Gifted teen, lazy as hell, would like teacher advise on how to push him

I teach IB. I love it as a program but it isn't as I intellectually rigorous as A Levels. If he does IB, I would advise Advanced Placement courses in addition.

In addition to coursera, I would have a look at EdX , the platform that host the MIT www.edx.org/school/mitx

Many of the EdX courses have the typical MOOC format, but I did several from Harvard that were a real course filmed during a semester. One of the courses I did on computer science (CS50) had several lesson taught by a uni professor who was 16 years old!

Even outside the MOOCs platforms, many major universities offer open courses, such as Yale oyc.yale.edu/courses , again a full semester of tuition filmed.

It is also worth mentioning that the Khan academy www.khanacademy.org courses go beyond high school.

I am a translator for Coursera and Khan. Maybe your son would be interested into translating some material or videos. DS1 and DD translate TED talks. The translators community is quite vibrant and full of immensely intelligent people. We always welcome new additions.

Re John Locke Summer School.

I wouldn’t know how much it would be for summer school now, my DS attended about 5 years ago and the cost was £3500. He was offered a bursary/scholarship but he raised half the money by having a quiz night locally and doing other fund raising and we paid the remainder so that the bursary money could be used for the benefit of someone else not quite so fortunate. He really wanted to attend so he was quite motivated to raise the money. He loved the whole experience.

I've realised in the last decade that my problem was not so much that I hadn't learnt to work, but that I hadn't learnt to learn. I simply didn't have the experience of (not being able to do something)-(working at it)-(being able to do it). My music got a bit better when I did some practice. My project work didn't get better. I didn't remember being unable to read (I just remembered that the first chapter or so of Heidi was a bit vaguer in my head than the rest).

I spent a lot of time during my A-levels sitting in my room in tears because I hadn't been able to answer the maths question the moment I read it. (Despite always being able to answer it eventually, I didn't improve at this. In fact I recall one occasion in my third year at university when I called the boyfriend in tears... Possibly a bit more stupid than anyone realised )

It's not the ideal time to be thinking of this sort of thing, but I think taking up karate was very good for both me and high-achieving S1. I now have concrete things I can point to that I genuinely couldn't do when I began.

He might do better at a good 6th form college. An academic one that encourages lots of enrichment and extra curricular stuff. They tend to be much better for bright kids, especially the mature ones.

Which year is he?

Four years at MIT or Stamford with three round trip flights per year and no financial aid would be over $300,000 total.
Have you considered the IB after GSCEs instead of Alevels? It involves a lot of research and extension work.

My child dropped a particular subject at gcse because the school and the teacher destroyed it.
Child is a now a very successful professional in that subject.
Schools can really take the joy out of learning.

For very able students GCSEs can suck the joy out of their learning. It certainly did with my DS. Why not have a look at the John Locke Institute (academics from Oxford and Harvard if my memory serves me right) as they have essay competitions each year and able students can apply for places on their summer courses. My DS took part in France a few years back and it was wonderfully enriching. He did philosophy, economics, history and politics with people from all over the world. At 15 he is the perfect age to start looking seriously at this kind of enrichment.

I completely agree with a pp - let him get a job* The only way to develop work ethic is to understand what work can actually achieve, whether that's the privilege of university (and it is a privilege, which is something we too often forget. Appreciate fees don't help with this) or fulfilling, stretching employment. At the moment life is easy because work is easy. Dropping him into another type of work is the best way to shake this up.

*I know this is easier said than done in Covid times.

Your DS needs to do his research. My DD thought she wanted to go to university in the USA. She went with DH to a Fulbright fair in London to investigate. Most of the courses were nowhere near the level of UK university courses. She then did work experience at a company in Manchester, working in a lab. The staff had come from a variety of science backgrounds and told her in no uncertain terms that a US degree was a poor choice. She would be better off getting her first degree in the UK and if she still wanted the experience, to go to the US for further study. She is now in her final year at Cambridge.

BTW MIT is not in California - it's in Massachusetts, on completely the other side of the USA!

I agree with the thought of getting him into a highly selective 6th form; if you start investigating this with him now, a potential school might help fire his imagination as to other things he could be doing between now and then.

It can be hard for some gifted students not to have a peer group; I didn't (extremely gifted, my life has gone all sorts of sideways so I absolutely understand where the OP is coming from), DD doesn't (gifted), DS (also extremely gifted) actually does for which I am incredibly grateful. If you can "find your tribe" it can help with motivation as ideas bounce back and forth and you stimulate each other.

Unfortunately, doing consistently well in all GCSEs requires more exam technique and practice than knowledge and mastery. Enrichment needs to be done around this and in many ways separately. My daughter wished, after she got her (excellent) results, that she had had the option to do physics GCSE early - she didn't think she'd learnt very much more after year 8, and is not continuing with sciences. Her GCSE year wore her down a lot. My son's school emphasises the top groups needing to aim for a flat profile - equally high achievement across all subjects, but are very good at enrichment.

Lots of good ideas have already been suggested. Depending on his interests I would also suggest looking at the maths challenge website and trying the intermediate olympiad past papers then the BMO1. The national ciper challenge has recently started, he'd have to catch up but my youngest has learnt loads doing it. I think there's another similar competition later in the year from somewhere else. Look at the informatics olympiad if he really likes coding. With his music, does he write his own stuff? If he loves writing, challenge him to write a novel?

Finally, something I heard somewhere years ago that has always stuck with me. Learning is like a pyramid. The broader the base, the higher the peak that can be reached. So encourage your son to branch out, investigate stuff, take charge of his own learning.

Hey ho, back to struggling with my own work ethic and procrastination ....

Hmm, I have many thoughts, but must work now.
But I understand what this is like- from both sides, so will post later.
It doesn't sound as though his school is much cop though!

Can I recommend a book called "He's Not Lazy" by Adam Price? We had a similar problem with our son and I found it really helpful. The premise is that talented boys often "opt out" and underperform as a reaction to pressure- fear of failure (especially for boys who have been told all their lives that they are clever and should be doing well, for whom failure can seem almost an existential threat) can manifest in a boy simply avoiding work. It's the equivalent of the obsessive perfectionism and liability to burn out that teenage girls sometimes develop in similar circs.

Reading the book and acting on its suggestions does require a leap of faith- even the title is a challenge- and it's natural to fear that letting the pressure off will lead to even less work being done, but in the long term your son needs to develop his own work ethic.

Not UN, university!

What about getting him to do some advanced placement (AP) courses? They are uni level and add to a students portfolio to enrich their UN applications. They're mostly accepted in the US, but you said hes thinking of applying there.

They'd push him, not interfere with his GCSEs AND help his Ivy League aspirations.

I’d be looking for a different school. IME, hitting university and then learning how to study is a real problem for DC like this, as both you and your husband found out. Better to move for A levels to a highly selective school where the pace is fast, they go above, beyond and around the curriculum for fun, and where the students are expected to also work hard at something else (music, sport, drama, whatever) as well as the academics.

You didn’t mention friendships - does he have friends? Because that will affect whether he wants to move, and he will need to want it and put the effort in if he’s to move to somewhere very selective. It might actually be the challenge he needs for this year, actually.

He can learn things away from school and sit additional GCSEs as an independent candidate if he really wants to do more. My ds did extra GCSEs outside school. I would echo what others say that if he is bright then he should focus on the extras, such as a good work ethic, volunteering, learning skills. It is easy for bright kids to coast and my ds did this at a level and it was a shock to him in the end. However he is well read, well versed in politics etc these are excellent skills to have and a good basis for expanding his knowledge and experience of the world. Academic success is just one part of being successful.

Surely the whole point of going to private school is so that they can focus on the individual needs and know individually how to help him and get the best out of him? It doesn't sound like education worth paying for if they are not doing that and it isn't academic enough for him. In my area the grammar schools get better results than the fee paying schools.

If he wants to go to uni in the states - tell him to get a part time job as his enrichment. Uni in America is EXPENSIVE, he could easily go to uni here so his desire needs to be paid for somehow. Getting a Saturday job in a supermarket etc will teach him a very different work ethic, social skills and highlight that sometimes it takes more than just brains. It will also allow him to save towards uni.

Other option would be to learn something practical. I've often found that highly academic people are a bit rubbish at practical things. Get him to learn how to cook, build a shed, iron etc

It's hard to understand from your OP whether you are mainly worried about a "work ethic" or whether your main concern is to get ahead of the academic curriculum.

In my opinion concerns about work ethic in very bright kids are usually overdone. And it's not something that necessarily needs to be worked on by accelerating the school curriculum, because usually to provide a real challenge to exceptionally bright students you'd need to accelerate by more than a couple of years - which is generally not a good idea unless its completely student-driven (ie independent study) rather than parent driven.

My bright but certainly NOT profoundly gifted son was accelerated by a year at his (not in the U.K.) school but still coasted all the way through high school - in fact to be brutally honest in three years of high school I rarely saw him open a book at home. However, he did work very hard, consistently and spontaneously on a couple of activities that were outside the school curriculum: programming and music, two activities where a motivated teenager can make extraordinarily fast progress if they put in the hours (for eg DS did the equivalent of grade 8 in piano in a single year).

He learnt far more in terms of "study skills" from those two activities than he was ever going to learn at school.

He is now in higher education and work ethic really isn't an issue as he knows perfectly well when he needs to step up the effort in order to master something, and he has plenty of "stamina" built up from hours solving programming challenges or perfecting Chopin études.

Happiness is very important to all ability levels and intrinsic motivation is so much more valuable than extrinsic. So encourage him to find his own outside interests.