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

"Ericka Kammerer" wrote in message
...

I've never heard of you doing anything that I thought
was inappropriate. However, while I agree with the idea that
people should be flexible on both sides, I also think attendance
is a serious thing. I've pretty much had it up to *here* with
people who don't place any value on the time of other people
than themselves (not saying you're in that camp at all). I
do see a bit of a pattern among many people--people who can't
be bothered to show up when they say they will at a party,
college students who skip classes (and who almost invariably
expect you to recount your lecture for them)

I teach at the college level, and have also been thinking about this
phenomenon as I've read this thread. I've always been very careful to put
my attendance policy on my course outline and to explain it on the first day
of class. Students get a certain number of "free" absences during the
semester, and once that number has been exceeded, their course grade is
lowered a certain amount for each "extra" absence. Students do not need to
show me doctor's notes or other documentation to prove that they had a
legitimate reason to miss class. And bringing such documentation does not
"excuse" their absences, so I urge students to save their absences for true
emergencies.

Students always nod and say they understand all this when I explain it. But
then I'll always have students who try to get me to make an exception.
"Dear Professor: I will miss class the Friday before and the Monday after
spring break, because my flight leaves early and returns late. Please
excuse my absence, and let me know if we're doing anything important on
those days. Thanks for understanding." It's not unusual for more than half
my students to miss class right before and right after a break.

I had a student who missed all of her "free" absences, and then was absent
on a peer-review day (for a writing class). Missing a peer-review day
carried extra penalties--losing points on the final paper. When the student
returned for the next class session, she told me that her parents had
"kidnapped" her to take her home to celebrate her birthday.

--
Belphoebe

In article Lcwob.48937$hp5.27745@fed1read04, Circe says...

"Ericka Kammerer" wrote in message


Agreed but...I have to say I do know an awful lot of
people IRL who make decisions I think are really suspect about
what constitutes a reasonable excuse for missing school or
a reasonable number of days to miss--and a number of them
are among the parents who will happily pitch a fit if Junior
isn't getting top grades or if the teacher can't somehow
find the time to personally tutor Junior to catch him up.
Perhaps the problem is that this area is a little too affluent.

Well, our school is also in affluent area, and I haven't gotten the
impression that parents in my neighborhood take school attendance lightly at
ALL. I think part of the reason my school is willing to be so flexible is
that people don't tend to abuse that flexibility as a general rule and that
when parents DO take their kids out, they are both willing to and capable of
ensuring the child completes the independent study work so he/she doesn't
fall too far behind.

Our area is mixed fairly-affluent and working class (not large porportions of
either welfare or very affluent). There *had* been too much perponderance of
parents pulling kids out for ski trips, etc.


I don't know if this is any worse than it was in the past.
Heck, for all I know it was *worse* in the past. I also
wouldn't want to sit in judgement over some other individual
family's decision. However, I'd bet a significant amount
of money that of the instances I know of personally, a
goodly percentage weren't really earth-shatteringly important
reasons to miss school ;-) I do think there are people who
are quite cavalier about their children missing school and
who do their children a disservice. There are probably many
more who use their flexibility very responsibly. Unfortunately,
even if these rules weren't being driven by stupid policy, it
doesn't take very many irresponsible people to be a real PITA
for a teacher.
Just as one example, in Adrian's class, there
were things that had to be delayed for *three* weeks that
should have been done right at the beginning of the school
year because out of a class of 27 (or so) students, *planned*
absenses had too many kids out every day for the first
three weeks of school and the teacher really felt the
material was important enough that everyone should hear
it first hand! I don't know all the reasons, but I do
know that they were planned absences and not illnesses.
Even if they were all fabulous excuses, that's a significant
impact. The teacher, by the way, didn't complain and
even said that he fully supported absences for family
reasons, bless his heart, and maybe every single one
of those absences was truly necessary. They were still
not without consequences for the teacher and the entire
class. In my mind, it would be a shameful thing to
cause that sort of disruption without a darned good
reason.

Well, I agree that the disruption is unfortunate, but I also think it was
the teacher's *choice* to delay the material until all the students were in
class. The teacher presumably knew what the material was. The teacher
presumably could have given the material to the parents of the students who
were going to be out and had them impart it to their children. We're not
talking about calculus here, are we? We're talking about curriculum for
third graders, and I'm sure most parents in affluent schools are perfectly
capable of homeschooling third-grade material for a few days.

My interpretation was that the students mostly *arrived late*, rather than
showing up, then going out, such that the teacher didn't have an opportunity to
do that.

I'd say that the teacher's part in the mess perhaps is in not taking off on the
curriculum anyway and leaving the absent students and their parents to take
responsibility for the work and/or cconsequences - but think what grief has the
teacher may have gotten in the past from parents complaining that the class got
into the heavy portion of the material 'too early', and/or what efforts
eventually had to be expended in the end anyway to deal with kids who were
behind.

And such toughness isn't well received often, so the teacher is between a rock
and a hard place, and it's really unfair to put him or her in that position.

At any rate, I don't take it for granted that the teachers has everything lined
up and ready to go for the next weeks' sessions so that the parents can stop by
and pick it up even if there was an opportunity.

Take your job - right now give me the materials you'll be working on next week.
Could you do it?

Concerning math - it's now in junior high that I find I can really impart
knowledge to my son and help him with concepts - it's in the *early* grades,
with concepts being presented much differently than I learned, where I'd be
stymied!



IOW, you're blaming parents for a decision that was really made by the
teacher. If you were sure that every single absence was the result of an
illness or truly justifiable reason, the delay would have been just as
disruptive.

The problem is in the sheer number of exceptional demands the teacher gets. If
there are fewer, it's less disruptive.

Banty

In article cqwob.48938$hp5.40274@fed1read04, Circe says...

"Donna Metler" wrote in message
. ..
Minimum days are rarely "suddenly" announced. Our school calendar, not
only
for this year, but for NEXT YEAR is already set in stone, and those
half-days are on it. So are the days with no classes. The only unexpected
days are those due to weather or factors beyond our control.

Shrug All I can tell you is that several minimum days were announced last
year at my school which were not on the calendar sent out at the beginning
of the year. (As it happened, they didn't affect us because our school chose
to keep kindergarten schedules the same even when minimum days were in
effect for the rest of the school.)

That said, minimum days don't usually represent a significant burden to the
parents of elementary school-aged children. Most elementary schools have
after-care programs and arrangements can usually be made even at the last
minute for a child to attend the after-care program on a minimum day.


That would have been a problem for many in my district.

Parents who are normally home when the kids got home but worked during school
hours would be SOL as, with the per-provider requirements of the after-school
care, there could *not* be a sudden influx of kids for the remainder of the
'minimum day'. Was the after-school program at your school really able to get
extra personnel for those hours?

The *problem* is for parents of middle school-aged children in particular. I
don't know of *any* middle schools in my area that offer after-care. There
just aren't many options for getting those 6th and 7th graders care for 3-4
hours on a sporadic basis, even if you know well in advance.

My son goes home for 1/2 days, and follows the same rules as he has for after
school but before I get home, unless it's a good day for me to work from home.
By junior high, normally kids should be able to do that. (Yeah, I know, not all
kids, and not in certain combinations with sibs.) Around here parents have to
have some kind of very available option or arrangemetn for snow days and other
weather-related changes in schedule anyway.
(After-school providers don't exactly have Star Trek 'beam-over' teleporters to
get to their homes during snow storms either, y'know, so they closed when the
school closed.)


To other silliness in this thread - no they are
not a fascist institution.

Not yet. But when state or federal law effectively takes flexibility
away
from an individual teacher of school by mandating that children cannot
miss
more than X number of days during the year and the school/teacher does
not
have the discretion to permit an absence for a child who is clearly
exceeding academic standards, I think it's getting pretty close.

Agreed. However, too often children missing classes for Disney or Ski
trips
(or to babysit little brother or sister because mommy is too strung out on
drugs to do it-a common scenerio in my school) aren't exceeding academic
standards.

And for those kids, labelling even parent-excused absences as "truancy" is
probably justified. I'm just saying that across-the-board policies that are
enforced regardless of circumstances are a substitute for common sense.

OK - so how do you tell Mrs. Struggling Smith that teen-aged Yolanda is truant
because she stayed home to watch little Amhad, even though she couldnt' possibly
afford childcare else her family doesn't EAT sometimes, but for Ms. Career
Woman, she of course has parental authority to take teen aged Brittanie to see
Epcot off-season in April, 'cause it's so educational y'know, and otherwise she
couldn't SAVE FOR COLLEGE at the rate she'd like and pay summer rates for
vacation trips, too? Hmmmm?

Banty

In article , Joni
Rathbun says...


On Fri, 31 Oct 2003, Circe wrote:


Well, I agree that the disruption is unfortunate, but I also think it was
the teacher's *choice* to delay the material until all the students were in
class. The teacher presumably knew what the material was. The teacher
presumably could have given the material to the parents of the students who
were going to be out and had them impart it to their children. We're not
talking about calculus here, are we? We're talking about curriculum for
third graders, and I'm sure most parents in affluent schools are perfectly
capable of homeschooling third-grade material for a few days.


I'm in the middle on all of this. Flexibility must exist on both
sides. Both sides are damned if they do and damned if they don't.
And we all have examples of responsible behavior and abuses of
the system, etc., etc., etc.

I think it's the attitude toward what is being taught and
how it's being taught that bothers me -- a little.

Well, I'm not even a teacher (although I'm the daughter of a former teacher, and
the step-daughter of a former teacher), and I can see right through this set of
attitudes, and it bothers me A LOT.

It boils down to:

MY job is sooooo important and uses all my faculties and there is no way they
can substitute for me and I have to be there all the time, I can't arrange to
take anything home, it's so real time - -

- - but the TEACHER oughta be able to reach in his or her drawer and give me
these nicely, neatly, pre-arranged, pre-packaged lesson plans because all
teaching is, is this mechanical exercise of implementing whatever is on those
plans that can la-de-da written down weeks ahead of time.

Hmmmph.

Banty

In article m,
Jenrose wrote:
Funny thing... I found a job myself where the day they hired me they said,
"We know you're a parent and we want you to know that your family comes
first."

I can miss a day "just because" and not lose my job--they know I'll meet my
deadlines and they know that flexibility is one of the reasons I stay there.
I can show up late or leave early. I insisted on finding a job where my
family COULD come first.

Me too. Early in my stay at this company, the department secretary
came in to a meeting I was in to say there was a call from my child's
daycare provider. My boss and co-workers essentially said goodbye and
wished me luck, assuming I'd have to leave for the day to deal with
whatever it was. I don't recall if I did indeed have to leave that
day, but there certainly were days when I had to leave on short notice
due to a child spiking a fever at daycare, and others that I had to
take off with sick children (or work a part-day, splitting the sick-child
care with my husband) and they were always completely understanding
and supportive of it. I could even use my own sick time for sick-kid
care.

A family-friendly employer is a wonderful thing! I made it a priority
when job hunting and am forever grateful!

--Robyn

In article m,
Jenrose wrote:

BTW... you can see a summary of our program at
http://schools.4j.lane.edu/family/index.html


Awesome-looking program!

--Robyn

On Fri, 31 Oct 2003, Circe wrote:

"Joni Rathbun" wrote in message
...
In nearly 20 years of teaching, I've never used a textbook
or generated a mass of worksheets to be used. Much of what I've
done has been process-based. For example, when we did a multi-
class social studies unit on community and government with
second graders, we visited all the city government offices,
developed our own community, our own government and community
infrastructure, court system, etc. Each student played an integral part
in our community and government. Their counterparts
in the city came to the school on a regular basis to work
directly with them. And what we planned for next week was highly
dependent upon what happened this week... Not the same thing
as working your way from chapter one to chapter two in a
textbook.

Well, all I can say if that I hope my kids have teachers like you in their
lives. Frankly, kindergarten and first grade have been nothing short of
worksheet hell.

You sound like a first-rate teacher, Joni, and I'd be loathe to have my kids
miss out on classes like yours!

Well, I wasn't fishing for compliments. I was part of a team and this
was usual operating procedure where I came from (but thank you).

I have to be realistic tho. Not all classrooms are like that and
not everyone WANTS them to be like that.

We moved to a new state and district and I figure my son could have
missed his entire third grade year and could have done better than had he
been there. Whole different system -- test-motivated, scripted, by
the book training with little to no education going on (and if it
wasn't on the test, forget it... it wasn't taught). I was rather
appalled (and eventually went so far as to ship my son back to the state
where we came from to go to school).

If a classroom offers something that seems valuable to the patrons,
fewer people will be so quick to skip. At the same time, here will always
be those who just aren't paying attention or don't really know
or understand what's going on.

In article , Robyn Kozierok says...

However, I'd bet a significant amount
of money that of the instances I know of personally, a
goodly percentage weren't really earth-shatteringly important
reasons to miss school ;-) I do think there are people who
are quite cavalier about their children missing school and
who do their children a disservice.

Well, when my kids were in public school and the teachers had to make
a special effort to provide them with work at their level, which was
different from what the rest of the class was doing, I was pretty
cavalier about them missing school. When my kids were out, they
didn't miss anything they didn't already know, and it *freed* the
teacher from having to come up with something productive for them to
do.

Using Banty's guideline that schools exist "to educate the children"
I guess that any day that the class is going to cover only material
a particular child has already mastered, and the teacher doesn't have
time to come up with something else for that child to do, the child
should be automatically excused, particularly if their parents are
willing to have them do something "educational" that day instead.

Well, think about it in a broader sense - the one the schools and teachers
actually have to deal with.

OK - *you* take your children out, and in your particular case, it works out and
the kids get educated. And in the right enviornment that probably works fine.
Especially if you don't have *other* parents, with kids that aren't so talented,
saying "then why can't WE...." OK - one answer to the 'why can't WE...' might
be "OK, go ahead, but for your situation there are consequences". And the
teachers and school truly hand over responsibility to the parents
(responsibility beign a two-way street, too!), to truly make those decisions.
Which means, doing the scrambling to make up for the lost teaching for those
kids who do need it, and/or taking the lower grade if the child isn't performing
so well.

Ms. Kozierok and kiddies might do just fine with it, Mrs. Clark may struggle
with it but try but her child Henry isn't doing so well becuase he's part of a
family that needed to pull him out at a critical time this year for a family
problem.

But two problems.

1. Mrs. Jackson is REALLY ****ED, and is going to go to the principal and even
the school board, because her little Amanda wasn't given any lessons, even
though little Amanda had to stay three weeks with the estranged Mr. Jackson in
another state because Mrs. Jackson is working on becoming the next Mrs.
*Johnson*, and took a trip with Mr. Johnson. Teacher and schools have to deal
wtih Mrs. Jackson and Amanda.

2. John and Jane Q Public. John and Jane Q Public is paying for this. You're
Jane Q Public too, but actually that's only incidental in that you're part of
the public at large - John and Jane Q Public at large is paying for an educated
populace *at large*. So, John and Jane Q. Public have a problem, not only with
future little Amanda Jackson-Johnson not being educated and all the resources
going into dealing with the irascible future Mrs. Johnson, they also have a
problem with little Henry Clark not doing so well.

So how do you have the Kozierok kiddies have all the flexibility that they can
use and still be educated, but also have John and Jane Q Public of the future
have well -educated Amanda Jackson-Johsons and Henry Clarks to hire or report
to, vote with, and all the other reasons why John and Jane Q Public are paying
so dearly to have the Kozeirok and Clark and Jackson kids educated?

Banty

On Fri, 31 Oct 2003, Belphoebe wrote:


"Ericka Kammerer" wrote in message
...

I've never heard of you doing anything that I thought
was inappropriate. However, while I agree with the idea that
people should be flexible on both sides, I also think attendance
is a serious thing. I've pretty much had it up to *here* with
people who don't place any value on the time of other people
than themselves (not saying you're in that camp at all). I
do see a bit of a pattern among many people--people who can't
be bothered to show up when they say they will at a party,
college students who skip classes (and who almost invariably
expect you to recount your lecture for them)

I teach at the college level, and have also been thinking about this
phenomenon as I've read this thread. I've always been very careful to put
my attendance policy on my course outline and to explain it on the first day
of class. Students get a certain number of "free" absences during the
semester, and once that number has been exceeded, their course grade is
lowered a certain amount for each "extra" absence. Students do not need to
show me doctor's notes or other documentation to prove that they had a
legitimate reason to miss class. And bringing such documentation does not
"excuse" their absences, so I urge students to save their absences for true
emergencies.

Students always nod and say they understand all this when I explain it. But
then I'll always have students who try to get me to make an exception.
"Dear Professor: I will miss class the Friday before and the Monday after
spring break, because my flight leaves early and returns late. Please
excuse my absence, and let me know if we're doing anything important on
those days. Thanks for understanding." It's not unusual for more than half
my students to miss class right before and right after a break.

I had a student who missed all of her "free" absences, and then was absent
on a peer-review day (for a writing class). Missing a peer-review day
carried extra penalties--losing points on the final paper. When the student
returned for the next class session, she told me that her parents had
"kidnapped" her to take her home to celebrate her birthday.

What is taught and how it is taught makes a difference. Sadly, many
of my college courses were such that you COULD skip and still do
very well -- especially at the 100/200 level. It was really a bit
of a shock for me back when. I'd have been happy to meet an instructor
like you tho after my experiences with the other courses, you might
have had to do some convincing Your students today have probably
had similar experiences.

That said, all my years in college, I only had one professor
present an attendance policy. He allowed NO absenses for any
reason. He promised to grade down one grade for each day missed.
As luck would have it, I had a required art course that required
a field trip which would cause me to miss that professor's course
one day. I tried to make arrangements. I got a professor from
Course B to talk to the professor from Course A. But I still
got the B.

I didn't think it was fair or appropriate and protested
to the powers higher up. My B was changed to an A.

"Robyn Kozierok" wrote in message
...
In article m,
Jenrose wrote:

BTW... you can see a summary of our program at
http://schools.4j.lane.edu/family/index.html


Awesome-looking program!


Thanks! Another mom and I just spent weeks creating that site for the
school, and it happened to go live yesterday!

Jenrose