scrapgal

I'm on an e-mail list with a group of ladies that I truly admire.
These are strong sensitive and caring womyn that I have known since
Mary Elayne was in diapers. We've been through divorces, deaths,
births, celebrations of milestones, etc together. Today, however,
one of the womyn posted about a problem her son was having in
school. Not completing assignments and failing his class. She
created a contract that I found to be very harsh and with NO
positive conditions, such as if he completes A,B,C he will be given
something special. Everything is "you must do X,Y,Z or you won't
get "ordinary" things" (such as television, video games, computer
time.) So I posted that before I would set up a penalizing contract
(which IMO is setting this child up for only failure) I would find
out what the root of the problem was. Why wasn't her son completing
these assignments? Why did he feel that lying about turning them in
was a good thing to do? (Probably because if he had told the truth
that he hadn't it would have had severe consequences.) :-(

This really hit home with me because I went through the same thing
with Emily last year. She wasn't turning in assignments and failing
her classes even though she was making 100% on all her tests (that
is just bass ackwards if you ask me!) But I took a totally different
approach. Instead of blaming the child I blamed the school.
Instead of making my child do these assinine assignments I tried
working with the school on a compromise (which eventually led to
Emily declaring her independence from school.) I have just never
understood why children need to spend 6-8 hours at school and come
home with 2+ hours of more assignments. Seems to me if it can't be
taught in 6-8 hours the kid isn't going to get it in 2 more at
home.

<sigh> It just saddens me.

Michelle

[email protected]

In a message dated 4/12/2005 2:48:13 PM SA Pacific Standard Time,
pamperedmichelle@... writes:


> Emily declaring her independence from school.) I have just never
> understood why children need to spend 6-8 hours at school and come
> home with 2+ hours of more assignments. Seems to me if it can't be
> taught in 6-8 hours the kid isn't going to get it in 2 more at
> home.
>
> <sigh> It just saddens me.
>
> Michelle
>
>
>

i totally understand,, my 4 kids have run the gamut ofpublic and private
schhool,and it always amazed me how they could come home with soo much home work
after all day at school.that was the first thing that made me realise i
could ''school'' my kids at home myself.,our way....heck i had did it for 12 plus
years already,,,geeezzzzzz>>>JUNE


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

jlh44music

>>>>I have just never understood why children need to spend 6-8 hours
at school and come home with 2+ hours of more assignments. Seems to
me if it can't be taught in 6-8 hours the kid isn't going to get it
in 2 more at home.
>
> <sigh> It just saddens me.

Hi Michelle,
This is on my list of why we're going to be homeschooling in the
fall. My daughter struggles with certain issues in school (mostly
not fitting into the "typical learner" i.e. she doesn't learn well
sequentially, which is how many teach), plus the organization, rules
etc and especially has difficulty with math.

If I'm expected to work all this extra time with her at home because
she can't get it right at school, then I might as well teach her
myself at home! More of the same (repetition, busy work etc) does
not work for my daughter. We sometimes need to find another way, but
once she learns it, it's permanent. Then she wants to move on. Part
of it is boredom too.

Rant away! We call in venting in our house!
Jann