My Teen Completed EFP12 Online Through NIDES: What I Wish I’d Known Before We Started
The crumbs of a peanut butter granola bar were stuck to my laptop trackpad on that January evening, and I was three pages deep in British Columbia distributed education forums, when Sam flopped down on the kitchen chair next to me and said, “I’m not going back to in-person for second semester.” He’d failed the first half of academic math 12, missed 10 days with bronchitis and anxiety, and couldn’t see a way to catch up without missing his graduation requirement. The trades counselor at his school suggested EFP12—Essentials of Functional Mathematics 12, the practical math credit he needed for graduation and his upcoming carpentry pre-apprenticeship—and said NIDES was a go-to option for online learning. That’s how we ended up spending the last four months working through EFP12 online through NIDES, and learning all the unwritten rules no one tells you before you hit enroll.
We enrolled in three days, got Sam’s login info, and I assumed it would be like the pandemic remote learning we’d done in 2021: daily check-ins, automatic reminders, a teacher that would email me if he skipped a day. Sam assumed it was fully self-paced with no hard deadlines, so he spent the first three weeks not opening the site at all. I got that automated progress email at the grocery store checkout—0% of assignments submitted, 0% course complete—and my face got hot while the cashier waited for me to tap my card. I called the NIDES office that afternoon, and got us a call with Sam’s assigned teacher, Ms. Henderson, the next day.
Ms. Henderson didn’t sugarcoat it. She said 70% of the parents she works with make the same mistake our first month: NIDES online isn’t teacher-led remote school, it’s distributed learning, which means the student carries most of the responsibility for pace, and she only has time to check in once a week with each student if they reach out first. She walked us through what works for most of her EFP12 students, and we adjusted immediately. First, we blocked 90 minutes every weekday at 8:30 am, right after breakfast, before Sam went to his part-time job at the local hardware store. No phones allowed at the table—he leaves his in the junk drawer by the front door. We used the course outline to map out one small weekly target: two assignments, one quiz, one full unit section done by Sunday evening. If he hits the target, he gets full access to our family car on weekends; if he doesn’t, he makes up the missed time on Saturday morning. That’s it, no big lectures, no extra punishments beyond that.
What surprised me most was how well the EFP12 content through NIDES fits kids like Sam. The in-school academic math class he took first was full of problems about parabolas and statistical distributions he swears he’ll never use as a carpenter. The NIDES EFP12 course is almost entirely practical: he calculated how much concrete he’d need for a 10×12 foot shed foundation, figured out the GST on a bulk lumber order, practiced reading measurements off blueprints, learned how to calculate a monthly budget for tools and rent. Last month, when we decided to build three raised garden beds in the backyard, Sam pulled out his notebook, calculated the total board feet we needed, added tax, and told me exactly how much it would cost at the hardware store. I didn’t prompt him, he just did it. That’s the first time I’ve ever seen him use math he learned in school outside of class.
It’s not all smooth, of course. The biggest frustration is the response time. If Sam gets stuck on a concept and messages Ms. Henderson, he usually doesn’t hear back until the next work day, sometimes longer, because she teaches three classes for NIDES and only works four days a week. When he’s in the middle of working, that can kill his momentum, and he’ll close the laptop and not come back for the rest of the day. We fixed that with a low-cost workaround: a friend of mine who’s a retired math tutor agreed to answer quick text questions for $20 a month. If Sam’s stuck, he sends her a photo of the problem, and she usually sends back a 10 second voice note explaining where he went wrong within an hour. It’s way cheaper than full tutoring, and it’s just enough to keep him moving. Another small thing I wish I’d known: NIDES only lets you submit three assignments for marking at a time, so you can’t just upload the whole unit at once to get it done. We learned pretty quick to submit assignments as he finishes them, so we don’t end up waiting a month for marking right before the end of the course.
A lot of parents I talk to think that online distributed learning through NIDES is only for kids who can’t hack in-person school, or for kids who are already super self-motivated. Sam’s not a super self-motivated kid, he’d rather play video games or work on his old pickup truck than do math homework. But the simple routine we built, paired with the practical content that actually matters to his goals, has worked way better than in-person ever did. He doesn’t have to sit through an hour of class waiting for everyone else to catch up, he can work through a concept as slow as he needs to, and rewatch the explanation videos as many times as he wants if he doesn’t get it the first time.
Right now, Sam’s at 72% course completion, on track to finish the first week of June, which gives him enough time to wrap up his other credits and start his pre-apprenticeship in September. Some weeks he still skips a day or two, and we have to shift the milestone to the next week, and that’s okay. It’s not the neat, linear high school experience people often describe, but it’s working for us. If you’re considering EFP12 online through NIDES for your kid, don’t go into it assuming it’s the same as in-person or pandemic remote school. Block the consistent time, set the small weekly targets, have a backup for when the teacher is slow to reply, and give your kid a month to adjust to the pace. It’s not for everyone, but for a kid who needs a different way to get the credit they need for their next step, it’s worth the small amount of extra planning up front.
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