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

On Wed, 29 Oct 2003 08:16:47 -0800, "Circe" wrote:

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.

I would suggest that the early grades are easier to do this in than
the later grades. If a child is reading well in first grade and is
up to speed on math skills some time off might not cause a problem.

But it sets a precedent. And I have found that most kids cannot take
so much time off once they are past the elementary level and still
manage to understand the work, particularly in mathematics.


--
Dorothy

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

The Outer Limits

On Wed, 29 Oct 2003 17:24:25 GMT, dragonlady
wrote:

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.

I wish that this worked, but I also see an advantage to attempting to
help those who immigrate to accept that this is a new country with a
new culture and that some things must be adapted to and not fought
over.

I did have one high school student who went to Mexico for a period
of four weeks in honors geometry who returned with every assignment
finished (with help from her uncles in Mexico), but she was an
exception to the rule. She ended up being valedictorian of her high
school class too.


--
Dorothy

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

The Outer Limits

"toto" wrote in message
...
On Wed, 29 Oct 2003 08:16:47 -0800, "Circe" wrote:

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.

I would suggest that the early grades are easier to do this in than
the later grades. If a child is reading well in first grade and is
up to speed on math skills some time off might not cause a problem.

But it sets a precedent. And I have found that most kids cannot take
so much time off once they are past the elementary level and still
manage to understand the work, particularly in mathematics.

In addition, starting in grade 3, standardized test scores count against the
school. Depending on the state, it could be every year, or just specific
ones. The real crisis years here are 3rd, 5th, and 8th, although students
are tested in grades 1-8, with exit tests in high school subjects.


--
Dorothy

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

The Outer Limits

In article , Barbara Bomberger
says...

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.


Having been in schools with only military kids myself (but stateside), I'd wager
that the privelege of pulling kids out for truely imporant reasons hasn't been
abused as much. I don't' take the position that it's *never* appropriate to
take kids out of school.

When I was a kid :utting on my bifocals:: , I remember kids getting off for
an opporunity to see a Saturn V launch, or for truly once-in-a-lifetime travel.
There has to be some flexibility anyway since lots of kids are always
transerring in and out. (One thing, though, families would fit travel around
the transfers often, taking some time off before having to depart or after
having to arrive.)

I dno't recall hardly any of this "hey here's a package for Disney the week
before Thanksgiving let's go" stuff. Or "we have a time-share in Vail for the
last week of January we're gonna do this every year".

Yeah yeah I know I'll get the 'but how can *you* say the skiing isn't as
important as a SaturnV launch!". But hey, this is what you get if willingness
to be flexible is strained by demands of too many folks having no concept of
what is appropriate and what it not. So *everyone* gets cracked down on.

Banty

In article , dragonlady
says...

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.

Oh - well, yanno what? Need more travel time?? Just sooo happens that the VERY
NEXT MONTH, right after the 5 day Thanksgiving break, there's whooooole long
two-week - what do they call it now? - WINTER HOLIDAY break. Very handy for
those longer trips, unless said relative truly is at death's door.

Sorry to be snide, but there's ALWAYS going to be reasons like this that people
give that they just haaaave to take the kids out now or this-or-that won't work
out just as conveniently as can be.

If it's important, you work around it.

Maybe said relative really should have been visitied in August. Death's door
ain't exactly the time to make those last connections anyway in just about all
but immediate-family cases. But, hey, since some folks think they can take the
kids out just ANY time, why bother to have planned that.

When the reasoning gets weak, it's apparent that this is rationalizing that's
going on. Some families will do whatever, whatever the consequences, and that's
the problem.

Banty

In article ,
Banty wrote:

In article , dragonlady
says...

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.

Oh - well, yanno what? Need more travel time?? Just sooo happens that the
VERY
NEXT MONTH, right after the 5 day Thanksgiving break, there's whooooole long
two-week - what do they call it now? - WINTER HOLIDAY break. Very handy
for
those longer trips, unless said relative truly is at death's door.

Sorry to be snide, but there's ALWAYS going to be reasons like this that
people
give that they just haaaave to take the kids out now or this-or-that won't
work
out just as conveniently as can be.

If it's important, you work around it.

Maybe said relative really should have been visitied in August. Death's door
ain't exactly the time to make those last connections anyway in just about
all
but immediate-family cases. But, hey, since some folks think they can take
the
kids out just ANY time, why bother to have planned that.

When the reasoning gets weak, it's apparent that this is rationalizing that's
going on. Some families will do whatever, whatever the consequences, and
that's
the problem.

Banty


No need to get snotty to me; I was merely pointing out that the 4 days
of Thanksgiving break is not always enough time to visit family when a
family visit is necessary. Sometimes, family is a LONG way off.

Since my kids started school, I have not been faced with a need to make
a trip home to see a dying relative one last time. I have NOT gone home
for my father's surgeries, though had they not gone well I might have.
However, I have had friends in that position: when a call comes that
says Mom or Dad are terminal, and only expected to live another three
months at best, I, for one, would be hard pressed to criticise someone
for taking their kids out of school for a few days to see them one last
time. If they try to use a llong weekend (and that's all Thanksgiving
break really is) to minimize the time away from school and still make
the visit long enough to make sense I think that's probably a good idea.

The winter break may well be pushing it too far off, plus that can be an
extremely difficult (and more expensive) time to try to travel with kids.

meh
--
Children won't care how much you know until they know how much you care

"Donna Metler" wrote in message
. ..
"toto" wrote in message
...
On Wed, 29 Oct 2003 08:16:47 -0800, "Circe" wrote:

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.

I would suggest that the early grades are easier to do this in than
the later grades. If a child is reading well in first grade and is
up to speed on math skills some time off might not cause a problem.


I agree with that assessment.

In addition, starting in grade 3, standardized test scores count against
the
school. Depending on the state, it could be every year, or just specific
ones. The real crisis years here are 3rd, 5th, and 8th, although students
are tested in grades 1-8, with exit tests in high school subjects.

Well, unless I see some evidence that the new California tests are a vast
improvement, both in content and scoring, over the old Stanford 9s, my kids
won't be taking them, so no one need worry that their non-attendance will
negatively affect test scores (not that I plan on taking them out, mind
you). While I realize that the school is under a mandate to test 95% of its
students, sitting the test is optional for any individual student. And by
the time my kids are graduating high school, I'm pretty certain that the
fallacies of NCLB will be wildly apparent to everyone because every single
school in the US will be failing by its standards and much of this testing
mania (including the exit exams) will have passed. But perhaps I'm too much
the optimist...
--
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

"Donna Metler" wrote in message
.. .

"Banty" wrote in message
...
In article , toto says...

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.

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?


If your parents want to have you with them for 4 weeks every winter-fine.
This is what homeschooling is for. 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. Two weeks is 1/3 of a grading period, 1/18th of a school year.
Coupled with other absenses (and every family I've known who does big
yearly
vacations also thinks nothing of a few days before Thanksgiving, a few
extra
days on each 3 day weekend, lengthening Spring break, and the regular
illness absenses), the child can end up missing a LOT of school.

Mmmm. We travelled this way from 7th grade thru graduation. We were all
mostly A students. Missing the two weeks didn't seem to hurt any of us. It
helped for Spanish class. After visiting Mexico we never felt sorry for
ourselves that we were "poor" b/c we had seen what real poverty was. The
experiences in Mexico were likely the impetus for one child doing Rotary
Exchange in Bolivia senior year, another going to Guatemala in a summer
program, and our families involvement having three foreign students live
with us at different times.

I did have one teacher who graded me down for not being in class, but I
didn't care--I knew the materials as well as anyone else in the class, and
if the teacher felt better giving me a B it didn't change what I had in my
head. IME, teachers in high school & jr high rarely went beyond the
textbook. It wasn't that hard to catch up. If you read the materials in
advance you could pretty much tune out for most classes and not miss that
much. I did have one English lit teacher who I hated to miss, b/c she was
truly intelligent and took the class beyond the basics. And one economics
teacher who was great. But b/c I loved these classes, I did well in them...
still, hated to miss them. This idea that learning only takes place in the
classroom is just crazy.

My parents should have homeschooled us if they wanted to take us out for
these family trips?! Ha! My mother graduated from high school, my dad got
his GED. They worked multiple jobs. I wonder when they would have found
time to homeschool us! Those poor teachers--we expected SO much from them.
They didn't do anything extra--they told us what they'd be covering, i.e.,
chapters 5 thru 8. It was our responsibility to figure it out. I don't
think one of us ever had a problem not hearing the golden words directly
from the teachers' lips. What nonsense. Perhaps teachers today take
themselves too seriously. Or parents & kids worry too much about a grade.
"Give us complete control over your children. If you don't like it you can
homeschool" Wow. It was not like this 20 years ago.

"toto" wrote in message
...
On Wed, 29 Oct 2003 08:16:47 -0800, "Circe" wrote:

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.

I would suggest that the early grades are easier to do this in than
the later grades. If a child is reading well in first grade and is
up to speed on math skills some time off might not cause a problem.

But it sets a precedent. And I have found that most kids cannot take
so much time off once they are past the elementary level and still
manage to understand the work, particularly in mathematics.

I found mathematics to be the easiest to understand without a teachers help.
Picking up on symbolism in readings for English lit was much more
difficult--maybe b/c there were fewer aids for this, and you couldn't check
your work.

"Banty" wrote in message
...
Oh - well, yanno what? Need more travel time?? Just sooo happens that
the VERY
NEXT MONTH, right after the 5 day Thanksgiving break, there's whooooole
long
two-week - what do they call it now? - WINTER HOLIDAY break. Very handy
for those longer trips, unless said relative truly is at death's door.

Sorry to be snide, but there's ALWAYS going to be reasons like this that
people
give that they just haaaave to take the kids out now or this-or-that won't
work
out just as conveniently as can be.

Well, we wouldn't have gone to Italy last year at all had we not gone during
a week when school was in session. THAT'S when the conference my husband
wanted to attend was being held, so we either went then or not at all. And,
I'll admit it, I thought a chance for my son to see another part of the
world and learn a bit about its history was at least as likely to be
educational as having him go to school and spend a big chunk of his time
coloring (which he could do in the car anyway, right?).

I certainly don't plan on taking my kids out of school for a week at every
whim, but I also believe that the school doesn't OWN my children. I am
increasingly troubled by the assumption that school is always so important
that it trumps any OTHER important thing we might do. I am already
struggling with this when it comes to homework--the school seems to think
that dictating what my kid does with his time for 6 hours each day isn't
enough, so they need to assign plenty of homework to dictate what he does
with at least a good chunk of the remainder of his time.

When the reasoning gets weak, it's apparent that this is rationalizing
that's
going on. Some families will do whatever, whatever the consequences, and
that's
the problem.

And if there *is* no consequence? What if the kid still gets A's and scores
well on all the standardized tests despite missing a few weeks of school
here and there? I'm not saying most kids could do this, mind you. I'm just
saying that if a parent has such a child, it is hard to make a rational
claim that the choice to have the child out of school for a week is really a
significant issue.
--
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