“Game Boy-Oh-Boy” or “ ‘D’ is for Dumb”

  Gameboy got his report card for the second quarter of school, which he attended for the last three weeks. I was a little curious to see what his grades would be, considering how he has been educated up to this point. If you spend your childhood getting no tests, no homework, no grades, how do you do when you're plopped into school?
  The answer is different for everyone, I'm sure, but for Gameboy, the answer is: OK, I guess.
  He got five A's, two B's and a D. Obviously, the thing that stands out is the D, and trust me; I've told him not to worry about it. That D was the result of "group work." I hated working in groups in school. My husband and I had similar experiences where teachers put us in groups to work together but left it up to the kids to figure out what jobs needed to be done and who would do what. It was frustrating because the hard workers ended up doing everything, and the other kids coasted along.
  So on Gameboy's second day of school ever, he was put into a group of kids he didn't know to do work for which he wasn't prepared. I'm sure he was just trying to go along with whatever they were doing. I don't think he really owns the F earned on that second day of social studies class. After that mark, he was in too big a hole to climb out of in the two-and-a-half weeks left in the quarter.
  The ironic cherry on top of the D is that the group project was to evaluate a board game made by other students. This is in preparation to make their own board game.
  It's not an accident that his blog name is Gameboy. He has been making his own board games since he was 4. He has been playing "Axis & Allies" with his dad since he was 6. He has a group of "Dungeons & Dragons" friends and spent all his Christmas money buying "Settlers of Catan" expansion sets. Then there are all the video games: "Caesar III" since age 4, "Zoo Tycoon" at age 5, then "Stronghold" and "Medieval Total War." He has done homeschool expo projects on "Star War Legos II" and D&D. He took a summer camp at a local college where the kids learned to program their own computer games. He can discuss the playability of a game, the flaws of a game, fixes that would make a game better for hours. If we get a new game, he dives into the instruction book and will know all the rules within about 20 minutes. Forgive me for not pointing a finger at him for that F.
  Not that there's any finger to point, really. That's how school is. And although I don't worry about his grades, clearly I can be annoyed by them.
  And what does he think of all this? Not much, from what I can tell. I told him not to be worried about it, and he isn't. So good for him, I say.