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#131
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Bright 2nd grader & school truancy / part-time home-school?
"Vicki" wrote in message ... "Jenrose" wrote in message s.com... snip Thank you so much for your posts. Your school situation sounds ideal. You are hitting on exactly the issues we have. It is not that we want more homework for our child, or want her pulled from her classroom, or pulled out of social time for more academics... we want her to learn how to meet challenges, how to learn, how to be persistent when she DOESN'T know the answer. She's not learning this at school, b/c she usually knows the answer. The worksheets she brings home are fodder for our pre-schooler, not a challenge for our 2nd grader... What state are you in? Vicki Oregon Jenrose |
#132
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Bright 2nd grader & school truancy / part-time home-school?
"Ericka Kammerer" wrote in message ... Banty wrote: I do think there need to be some accelerated programs for bright kids. But on the other hand I don't sign on to this idea that it's necessarily utter disaster if there isn't. So - what, every farmer in a small rural district should up and sell the farm and move to get his kid into a GT program? Of course not. I see it both ways. Yes, *any* child should be able to cope with some boredom and learn to develop some initiative to find something constructive to do. I am totally unswayed by the boredom argument. Our rule is "If you're bored and you tell me, it means you want a job to do." 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..." 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? Why do schools keep teaching the 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. 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 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* academic discipline. 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. 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. 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. 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? Jenrose |
#133
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Bright 2nd grader & school truancy / part-time home-school?
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#134
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Bright 2nd grader & school truancy / part-time home-school?
"Jenrose" wrote in message s.com... "Ericka Kammerer" wrote in message ... Jenrose wrote: Um, she *is* in a public school. Then I would prepare to see the school's flexibility whittled away, little by little. (Sorry to be cynical, but I'm afraid I'm not all that optimistic on this front.) I think our public school system is quite good and I am happy with the education my children are getting there, but I keep seeing more and more flexibility taken away by both state and national initiatives. Actually, the school itself is getting whittled away. We lost a teacher this year due to funding cuts, so we're running 5 grades with 4 teachers plus an assistant for math hired by the PTA directly through draconian fundraising. That is, they lined parents up at the plasma center and had them donate plasma to raise money for the schools. Voluntarily of course, but I'm not kidding when I say that parents actually pay for this school in blood... That means you have a very small school. My campus has more teachers in a single grade than your entire school has. But a nearby charter school is doing okay, with a similar concept and fewer "hurdles" to jump... a lot of kids who would have been at our school go there now because the parents are tired of the funding crisis. Why is ours in funding crisis and theirs not? Hard to say, but the different requirements for charter vs. regular schools might be one factor. Or, it may be sheltered for the first few years. Charter schools get additional start-up funding from a lot of sources when they first open, but after a few years, this tends to trickle away. snip This leaves kindergarteners with eight hours of homework and caffeine jitters at the age of five, carried to the logical conclusion. I don't want to even think about preschool. I hyperbolize, but you get the point. Absolutely. This is a very common attitude and getting more and more common. Makes me crazy and it won't happen to my kids, period. It was very important for us to find a program that let kids be kids without the heavy homework load. She has gone from no homework in kindergarten to not quite an hour in 5th grade on a "heavy" night, and never not been able to get her homework done working no more than 10 min x grade level every night. Thus, with reasonable, age-appropriate expectations (and how many emotionally average academically gifted kids get loaded with age inappropriate amounts of work when their "enrichments" pile on top of a normal workload....) she's actually developed study skills which seem rare in kids that bright. I agree with you 100 percent. I just think that public schools like this are going to get more and more rare in the current legislative environment. But the point is that *all* these programs operate with the same budgets the neighborhood schools get, per pupil. This is a red herring in most cases. The big player in funding for public schools is often how many "special" cases the school has to deal with (e.g., language barriers, severe learning disabilities, etc.). Schools that don't have to deal with these issues effectively have much more money to spend on the population at large. There is a special needs program and ESL program in the building, not affiliated with our school, but affiliated with the building as a whole. And special needs programs do get extra funding, though never enough. So, IOW, your special program doesn't have to deal with these issues. How nice for you. How does the building as a whole fare, compared to your little special program? There are some who argue that this kind of program "saps" the neighborhood schools of the brightest kids. In my experience, neighborhood schools with a "standard" normal curriculum rarely make enough use of the brightest kids to justify keeping them. Except that the brightest kids drive up the test scores, and with test scores becoming so all-fired important, lowered test scores have very real impacts on all the students in a school. There's also a secondary effect--the brightest kids generally bring more affluent and more involved *parents* to the table, which translates into more money for the school (through the PTA) and all sorts of other advantages. We've got some very well off families at the school, but our area is INCREDIBLY depressed right now, economically (Oregon is still in a recession, whatever's going on elsewhere) and the labor market is only just now starting to ease a little. We're talking a lot of previously well-paid people out of work. That's part of our "flight" problem...people are leaving for Portland to get work, which is ironic, actually. We have a lot of low income families in the school. But yes, our parents are more involved. But local schools CAN get that kind of involvement if they structure things in such a way as to encourage it. What delights me about this program in particular is that it manages to provide an enriched learning environment for the same money to ALL kids at all ability levels. Isn't that how it *should* work? Shouldn't people be looking at taking this model out to the neighborhood schools? If your parents are lining up and donating blood to pay for the program, it is NOT recieving the same funding support. Period. It is unlikely you'd get this in my school. Too many of the parents are already donating plasma to feed their children (or have histories which would make them poor candidates for blood donation). Absolutely. Programs that are working well should be looked at and their ideas co-opted wherever possible. However, I would be cautious about the money issue. If your school is really serving the full gamut of abilities on the same dollar, that's wonderful. Odds are, however, that it's not, nor is it likely coping with as high a percentage of the more difficult to educate children (extreme poverty, etc.). That's not to say that other schools shouldn't be taking a page from your school's book. From many of the things you've said, it sounds like there are a bunch of very valuable things that likely *would* help with no downside whatsoever. I'm just suggesting that sometimes the problem is a little more complicated than it first appears--and all these relatively recent legislative attempts towards accountability through testing and other "objective" standards are complicating the situation significantly. (I'm not against accountability per se, but I have a lot of heartburn with the way it's often implemented.) Yep. We are faced with the twit-head accounting too... our school is listed on the "bad" list for *one* issue--that our well-educated and involved parents tend to be very political and flat out refuse to allow their kids to do the testing. So we get less than 90% testing compliance and therefore dinged. It's kind of refreshing, actually. That is NOT part of our attrition problem. The economy and budget cuts are. Which means, in three years, you'll be facing takeover. Just the same as if you'd failed every standard. I'd suggest you make it clear to the parents that they will lose this great program if the students are not tested. Jenrose |
#135
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Bright 2nd grader & school truancy / part-time home-school?
On Wed, 29 Oct 2003 09:54:41 GMT, "Jenrose"
wrote: But a nearby charter school is doing okay, with a similar concept and fewer "hurdles" to jump... a lot of kids who would have been at our school go there now because the parents are tired of the funding crisis. Why is ours in funding crisis and theirs not? Hard to say, but the different requirements for charter vs. regular schools might be one factor. The fact that the charter schools pay their teachers less is a factor. But even so, we recently heard stories of teachers leaving in the middle of the year and charter schools closing because they are not making a profit. -- Dorothy There is no sound, no cry in all the world that can be heard unless someone listens .. The Outer Limits |
#136
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Bright 2nd grader & school truancy / part-time home-school?
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. -- Dorothy There is no sound, no cry in all the world that can be heard unless someone listens .. The Outer Limits |
#137
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Bright 2nd grader & school truancy / part-time home-school?
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? Banty |
#138
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Bright 2nd grader & school truancy / part-time home-school?
Jenrose wrote:
our school is listed on the "bad" list for *one* issue--that our well-educated and involved parents tend to be very political and flat out refuse to allow their kids to do the testing. So we get less than 90% testing compliance and therefore dinged. It's kind of refreshing, actually. I've been following the thread but don't have school age kids so I've just been taking it all in. I'm curious though...how do you guys plan on handling this long term? My understanding is that if you go x amount of time without showing improvement then someone comes in and takes over. It sounds like you have a nice program and I'd want to protect it by not having anyone force their way in to mess things up. -- Nikki Mama to Hunter (4) and Luke (2) |
#139
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Bright 2nd grader & school truancy / part-time home-school?
"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. 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. Banty |
#140
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Bright 2nd grader & school truancy / part-time home-school?
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 longer. Banty |
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