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#141
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Bright 2nd grader & school truancy / part-time home-school?
"Banty" wrote in message
... And what other needs are not being tended to because the teachers are trying to catch the kids up. Or arranging those all important take-with assignments and grading separately said take-with assignments, that parents who pull kids out of school are so proud of themselves for arranging? When we took Julian out of school to go to Italy last year, we had to sign an independent study contract. The school has a sheet of suggested activities that is used for every grade. The teacher checks off the items she wants your child to do and may also send along additional worksheets and assignments that would have been done in the classroom. I got the impression from our teacher that she knew what the curriculum would be well in advance and that putting together this packet for us was not a big issue. When we returned, I turned in the packet of completed work. I never saw it again. As far as I know, she never "graded" or reviewed it in any way. So I don't think it caused her to have to do much extra work. Of course, Julian was in kindergarten at the time. The amount of effort required to provide independent work for students in higher grades would be much more significant. My neighbor, who is a kindergarten teacher herself, just took her first grader out of school for a little over a week on an independent study contract. I have a hard time believing she would do this to another teacher if she thought it would create a huge burden for that teacher. -- Be well, Barbara (Julian [6], Aurora [4], and Vernon's [19mo] mom) This week's special at the English Language Butcher Shop: "Use repeatedly for severe damage." -- Directions on shampoo bottle Daddy: You're up with the chickens this morning. Aurora: No, I'm up with my dolls! All opinions expressed in this post are well-reasoned and insightful. Needless to say, they are not those of my Internet Service Provider, its other subscribers or lackeys. Anyone who says otherwise is itchin' for a fight. -- with apologies to Michael Feldman |
#142
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Bright 2nd grader & school truancy / part-time home-school?
Banty wrote in :
Amazing what use can be made of summer and spring and holiday and other breaks. Say - Thanksgiving break is coming right up in a scant few weeks! What a wonderful time to visit a family member who may not be with the world much longer. Doesn't that depend on whether you think the relative will still be around for Thanksgiving? If they are really ill, maybe that four weeks is too long to wait. -- Penny Gaines UK mum to three |
#143
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Bright 2nd grader & school truancy / part-time home-school?
x-no-archive:yes
Ericka Kammerer wrote: Nevermind wrote: Wow -- is ability grouping common in the UK? If I understand correctly, it has been all but wiped out of public schools in the U.S. It sounds like wonderful common sense to me. Ability grouping isn't the problem - TRACKING is the big bad no no. Tracking means that a la '1984', once one is put on the dummy track, one can never test out of it to get more challenging material even if a mistake has been made because of some physical handicap or the like or because of prejudice against a specific group. Ability grouping has always been done, and hopefully always will be. It sure isn't wiped out in the public schools here. In my sons' school they ability group for math and reading in every grade past kindergarten (except it seems that they don't in the center based GT program, which I suppose makes sense). They have as many groups as they have teachers for that grade. So, this year there are something like six first grade teachers, so they have seven reading groups (each teacher has one, plus there's a reading specialist) and six math groups. The groups are relatively fluid, so children who need to move up or down accordingly. Seems to work like a charm. I don't know about primary grades, but in middle school (6 to 8) we team taught which meant that four teachers had about 120 to 135 kids to teach English (pardon me - Language Arts), Math, Science and Social Studies. We usually grouped the kids for math and for language arts. The kids moved from one teacher to another for their classes, but were not necessarily in the high group or the low group for all the classes. So a kid in the high group for math could be in the middle low group for LA. LA was often done by spelling and reading ability. It was even possible for a child in the 7th grade to go to the 8th grade algebra class, or for one in the 8th grade to go to the high school for an advanced math class. [Reading was taught by every teacher in the school and was divided up according to ability - so as a 6th grade teacher, I had an 8th grade reading class. The reading specialist had the hardest group - the one who needed the most hand holding and the PE teacher had the easiest group to teach i.e. those students who could be basically left to read on their own. This meant that the classes could be very small where needed.] grandma Rosalie |
#144
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Bright 2nd grader & school truancy / part-time home-school?
Vicki wrote:
Do you know... does this mean that to get this law changed for our state we would have to work at the national level? Probably both. The federal laws provide a structure that encourages certain things, and then states build on that, and school districts build on it further. You'd have to find out the details of precisely what is driving the rules in your situation to find out how high up you'd have to take things, or whether you'd be able to find an accommodation or a loophole lower down the food chain that would solve your particular situation. I don't think dd would suffer from missing 20% of class (but I'd been leaning more towards 10%). I thought taking dd out would be *easiest* for the teacher. Shows how much I know! I hadn't expected teacher would do anything to "make up" work for dd. The point was to give the class time to catch up without dd sitting there spinning her wheels. Reading people's objections, it seems I've misjudged how much work a teacher has to do when a child misses. This must have to do with record-keeping and evaluation, not with actual teaching. I don't care what marks dd receives at this point, but I suppose the school cares, and must record them. Yes, that's the problem. Not only that, but even without any mandates, if your child didn't have to do at least something equivalent to what the other kids were doing, that could generate a lot of resentment from the other kids--which could be a rather serious issue since it seems to be the socialization that is driving any attempt to remain in the school! I don't expect much from the school in terms of education--they are passing time. I hadn't articulated this, but as long as dd was having fun with her friends, I thought we could bide our time and she would (eventually) get an education at school. This part-time home school idea was so that she could get *some* education until the public school kicked in. And stating it, that's probably pretty stupid on my part: I should ask that they teach dd *something* in the time she is there. That would be my leaning, personally. They *should* be providing an education for her! It might not be absolutely perfect for her individual situation, but it ought to be at least in the ballpark. I think it's perfectly reasonable for you to ask that they find *some* way to accommodate her needs. After all, if she were on the other side of the bell curve and were really struggling with the material you would accept that, would you? We don't have a separate program for kids who excel academically. They've pulled four kids in dd's grade into one class and have them do some different activities, but this is limited, and has been new ground here. Funny as it may sound, I'd prefer dd not be pulled out for a lot of "specials" away from her class, prefer she not be singled out. I'd prefer that she be taught within the classroom. Yeah, I know. I've been told that a really good teacher can teach to a lot of different levels within one classroom and that everyone will benefit. I think dd's teacher is good... but that kind of teaching doesn't seem to happen here. I do need to ask at teacher conferences that teacher actually teach my child, and ask how she will measure that. If it will be less work for her to actually teach dd, it would be easier for me, and better for dd. I just don't see it happening in-class, so all the trouble of having her pulled out of class are still there, and then some. Oh well. Their record-keeping would be easier. And I'd be being reasonable. Joy ;-) They should at *least* be able to provide some guided individual study, with you helping out. That's not ideal-- they should be able to provide an education without punting a lot of the responsibility to you, but it beats having her bored to tears in class. Best wishes, Ericka |
#145
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Bright 2nd grader & school truancy / part-time home-school?
Donna Metler wrote:
However, I don't think it's fair to ask the teachers to come up with two weeks of individualized assignments for a given student (when a child is on homebound, the homebound teacher takes over most of the planning, only occasionally consulting with the classroom teacher), the grading, and trying to get the child caught up, or for the teacher to be assessed and blamed based on the child's performance on tests, when the parent has chosen to pull the child out of school for several weeks at a time. Yes, this is another factor to be taken into account-- if a child isn't doing well in a class on these standardized tests, the *teachers* and *administration* are held accountable. That's what all this "accountability" stuff means. When you (the figurative "you") jump on the accountability bandwagon, that means you are actively transferring *YOUR* responsibilities (and the privileges that go with them) as a parent to the teachers and administrators. They're not going to accept being accountable for your child's performance if they have no control over what your child does when. Best wishes, Ericka |
#146
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Bright 2nd grader & school truancy / part-time home-school?
In article ,
toto wrote: On Wed, 29 Oct 2003 01:09:58 -0600, "Vicki" wrote: My parents took us out of school for two weeks every winter, right after xmas holidays. We'd drive down to Mexico and stay 4 weeks. This was our family vacation and our xmas present. We missed hearing about what everyone got for xmas, we reconnected with family, got away from the pressure of teenage groups--helped us keep balanced. And my father got sun, which reduced his seasonal depression (even tho we didn't know what that was then,) and this made our winter with him bearable. I think it's hard to judge accurately what is best for another family. Under the laws now, I think we'd all have been truants and my parents would have been served notice. Yee haw. Long live the totalitarian state. Unfortunately, we had families like this in the high school I taught. Guess how many did not get the math homework in algebra and geometry because they missed so much? I'm afraid that I don't believe that *most* students can afford to miss so much of these classes at least once they hit middle and high school. Apparently, this is fairly common in families from Mexico. I've heard of at least one school district with a substantial percentage of Mexican families that has altered it's schedle so that they TAKE four weeks off at this time of year. Cultural differences in things like this are a challenge in culturally diverse areas. Unless a school has a certain percentage of Jewish kids, for example, they don't schedule days off on Jewish Holy Days -- though those kids are entitled to take the days off. Same for Muslims or anyone else who is not Christian. Even among Christians, those who celebrate on Epiphany (12th night) instead of Christmas Day don't get that day off. I wish we had a better way to accomodate everyone's needs, both cultural and religious. In elementary school, if a child is doing well I think they ought to be able to be more flexible. By high school, I don't see how a child CAN miss two extra weeks without it having an effect on thier schooling. But even if the schools WANT to be more flexible, current political climate is making it more and more difficult. meh -- Children won't care how much you know until they know how much you care |
#147
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Bright 2nd grader & school truancy / part-time home-school?
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?) However, I also believe that children ought to receive a reasonably appropriate education, and children who are way out there on the bell curve really aren't being served without some accommodation. With a little flexibility and willpower, most gifted kids *can* be accommodated, at least to some degree, in a normal classroom. I was in a "normal" classroom for all of elementary school (several different schools) and most of my teachers were willing to make all sorts of arrangements to keep me learning in a reasonable way. Sure, I was occasionally bored, but I don't see that as a downside. However, in most cases I *was* able to do more than just slog along with material I'd mastered years before. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. academic discipline. I think that lack of academic discipline is something that affects lots of bright people. It cannot be blamed on the schools. Everyone always told me that I should make an outline and then write something, and I resisted that. I would write the piece first, and then make an outline from it. The pieces that didn't fit, I would rework until it fitted the outline, and then redo the outline etc. I thought that an outline stifled my creativity. It wasn't until I took a writing course where I was forced to turn in an outline before I could have written the article that I finally came to terms with outlining. (This was in the days before computers and cut and paste - I used to type stuff out and then lay it out on the floor and cut it up with scissors and paste it back together, and then retype.) 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. There is a *lot* that parents, and especially the child herself or himself, can do outside school to develop themselves and supplement their own learning. Hobbies, clubs, scouts, outside reading, travel. Absolutely, and I've always been a big proponent of that. Still, that doesn't totally excuse allowing school to be a waste of time when there are usually simple and not-too-intrusive things to do to alleviate at least *part* of that problem. 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. 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.) :-{ And, BTW, there's 180 days of school a year, covering only about 2/3 of a work day for each day. There's *plenty* of time for that outside school. IMO by far most of the reasons parents take their kids out of school for 'enrichment' it's really a matter of parental convenience such as cheaper travel, etc. I can fully understand why schools are cracking down on some of this. I also agree with that. I don't really get the notion that every child must be catered to as an individual in every single way. 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. 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. If that's your definition of an acceptable education, homeschool or hire a tutor. (I realize that in some cases, that really *is* the only way to get any sort of acceptable education, but that doesn't apply to the majority of kids.) If you are part of a class, I think it's reasonable for students and parents to be thoughtful about the effects of their requests/actions on the teacher and other students in the class. Some things are just too intrusive to be reasonable, IMO. Other things, however, are quite reasonable, and should be implemented wherever necessary to provide the best education possible. 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. 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. 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. 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. grandma Rosalie |
#148
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Bright 2nd grader & school truancy / part-time home-school?
On 29 Oct 2003 07:45:10 -0800, Banty wrote:
In article , Donna Metler says... If you want that much flexibility, homeschool. Or find a private school which caters to parents. Don't ask a public school to do the work of homeschooling for you so you can take your child anywhere you want to take them. Hear-tell private schools get a lot less of that. Once a parent has paid dearly for the specific setting and paid the teacher for his or her curriculum and teaching work out of pocket, the whole vacation/family/play vs. mean-ol'-inflexible-school outlook changes considerably! Amazing what use can be made of summer and spring and holiday and other breaks. Say - Thanksgiving break is coming right up in a scant few weeks! What a wonderful time to visit a family member who may not be with the world much Im a little ambivilant about this. We use a department of defense school. They dont allow unexcused absences. They do however, consider the opportunity to travel the continent in which we live (Europe) a valuable education in and of itself. Therefore, we can take children out with prearrangement, and I have done so. Yes, one can travel in the summer and school facations, but that doesnt always work with our parent schedules, or with the crowds. So I would say I have taken my son out about two weeks in the past year. It has been well worth it. We do the planned assignments in advance, and it has never been a probleem. Barb longer. Banty |
#149
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Bright 2nd grader & school truancy / part-time home-school?
In article ,
Penny Gaines wrote: Banty wrote in : Amazing what use can be made of summer and spring and holiday and other breaks. Say - Thanksgiving break is coming right up in a scant few weeks! What a wonderful time to visit a family member who may not be with the world much longer. Doesn't that depend on whether you think the relative will still be around for Thanksgiving? If they are really ill, maybe that four weeks is too long to wait. I would add that the four days we got off for Thanksgiving might not be enough time. At least for me, getting TO my relatives takes a full day and costs a lot of money; spending the $$ to spend only two days there is problematic. However, by adding 3 days out of school and work, one could travel on a Saturday, stay for a full week, and travel back on a Sunday. meh -- Children won't care how much you know until they know how much you care |
#150
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Bright 2nd grader & school truancy / part-time home-school?
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