purty good

[gfrancie]

I bought a dress for a party I am going to on Saturday. I love it. It is brightly colored and is kind of fun. I am rather excited. (I also got it for more than half off, so that pleases me as well) I am trying to return to the land of fun clothes. I am not sure where else I could wear this dress but I will think of something. Seriously this dress is awesome. I flipped when I found it.

...

I went to the monthly parent/class meeting tonight. It was good. I really like the parents this year. Most of us know one another from last year (the more wound up parents from last year went elsewhere) and even the newer parents are cool. There was a discussion about kindergarten readiness. (since most of the kids in the class will be heading off in that direction next Fall) The illuminating part of the discussions lead by the parent educator (a lady I really like, who knows HER stuff and has been on the front lines of parent/education work for a million years) was on the subject of homework. The last couple of decades it has been all about the homework. Starting from Kindergarten. Now they have done all of this long term hard-core research and homework is fucking useless until a kid is in high school. It is one thing to do the occasional project outside of school but the weekly pile of bullshit worksheets? It does NOTHING for the learning process and it actually disrupts family life. (since many family have parents, where both work outside the home and so when they come home, they are trying to get dinner on the table and then get the homework done -which brings about a lot of agony) Homework gets in the way of genuine parent/child time. It seems the most effective thing for a child is to have them read (or be read to) for half an hour/hour. It seems (besides Scandinavia) the only other country taking this seriously is Germany. So Homework is bullshit. I KNEW IT. It was interesting to hear other parents with older children talk about what is involved and what goes on in the classroom. The parent educator said that because of No Child Left Behind (God what another pile of bullshit if there ever was any) also changed the dynamic of Kindergarten. (which used to be more about the social learning vs. hard academics) She said that a number of teachers took what they used to teach in first grade and moved it down to Kindergarten.

I... I have some definite opinions about early education. A child has a natural curiosity to learn and I want to encourage that. But I do have suspicions about where it goes wrong early on. I hope it goes well for Senor Onion when he begins school next fall in England. Yeah he is my speshul snowflake but I also care about the other kids in the class because they are speshul snowflakes too. I suppose what makes me feel better is that he will be in a very very tiny school and so he won't get lost. And the sense of community is strong. And I want to make sure a teacher feels supported too. Because good lord that is hard going in everyday trying to do good things and have a million other things on your plate.

I babble. It's LJ.

Comments

[land-girl.livejournal.com]

Unless it is a very unusually rubbish school, you will be given every opportunity to support the teacher and the whole school. Over the last 12 years I have been a governor, classroom helper and assistant on many, many visits. I have helped at clubs and acted as school photographer. The school wil be blown away by your cooking and will need parents to come and listen to reading. And you will get to see what is going on and be a part of the process.

[gfrancie.livejournal.com]

I figure I can do that sort of thing. I am happy to come in and help kids with reading and so on. (If I can get one kid hooked on loving books/reading, then I figure my job is half done)

[land-girl.livejournal.com]

Schools are crying out for people like you - it can make such a huge difference. Especially when the kids are older.

[keirf.livejournal.com]

Here in Finland they're not teaching kids to read until they're seven or eight. At the moment for Lumi it's structured play, practical skills like skating and how to tie shoe laces. And homework starts at 12 years, with a couple of half hour spots a week, building up to two or three hours a week by the time they're in their late teens.

The OECD's PISA study, which assesses and ranks the world's education systems consistently ranks Finland in the top five, and marks it out as one of the high flyers.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2010/dec/07/world-education-rankings-maths-science-reading

Of course countries like the UK and the US aren't going to change their methods though...

[gfrancie.livejournal.com]

Everything I read about in Finland really impresses me. It sounds exactly like what children should be doing. Play is so very very important. I feel lucky that Senor Onion's preschool experience has been play-based learning. Even their science experiments are fun. Today they made a couple of different kinds of paper airplanes to see which ones would fly further/better. The major things that are being taught/encouraged are zipping up your coat, putting on your shoes (after dance class) on your own and how to work through conflict.
Senor Onion told me how he and his friend Ailsa were pretending to be a family today. Belle (who was also playing with them and is one of the youngest kids in the class) was their daughter and then they had a couple of baby dolls to round out the family. I had to laugh when he referred to them as "the pretend babies we bought."
When I left him at school, he and his friend Sam were pretending to be on a pirate ship selling things. (they have a toy cash register at school)

[ooxc.livejournal.com]

I thin k that a lot depends on the child and the school, both about homework and parents helping in school.
With homework, mine got very bored, because they were well ahead in reading - so they demanded that we should do it at home - "we don't want to stop, just because it's the end of the page"
Later, perhaps because they were close in age, they preferred to help each other - they were nearly always doing the same work.
They hated me being in school as an assistant, although they never saw me there, so I had to give up my training - couldn't find another school to do my placement. But that was a long time ago, and it was still comparatively unusual for parents to come into school

[neptunia67.livejournal.com]

The negative effects of No Child Left Behind are so apparent in higher ed, in so many ways. Thinking back to when I was in school, the only homework that was useful to me, as much as I disliked it, was math. I couldn't have learned it with just the classroom time, I needed to practice.

Can we see a pic of the dress at some point? :)

[gfrancie.livejournal.com]

Yes. I will try and post a pic of the dress in a few days.

The real killer about No Child Left Behind is that there are kids who did make terrific progress but by the standards set, it wasn't considered up to standards. I know this is a real issue for ESL kids. Kids who come in with no English language skills and are fluent by the end, but it isn't enough. Also in some cases the tests are wrong/inaccurate and if a kid isn't taught according to the test, they might fail.

[kitchenwitch.livejournal.com]

I found out recently that (most) Minneapolis public schools expect kids to read when they leave kindergarten. NO WONDER so many kids hate reading. They're not ready for it yet and it gets pushed on them and it's HARD and they're still expected to do it. So sad. :(

[gfrancie.livejournal.com]

See that pisses me off. Children learn to read anywhere between the ages of four and eight. Some have it click quicker than others but it means NOTHING when it comes to long-term academic success. The best thing that can be done for a kid is to expose them to a lot of books, read to them often if you want to encourage a of love reading.
rackem-frackem...

[kitchenwitch.livejournal.com]

I think it's so amazing watching kids gradually learn things on their own just by being exposed and I can't imagine disrupting the process in that way. I fully expect Nora and Ike to start learning to read on their own, whenever they happen to get it. Nora's picked up on things like writing out the whole alphabet and will ask us to spell out words so she can write them, without any prompting from us. I'm kind of surprised she hasn't started reading yet, but I'm sure it's coming soon.

Nora's going to school in the fall and I really hope I find a place that will be laid-back academically. Kindergarten is not the place for academics. I have a friend whose daughter is in kindergarten and "struggling" academically, and she and others are leaping to the conclusion that her little girl has a learning disorder. SRSLY?!

[gfrancie.livejournal.com]

How does your district do it? There has been a significant change in our city. It used to be kids were all over the city. (some of it left over from the days of bussing) Now there is your neighborhood school and then for whatever reason you can apply to other schools. (in some schools it is a lottery)

[thiscantbesoy.livejournal.com]

This begs the question, though, what do they do with their "expectation" that kids read by the end of kindergarten? Does it have any consequences? I think it can be reasonable to expect most kids to pick up on reading by then, although certainly there's a wide range. But what's the harm in "expecting," unless they somehow act on these expectations? And I'm not sure what that would even mean.

[kitchenwitch.livejournal.com]

Just the expectation that kids should be reading by then creates consequences, because kids get pushed to read when they are not ready to do so, and it makes them resent and dislike reading. As far as school itself goes, you end up with kids who are just not ready to read yet getting put in the "remedial" or lower-level reading groups, and I think that has long-term consequences on kids' perceptions of themselves and their abilities.

When I was in kindergarten, the expectation was that we could tie our shoes, throw/catch a ball, identify letters... that sort of thing. It's a very different landscape these days.

[gfrancie.livejournal.com]

The real pressure is on the teachers. And the district. If they don't meet certain targets by a certain point, it could mean the loss of funding/support. (which is ridiculous for many reasons)
Then there is an issue that my son's preschool teacher brought up (she spent years working as a public school teacher, and raised several children in the seattle school district) That for years, if a kid wasn't ready (be it emotionally/academically) it wasn't uncommon to hold the kid back. In most cases, it did the kid a lot of good. That has changed. At least in the case of the Seattle school district, they don't do retention. They want to move a struggling child into special ed. (which can create a whole host of issues later on)

So that kid who isn't following the expecations (reading in this case) is in more danger of having an incorrect label put on him way before it is accurate. Possibly setting him/her down a path that might have poor consequences on their academic record/experience.

[ms-pooka.livejournal.com]

i'm so scared of the educational wormhole we're about to go tumbling down. it almost makes me want to spend $35,000 a year to have kids in montessori. of course, i made much less than $35k last year, so off to public school they go!

[gfrancie.livejournal.com]

Yeah. Not hopeful stuff.

[particle-person.livejournal.com]

Will there be dress pics?

[gfrancie.livejournal.com]

Oh yeah in a few days.