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Sweet picture.
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~Amy~
Cherishing my newest wee boy...Fionn Skye and homeschooling mama to Spencer (proud to be 9) and wee Lazlo (5)
Kayaking is my bliss. Strip-built kayak made by DH.
San Juan Islands - New Years 2007.
Maybe this doesn't go along with this thread...well, it does, in a way, I guess. DS#1's teacher has contacted me twice in the week since school started (I'm impressed with her) to let me know things are going well.
Today, she told me that she thought his handwriting was OK, really. Now, I'm really starting to wonder how much of his "problematic" handwriting had to do with expectations that were unneccessary in K-2nd grade, YK? It seemed more of a "problem," actually, in K and 1st grade--that is where the biggest deal seemed to be made--teachers "very concerned" about what would happen next year when he had to write more, etc. His kindergarten teacher was extremely concerned and kept giving me fine motor activities to do with him (it was definitely not a fine motor issue, but something else, mostly, I expect, vision).
I'm starting to wonder if we haven't been made to feel that our extremely bright little boy has disabilities (enough to qualify for title funds) that were really just things he needed a little more time on. How much of this feeling that his skills are inadequate has rubbed off onto him? I am actually quite thrilled that DS was able to hear what his teacher was saying to me on the phone--that his writing was good, that he was doing well, etc. He got a big grin on his face!
__________________ Jody
Mama to two boys (5-10-98 and 6-01-01), and two girls (11-18-03 and 1-11-07)
Location: When I dare to be powerful -- to use my strength in the service of my vision, then it becomes less and less important whether I am afraid.
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Jody that is wonderful! I had the oposite experience today. Her teacher was negitive, saying that she didn't know how to raise her hand and was having trouble with all the 'waiting' she had to do.... and it sort of bugged me that she only had negitive things to say. I mean I am sure TONS of kids have those troubles on the first day! Come on lady... it really made me mad... and if I have that type of conversations with her again I am going to pipe up with "So did she do anything RIGHT today?" with the snootiest tone I can muster. Becasue I will be ****ed if I am going to feel like my child wasn't prepared just because she wasn't in a "public" preschool. She was in a WONDERFUL preschool in which she was loved and honored. I wish she was still in it actually. *sigh*
Anyway... Cyan says she had a good day. That is all that matters.
Beuatiful going to school picture, and beautiful returning home picture. I wish the pictures in the middle were also good. I hope there is a chance they will get better.
infor sources. I wrote a novel, and it got lost. so this is brief, and probably more useful.
One: fourminute democracy was a website. It still might be up. It's all about calling reps. Reps numbers are in the blue pages. If you don't know your rep, call any rep, and ask for help. Usually, a live person answers the phone, and is really helpful. Their staff wants their employer to stay elected so they can stay employed.
Facts and figures: Jim Hightower, and Molly Ivins. Columns and books. Dubose (?) co- authored a book with Ms Ivins.
Leininger, Rove, and Norquist, are all about starving school funding. Vouchers, things like that.
Good money after bad: kansas city shows up in school funding debates all the time.
Crittenden- price of motherhood, or something like that.
h/t craft a persuasive staffer argument- hanging around staffers, on occasion.
as mentioned, schools are under incredible pressure to perfom and the anti gets upped every year. Teachers hate it too. Blame Dubya, though the system was a clunker already. Really public school can only meet the minimum needs of the masses.
We are eating beans for days to send mine to Waldorf and on his first day he got pushed and punched in the stomach. So much for the great curriculum if he is petrified to go to school. Nothing like that ever happened in his ghetto s.Florida public school kinder.
Can't we just keep them in a bubble?
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And since to look at things in bloom
Fifty springs are little room,
About the woodlands I will go
To see the cherry hung with snow.
-- A. E. Housman
Her teacher was negitive, saying that she didn't know how to raise her hand and was having trouble with all the 'waiting' she had to do.... and it sort of bugged me that she only had negitive things to say.
That sounds like Liam's K teacher (who was also Killian's, BTW). At least Liam's teacher mentioned that it was totally normal this early in the game, but, it is bothersome that a teacher would even comment on something like that on the first day of school, you know? I would think that it would just be what was expected on the first day when the kids are in a new place with new things all around them, etc., and that it wouldn't even warrant comment. But then, so many of the kids have already been trained to function a particular way (grrrr...) so that stands out and is "bothersome." I hope it gets better, Val.
Liam did not want to go to school today at all. He kept telling me he felt like he was going to throw up. Day three of kindergarten, and he's faking sick to stay home.
Hi, sorry last post was so short and vague. DH was talking to me, almost like we were married, or something. (joke)
Okay, I'm not passionate and working too hard, and sacrificing. I don't go to marches, for instance- hot, crowded, pointless, as far as I can tell. I think staffers are cute, and politics, by the people actually making the law, interesting. And, let's see, the capitol is on the bus line, and the offices are air- conditioned. It's a really beautiful building, with a big lawn that the boys can run around on, and there are cool bronze statues all over the place.
I don't harbor any illusions that I can change the law all by myself- it takes lots of little strings to make a rope. I don't think I get my way because I'm right- enough people I know have ulcers from this. And I don't really get what paradise people are working towards. I really, really don't. So the sturm und drang, and the flustered outrage en't there.
I keep an eye on the school thing- so my brain is sort of like a bird's nest ( you would not believe how often that simile comes up).
So, school stuff:
Texas Monthly, the magazine.
Austin Chronicle, on the web. It's the free weekly.
Austin American Statesman. online accessible
Crittenden, motherhood, I think she's associated with moveon, or it's parent's organization
Molly Ivins- writes books, and columns
Jim Hightower- writes books and columns
Vanity Fair profiles of various washingtonians
interviews with the current and former education secretaries. The 15 % pass rate came up here.
conversations with realtors- they were excited about the 15% thing. One was really happy I had found the two mile slice of high priced houses in this one section. He bought several properties after he brokered our house.
Conversations with teachers. I don't know, so I ask. They are usually way more interesting and informed than I could ever be.
Conversations with teachers's spouses.
Women of The Republic, a textbook
Right- wing Women, a pop culture book
Newsweek
New York Times education supplement- comes out twice a year.
The "brittle law" thing- that's just political handicapping. The not funding it bit- that's Michael Ventura- he's on the web.
phyllis schlafly is eagle forum. I think Concerned Women of America has a position, but I haven't checked.
The exploitable dropouts: from a teacher at Youthworks Austin, a local dropout resource center. It has a fast track hs diploma, and apparently a trade school, and an entrepeneurial center. I think it's on the web, too. It has articles in the paper, too.
Republican stuff- from Republicans.
I'm leaving stuff out, obviously, but I think most of it is findable. I think the stuff that was face to face is corroborated on the web, too. I just haven't looked. I usually ask one person what they think, and if they say something really weird, I'll mention it to a few other people, to see what they say. It makes for a decent conversation, since, usually, my day is kids, and most people don't want to hear about that.
I oppose testing because I think it doesn't work as intended. The really crappy schools - we already know where they are, for one. And, for two, the remedial section of the law isn't funded- which is crazy. And three, even if you have a crummy school that finally turns around parents don't want to send their kids there- it's a drill and kill school in a violent neighborhood. And four, a school, a 2,880 kid school failed because three students failed. There were four black males at this school. Three of them failed. This means that this school which has nearly three thousand kids in a rich neighborhood, has a lot ( A LOT) of motivation to keep the neighborhood white. It's already sort of famous as not integrated.
Classic progressive- basically- all the good guys of the early twentieth century: John Dewey, Eleanor Roosevelt, Jane Addams of Hull House, Margaret Sanger, Ida Tarbell. Before that you were looking at homeschooling, classic boarding school- ( ie learn greek and latin, maybe not learn to write well) kill and drill, many spankings, stuff like that. A really sexist, classist education. I don't know anyone who wants to go back to that- it was based on fear and loathing of children.
Location: Driving an SUV powered by Biodiesel made from waste vegetable oil.
Posts: 2,881
Quote:
Originally Posted by mammakat
Just wanted to pipe in and add two things:
as mentioned, schools are under incredible pressure to perfom and the anti gets upped every year. Teachers hate it too. Blame Dubya, though the system was a clunker already. Really public school can only meet the minimum needs of the masses.
We are eating beans for days to send mine to Waldorf and on his first day he got pushed and punched in the stomach. So much for the great curriculum if he is petrified to go to school. Nothing like that ever happened in his ghetto s.Florida public school kinder.
Can't we just keep them in a bubble?
amen to that, mama. I know of 2 families that scrape to send their kids to Waldorf...though it's obviously no guarantee in the nice-kid arena, yk?
My aunt is a librarian in the public school district in Honolulu. She was a teacher, but went back for her library master's program. Anyway, she said that Hawaii public school teachers are one of the lowest paid in the country. That's just sick w/the cost of living there. Interestingly, her children are no longer attending public school there. They're in private schools.
I wish my parents could have HS me. I was a terrible reader and I was made fun of from the other kids at school. I have since become a great reader but only because I forced myself to be so I woudlnt be made fun of anymore.
My 10 yr old DD is in public school. I couldnt Hs her as I was a single working mother and I just couldnt figure out a way to make it work without living in a card board box. She does very well, honor roll every year on her own doing. I now have a 2 yr old and have joined pre-homeschoolers groups for support and I have every intention on HS'ing her.
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"When the power of love overcomes the love of power....The world will know peace" ~ Jimi Hendrix
I've been reading The Fifties, by David Halberstam. Oy. The section on integrating- a genuine and true morality play.
I left out some stuff, too. Namely, the winners of the international science fair, at my first high school? For three years running, they were Vietnamese kids who couldn't really speak English. Now, the test is in English. Is it worth the time and humiliation to drill them on English to have them do a "high pass," or is it better to let them do really, really well on the things they are good at- math and science, and let them pick up enough to be comfortable. Grad school, esp in the sciences, isn't English primary, at all. Even at the undergrad level, I was supposed to translate from French, and Japanese. I am monolingual, so I had to break out a dictionary for one, and ask for a rough translation of the Japanese. I was supposed to learn German, to be comfortable. I know friends who went to Japan, and Singapore, and came back speaking "Singlish." The instructors in math- chinese, two days off the airplane. They could not have passed TAKS, or any other high stakes test. Besides, we know that people pick up the words that they think are meaningful. Do scientists really need to learn "fluffy bunny," or will "Atomic clock" work better?
I have a friend in Austin with a masters, who has never, not once learned algebra, or above. In the "no-pass, no play" universe, she wouldn't have graduated from high school.
English isn't even an official, necessary language. I know everyone gets thier panties in a twist about spanish, but the central part of the country had german language newspapers up to world war 2. Eisenhower? Nimitz? Those aren't Smith, Cooper, Jones. We weren't doubting their literacy.
I know everybody is talking about this horrible, high pressure environment. It wasn't there before. It's arbitrary. We don't have to live with it. We don't have to groan and suffer, and wonder about the powers that be. We elect them. They are human. NCLB is only a few years old. It's breakable. It's ignorable. It's not necessarily enforceable.
I don't expect anyone to come to exactly the same conclusion as I do. Even at the presidential election, I'd sit at a table, and half the people would go dem, and the other republican, off the same information. My son's kindergarten teacher believes in homeschooling. Most of my friends kids are homeschooled. A few are private schooled. Two are committed to public schools. The others, even in public schools, believe in vouchers, transfers, university model public schools. I just think if we are all at the table, workable models will abound to everyone's benefit.
[quote=mammakat]Just wanted to pipe in and add two things:
as mentioned, schools are under incredible pressure to perfom and the anti gets upped every year. Teachers hate it too. Blame Dubya, though the system was a clunker already. Really public school can only meet the minimum needs of the masses.
We are eating beans for days to send mine to Waldorf and on his first day he got pushed and punched in the stomach. So much for the great curriculum if he is petrified to go to school. Nothing like that ever happened in his ghetto s.Florida public school kinder.
QUOTE]
We had a similar experience with Waldorf. As far as I know, no one punched S, but I encountered some of the meanest kids I've ever seen and some of the worst behavior -- and the teachers did not correct it. She did not stay there even a year...
We are eating beans for days to send mine to Waldorf and on his first day he got pushed and punched in the stomach. So much for the great curriculum if he is petrified to go to school. Nothing like that ever happened in his ghetto s.Florida public school kinder.
Can't we just keep them in a bubble?
Ay yi yi.
I know, not constructive...but oy.
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"If you only believe what you see, then you are limited to what's on the surface. If you only believe what you see, then why do you pay your electric bill?" Dr. Wayne Dyer
We had a similar experience with Waldorf. As far as I know, no one punched S, but I encountered some of the meanest kids I've ever seen and some of the worst behavior -- and the teachers did not correct it. She did not stay there even a year...
I'm pleased to add that this teacher handled it well and so is my son. I even think that child is leaving the school. (Not because of this exactly, but I think it was a factor). Bullies are so tough to deal with because it doesn't originate at school.
I really like the teacher and think she won't stand for any bs from any angle. I think she is already getting some flack from parents, but it will all smooth out.
Every day since the first has been a huge improvement. Thanks for the proper sympathy Linda.
Jody
So much for the great curriculum if he is petrified to go to school. Nothing like that ever happened in his ghetto s.Florida public school kinder. 
Interestingly, her children are no longer attending public school there. They're in private schools.
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