Kindergarten - my child "going postal" every morning...

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(Kevin Karplus) wrote:


In article , H Schinske wrote:

It did bother me a little when I got math homework back that was corrected by
the parents (I know it was, because I sometimes did this job when I volunteered
in class) -- especially when they had marked correct answers incorrect, and
vice versa!


My dad used to let us grade the medical student's anatomy practical
for the exam he gave just before Xmas break while we were in the car
going to my grandmothers for the holidays. We were about 9 and 11.
He gave us the possible or part right answers, and if it wasn't one of
those answers, we'd ask him. He would (especially for the
spectacularly wrong ones) groan and tell us what part credit to give.

I also helped my Dad grade undergraduate biology papers
when I was in grade school. It's only a vague memory,
but I think they were multiple choice questions. I'm sure
all the argumentative undergraduates would check to see
if I did my job properly. I seem to recall a nickel
or dime a sheet.

So do the parents grading the homework not have the correct answers on
an answer sheet?

In my experience, no.

Scott, DD 10 and DS 7

(iowacookiemom) wrote in message . com...
(Bev Brandt) wrote in message . com...
Of course, my husband and I WOH, so that very likely skews my
perception of what it means to be asked to "volunteer regularly." It's
not that my child isn't worth my vacation and sick time. But that *is*
all some of us have - limited vacation and sick time. We *can't*
"volunteer regularly" or we'll get fired.

I agree completely that many schools/teachers are insensitive to this.
I've found that fellow parents can be even more insensitive.

That said, when Henry started school I asked my sister, a teacher,
what I could do as a working parent who had limited vacation time,
etc. (I did have a good boss who was flexible with me, but I
preferred to use that good will for after-school needs.)

My sister had a great suggestion, and I've done it every year since:
volunteer to grade the spelling tests. It's time-consuming and
tedious for the teacher, and usually has to be done over a weekend.
Henry brings the tests home on Friday and I grade them over the
weekend -- takes about a half hour of my time. Henry has always
seemed very proud that I do this, and even willingly toted the
25-or-so *spiral notebooks* the last two years that contained the
spelling tests. I involve him in picking out stickers to put on each
test and teachers have told me the kids are great about saying, "your
mom got cool stickers this week, Henry!"

I started out doing this for the teacher, and all have been very
grateful, but I keep doing it for my kid. It connects me to the
school and he seems proud of it. I'm planning on asking his new
teacher if I can continue this year.

One caveat: by doing this you do have access to the academic progress
of the students, and when I have mentioned this casually some parents
have looked a little surprised and slightly bothered by the fact that
I see their child's test each week. Truthfully, beyond learning who
you can rely on to get all or most words right (this is helpful in
weeks when the words are confusing like "there/their/they're" and
you're unsure what order the teacher read them in), you really don't
pay attention to individual kids' scores. I never share the scores
with Henry, and also get teacher approval in advance to share Henry's
own score with him (all have allowed me to do so).

While I praise you for trying to find a way to be involved in the
classroom, I'd be furious if I found that parents were grading
tests/papers/projects/schoolwork for teachers. First, this is part of
the teacher's job and there is no reason on earth that they can't do
it. As a former teacher I know all the canned lines about how hard
teaching is (it is) and how many extra hours teachers work (they do)
but grading papers is an essential part of their job and should never
be done by anyone else.

Second, the confidentiality issue would put me over the edge. I would
never want ANY other parent to know what my children are doihg
workwise in school. It's not their business, and there is a part of me
that wonders about the legality of this serious breach of
confidentiality. Parents DO tend to gossip (I'm not saying you're a
gossip, but if you're doing this, so are other parents, and if they
are, they're possibly not as honest and decent as you, Dawn) and do
tend to report on other kids in the class, and I'd be so upset if
parents were discussing my child's progress.

Third, I've read right here on the net the 'musings' of one SAHD who
volunteers in his kid's class and reports the stupidity and lack of
progress of one kid he works with. I find this beyond disgusting. No
parent volunteer has the right to discuss a child in his volunteer
group on the internet. And I wonder about the motives of any parent
who thinks this is a good idea, as so many do (not on this newsgroup,
of course).

Fourth, once your children reach middle school age, all of this is
moot. They don't have parent volunteers in the middle school
classrooms, thank goodness, and the parental competition dies on the
vine. You can, and most do, volunteer for the special projects and
events that come up during the school year, but this does not in any
way impinge on working parents. Me, I do the Boxtops for Education
every year. It's a simple job, it takes almost no effort on my part,
and raises thousands of dollars for the PTO. That is pretty much the
extent of my relationship with our middle school.

Lastly, I strongly believe that most parents are absolutely clueless
about the goings on in the classroom even if they're there day after
day. I know from putting two very different kids through elementary
school that the parents who are constantly there day after day
volunteering to do this and that inside the classrooms are the people
who use this as their social life during school hours. When I did
volunteer in our day school years back, I saw the same group of moms
who never left the campus. They were always there to 'help' but the
help usually consisted of chatting with the other volunteers in the
back of the room, and working in group settings on projects where
there was little possibility of gaining insight into the
individualized educational progress of any child. Mostly there were
there to provide control for more freeform activities. An example
would be a mother who was there for her son day after day after day,
but had no clue that her son's learning differences were so severe
until an educational consultant came to look at the classrooms and
took her aside. This mother was not only a trained teacher, she taught
that very grade for over 10 years and yet she hadn't a clue about her
own child's progress.

Parent volunteering is, imo, really more about the social aspects of
parenting school age children than it is about helping to teach. I
don't have a problem with this, I think it's probably a much better
idea than allowing parents access to graded projects, tests, etc. The
lack of knowledge about what is and should be going on in a classroom
needs to be recognized for what it is: goodhearted and well meaning
parents who want to make the classroom a better environment for their
children. That's not a bad thing at all, it's commendable at all
levels. But putting education of children other than your own into a
volunteer's hands is definately a bad thing in my opinion. YMMV.

Marjorie

Henry struggles with spelling and having this connection to spelling
at school has also been helpful.

All of this is just to provide an idea -- not to suggest that anyone
out there frustrated about school expectations regarding volunteering
is somehow off-base.

-Dawn
Mom to Henry, 10

In article ,
chiam margalit wrote:
Parent volunteering is, imo, really more about the social aspects of
parenting school age children than it is about helping to teach. I
don't have a problem with this, I think it's probably a much better
idea than allowing parents access to graded projects, tests, etc. The
lack of knowledge about what is and should be going on in a classroom
needs to be recognized for what it is: goodhearted and well meaning
parents who want to make the classroom a better environment for their
children. That's not a bad thing at all, it's commendable at all
levels. But putting education of children other than your own into a
volunteer's hands is definately a bad thing in my opinion. YMMV.

I can't speak for other volunteers, but my volunteering for the school
has nothing to do with the social aspects of it---I'm not a
particularly sociable person, and the other parents around the school
are not necessarily who I would choose to socialize with.

Some of the things I've done in the last couple of years:

In kindergarten, supervising students doing various craft
projects---this was mainly making sure they knew what they were trying
to do and gently bringing them back on task when they got distracted.
Decreasing the child/adult ratio in the classroom makes it easier for
the teacher to focus on the kids who need the most help.

In kindergarten, sitting individually with children listening to them
struggle with beginning reading and helping them sound out words they
were having trouble with. (This was exactly what the teacher was
doing also---having two adults doing it meant twice as many students
were getting reading help that day.)

In first grade, doing a monthly art newsletter. This involved
collecting art from all the kids in two classrooms, choosing which to
include, scanning them, laying out the newsletter on my computer,
printing 50 copies, folding, and saddle-stapling them. I had another
parent help me with the collecting art and choosing which to
include---she also kept track of which kids' art we had already used,
so that we could be sure to be fair to the kids. This newsletter took
a lot of my time (10-12 hours an issue, which pretty much killed a
weekend a month). If parent volunteers had not been given access to
the student work, then the art newsletter would not have happened, and
the kids would not have seen their own work printed and distributed.

In first grade, doing a 45-minute-a-week math enrichment session for
the kids who were ahead of the rest of the class. Another parent did a
similar math enrichment once a week also. We did a variety of
different things, some of which were more successful than others. My
son and his best friend were always included in the session (her
mother was the other parent doing the math enrichment), but 1-3 others
were involved each time, depending on who the teacher felt was ready
for it that week.

In first grade, making 4 soda-bottle rocket launchers and running
rocket-launching activities for both the Fiesta de las Artes (which
involved decorating the rockets before launching them) and the school
carnival. Incidentally, plans for the launchers, in English and
Spanish are available on my web site
http://www.soe.ucsc.edu/~karplus/abe...tle-rocket.pdf
http://www.soe.ucsc.edu/~karplus/abe...et-spanish.pdf
The translation into Spanish was done by another parent volunteer.

In first grade, organizing an after-school science class for 1st-3rd
grade with a teacher (not associated with the schools) who specializes
in science enrichment classes.

In first grade, being one of the organizers (not the main one by any
means) of the Fiesta de Las Artes---the first all-day art event the
school had done. It was a free event run on a Saturday which got high
participation from the students.

In both kindergarten and first grade, organizing and running (with
other parent volunteers) the Bike-to-School breakfast site.

My family also spent several hours walking the precinct before the
vote on the parcel tax that allowed the elementary schools to stay open.

I don't expect most parents to volunteer for the school at the level I
do---but I want to dispel the notion that all of us who are putting
in this amount of work are doing it as a social outlet. Some of us
are doing it because education is important to us, and the schools
(particularly in post-Prop 13 California) do not have the resources to
do it all themselves.

--
Kevin Karplus http://www.soe.ucsc.edu/~karplus
life member (LAB, Adventure Cycling, American Youth Hostels)
Effective Cycling Instructor #218-ck (lapsed)
Professor of Computer Engineering, University of California, Santa Cruz
Undergraduate and Graduate Director, Bioinformatics
Affiliations for identification only.

Banty wrote:

: I think the resistance you're running into is resentment of the idea
: that All Good Parents volunteer (which was Bev's complaint) or even that
: one should volunteer if one's child isn't an academically bright or
: successful student.

Please point out where I said All Good Parents volunteer? Parents who
don't want to be in the classroom helping out, should stay away. Parents
who go crazy staying home with their kids should return to work. Just to
let you know where I stand on the "All Good Parents Stay Home" issue.
However, when your child is having trouble at school, All Good Parents
should make some attempt to find out why.

The volunteering suggestion was made in a specific context. For one week,
the OP's son has been crying every day about going to kindergarten, even
to the point of tearing her shirt, no matter what she's tried to do.
There is no doubt in my mind that the very best thing to do is for her to
get into the classroom and see first-hand what is going on or to ask
parents who are already there what is happening between her son, the
teacher, and the other students.

: This is part of the problem with the communication here. You're
: conflating altruistic volunteering for the school with what you
: originally proposed as a scouting mission for one's own child's sake.

My suggestion has always been from the POV of a scouting mission. Please
show me how I've stated otherwise.

Noreen (btw, the gweep server is back up now so the test group
misc.kids.family-life is back on line -- check it out if you have the
time)

Noreen Cooper wrote in message ...
Banty wrote:

:If for some
:reason you are unable to volunteer during kindergarten hours, seek out
:another parent who volunteers quite regularly in the classroom and ask
:what they perceive to be the problem.

: .. even if he doesn't volunteer 'quite regularly', no?

: Banty (yep - I'm ever aware of the common presumptions, and think it
: useful to point them out ...PIA I know ;-)

Sure, that's exactly why I used the word "parent" rather than "mother."

Which is why I said *any* parent. If a child is having social and
academic issues at school, I don't care what the parent's employment
situation is - it is encumbent upon the *school* and their paid
professionals to provide that parent help. The suggestion to
"volunteer regularly" should NOT be made first, in fact I believe it
should not be made at all in the case of academic and social issues.

Although as I readily admitted, both my husband and I do WOH, so when
*we* hear this suggestion, it doesn't sit well. But I don't know that
I'd change my mind if I SAH - which actually I plan to do someday
soon. But not so I can be at school every day.

That suggestion is thick with value judgements. No matter *who* that
suggestion is made to, the implication is that if you can't volunteer
for any reason, you're doing your child a disservice. That could not
be further from the truth in many cases. I know this first hand.

I think that any parent that volunteers at the school during the day
should do so because they can contribute to the (underfunded)
workload, not to monitor classroom dynamics. I don't want any unpaid,
non-professional - including myself, to some degree (I have obvious
biases) - to evaluate my child's academic and social progress in the
school. If I need to determine whether or not there is a personality
conflict between my child and his teacher/counselor, I can do that in
other ways besides being a volunteer.

What a strange twist this thread took.

Not strange at all. Either that or I hang out with a bunch of strange
parents. There are a lot of us out there - WOH and SAH - who bristle
at the suggestion that we're not doing enough because we're not
on-site at the school every single day, during the day.

However, it behooves those working parents who can
never or have no inclination to be present during the school day to seek
out parents who actively volunteer in the class if their child is having a
hard time adjusting either to school or a particular teacher to get a
second, third, or fourth opinion on what may be the perceived problem.

Sure, this is helpful, I'm not so sure it's a necessity, though. I
have indeed relied upon "reality checks" from other parents in the
case of my son. And one of my reality checks actually came from a
fellow parent who is a physician and volunteers for some of the
after-hours math games we have.

My better reality checks are fellow parents - working and SAH - who
have my son over to play with thier kids. Or the soccer coach. Or my
own extended family. (Heh...like my SIL, a school counselor - a WOH
mom who is also just about as involved in the schools as one can be!)
I'd say that if one didn't have these reality check resources, then a
school volunteer would be one avenue, but not the only one.

When it comes to those gift wrap fundraising sales, the reigning queen is
a working mom who could care less about ever stepping a foot in the
classroom, whether she could get off work or not. We all do our part.
But were I to become a full-time working mother tomorrow, I'd be damn sure
to seek out the SAH parents who are in the class every week.

You see, there's an implication here that a regular, on-site volunteer
is somehow saintly, moreso than the working mom that "couldn't care
less about ever stepping a foot in the classroom." I feel like you are
indeed making a value judgement about the classroom volunteer versus
the mom who helps with fundraising.

There's no
better review about a teacher and the classroom dynamics than by being
there yourself.

It shouldn't have to be this way. We shouldn't have to rely upon
non-professionals to give us a review of the classroom situation as it
pertains to academics and social structure. Teachers should be more
communicative with parents. Counselors and principals should be in the
classroom more to make better judgement calls about those dynamics.

This is not a SAH vs. WOH parent rivalry. It's too bad that you see it
that way. If there is a "rivalry" it's between parents and our
expectations and schools and their apparent lack of resources.

-Bev

Kevin Karplus wrote:

: I don't expect most parents to volunteer for the school at the level I
: do---but I want to dispel the notion that all of us who are putting
: in this amount of work are doing it as a social outlet. Some of us
: are doing it because education is important to us, and the schools
: (particularly in post-Prop 13 California) do not have the resources to
: do it all themselves.

Glad you responded to this. I don't use my time as a school volunteer to
socialize either. Most parents who are volunteering in the class are
doing so to help out the teacher and keep track of how their own kid is
doing, IMO.

Noreen

In article , Kevin Karplus says...

In article ,
chiam margalit wrote:
Parent volunteering is, imo, really more about the social aspects of
parenting school age children than it is about helping to teach. I
don't have a problem with this, I think it's probably a much better
idea than allowing parents access to graded projects, tests, etc. The
lack of knowledge about what is and should be going on in a classroom
needs to be recognized for what it is: goodhearted and well meaning
parents who want to make the classroom a better environment for their
children. That's not a bad thing at all, it's commendable at all
levels. But putting education of children other than your own into a
volunteer's hands is definately a bad thing in my opinion. YMMV.

I can't speak for other volunteers, but my volunteering for the school
has nothing to do with the social aspects of it---I'm not a
particularly sociable person, and the other parents around the school
are not necessarily who I would choose to socialize with.


I think both are true, actually - volunteering many times is socially-driven;
other times purely for the sake of volunteering. I've done both.

I do agree with Marjorie in general regarding the parental school volunteering
because IMO it does seem to be a feature of a certain set of social circles.

When I volunteered for the newsletter at Cub Scouts, it was because it was
something I could do more or less on my own terms and on my own time, though it
was considered less "fun" partly because it was less social, but less social is
fine with me. I was also an assistant Den Mother, mostly so that there could be
a Den, but the Den also turned out to be the start of a social circle for me -
the latter being mostly a matter of luck of composition of people involved.

Years ago when I was a volunteer EMT, that was a very consuming and active kind
of volunteering, and the social benefit to myself was huge, and part of the
reason I got involved (how a white girl from Texas and Colorado managed to fit
happily into her Bronx community). The socializing is a big feature of the
rural and suburban volunteer fire departments as well, alhough the committment
is also very large.

But even around the ambulance garage and the firehouses, although the volleys
can tend to consider themselves the Community Heros, I never caught whiff of the
"good people would all do this" attitude that I detected in PTA, schools, and
even Cub Scouts. Perhaps because it so obviously isn't for everybody, but
still.

I *do* think there is a fairly strong expectation about parents volunteering,
and, devoted volunteer as I am sometimes myself, it's clear enough for me to get
irritated with.

As to Prop 13 and all that - part of the issue IMNSHO is that these cutbacks are
happening largely *because* of the expectation that parents should be doing the
free labor. It's an enabling that is happening with this "you should be doing
it yourself anyway" ethic. And even in states not so hit by the anti-tax
movement as here in New York State, gee whiz, it's maddening to see a
decent-condition two-acre school parking lot paved again, whilst the library is
asking for used books. Yeah, I know it's different colors of money and all
that, but if there weren't the outlet of PTA and gifts (like my own) for
classroom needs, the pallette would be different.

Banty

Bev Brandt wrote:

: I think that any parent that volunteers at the school during the day
: should do so because they can contribute to the (underfunded)
: workload, not to monitor classroom dynamics. I don't want any unpaid,
: non-professional - including myself, to some degree (I have obvious
: biases) - to evaluate my child's academic and social progress in the
: school. If I need to determine whether or not there is a personality
: conflict between my child and his teacher/counselor, I can do that in
: other ways besides being a volunteer.

How your son performs on the soccer field is not the way your son will
behave in a particular classroom with a defined factor of fellow students
with the teacher who is chosen to instruct him for the year. I'm amazed
how you readily discount verifiable data which can only be obtained by
either being there first-hand or asking other parent volunteers.

: Not strange at all. Either that or I hang out with a bunch of strange
: parents. There are a lot of us out there - WOH and SAH - who bristle
: at the suggestion that we're not doing enough because we're not
: on-site at the school every single day, during the day.

And where did I make that assertion?


: When it comes to those gift wrap fundraising sales, the reigning queen is
: a working mom who could care less about ever stepping a foot in the
: classroom, whether she could get off work or not. We all do our part.
: But were I to become a full-time working mother tomorrow, I'd be damn sure
: to seek out the SAH parents who are in the class every week.

: You see, there's an implication here that a regular, on-site volunteer
: is somehow saintly, moreso than the working mom that "couldn't care
: less about ever stepping a foot in the classroom." I feel like you are
: indeed making a value judgement about the classroom volunteer versus
: the mom who helps with fundraising.

I have no idea where you're reading in a value judgement here. Did you
miss the line about "we all do our part?" Okay, let me rephrase it this
way. The mom who brings in all that money for the school is helping the
school out as equally as any parent who helps out in the class every day.
Will you read a value judgement in that statement, too?

: It shouldn't have to be this way. We shouldn't have to rely upon
: non-professionals to give us a review of the classroom situation as it
: pertains to academics and social structure. Teachers should be more
: communicative with parents. Counselors and principals should be in the
: classroom more to make better judgement calls about those dynamics.

Well, in an ideal world....but....who is living in an ideal world? If the
system isn't ideal, though, I'd still suggest getting data firsthand in a
scouting mission rather than continue to allow your child to fail because
the system is failing to communicate the problems to you in a timely
manner.

Noreen

wrote:

Time for my annual plug for "Spellabration" easy, cost effective,
high-profit.

Kids get pledges based on the number of points they will earn on a spelling
test...

I *hate* these things, and the box tops, grocery receipts, etc. Why in heck
can't the businesses just DONATE already? Why do we have to jump through these
stupid little hoops?

(Of course, what I'd *really* like is a sensible tax structure, but in the
absence of that.)

--Helen (who just sends a goshdarned check to the school every year)

In article ,
Karen G wrote:
I don't really like doing it, but I have put our emergency contacts down
as my in-laws who are "states" away. I am upfront with people who I
give those numbers too.

I have put my parents, who are 3 hours drive away. I still put them,
even though I now have local friends I can put down as well. Usually I
put down my parents and one local friend with a child in the same
school for my 2 emergency contacts. Honestly, with both my husband and
I having cell phones, I can only imagine they'd need our emergency
contact numbers if the cell towers were gone and we were not reachable
on our other contact numbers, which seems vanishingly unlikely (esp.
since DH and I are normally in areas covered by different cell
towers). But I figure, if there were an emergency of a type where they
had to get someone to amke a judgement call in a hurry, I'd want them
to call my parents and not a friend. If they need someone to pick the
child up and can't reach me, that's when I'd expect them to call the
local friend.

If you don't know anyone local yet, just say so. If you can, get a cell
phone or pager to make them not being able to reach you less of an issue.
And when you make friends, you can add one to your school forms later in
the year.

Good luck!
--Robyn