Bright 2nd grader & school truancy / part-time home-school?

Circe wrote:

And by
the time my kids are graduating high school, I'm pretty certain that the
fallacies of NCLB will be wildly apparent to everyone because every single
school in the US will be failing by its standards and much of this testing
mania (including the exit exams) will have passed. But perhaps I'm too much
the optimist...


cynicism alert

Isn't that the point of NCLB? To have shown all public
schools to be failing, so that there will be a massive
outpouring of support for vouchers and The End Of Public
Schools?

Lesley

On Thu, 30 Oct 2003 01:41:57 GMT, LFortier
wrote:

Circe wrote:

And by
the time my kids are graduating high school, I'm pretty certain that the
fallacies of NCLB will be wildly apparent to everyone because every single
school in the US will be failing by its standards and much of this testing
mania (including the exit exams) will have passed. But perhaps I'm too much
the optimist...


cynicism alert

Isn't that the point of NCLB? To have shown all public
schools to be failing, so that there will be a massive
outpouring of support for vouchers and The End Of Public
Schools?

Lesley

LOL. I didn't change the subject header and said exactly the same
thing.


--
Dorothy

There is no sound, no cry in all the world
that can be heard unless someone listens ..

The Outer Limits

: Isn't that the point of NCLB? To have shown all public
: schools to be failing

Yes.

: so that there will be a massive
: outpouring of support for vouchers and The End Of Public
: Schools?

I think that's only part of it. IMO it's a much bigger issue than that. I
can't wait until Colorado starts "taking over" schools--talk about a
quagmire. This when the damn governor can't even pass the 8th grade science
tests.
--
ColoradoSkiBum

On Wed, 29 Oct 2003 20:48:00 -0700, "ColoradoSkiBum"
wrote:

: Isn't that the point of NCLB? To have shown all public
: schools to be failing

Yes.

: so that there will be a massive
: outpouring of support for vouchers and The End Of Public
: Schools?

I think that's only part of it. IMO it's a much bigger issue than that. I
can't wait until Colorado starts "taking over" schools--talk about a
quagmire. This when the damn governor can't even pass the 8th grade science
tests.

http://www.educationnews.org/school-doors-open.htm

Beginning the school year, NCLB high-stakes testing accountability act
and school sanctions are still considered by many a prudent yardstick
for learning – and punishment too, of course. Using only test
accountability – including state high school graduation tests – could
never find a buyer even at a pedagogical closeout sale. Of course,
congress and the president know this. The fact MPCP private and
religious schools receiving taxpayer tuition money are not required to
play by identical accountability rules makes NCLB highly suspect in
its real goals. Secretary of Education Rod Paige, a former college
football coach, understands that when the whistle blows, both teams
also have to play by the same rules. Instead, his pro-voucher
supporters demand, “We’ll let the education marketplace of voucher
parent fans decide who wins the game.”

Well-known education author Gerald W. Bracey warned, “NCLB is a trap.
It is the grand scheme of the school privatizers.” “A Plan for the
Destruction of Public Education: Just say ‘No’!” was published in a
February 2003 article in nochildleft.com. “NCLB sets up public schools
for the final knock down. Consider that the Bush administration is
deregulating every pollution producing industry in sight while cutting
Superfund cleanup money. It has rolled back regulations on power
plants and wants to take protection away from 20 million acres of
wetlands,” said Bracey. “The president wants to outsource hundreds of
thousands of government jobs to private corporations. He wants to get
the government out of government.”

“The 500-Pound Guerilla,” an article by Alfie Kohn published in Phi
Delta Kappan, October 2002 criticized the giant testing industry for
its role behind the “heavy-handed” versions of the current school
reform movement. “Standardized testing may be an even better
illustration in that it manages to achieve several goals at one
stroke.” It brings in hundreds of millions of dollars a year to the
handful of corporations that produce the tests, grade the tests, and
supply materials to raise students’ scores on the tests. It screens
and sorts students for the convenience of industry and higher
education. It helps to foster acceptance of a corporate-style
ideology, which comes to be seen as natural and even desirable, in
which assessment is used less to support learning than to evaluate and
compare people – and in which the education driven by the testing has
a uniform, standardized feel to it, asserted Kohn.

“And finally,” he added, “When many students perform poorly on these
tests (an outcome that can be ensured from the outset, and then
justified in the name of ‘raising the bar’), these results can be used
to promote discontent with public education: ‘We are shocked –
shocked! – to discover just how bad our schools are!’ Again, this can
create a more receptive climate for introducing vouchers, for-profit
charter schools, and other private alternatives. Anyone whose goal was
to serve up our schools to the marketplace could hardly find a
shrewder strategy than to insist on holding schools ‘accountable’ by
administering wave after wave of standardized tests.”

Quite noticeable in NCLB high-stakes testing results, school districts
with high numbers of schools with sub group categories of race,
poverty, special education and English as a second language students –
are the schools unable to meet and achieve “annual yearly progress”
(AYP) using tests. Even if only one of these sub groups of students at
a school fails to meet AYP, the entire school is placed on the
“sanction” list, allowing all of its students to transfer to
non-sanctioned public schools within its district. In Milwaukee, with
most of these schools already at capacity, the NCLB stage is set
hoping many parents will then choose a taxpayer funded private or
religious school in the MPCP program or one of the many new charter
schools (that receive funding from the MPS budget too, as described
earlier). With funding needs for MPS schools being diluted into these
private, religious and charter school coffers, it guarantees more MPS
budget cutbacks now and in the future – affecting its educational
goals even more unfairly.

Unlike the media frenzy rallying around H-D’s marketing celebration,
the local news media remained deathly silent about NCLB from its
onset. It dared not expose the “500-pound guerilla” or getting
“government out of government” to enable continued school “choice”
privatization in Milwaukee. Either now or after 2004 elections,
there’s no choice except to repeal NCLB – to prevent further harmful
and devious high-stakes testing and to reinforce “public” in public
education.


--
Dorothy

There is no sound, no cry in all the world
that can be heard unless someone listens ..

The Outer Limits

"Rosalie B." wrote in message
...
x-no-archive:yes
"Jenrose" wrote:

"Ericka Kammerer" wrote in message
...
Banty wrote:
snip
Our rule is "If you're bored and you tell me, it means you want a job to
do."

That's why most kids won't admit to being bored. I think that
attitude *in school* is kind of counter productive. It is different
for a parent at home who is dealing with the 'I'm booored mom, there's
nothing to do." type thing, and I'm assuming when you say that is your
rule that it is in your role as a parent that you are telling the kids
that.

(Right?)


Correct. My point is that I do think it's good for kids to learn to deal
with boredom constructively. However, I question the wisdom of that attitude
for years on end in a school setting.

This is my pet peeve, and can be summarized by a rant I had with some old
school friends a couple years ago. I said to my friend who is now an
English
teacher, "Do you realize that someone taught the class I was in the
difference between nouns and verbs every single year from the time I was
in
second grade until I hit 12th grade lit class?"

Another friend who was listening (whose mother *was* an English
teacher...)
said, "But I still don't know the difference..."

Either your friend was pulling your chain, or she knows but can't
verbalize it or she had some disability that prevented her from
learning, or she was just so uninterested that she never really tried
to learn.

She has some learning disabilities.


I knew the difference in 2nd grade, the first time they taught it. She
never
did learn. And there is the problem in a nutshell. WHY should a kid who
already has learned something several times over, sit through it one more
time because many kids will *never* get it?

So what would have them do - not let the kids who 'don't get it'
advance with their classes? [With no child left behind good luck on
that] Give up on them ever getting the concept? What should be done
with those kids.


Here's an aside on that particular subject... I believe in developmentally
appropriate learning, vs. age appropriate learning. That is, there are some
kids who can grasp a concept (such as nouns, verbs, etc.) at age 6 in a
ten-minute explanation. Give them a bit of review once or twice down the
road so they say, "Oh yeah..." or teach them a little song about it a la
schoolhouse rock, and that's all you need. BUT... a lot of kids won't learn
it easily at six. Or ten. But they might grasp it quickly at age 14. The way
our schools are structured, you can easily start spinning your wheels on a
given subject if you're just not "ready" to get it. The way my daughter's
school works, no one spins their wheels. Some people have to work harder on
certain things than others, but they never get stalled in one thing they're
not ready to learn. They aren't stopped from performing a Shakespearean
comedy at age 6 just because they haven't studied nouns and verbs yet...but
boy does that Shakespeare make them start wondering about language structure
as part of the study has them figure out what the "old fashioned stuff"
"really means". And they don't *have* to perform Shakespeare if that's not
what they want to do.Whereas in the model I grew up with, it was only drama
students, or advanced English students who did the Shakespeare, and then
only in high school, with the exception of a class trip for 5th grade TAG
down to see a production. I've seen a 6-year-old little boy with Downs
playing a part in A Midsummer Knight's Dream... and it was wonderful. He was
wonderful. It was one of the most highly entertaining productions of that
play I've seen. My kid *loves* Shakespeare at 10, and has performed in at
least 4 productions that I can think of at her school.

If you can get a little boy with as many challenges as Downs brings to
memorize lines and bring off a priceless performance at the age of six with
a program like this, while still challenging kids at the far end of the
spectrum, then yes, you can teach a lot of kids of different ability levels
without boring them to tears or frustrating them so much that they give up
completely. I feel so passionately about this because I know how much I
hated school, hated the process, turned off of the whole system, and I see
how much my daughter loves it. I know how terrible my study skills were, and
I see how diligent she is and how engaged she is in the process. It's really
beautiful to see.

I've done 3 things around making my child truly successful in school.
1. I shopped very carefully for her school program early on
2. I helped her find limits that would make it easy for her to get things
done. (i.e. no computer or TV until homework is done and violin practiced)
3. I've provided an otherwise supportive environment with adequate food and
interesting people.

Other than that, it's pretty much all come from her, the program, and her
teachers. But the magic is that this program really makes kids a major part
of the process. They get to make decisions, within limits, and they are
respected. Nobody wastes their time. There may be things which are less
interesting than others for some...but they are not time wasters. I can't
tell you how many times my time was just wasted in school by the
one-size-fits-none mentality. I don't mind being bored by necessary
dullness, but lord help me when it's completely UNNECESSARY dullness.

If it is an important concept to get, I would be more concerned with
the kids who don't get it, and would tell those kids who did get it to
stop whining. Or better to offer to help out with those kids who
didn't get it.


If you have the right structure in place, then the kids who "get it" fast
have "deeper" to go into it or freedom to go do something else OR help their
peers (VERY common at my daughter's school), AND the teachers have more time
to go in-depth with kids who need extra help. By 5th grade, the teacher has
not only time to help the strugglers....she has time to give the really
bright kids some marvelous challenges.

same thing in the same way year after year, constantly reviewing, rather
than looking for another method which might work better? An operational
definition of insanity is to keep doing the same thing over again while
expecting different results.

This isn't so much a *school* problem as an educational establishment
(teachers college) and individual teacher problem. Schools rarely get
into exactly how teachers teach. Some teachers are master teachers
and can present stuff in different ways. Some are journeyman teachers
who do an adequate job, and some are intern or apprentice teachers and
remain so their entire lives, doing it the way they were taught or the
way they started and never changing. Even some teachers that are
highly respected are like that.

The hope would be that the person one had as teacher who failed to
teach the concept last year will be replaced by another person who
uses a different method this year.


Interesting thing there... my daughter had the same pair of teachers (they
team teach) from the time she entered first grade through the end of 4th
grade (although she spent far less time in their class in 4th grade). It was
a godsend for us to have that consistency from year to year--there was NO
anxiety until 4th grade when a new teacher came in, and that was minor
because we knew the teacher from her sub days. And by 5th grade, she'd done
classes and projects and extras with the 5th grade teacher often enough that
it was no big deal at all to have a different teacher.


I was ready for more challenging work. It took until 7th grade to really
get
it--I felt like I spun my wheels from 4th through 6th grades because
there
was so darn much repetition. Three wasted years. I would have loved to go

I was quite different - I did not find math, even arithmetic fun or
challenging or easy, although I had no problem with the social
sciences, english or biological science.


That's where flexibility is such a godsend... Kids who love math can do the
extra problems in about the same time that kids who don't like it take to
get through the basics.

into advanced math really young... algebra was fun for me and I adored
calculus--but could not get the school to let me go ahead. It takes me
about
1/4 the repetition it takes most people to "get" a math concept--I
finally
quit doing homework until the night before a test because it drove me
nuts
going over the same things day after day. So I read science fiction books
in
class, crammed for the test, and aced it, then promptly forgot what I
learned. I "played the system" and ended up with great grades and *no*

If you forgot what you "learned", then it might have been better for
you to be bored doing stuff over and over so that you would remember
it.

Sure it would have...but by the time I got to the point where I needed to, I
didn't have the basic discipline to do so. College was a mess.


academic discipline.

I think that lack of academic discipline is something that affects
lots of bright people. It cannot be blamed on the schools.


Ultimately my lack of discipline is my own responsibility... but "blame" can
certainly be laid in several quarters. I *know* it is possible to teach a
very bright kid discipline. I've been throwing challenges at my daughter
since she was six, things that she *had* to be diligent about to "get" and
she's got excellent skills I definitely lack. Violin is one example...she
loved her lessons but not her practicing. I simply said, "If you want
lessons, you have to practice."

She had trouble remembering to practice before bedtime. So we made
practicing a mandatory "before TV and computer" item, like homework. And the
rule was, "You can't even ask to watch TV if you're homework is not done."
Later, she said, "I think I need a break between homework and practice, so I
have more energy for it."

I said, "If you can demonstrate that it will get done consistently, that's
fine."

She did.

And the real kicker? She saw that when she practiced, she got better. She
saw that when she did her homework a little bit every day, it got done
without stress. She had an immediate reward and got a lot of freedom if she
demonstrated responsibility. At one point her reading "homework" started
taking up the full 40 minutes (4th grade) and we talked about it and decided
together that reading homework was last on the list because she likes it
best, just to make sure everything gets done. And she never, ever gets
totally swamped with homework.

I *never* got those things until I was in my mid-twenties. I'm still not as
good at it as she is.

What I see today, though, is that while there are
still some teachers/administrations willing to be flexible
and make these accommodations, much of the flexibility has
disappeared. I'm not sure why that is. Some is due to
these accountability and standardization programs. Some
may well be due to other factors. And, of course, I'm
sure there are many people who *do* find acceptable
accommodations and are reasonably happy with the results.
I do seem to hear from more people now, however, that
they've tried to find reasonable accommodations and
haven't been successful.


If the school funding is cut to the point that they cannot meet other
than minimum goals the blame must be laid at the feet of the voters in
the district. Or it may be that the district can't attract able
teachers due to location or inability to pay. This is not always the
school's fault.

Let's see... our voters approve almost every levy that gets passed, but
property tax limits have severely crunched the ability of the legislature to
raise the necessary funds. And the majority of our school funding comes from
the state level, mandated by our laws in order to balance "rich" districts
with "poor" districts. This means that a district can't necessarily raise
money even if they want to. Donations can be used, but you would not believe
the amount of energy that goes into fundraising which could be going to the
kids instead. When we have our best and most involved parents absorbed in
grant-writing rather than in the class helping kids learn.... Our problems
come from a statewide system that got really, really hammered by the
economic downturn.

NEVERTHELESS... the basic structure of Family School has really buffered
kids from those changes...because when we lost a classroom, the kids moved
into classes they were already very familiar with.


Exactly. One thing a wise teacher allowed me to do was to pretest out of
given units. She'd hand me something else to do if I aced the
pretest--and I
usually did.

I took a course once where after I went through the class, I got a
lower grade on the post test than I did on the pretest. (Now this was
not a big difference - I got 48 out of 50 on the pretest and 47 out of
50 on the post test - the questions were virtually the same.) :-{


How ironic...

I agree with this too. Because the majority of my daughter's education is
interesting and challenging for her, I tell her to suck it up and take it
as
a speed challenge when someone gives her an assignment that is
ludicrously
easy. Orchestra for example... they handed out a basic music theory
worksheet on note values. She's been playing for 4 years and sightreads
better than most adults. She's got incredible pitch and an innate sense
of
rhythm and she's a natural at math and she *knows* this stuff. She griped
about it being too easy, and so I said, "See how fast you can finish it."
She was done within 5 minutes. And then we let the orchestra leader know
that he can feel free to toss extra challenges her way.

Does she have to take orchestra? Maybe it would be better to have her
in some other program.


This is the ONLY program in town that lets 10-year-olds play in strings, and
she auditioned to get in. The music is challenging and fun, the music theory
is very, very basic. Our school-based strings program was cut last year.

The other problem with things like this is if the kid begins to feel
superior to other kids who are not as able. dd#2 had some problem
with this with her son who had always played baseball with kids a year
older than he was. When his mom decided to move him back with his age
group he was a whole lot better than almost all of them, so she had to
tell him that if he wasn't trying to do his best, then he was letting
the team down, and that he should always do his best. When he was
able to accept that, his attitude and his performance improved.

She had some moments last year when things happened in her orchestra which
pointed out a pretty big ability gap between her and some of the other
players. Like the whole thing falling apart and everyone except her stopping
playing--she was still counting and following the conductor and getting all
the notes right. She was upset that evening at how everyone ended up staring
at her for getting it right. So she helped some of the other kids and ended
up with a leadership award, because that was how her school taught her to
handle ability gaps.


For me, seeing how incredibly well the teachers manage to bring together
a
wide range of skill levels at my daughter's school, it really seems like
a
shift to a different model might really help a lot of these classroom
situations. Shouldn't all the kids be getting a richer education?

All kids aren't interested in or capable of absorbing a richer
education.


A richer education will almost always benefit everyone. See my example above
(Shakespeare...)

I have to say that the only times I'm REALLY bored is when I have to
listen and respond to something that's boring - like a story that my
mom has told me many times before. Where it is rude to read a book or
watch TV or compute or do needlepoint or do the crossword puzzle,
because I have to pay attention and be ready to respond. Normally in
school, once I'd figured out where the teacher was going with
something that I knew, I'd just read or think about something else.


I joke that I haven't been bored since 1995 (the year I got online.)

As an adult, I've formed the habit (whether the lecture was really
dull or not) of outlining what was said in the text book margins.
(where I owned the text of course) That kept me busy finding where the
same thing or close to the same thing was said in the textbook.


As an adult, I avoid that kind of situation where I can and go for
one-on-one learning, book learning, or hands-on learning. I do best when I
can dive into something... like teaching myself to build a computer or
design a baby sling. I learn best by observation and by doing and classrooms
drive me nuts if I can't ask lots of questions.

Although in some particularly egregious cases, I have resorted to
making a list of the teacher's mistakes in pronunciations or the
number of times he says some particular pet phrase. I look very busy
and studious as long as no one actually reads what I've written.

I'm not that patient...g

Jenrose

"Chookie" wrote in message
...
In article ,
(chiam margalit) wrote:
snip
In the process, you might answer another question I have had at the back
of my
mind. One tends to hear of very bright primary-age children being good at
mathematics/sciences rather than literature, and I wondered if that was
because some aspects of literature are closed to prepubescents? One
cannot
imagine children making much of (say) 'The Flea' or 'To his Coy Mistress',
even if they understand the words and even the concepts. Or am I
completely
wrong?


I know extraordinarily gifted writers my daughter's age. (She's good, but
she's not a passionate writer at heart--she has one friend who is one of the
"I write because I can't help writing" sorts who is constantly writing
little short stories and novels.) And from my daughter up through my mother,
we're all bookworms, every one of us. My husband read the great books. All
of them. He remembers books being taken out of his hands when he was 7
because he was labeled "slow"... that was before he blew the top off their
standardized test scores and they labeled him "gifted", which didn't do him
any favors either. Yes, much literature is simply not "emotionally
appropriate" for young kids...but that never stopped me. I was reading at a
high school level by the time I was 7 (I taught myself at 3 or 4) and an
adult level by the time I was 9. There are words my daughter knows that I
still can't pronounce, let alone spell, and I have a superb vocabulary and
have since I was small. She's more gifted in certain areas, but is not as
advanced a reader as I was. I believe firmly that the internet is
responsible for that--much of the time I spent reading as a kid, she spends
on the computer. She's still way ahead of the curve on reading though, so I
don't fuss. And she's been able to touch type for at least a year.

I think there's a lot more "gee whizzery" when a kid groks calculus at age 5
or quantum physics at age 8 or plays an instrument at a professional level
by age 10. But in our family, it's really the language side that gets the
most "hits". We're all above average in math and science, some of us are
gifted at one level or another in math, science or music, but we're *all*
way ahead of the curve and always have been in literature/language/reading
skills. Dad might have the weakest "innate" talent in that side of it (he's
much better at the logic stuff) but he's still pretty dangerous with
scrabble and reads a lot. You wouldn't believe the number of books in our
two houses... and my mom might have the weakest math/science bit, but she
still managed to explain the basics of calculus and econ to me when I was 5
so that by the time I got to those classes in high school, they felt very,
very comfortable. And Dad was the one who taught me outlining...

Jenrose

"Donna Metler" wrote in message
news



Actually, the school itself is getting whittled away. We lost a teacher
this
year due to funding cuts, so we're running 5 grades with 4 teachers plus
an
assistant for math hired by the PTA directly through draconian
fundraising.
That is, they lined parents up at the plasma center and had them donate
plasma to raise money for the schools. Voluntarily of course, but I'm
not
kidding when I say that parents actually pay for this school in blood...

That means you have a very small school. My campus has more teachers in a
single grade than your entire school has.


Our district is all "small schools". The "other school" in the building has
about the same number of kids. They're building a new school (We have a bond
measure which was dedicated to new buildings, so while our programs are
getting eroded, a new shiny building is going up...) to combine our school,
the neighborhood school and another neighborhood school. But they designed
the school to have small "subschools".


But a nearby charter school is doing okay, with a similar concept and
fewer
"hurdles" to jump... a lot of kids who would have been at our school go
there now because the parents are tired of the funding crisis. Why is
ours
in funding crisis and theirs not? Hard to say, but the different
requirements for charter vs. regular schools might be one factor.
Or, it may be sheltered for the first few years. Charter schools get
additional start-up funding from a lot of sources when they first open,
but
after a few years, this tends to trickle away.


We'll see. If so, they'll end up back at Family. But this is a very
hippy-alternative which goes a lot farther than Family School and in this
community it could last a long time.


There is a special needs program and ESL program in the building, not
affiliated with our school, but affiliated with the building as a whole.
And
special needs programs do get extra funding, though never enough.

So, IOW, your special program doesn't have to deal with these issues. How
nice for you. How does the building as a whole fare, compared to your
little
special program?


Actually, both programs end up "giving" to each other. That is, one may be
able to afford a PE teacher...who gets used for both programs. Another
provides an ESL teacher... who is used for both programs if necessary.
Parent volunteers staff the lunchroom...where both schools eat at the same
time. And recess, ditto. We are in it together. Curriculum is mostly
separate, except where it isn't. Our program is committed to helping keep
the neighborhood school healthy, and it's a school in a very lower income
part of town, so you end up with far more well-off kids in the school
building as a whole than you might otherwise.

What delights me about
this program in particular is that it manages to provide an enriched
learning environment for the same money to ALL kids at all ability
levels.
Isn't that how it *should* work? Shouldn't people be looking at
taking
this
model out to the neighborhood schools?

If your parents are lining up and donating blood to pay for the program,
it
is NOT recieving the same funding support. Period. It is unlikely you'd
get
this in my school. Too many of the parents are already donating plasma to
feed their children (or have histories which would make them poor
candidates
for blood donation).


Except that the majority of our fundraising has historically gone into one
account which was divided equally between both schools. And that gives the
neighborhood school FAR more money than it might have otherwise.



Yep. We are faced with the twit-head accounting too... our school is
listed
on the "bad" list for *one* issue--that our well-educated and involved
parents tend to be very political and flat out refuse to allow their
kids
to
do the testing. So we get less than 90% testing compliance and therefore
dinged. It's kind of refreshing, actually. That is NOT part of our
attrition
problem. The economy and budget cuts are.

Which means, in three years, you'll be facing takeover. Just the same as
if
you'd failed every standard. I'd suggest you make it clear to the parents
that they will lose this great program if the students are not tested.

It will get addressed. We have monthly parent/teacher meetings and threats
to the program are taken very, very seriously.

Jenrose

"Penny Gaines" wrote in message
...
H Schinske wrote in :


To some extent, I think it may also be because reading is 'fun' and doing
maths workbooks is 'not fun'. So the 9yo who is reading, is doing
something
normal, even if chosing Lord of the Rings is unusual.

The kid who is doing high-level maths is doing something unusual - imagine
doing maths problems for fun? - and hence what they are doing is more
likely to be scrutenised closely.

wry grin yeah.... my kid perversely adores workbooks. She used to do
workbooks for fun to supplement dull homework when she was about 7.

Jenrose

toto wrote:


I said:
cynicism alert

Isn't that the point of NCLB? To have shown all public
schools to be failing, so that there will be a massive
outpouring of support for vouchers and The End Of Public
Schools?

Lesley


LOL. I didn't change the subject header and said exactly the same
thing.



I saw your post after I sent this. Great minds, right? :-)

Lesley

x-no-archive:yes
"Jenrose" wrote:


"Rosalie B." wrote in message
.. .
x-no-archive:yes
"Jenrose" wrote:
snip

I think that lack of academic discipline is something that affects
lots of bright people. It cannot be blamed on the schools.


Ultimately my lack of discipline is my own responsibility... but "blame" can
certainly be laid in several quarters. I *know* it is possible to teach a
very bright kid discipline. I've been throwing challenges at my daughter
since she was six, things that she *had* to be diligent about to "get" and
she's got excellent skills I definitely lack. Violin is one example...she
loved her lessons but not her practicing. I simply said, "If you want
lessons, you have to practice."

She had trouble remembering to practice before bedtime. So we made
practicing a mandatory "before TV and computer" item, like homework. And the
rule was, "You can't even ask to watch TV if you're homework is not done."
Later, she said, "I think I need a break between homework and practice, so I
have more energy for it."

I said, "If you can demonstrate that it will get done consistently, that's
fine."

She did.

And the real kicker? She saw that when she practiced, she got better. She
saw that when she did her homework a little bit every day, it got done
without stress. She had an immediate reward and got a lot of freedom if she
demonstrated responsibility. At one point her reading "homework" started
taking up the full 40 minutes (4th grade) and we talked about it and decided
together that reading homework was last on the list because she likes it
best, just to make sure everything gets done. And she never, ever gets
totally swamped with homework.

I *never* got those things until I was in my mid-twenties. I'm still not as
good at it as she is.

I also had music lessons (piano in my case) where I had the experience
of seeing that practice made me better. In my case, my very excellent
teacher showed me the proper way to practice which included not
practicing it wrong. If you can't do it right, slow it down until you
can do it right. Do it right 10 times - and it doesn't count and you
have to start over if you make a mistake. (At least that's what I
remember).

I also had a wake-up call when I took shorthand in high school. I had
to practice the skills each night in order to keep up with the
commercial students in my class (long story which I will omit). I
also found that if I did not constantly practice, I lost the skill.

snip another long section
I have to say that the only times I'm REALLY bored is when I have to
listen and respond to something that's boring - like a story that my
mom has told me many times before. Where it is rude to read a book or
watch TV or compute or do needlepoint or do the crossword puzzle,
because I have to pay attention and be ready to respond. Normally in
school, once I'd figured out where the teacher was going with
something that I knew, I'd just read or think about something else.


I joke that I haven't been bored since 1995 (the year I got online.)

As an adult, I've formed the habit (whether the lecture was really
dull or not) of outlining what was said in the text book margins.
(where I owned the text of course) That kept me busy finding where the
same thing or close to the same thing was said in the textbook.


As an adult, I avoid that kind of situation where I can and go for
one-on-one learning, book learning, or hands-on learning. I do best when I
can dive into something... like teaching myself to build a computer or
design a baby sling. I learn best by observation and by doing and classrooms
drive me nuts if I can't ask lots of questions.

This was work mandated training so I couldn't (and didn't want to)
avoid it. In many cases they sent me away for training so I got to
visit Seattle for two weeks, Salt Lake City, Pittsburgh (when my ds
lived there), Richmond, Ocean City MD, Dallas, Atlanta, Toronto and I
went to Chicago many times for training at the headquarters. Even if
I didn't like the classes, I always had fun with the peripheral
ability to sightsee at the remote location.

Although in some particularly egregious cases, I have resorted to
making a list of the teacher's mistakes in pronunciations or the
number of times he says some particular pet phrase. I look very busy
and studious as long as no one actually reads what I've written.

I'm not that patient...g

I have found that I'm also pretty impatient. But I'm also very
tenacious. I keep doing things the 'right' way long past the time
that other people have given up and gone back to their own way.

grandma Rosalie