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

In ,
Jayne Kulikauskas wrote:
*
*I do nothing to participate in my children's schools. I hate the thought of
*doing it. I do not understand why you presume to have expectations for my
*behaviour.

And you're proud of that? Wow. Can you explain a little bit why you feel
this way? Frankly, while I can't say I'm thrilled to pieces by the thought
of spending time in a preschool or elementary level classroom, I'm
horrified by the thought that I might be completely left out of the loop
with no idea what's going on, and I think maintaining some level of
participation is the only way to prevent that. Plus, of course, it seems
like a nice thing to do.

--
hillary israeli vmd http://www.hillary.net
"uber vaccae in quattuor partes divisum est."
not-so-newly minted veterinarian-at-large

In article , "Rosalie B."
writes:

None of these things really relate to the teachers.

Budget cuts
Not a good reason

What does that mean? Teachers are asked to do more with less... If there is
some way I can ease that burden so they can spend their time on teaching,
clearly I should do that.

standardized tests
Neither a good reason NOR new - we've had standardized test for eons.

Not like today.. There are so many, and such importance is placed on them that
all the teachers can do is teach to the test... Any student that falls behind,
or already knows a given topic is a child that needs time and attention the
teacher can't spare.

"No child left behind"
That might be a problem, but I'm not sure that volunteers can really
help.
It can help the children for whom the slogan is better stated "Everyone moves
at the paces of the slowest child."

"School to Work"
I'm not sure what that slogan stands for.

Yet another program for teachers to deal with instead of teaching... Turning
kids into factory fodder, basically.


lawsuits that removed the ability of schools to maintain discipline.

That one is one that is getting rid of the teachers we have. Again -
not sure how volunteers can help. Lack of teachers can't be remedied
by volunteers - lack of reading teachers in middle school is a lack of
a highly trained professional. An untrained volunteer isn't going to
be able to substitute.

Volunteers can do a lot, even in middle school. If they can work with the
students that aren't having problems the teacher can concentrate on the ones
that are.

I list the problem as one of not being allowed to discipline because I don't
think class size per se is a problem... High ranges of abilities, and
discipline problems that can't be resolved make large classes a problem, but
they would also be a problem in smaller classes.

Some of that may be the principal involved of course and her
interpretation of the rules. But I fail to see how a volunteer in the
classroom would help with this situation.

Well, if they observed the incident they could report their view. Plus, just
having additional adults can be a help.


I'd also like to ask - how could a parent who is a teacher volunteer?
Why should a parent who is a teacher be considered exempt from the
universal expectation to volunteer? Answer: Because we know that the
parent who is a teacher is working at a school while the volunteering
is going on.

At my kids school, the teachers who have kids there help at fundraisers and in
other ways that aren't during the school days, just like the parents that
volunteer in spite of other school hour commitments do.


If volunteering is something that helps schools, then it should be
everyone that volunteers, and not just parents. Like universal
military service in Israel. If the schools need more hands and heads
and bodies, why should it be just parents that help? If funding has
made the schools so strapped for cash that people are needed, then all
voters should make up the deficit. Because the schools are a
foundation and good education of children is in the interests of all
of society.

There are ways to help schools besides volunteering during the school day. And
yes, helping public schools is something that everyone *should* do... Even
those that don't have children in public schools. But, it appears that not
even those who are parents of children in public school agree with me.

-Marjorie

Iowacookiemom wrote in :

At the time, I was too new in town to have had any other numbers to give
them --

Does anyone have suggestions regarding this? We are brand, spanking new
in our
new community -- been here 5 whole weeks. My husband is reluctant to ask
work friends to be our emergency contact since most of the folks he's
gotten to know work *for* him and it seems like an unfair request from a
supervisor to a
subordinate. We haven't yet found a church, and we barely know neighbors.
Has anyone out there solved this creatively?

We put the one set of neighbours we knew, my sister (over an hours drive
away) and my parents (even further). As far as I can remember, the school
has never used any of those numbers.

--
Penny Gaines
UK mum to three

Hillary Israeli wrote:
In ,
Jayne Kulikauskas wrote:
*
*I do nothing to participate in my children's schools. I hate the thought of
*doing it. I do not understand why you presume to have expectations for my
*behaviour.

And you're proud of that? Wow. Can you explain a little bit why you feel
this way? Frankly, while I can't say I'm thrilled to pieces by the thought
of spending time in a preschool or elementary level classroom, I'm
horrified by the thought that I might be completely left out of the loop
with no idea what's going on, and I think maintaining some level of
participation is the only way to prevent that. Plus, of course, it seems
like a nice thing to do.

I am fortunate that my kids have had teachers who communicate
with parents very effectively. They realize that not all
parents are in the classroom. Saying that volunteering is
the only way of knowing what's going on in a classroom is
damning with exceedingly faint praise the communication
abilities of your child(ren)'s teacher. You should expect
better.

I read nothing in Jayne's post, incidentally, that said she
was proud of her non-participatory status. Didn't she
just write a simple fact that she doesn't and dreads the
thought?

Scott DD 10 and DS 7

"Hillary Israeli" wrote in message
...
In ,
Jayne Kulikauskas wrote:
*
*I do nothing to participate in my children's schools. I hate the thought
of
*doing it. I do not understand why you presume to have expectations for
my
*behaviour.

And you're proud of that? Wow. Can you explain a little bit why you feel
this way?

There are a combination of reasons. Last year I had children in 4 different
schools. One was a coop nursery school that I had to go to. That was quite
enough dealing with other people's children for me. I was unhappy in school
as a child and still feel uncomfortable in school buildings. I have seven
children and am already at the limit of what I can handle in regards to
children .

I am neither proud not ashamed of not doing any school volunteering last
year. I am not going to do something that I do not want to do because other
people expect it of me. I'm proud of that.

Frankly, while I can't say I'm thrilled to pieces by the thought
of spending time in a preschool or elementary level classroom, I'm
horrified by the thought that I might be completely left out of the loop
with no idea what's going on, and I think maintaining some level of
participation is the only way to prevent that. Plus, of course, it seems
like a nice thing to do.

I talked to the my children's teachers and I talked to my children. I was
not completely out of the loop. Volunteering at school is a nice thing to
do, but that does not mean that everyone should do it. The world is full of
nice things to do and one person can not do them all.

Jayne

Rosalie B. wrote:

: That doesn't matter - it doesn't make it necessary to volunteer just
: because the California schools aren't as good as they were.
: Volunteering is a bandaid. The schools need more than a bandaid just
: as a cancer patient does.

I wonder if you really took up the challenge to see where California
schools ranks nationally between then and now? It's quite the points
spread.

Ideology vs. reality again. Okay, I agree. The schools in California
need more than the bandaid volunteers provide. And if funds continue to
be cut back year after year, class sizes increase, many vital programs are
cut, the state is in an overload financial emergency right now; so what do
you suggest be done other than volunteer to help out the schools under the
circumstances?

Noreen

(MarjiG) wrote:
Nan writes:

So what is it about today's teachers that requires all this volunteerism???

Budget cuts...

Dependence upon the vagaries of government funding is a challenge, whether
one is trying to run an educational establishment, waste management system,
or armed force. It guarantees something of a boom-and-bust cycle, inherent
in anything that feeds at the public trough. But is this significantly
different that a generation ago?

Does anyone have good figures for US schools that shows a generational
*decrease* in educational funding (avoiding boom-to-bust comparisons)? Or
perhaps a decrease net of mandatory spending of various sorts?

Perhaps there are such numbers, but what little I've seen has been in the
direction of gradual increase and has shown only marginal correlation with
educational outcomes. I don't believe that budgetary limitations are a
significant factor in school performance or the general, increased
expectation for parental volunteerism. It certainly could explain a
temporary demand for parents to fill in during budget busts, such as the US
states are seeing now.

standardized tests

When used to evaluate schools and teachers, these metrics certainly distort
the systems they are meant to observe, perhaps reversing the good
intentions behind them. Again, it's a universal problem with any human
metrics system. I'm not sure how that involves volunteers one way or the
other.

The main role I've seen myself in as a parent with the Virginia Standards
of Learning (SOL--unfortunate acronym there) is in reassuring my kids that
they should not share in the teachers' tension over these metrics,
encouraging them to resist any tendency by the teachers to pass on their
nervousness. I feel that the administrations don't do enough to dissuade
the teachers from this somewhat unprofessional behavior.

"No child left behind"

That looks to be more required, useless thrashing about based upon random
statistical variations, but such trends in education seem to have been
coming along for many years, with our without Federal mandate. Perhaps this
one will be even stupider and worse than past ones, but what parental
volunteerism has to do with it, I don't know.

"School to Work"

New one to me, but browsing
http://www.stwclearinghouse.org/showcase/index.asp it sounds as if it's
just an new label on what we called "career awareness" 25 years ago.

Every school seems to have to drone on for a few paragraphs of their
mission statement with ritual pronouncements on inclusion practices,
school-to-work, ESL, mentoring, gifted and special ed, community
engagement, technology, and diversity.

I'm having a hard time finding examples of parental volunteerism in
association with this, unless it's as field-trip chaperones. Has anybody's
volunteer work been in association with this movement?

lawsuits that removed the ability of schools to maintain discipline

Again, I don't see where parents can have more than marginal effect. If
this is a serious problem, I'm not sure that there is any solution this
side of corrective Federal legislation, or else abandonment of public
education. But what figures I have seen on US public school performance
seem to show a generally improving trend the last ten years. Perhaps the
turnaround from "defining deviancy down" and the funding boom of the late
'90s has been paying off here, as well as in more gross measures such as
the extraordinary decline in US violent crime.

In ,
Scott Lindstrom wrote:

* Jayne Kulikauskas wrote:
* *
* *I do nothing to participate in my children's schools. I hate the thought of
* *doing it. I do not understand why you presume to have expectations for my
* *behaviour.
*
*I am fortunate that my kids have had teachers who communicate
*with parents very effectively. They realize that not all
*parents are in the classroom. Saying that volunteering is
*the only way of knowing what's going on in a classroom is
*damning with exceedingly faint praise the communication
*abilities of your child(ren)'s teacher. You should expect
*better.

That's true - I do expect good communication. I guess I misspoke, seems to
be happening a lot lately. Let me try again...

I think that if one does not participate in some way, one does not have as
much of a say in what goes on in the classroom, and one is less likely to
be as aware of what is going on when it is going on.

*I read nothing in Jayne's post, incidentally, that said she
*was proud of her non-participatory status. Didn't she
*just write a simple fact that she doesn't and dreads the
*thought?

Yes, I think perhaps I overinterpreted. I was out extremely late last
night and didn't sleep well. It was our anniversary and I celebrated too
much. Whoops

--
hillary israeli vmd http://www.hillary.net
"uber vaccae in quattuor partes divisum est."
not-so-newly minted veterinarian-at-large

Jayne ) wrote:

Volunteering at school is a nice thing to
do, but that does not mean that everyone should do it. The world is full of
nice things to do and one person can not do them all.

This is absolutely true. I expect my *school*, as a whole, to have a lot of
volunteering going on in it. But I do not see why every single parent should
have to be involved as a volunteer.

--Helen

In article ,
Rosalie B. wrote:
Larger class sizes in many cases. Heterogeneous grouping of
students at all different ability levels in the same class.

We had that 20 years ago and it was regarded as appropriate and in
fact for better learning of all the children - at least research
showed that.

The research isn't as clear anymore. What I've seen suggests it is
good for average and below-average students, and not so good for
above-average students. I'll try to find some references later.

Regardless, I think you would agree that having to meet the needs
of a wide variety of students at the same time demands more of a
teacher than having to meet the needs of a more homogeneous group.

I'm sure some teachers can and have in the past done a great job
of this with no parental help; I'm also sure that many feel/felt
they need(ed) help to *really* meet everyone's needs.

Also, I think parents are more aware that their children's needs
may not be being met in this model, and are more proactive about
doing what they feel needs to be done to rectify it.
I also think parents are more


fewer "resource teachers" available within the school to help out
individuals needing extra help or enrichment. Also different
expectations on teachers today (both educational and beaurocratic).

The resource teachers are mandated by law for special needs students.
The school cannot eliminate them.

When I was a kid, they were also available to help the above-average
students who needed higher-level or faster instruction. This is
rarely the case today.

I truly don't see that any of those things are a reason to volunteer.

They're not necessarily "a reason to volunteer". They are all reasons
why, IMO, teachers and students may need/benefit from volunteers more
now than they did in the past.

I also think parental expectations are changing, and to the extent that
parents add additional expectations of teachers, they are often also
willing to help them meet those. I know I expect more out of my children's
school than my parents (very involved; I mean no slight to my parents)
expected of my schools.

I basically agree with Banty. The schools are supposed to teach my
child. That's their job.

Yes it is. And if I can help them do it better, I'm willing and
motivated. I don't "expect" anyone else to do the same. I do
it both selfishly for my children's benefit and altruistically
for the benefit of other children. Do you think parent volunteers
hurt teachers or children? Do you think they can help?

I will go farther than that. If there are schools that need
volunteers, I think they are the private schools. Private schools
have FAR less resources than public schools.


I'm not sure you can generalize. But my children are now in a
private school that definitely nees parental help in many, many
different ways.

--Robyn