"Ericka Kammerer" wrote in message
...
Jenrose wrote:


But you have a job where the nature of the job makes
that possible. I have one of those too, and it's a really
nice way to go. But there *are* jobs where that isn't
possible. The way most classrooms are organized, the job
of learning/teaching isn't one that can be done in a situation
where the child is missing 20+ percent of school. Is the
teacher *really* supposed to sit down each week and plan
*everything* to accommodate the fact that a particular child
is going to regularly miss a day that week?

No. However....

The teacher
must not schedule anything that would affect her grades that
day? And, of course, it would be a shame to schedule anything
particularly interesting or special that day, since this is
a child who most needs those sorts of enriching activities.
And what about group work? Will this child be excused from
all group work so that her group won't be at a disadvantage
by her absence? Or will all group work have to be scheduled
around her schedule? And what about specials (music, PE, art,
computer, etc.)? If the day she's skipping has one or more
of those, then she's missing *all* of that activity, so what
should happen with those grades? Should she be given a way
to make those up?

In an environment which focuses on education (rather than grades) and
provides enough group work, special activities, enrichment, etc., there will
be both the flexibility for a child to miss a class (without it affecting
non-existing grades) and enough learning going on that maybe the parents
don't feel they *need* to pull the child out to keep her learning.

Now, one could argue that classes should be designed
differently so that they had the flexibility to deal with
this sort of thing. However, that would pretty much mean
that they'd have to go to a sef-paced, self-directed sort
of class. This would be a huge change, would probably
require a significantly lower teacher:student ratio, and
would wreak havoc with all the "accountability" testing
and whatnot that has been implemented by our elected
officials over the last several years.


My daughter's classes are not self-paced, per se, nor self-directed. And the
teacher/student ratio varies from 24:1 to 28:1, although we have enough
parent volunteers that there are usually other adults around. Honestly, when
you get a bunch of kids with different ability levels together, ditch the
whole "letter grade" system, encourage group learning environments and make
the curriculum one which allows children to do assignments to their ability
rather than to one "objective" standard, then yes, you can accomplish an
education with the same basic resources any public school should have. Our
kids have to take the testing just like everyone else, and they do well on
it. The *only* "problem" our school had on the national testing
was...attendance. That is, enough parents opted out of the generalized
testing that it was a black mark...the only black mark. Funny, the kids are
still learning.

But the teachers give the assignments, and the general direction, but they
do tailor their expectations to each kid. Removing the tyranny of graded
assignments and placing instead actual *feedback* to kids and encouragement
to learn and develop rather than 'get better grades' and suddenly you get a
group of engaged kids who like helping each other out, like learning, and
who don't have to be ability grouped, ostracized or otherwise isolated for
being brighter than average OR slower than average.


My daughter's school succeeded in making going to school "the reward"...
so
that they don't HAVE to punish people outrageously for missing. Most
people
just don't want to miss!


I think most schools can be accommodating to some
degree. Even if it's that once-in-a-lifetime opportunity
to spend two weeks on safari, they'll usually work to
concoct some sort of project the child can do resulting
from the trip itself, and that plus a little makeup work
will eliminate the problem. But handling a situation
where the child is regularly missing as much school as
the OP proposed is a really different situation, in my
opinion at least.

My opinion is that a bright kid whose parents feel the kid needs to be out
of school once a week to get a decent education is a symptom of a school
that is failing to provide an adequate education. The irony is that getting
kids engaged in learning just does not have to be all that hard.

School does not have to be boring. It does not have to be "paced to the
slowest learner in the class". It does not have to be demoralizing for kids
who take longer to learn. It does not have to be centered on getting
grades--it should be centered on learning! I got great grades all the way
through high school--it taught me to cram for tests but little else. I'm
great at cramming for tests, btw... but have lousy retention of what I
learn. My daughter on the other hand tends to really internalize what she
learns, has great study habits, etc. Just this year, in 5th grade, she gets
points on her assignments for the first time. And she is so into the extra
credit for it's own sake that she often comes back with a zillion extra
points on her paper and it's irrelevant to her. She's so not about the
numbers.

To me, a bored bright child is as scary or scarier than a child who is
struggling to learn. Both are fully capable of acting out in frustration and
disrupting the environment for other kids. Why not use curriculums that
actually keep both kids from getting too frustrated? Curriculums that keep
them learning?

Jenrose