purty good
Jan. 25th, 2012 10:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gfrancieI 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.
...
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.
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no subject
Date: 2012-01-26 07:43 am (UTC)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...
no subject
Date: 2012-01-26 07:52 am (UTC)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)