You Never Know

Half way through her first year of middle school and there have been some expected and unexpected outcomes for Ashley.  By far her best subjects are math and science.  She's been placed in AT (academically talented) math as well as accelerated science.  I would have guessed her strongest subject would have been English as she is such a good and avid reader, but you never know.  I'm very proud of her especially because girls excelling in math and science is an issue near and dear to my heart.

Another area that we didn't anticipate her success in is keyboarding.  Yeah, I know, who gives much thought to keyboarding?  Actually, this whole story has just made Dave and I smile and shake our heads.  In our school district they held an online keyboarding competition among the four junior high schools.  Every day for a couple weeks or so, all the kids in the school would log into a keyboarding program that would test their skills and record their scores.  At the end of the competition the school with the highest total score would win the "keyboarding trophy."

Anyway, the first week of the competition Ashley scored the highest in her school.  In fact, one day during the competition she stayed home sick and when the principal saw the day's score, she came to the keyboarding teacher and asked, "what happened?  Why is our score so low today?"  The teacher said, "it's because, Ashley, my best student is absent today."  Of course, as a result of this Ashley became a minor celebrity among the keyboarding students as everyone waited to see how high Ashley would score each day.

In the end, Ashley's school won the trophy.  Her computer teacher, searched the whole 6th grade lunchroom asking for Ashley so that she could show Ash the trophy!  So funny.

Of course, not everything has come easy.  Sewing for example has involved a lot of picking stitches, re-threading the needle, and being frustrated.  Now, that is a little more expected.  Of course, Ashley is just beginning her sewing class so hopefully by the end it will be a lot easier.  She is also doing an after school cooking and sewing club so that will give her extra practice---because it's not like her mom is going to be much help with sewing homework.