with how they were trying to teach me.

This is coming from someone who, in 12th grade, read the entire intro psychology textbook in less than 3 weeks, retaining most of the knowledge involved, and passing the class with >95% while playing video games/sleeping/drawing/not completing assignments. I was certainly capable of completing the task at hand, it's just that they taught it in the most rigid and didn't help work with my personal needs. The teacher, most unsurprisingly, hated me and thought I was lazy, despite her not even realizing that it was her not paying attention to not notice my differences in learning.

I think my school district failed me in a lot of ways. I think they could have done a lot more to keep me interested in class, even though I wasn't diagnosed at the time, I still showed a lot of differences and kinda shows you that unless you've got a pass (a diagnosis) that most teachers aren't going to do much to try to help you get interested. They even held me back because even though I could have graduated a year early, they needed to keep me in the school for "credits", even though I could have tested out and obtained those credits through testing out.

/frustration

My grades in high school ranged from good to average. My best year academically was my sophomore year, when I managed mostly "A"s and some "B"s. I am very smart, but I also tend to get lazy sometimes, and my grades sometimes reflected that. One of my teachers even remarked that I could be really successful in life if I just employed my talents to their fullest potential.

When it came to AP classes, I never did well in those. I tried them, but I either made mostly "C"s in them or failed them. The fact that the regular classes were too easy for me was especially frustrating. It made me feel intellectually inferior to the AP kids, too.

I never took the SATs in high school, but I did take the PSATs, and I recall scoring exceptionally well in the language arts section of it.

had the exact same pattern. (from the early 80's to 90')
My issues were very complex.

But, relatively the same progression.

My grades got progressively worse through school as well. The first class I ever failed was in my senior year in high school.

I was pretty much like this. It was mostly the NVLD I have. My science, history, and English grades remained pretty good (barely tried at those really) but then math I bombed out. My math grades got better when I was switched from algebra to like, business math and accounting, there I did fine. I think for me in high school, it was more all the social pressure of it all that messed with my grades. I was in a school of like...1600 people? I spent elementary school in a Christian school where my entire GRADE was under 20 people usually. Then middle school, your entire grade is like...hundred people? Then you go to high school, and it's way harder to figure everything out, there's sexual tension everywhere, and hell, I had trouble navigating hallways and stuff in high school just because my sense of direction is so bad (due to NVLD, probably.) So there's so much more to think about than your actual grades in high school.

I wish I could have taken my GED in 8th grade. I hate school.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UeSJ9loxFgI[/youtube]

This is what is happening to me now. I've always not done little work in school because I find it boring. Like in maths I would do absolutely no bookwork and the night before tests I would look through my textbook to understand the concepts and would get As on my tests. The problem now is that there is a whole lot more work in year 11 and after years of doing little work my concentration levels have dropped and now I'm always behind.