In which we gain more understanding of the school system
We had a parent-teacher conference with Mrs. Flagg, Evan's kindergarten teacher, this week. I can't say that I feel better about what's happening with my kid, but I understand where it's coming from.
The good news is that Evan is both maturing (a little) and getting a lot better with his literacy skills. We had noticed that the literacy homework was not coming home any more, and had wondered. Mrs. Fisher confirmed that her assistance was no longer needed to get Evan up to speed with his letters.
The bad news is that the school still expects half an hour of "homework" on week nights and an hour daily on Saturday or Sunday, and the behavior problems that we see at home are the same that Mrs. Flagg sees at school.
Sigh.
When the "experts" recommend that children average 5 minutes of homework per grade level (and Kindergarten is "0"), this still seems excessive to me. I have never questioned if Evan can do the work, rather if he should be doing it. Of course, the school has its standards and we're not going to be able to change them or be an exception to them. And really, I believe in standards. But what to do if I think the standards are beating the love of learning out of the kids?
I still don't have answers, but I do have a few explanations.
1) The school has exercised their right to set expectations based upon the desires of the parents whose kids attend Lenski. The expectations are somewhat above the district standards. I think that what has happened is that Lenski has bowed to the pressure from parents who have bought into the early childhood over-education movement. There are a lot of indications that simply because kids can learn to read and add at age three or four, the consequences of making them read before Kindergarten - stress, anxiety, learning that is a chore not a delight - aren't worth the effort. Equally troubling is research that says that for all the stress that we put the kids through, they're not really getting a leg up on their peers by the third, or fourth, or fifth grade - that all that "ahead" at Kindergarten doesn't equate to "ahead" later in school.
Thus, by the time Evan entered Kindergarten, 60% of his peers were academically ahead of him, which placed him - through no deficit of his own - behind before he'd even started. We felt like horrible parents. We played the catch-up game. Per the advice of the school, we bought him DVDs and LMax cartridges. His game and TV time were restricted to only the TV and games that would enrich his literacy and math skills. In addition, he was bringing between one and four pages of literacy homework home nightly. The DVDs and LMax were his diversion between 4:00 and supper's start at 5:00; after supper he spent up to another hour with the homework pages, or a workbook I bought at Albertson's, or some time with the full page of "suggested home activities" to improve his skills. Through all this we were (and still are) aware that Evan is not emotionally ready to sit down and concentrate on any one thing at a time. It's a chore, both for him and for us. For him, because he's getting frustrated at our insistence that he complete a task; for us because we're frustrated at having to continually redirect his attention to the homework at hand. Getting him to even sit still is a challenge.
2) The "objectives" distributed by the school district aren't really objectives at all. Because they are written without outcomes ("the student will write the numbers 1-100 in a 20-minute time frame by March of the school year"), they don't really communicate the expectations that the kids are supposed to achieve. I took the packet of objectives that were sent home to the conference. "These aren't objectives", I said. "How do these relate to what is expected of Evan - both as an entering student and by the end of the school year? Because if we know the expectations we will do what it takes to get him there." It seems that the Back to School night would have answered a lot of these questions.
3) The school's flurry of activities have caused a level of school-fatigue (think of giving-fatigue, the condition that charities encounter when there are more needs than donators can serve) that prevents us from prioritizing the importance of any one event. Back to School Night was presented in the same way as the ice cream social. While we could have skipped the ice cream social, we should have not have skipped Back to School Night. If we needed to get Grandma to watch Evan that night we could have, but we didn't know.
As a student in education, we spent a lot of time discussing how to get parents involved in their kids' educations. In the eighties, it seemed that this was one of the prime issues facing and impacting education - and I can't say that in general, the situation is any better or worse twenty years later. However at Evan's school, it seems that the uninvolved parental unit is a rare exception rather than the norm. In Lenski's case, this means the parents not only attend parent-teacher conferences and PTA meetings regularly, they are expected to volunteer at the school, organize fundraisers, serve as paraprofessionals during class time, monitor playgrounds, and the like. I'm not saying that this is a bad thing, but there is a certain level at which every parent is prepared to participate, above and beyond monitoring homework.
I don't volunteer at the school and I don't donate every time a cry comes out. Let's consider what we do do as parents. We "volunteer" at least half an hour every day to Evan's homework. We "donate" money to his education in the form of learning gadgets and books. I should not feel guilty that my "only" involvement in Evan's school are those teacher conferences, and checking up with Mrs. Flagg regularly about Evan's progress and how to help from home.
4) Much of the success of Lenski is due to the volunteer corp. They not only provide sevice to the school which would otherwise have to be paid for out of school funds, but they raise a lot of money to pay for some of the professional services that contribute to that success. The literacy teacher for instance seems to be paid solely out of school-raised funds. Which in a lot of ways explains the incessant fundraising. At least once a month - and up to three per month - there have been solicitations for donations to the school. "This is crazy", I think as I look another solicitation, this time to purchase gift certificates which benefit the school, after writing a check for Spanish and Science "enrichment" classes.
Where is school district money? Why should a second language - or art, or music - be "enrichment"? How does the district justify not paying a teacher to assist kids who may need extra help with their letters? Lenski isn't exactly having to buy books with bake sale proceeds, but public schools should be able to be successful without "taxing" the parents. Otherwise let's privatize the syetem.
5) The standards are set by the government. Probably "no child left behind". Or is that "unfunded"? If 20% of the kindergarteners cannot write the numbers 1-100 in 20 minutes in March, or if they cannot pass a word recognition reading test in April the school looses a bit of its funding. Not that Lenski might notice with all the fundraising, but I suppose it could be a significant part of the budget of schools with a less-involved parent base.
I suppose that with some understanding comes a little more tranquility about my relationship with the school and Evan's education. I was involved in Montessori while in college and am still a deep believer in the benefits of learning in a more natural, child-centered fashion. So I'm still uncomfortable with the "training" that we're imposing on him. He's not mentally ready for it, although he has demonstrated that he's intellectually ready. I wonder if selecting a school (partially) based upon test scores was a mistake for a mental pre-schooler. Maybe the arts school would have been a better choice; I'm beginning to think it was a good thing that we didn't get into Littleton Academy.
And yet, I believe in excellence. The teacher keeps telling us that we're going to be surprised when Evan's mental maturity catches up with his intellectual maturity. I believe that; I'm just getting increasingly impatient with how the school deals with it until then. Until that happens, I've opted to not push for gifted and talented education, which would seem to pile on additional layers of stress, anxiety, and fear about learning. Only time will tell.
The good news is that Evan is both maturing (a little) and getting a lot better with his literacy skills. We had noticed that the literacy homework was not coming home any more, and had wondered. Mrs. Fisher confirmed that her assistance was no longer needed to get Evan up to speed with his letters.
The bad news is that the school still expects half an hour of "homework" on week nights and an hour daily on Saturday or Sunday, and the behavior problems that we see at home are the same that Mrs. Flagg sees at school.
Sigh.
When the "experts" recommend that children average 5 minutes of homework per grade level (and Kindergarten is "0"), this still seems excessive to me. I have never questioned if Evan can do the work, rather if he should be doing it. Of course, the school has its standards and we're not going to be able to change them or be an exception to them. And really, I believe in standards. But what to do if I think the standards are beating the love of learning out of the kids?
I still don't have answers, but I do have a few explanations.
1) The school has exercised their right to set expectations based upon the desires of the parents whose kids attend Lenski. The expectations are somewhat above the district standards. I think that what has happened is that Lenski has bowed to the pressure from parents who have bought into the early childhood over-education movement. There are a lot of indications that simply because kids can learn to read and add at age three or four, the consequences of making them read before Kindergarten - stress, anxiety, learning that is a chore not a delight - aren't worth the effort. Equally troubling is research that says that for all the stress that we put the kids through, they're not really getting a leg up on their peers by the third, or fourth, or fifth grade - that all that "ahead" at Kindergarten doesn't equate to "ahead" later in school.
Thus, by the time Evan entered Kindergarten, 60% of his peers were academically ahead of him, which placed him - through no deficit of his own - behind before he'd even started. We felt like horrible parents. We played the catch-up game. Per the advice of the school, we bought him DVDs and LMax cartridges. His game and TV time were restricted to only the TV and games that would enrich his literacy and math skills. In addition, he was bringing between one and four pages of literacy homework home nightly. The DVDs and LMax were his diversion between 4:00 and supper's start at 5:00; after supper he spent up to another hour with the homework pages, or a workbook I bought at Albertson's, or some time with the full page of "suggested home activities" to improve his skills. Through all this we were (and still are) aware that Evan is not emotionally ready to sit down and concentrate on any one thing at a time. It's a chore, both for him and for us. For him, because he's getting frustrated at our insistence that he complete a task; for us because we're frustrated at having to continually redirect his attention to the homework at hand. Getting him to even sit still is a challenge.
2) The "objectives" distributed by the school district aren't really objectives at all. Because they are written without outcomes ("the student will write the numbers 1-100 in a 20-minute time frame by March of the school year"), they don't really communicate the expectations that the kids are supposed to achieve. I took the packet of objectives that were sent home to the conference. "These aren't objectives", I said. "How do these relate to what is expected of Evan - both as an entering student and by the end of the school year? Because if we know the expectations we will do what it takes to get him there." It seems that the Back to School night would have answered a lot of these questions.
3) The school's flurry of activities have caused a level of school-fatigue (think of giving-fatigue, the condition that charities encounter when there are more needs than donators can serve) that prevents us from prioritizing the importance of any one event. Back to School Night was presented in the same way as the ice cream social. While we could have skipped the ice cream social, we should have not have skipped Back to School Night. If we needed to get Grandma to watch Evan that night we could have, but we didn't know.
As a student in education, we spent a lot of time discussing how to get parents involved in their kids' educations. In the eighties, it seemed that this was one of the prime issues facing and impacting education - and I can't say that in general, the situation is any better or worse twenty years later. However at Evan's school, it seems that the uninvolved parental unit is a rare exception rather than the norm. In Lenski's case, this means the parents not only attend parent-teacher conferences and PTA meetings regularly, they are expected to volunteer at the school, organize fundraisers, serve as paraprofessionals during class time, monitor playgrounds, and the like. I'm not saying that this is a bad thing, but there is a certain level at which every parent is prepared to participate, above and beyond monitoring homework.
I don't volunteer at the school and I don't donate every time a cry comes out. Let's consider what we do do as parents. We "volunteer" at least half an hour every day to Evan's homework. We "donate" money to his education in the form of learning gadgets and books. I should not feel guilty that my "only" involvement in Evan's school are those teacher conferences, and checking up with Mrs. Flagg regularly about Evan's progress and how to help from home.
4) Much of the success of Lenski is due to the volunteer corp. They not only provide sevice to the school which would otherwise have to be paid for out of school funds, but they raise a lot of money to pay for some of the professional services that contribute to that success. The literacy teacher for instance seems to be paid solely out of school-raised funds. Which in a lot of ways explains the incessant fundraising. At least once a month - and up to three per month - there have been solicitations for donations to the school. "This is crazy", I think as I look another solicitation, this time to purchase gift certificates which benefit the school, after writing a check for Spanish and Science "enrichment" classes.
Where is school district money? Why should a second language - or art, or music - be "enrichment"? How does the district justify not paying a teacher to assist kids who may need extra help with their letters? Lenski isn't exactly having to buy books with bake sale proceeds, but public schools should be able to be successful without "taxing" the parents. Otherwise let's privatize the syetem.
5) The standards are set by the government. Probably "no child left behind". Or is that "unfunded"? If 20% of the kindergarteners cannot write the numbers 1-100 in 20 minutes in March, or if they cannot pass a word recognition reading test in April the school looses a bit of its funding. Not that Lenski might notice with all the fundraising, but I suppose it could be a significant part of the budget of schools with a less-involved parent base.
I suppose that with some understanding comes a little more tranquility about my relationship with the school and Evan's education. I was involved in Montessori while in college and am still a deep believer in the benefits of learning in a more natural, child-centered fashion. So I'm still uncomfortable with the "training" that we're imposing on him. He's not mentally ready for it, although he has demonstrated that he's intellectually ready. I wonder if selecting a school (partially) based upon test scores was a mistake for a mental pre-schooler. Maybe the arts school would have been a better choice; I'm beginning to think it was a good thing that we didn't get into Littleton Academy.
And yet, I believe in excellence. The teacher keeps telling us that we're going to be surprised when Evan's mental maturity catches up with his intellectual maturity. I believe that; I'm just getting increasingly impatient with how the school deals with it until then. Until that happens, I've opted to not push for gifted and talented education, which would seem to pile on additional layers of stress, anxiety, and fear about learning. Only time will tell.
posted by Melanie Unruh-Bays at
10:26 AM
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