Mom Is Teaching

I’m cross posting this on my Marital Talk blog for obvious reasons.  Or at least I think they are obvious.

It relates to activity level of children and also their sleep habits.  You knew I couldn’t let it go that easily didn’t you? 

TCAH quotes an Early Childhood Education Professor named Olga Jarrett,

“When kids are not allowed a chance to be playful, that playfulness tends to come out in negative, disruptive ways.”

I see this every day.  If Jace stays home with me, we stay indoors, he plays, I write, we read a book, we play, we eat, he plays, I write, we take a nap and when Walker gets home from school I swear it is like someone has fed him a hyper pill.  And, in the end, he gets in trouble.  Then, it is bedtime and he gets in more trouble.  It is a vicious cycle. 

Then, days like today (and most of this last week), the boys have played outside after Walker got out of school and Jace has been to my mom’s and played out doors some as well.  They come in, eat, take a bath and go to bed - exhausted.  And, they sleep well, remember.

Winter time is hard because it is more difficult to get him out and about for long periods of time and I’m sure it will affect Walker as well being cooped up in a classroom.

The bottom line goes like this:

an active child that gets the necessary physical activity does better when asked to do quiet activities and rests better after a day full of activity, mental and physical - pretty simple formula if you ask me.

My opinion goes back to a prior post where I said that my parents felt like it was my job to go to school and do homework and they didn’t intervene.  I feel very much like that.  The only job children should have is playing and learning and the more you can make learning look  like playing, the better off you and the child will be in the long run. 

Ok, stepping off my soap box.

I’m going to be brief mainly because I’m going to discuss this in more detail on my Mental and Emotional Health blog and I did just cross-post a big one so, no need in getting in trouble over multiple content.

For now, my last thoughts on Part One of TCAH go like this:

• do you think it is coincidence that the academic pressures increased and now we have more children with mental health issues?
• do you think that having a child move rapidly from one unrelated subject to the next makes learning more difficult?

Of course it isn’t coincidence and of course it is difficult.  And, then we want to go and blame it on the child when we, as adults, should know better, right?

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My last parting thought goes like this (just for Part One mind you),

“…..other kids drive themselves - but that doesn’t mean they’re enjoying the learning process.  “All my daughter cares about is her grades….for her, it’s not ‘this new Greek unit is really interesting.  It’s all about the number of points she can get.  She just crams the information, then drops it like a stone as soon as the test is finished.  She isn’t having fun, so good grades are her only reward.  I’m worried it won’t be enough.”

Let me say that that person being interviewed in that last paragraph could have been written by either of my parents.  And, you know, what, I’m living proof that the answer to her fear that “it won’t be enough” is that no, it won’t, it simply won’t be enough.  One day, information will need to be retained…and cramming and forgetting won’t work.

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With that, I’m stepping off my soapbox and I’m going to learn and hopefully teach you a few methods on how to make some of this stuff go away!

I’d have to dig deep into my archives on my personal blog to find some stories and how they relate to sleep…and wait, I’ll just go do that….

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ok, here

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here

and….well I’m too lazy to keep searching, but I did find this and this 

so the following should come as no surprise to you…

 

“Children between the ages of five and twelve need 10 to 11 hours of sleep each night, teens need 9.25 hours and as any parents know, many kids need more.”

But a study by the National Sleep Foundation’s 2004 Sleep in America Poll, many kids are seriously sleep deprived.

On a personal note, for the last few weeks, my children have played hard, Walker at school then outdoors after school and Jace has been running and ripping like wild all day, napping some days (which he needs) and not napping others.  And, when bed time arrives, they give us the usual rift raft about “I want to play this game or that game or read one more book” but once we get them in bed and tucked in, they are out like lights.  I mean OUT LIKE LIGHTS.

My oldest son, Walker, doesn’t require as much sleep as his brother.  He is definitely his father’s child in that respect.  Even as a baby he didn’t need as much sleep.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying he gets by on less than 9 hours, but he can on an occasion swing an 8 hour night as long as he isn’t doing it night after night.

Jace however is his mothers son for real.  He requires a lot of sleep.  He doesn’t even argue about naps, he will be 4 in November and when I say nap time, he runs and gets in my bed, blink, blink…sleep.  At night, he would do best if he could sleep 10 or 11 hours.  He doesn’t always get it but when he doesn’t, he will sleep 3 hours during his nap. 

People, sleep deprivation will kill you.  Knowing that, why would you put that kind of pressure on a child? 

I don’t get it.  Do you?

Here’s another sleep story!

Yes, you read that right, Homework Potato.  Kids need to run, they need to yell, they need to roll on the ground, dig in the dirt, make mud pies.  They need to be free for a little while.

And, so I give you Chapter 4 of TCAH entitled The Creation of the Homework Potato.  I won’t give away all their juice, but some things were staggering and I couldn’t resist.

• Since 1980’s, the number of overweight children it the U.S. has tripled. 
• Since the 1980’s, the number of children with diabetes has increased dramatically.

Some more food for thought:

• homework is a major obstacle to kids who need to lose weight
• in many schools, recess doesn’t exist and physical education is only taught two or three times a week….

And, from TCAH says,

“…..4,600 U.S. elementary schools have no recess at all …..and physical education classes aren’t physical anymore….Even when kids do have physical education…..after teachers manage kids’ behavior and taught them rules, there was an average of 4.8 minutes left in class for vigorous activity”

People, I taught physical education.  My first year, there were two p.e. teachers and 600 children a day.  I am not kidding you. 

How many of you would volunteer to work at the McDonald’s play area for 8 hours a day, five days a week with anywhere from 80 to 120 different students coming in one door and going out another every 30 minutes?

Unfortunately, that’s what physical education has come to these days…thus we get that “homework potatoes”.   Don’t let it happen to your kid!

I have a lot of thoughts trying to spew from my head into my hands and onto this keyboard right now.  Therefore, let me add my disclaimers right up front.

Disclaimer Number One:  I am frustrated, aggravated, confused and maybe even angry.  Sometimes when I’m like this, posts seem to disappear without warning after I have calmed down.

Disclaimer Number Two:  I very much want my children to be educated in the public school system.  I guess what I really want is the education system to straighten their act up while I attempt to get  the act of my child together.  I really don’t think I am cut-out for homeschooling.  My mom even said as much yesterday.  Geez, she’s a real motivator uh?

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Ok, so simply by the act of convenience, my mom has been taking Walker to school and/or picking him up for over a week.  He has remained a Purple Bee (that’s the highest level of good) in the hive for the last 10 days.  Today, today I figure it was time for Jace (3.75 year old) to get out of the house for a change (and me too) so I prepared to pick Walker up at school (you know, like I bathed, brushed my teeth and make the kiddo put on some clean clothes).

When Walker’s teacher opens the door for him to get inside the automobile, he notices that it is me, his mommy instead of his All-Wonderful Nanny, who is retrieving him from school and he started crying.  I issued orders to stop crying because I had a surprise.

Before I could reveal our plans to come to McD’s and play (while I work), he burst into tears again with, “but I got a Yellow Bee”.  Yellow would be directly under green so of course it isn’t horrible but we have been laying down the law about this when it occurred in the past.

With that, I opened his folder to read that they were having “silent lunch for half of lunch today and Walker would not cooperate and missed half of his physical education class”.  (not verbatim, but you get the idea - and Walker said up front that she moved him to a place alone during lunch because he wouldn’t quit talking).

This will take bullets for me to dissect:

• Why do they have silent lunch?  They sit in a room, in a chair, paying attention (hopefully) and working quietly (hopefully), so why do they add silent lunch in there as punishment.  Sorry, I don’t see that as a good punishment or even as an idea.
• They only have like thirty minutes for lunch, so that’s plenty of time to eat for 15 minutes while being silent (no talking with food in your mouth at least) and then 15 minutes to at least socialize a little, geeez! (I have a post coming on my own social skills).
• He was moved to a table to sit alone for the remaining 15 minutes.  So, he was punished.  Right?
• He missed half of physical education class.  Wait, he has already been punished, right?  He was made to sit alone for not following the silent lunch rule.   So, why is he now missing half of physical education?  And, why are the physical education teachers (and you know I am a physical education teacher with a B.S.) allowing the teachers to use the child’s physical education time for punishment?  They only have 30 minutes for physical education.  Why take fifteen minutes of it away?  Don’t these kids need to play?  Get rid of some excess energy?  Release the energy bundle so they can go back to class and “sit quietly”?

I’m going to say this first and foremost.  When I taught physical education class, it was a ground rule I set between the teachers and myself that my time with their children was not to be taken away from them for punishment.  I was not carrying out their punishment nor was I going to take away the child’s time to be free, run and exercise.  I had to go through the principals at various times because teachers didn’t want to comply, however, how do you think they would have felt if I had sent this note back to class with little Johnny?

“I am keeping Johnny in physical education class for an extra fifteen minutes because of his behavior.  Please excuse him of any math work he may miss during that 15 minutes.”

How well do you think that would go over?

Yea, I know, it wouldn’t!

So, what did I do.  I didn’t think it was fair to Jace to just say, “ok then we aren’t going to McD’s” so I told him that we were going and he would sit and watch without playing.  Yes, I know, I mentioned that he had already been punished.  But, in my world, punishment at school means punishment at home, no matter the crime.  And, it’s not up for debate, so don’t go there.  please? 

Once we arrived at McD’s, he ate and then I told him he had 15 minutes more to sit out without talking and he would get a spanking when we arrived at home. 

Side Note:  Again, don’t even go anywhere on a tangent about spanking.  I do believe in corporal punishment when a child is old enough to understand it, knows and understands the reason for the punishment and it is NOT carried out when the person dolling out the punishment is angry. 

I called my husband to verify that this would be sufficient.  He agreed.  I’ll let you know how it all works out.  I had already planned to take Walker to school myself in the morning because of errands and such, but now I will be going inside.

Why am I going inside?  I want he and his teacher to understand that we (the parents) will not accept his behavior as such.  But, we (the parents) would like some consistency..punish the child once please, do not repeatedly punish him for the same misbehavior. 

Lastly, Walker was telling me that he didn’t know it was suppose to be a silent lunch.  They had silent lunch for half of the time last Friday when I was there so I know my son knew it was suppose to be a silent lunch.  I let him know that I knew he was aware of the “silent lunch” rule.  He repeated again that he didn’t know.  I stopped the truck and asked if he wanted me to turn around and go back to school and ask the teacher about this.  (I know he knew, but I had to call his bluff).  He decided that no, indeed, he did not wish to go back and that he did, indeed, know that it was suppose to be a silent lunch.

Either way, I will go inside with him tomorrow morning.  I will make it clear how I feel and then I’ll let you guys know if I have any hair left.

Discuss.

I’ve mentioned before that I didn’t get in trouble at school.  I was obedient, respectful and I knew that teachers and administrators had the most authority.  So, if my respectful and obedient actions holds true, I will turn into what is deemed a “helicopter parent”.

Definition of Helicopter Parent:  Parent(s) that hover over their children, scooping them up before they can make a mistake. 

What is the end result?  Children who become adults and cannot cope with failure.  Does any of this start to ring true for you?  Sara Bennett and Nancy Kalish put into words the very things I’ve tried to say many times.  I’m just a bit wordy (you know, like I talk too much).  They accomplished putting into words so many of my thoughts, it is odd. 

TCAH quotes a parent as saying, “We made our daughter do the homework even though we didn’t believe in it because we were obedient parents, which I really regret, and because I was worried about what would happen to her.”

Sound familiar?  Don’t we all do this to some degree in one facet of our child’s life or another?  But, the homework issues don’t have to go that far.

Another parent was quoted as saying, “Homework seems to have supplanted teaching.  Whatever the teacher hasn’t finished becomes homework”

What does that mean?  That means that the parents are expected to take up the slack.  And, if this is the case, I’d rather homeschool any day so I could work on my time frame as opposed to allowing someone to half-way do their part and want me to pick up the pieces in a hour or two in the evenings…all at the expense of the child.

From

TCAH

“…study after study shows that homework has no or little effect on kid’s overall achievement until high school, a review of 850 studies by the CDC showed that physical activity has a plosive impact on everything from grade point average, scores on standardized tests, and grades in specific courses in concentration, memory, and classroom behavior”

Yea, that!

More from TCAH and I’m gonna just put out some shouts from the book and some shouts from myself based on personal experience.

Parental Quote:

“The principal told me that it is really the parents’ job to educate their children and that his teachers are only facilitators.”

Errmmm no, that would be homeschooling, the parent is the facilitator, the guide, the one who helps the child learn.  Public school teachers, which is who is references in the quote obviously, are the teachers.  We do not give them that “title” of “teacher” for them to be facilitators while the parents do the teaching.  UGH!  That’s all I can say on that one is UGH!

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Another parent:

“If I wanted to be a teacher, I would have gone and gotten a teaching degree.”

Well duh, that’s all I can think of, is duh.  And, I have a teaching degree but duh, what are our public educators thinking?  Wait, are they thinking at all?

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TCAH says, “…if we wouldn’t want an unqualified person teaching our kids during the day, why would we want one doing it at night - especially when that person is also tired and distracted”

I mean, come on, again, is this brain surgery?

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A parent who admits to reading to her children often and being a math teacher herself says,

“I think homework assignments should be for the child.  If a child cannot do the assignment alone, then it is parent homework”

I knew it, I knew it, I knew it. If you are a parent of a publicly schooled child (which I want you to remember is still my preferred method if it works, if it doesn’t that’s another story, for some people it doesn’t work and homeschooling is so much better, but….) and your child can’t do the homework alone….just send it back to school with a note stating that you (the parent) are not in such and such grade and the child was unable to do it, thus it remained unfinished.  Period. 

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One more quote and I’ll hush on this for today……

Another parent quote:  (this one made me see red)

“I was in the middle of a parent teacher conference when, out of he blue, the teacher says, ‘Listen, if you don’t work with your daughter’s penmanship, I’m going to have to send her to occupational therapy’. 

And the parent asked,

“Well, at what point did she fail to keep up with penmanship in class?”

And the idiot teacher (sorry it makes me emotional):

“We don’t teach them penmanship.”

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Here’s the problem, teachers who are slacking are making the ones who aren’t (such as a host of teachers I had in my life time) look really bad.  That’s when people start talking of unqualified teachers and highly qualified teachers (remember Mac from yesterday?), etc.  Absolutely ridiculous. 

Last Friday was “Report Card Day” at school.  Now, I have no clue how a kindergarten child with no older siblings even has the concept of a report card, but I do know that Walker was beaming at the edges.

It’s fairly simply:

S = Satisfactory (Meets Expectations for progress and performance at this grade level)

P - Progressing (Shows improvement toward meeting expectations for progress and performance at this grade level.)

N = Needs Improvement (Needs improvement to meet expectations for progress and performance at this grade level.)

And, with that, he had all S’s in:

• Shows self-confidence
• Stays on Task
• Completes task independently
• Participates in Task
• Handles Conflicts Appropriately
• Cleans up after Activities
• Takes Care of Materials/Property
• Respects Adult Authority
• Respects other Students
• Recites Full Name
• Recites Birthday and Age
• Recites Names of Parents/Guardians
• Recites Days of the Week
• Sports Sets by size/color/shape
• Recognizes:  circle, triangle, square, rectangle
• Interprets Graphs:  more/less/same
• Recognizes colors:  red, blue, yellow, green, orange, black, brown, purple
• Orally Recognizes and Produces Initial Sounds
• Demonstrates Left to Right progression
• Demonstrates Concept of word
• Contributes appropriately in group discussion
• Correctly prints first name
• Picture and writing convey a message
• Copies Letters that form words
• Identifies Rhyming Words
• Recognizes uppercase letters:  all of them
• Recognizes lowercase letters:  all of them but “a” “l” “q”
• Associates sounds with letters:  except “d”, “e”, “u”
• Writes Circled letters:  all of them
• Physical education

And, he received ‘P’s” in:

• Obeys rules
• Plays and works well with others
• Displays self-confidence
• Follows directions
• Remains seated at appropriate times
• Listens Attentively
• Puts Forth Best Effort
• Controls Talking
• Effectively uses crayons
• Effectively uses Scissors
• Effectively uses Glue
• Reads High Frequency words

And, with that, we move into the next grading period….

Ok, so remember, I’ve told you my son talks a lot.  And, when report cards came home yesterday, my thoughts were thus far confirmed.  No problems with staying on task, cleans up after himself, works independently.  Does that sound like ADD to you?

It doesn’t to me.  It doesn’t to his teacher, thank goodness.  So, I’m thrilled beyond belief to know that he is just a chatter box and for now, we have no problems.  I know that doesn’t mean we are scott free forever, but it is a nice start.

And, add to that, the post about the ADHD Diet over on Mental & Emotional Health and you can see that I’m not very fond of this ADD, ADHD blanket diagnosis.

And, in this post, About that other book, I had this to say,

“There are entire sections devoted to homework. E.g., classroom management has a section on homework. Here are some quotes: (Whoa, classroom management and homework are not synonyms…classroom management does not equal homework, sorry)”

And, I meant it.  And, if anyone thinks for one minute that medicating a child for ADD or ADHD or assigning homework is a good way to work out classroom management problems, that someone would be seriously delusional.

Then, in this post, I tell you about a teacher who yells a lot.  And, her classroom management style is to yell abusively at the students.  Sure it works, they must be scared to death.  She scares me.  She too, in my opinion, needs to return to college for that class on classroom management….I had one, I know she had one…but I’m thinking that was a class she skipped out on a lot because she knew she could just yell at those 6 year olds and they would be ready to stand on their head if she bellowed. 

And, that’s all I’m saying for now on classroom management..simple, ritalin does not make every child in the room behave…now does it?

Remember, The Case Against Homework by Sara Bennett and Nancy Kalish equals TCAH for the remainder of the post and unless otherwise stated, the information in quote came from their book, the other stuff is my nonsense babble.

Let’s talk about parental involvement for a minute ok?  Many of you may remember when I first took over this site, I referenced a couple of posts.  You can read them here and here and they are about parental involvement.

Now, after you skim through that, you can see that I wasn’t delusional with my thoughts.  TCAH says that in the 1990’s, parental involvement and parent-teacher partnership were big buzzwords.  And, then, then the quote comes, (amazing how they can say in a few sentences what it took me two looong posts to say, eh?):

“Moreover, few parents would call what we have with our kids’ schools a “partnership” when we rarely have a say about our “part” or whether we want to turn our homes into second classrooms at night.  Yet, many feel we have no choice.” 

Yea, what she said!

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Don’t get me wrong, (or TCAH), I don’t think that the idea is that the child never ever brings another book or assignment home.  The idea is that teachers return to a time when the

“whole point of homework is for a child to become an independent learner…..If he’s got to have his mother or father sitting beside him, it defeats the whole purpose.”

Now, that said, I might be wrong but I do believe that the very people who are crying out over the insane amounts of homework that our children bring home would not be so vigilant about it if they felt assured that the above quote were true…homework is to help the child become an independent learner….

Is that brain surgery?   Apparently it may be!

The bottom line here is this, and I quote again, from TCAH,

“I think that schools are depending upon parents for a lot of the teaching…..”

And, you already know how I feel about that.  If not, read here, here, and here.

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I’ll try to move right along……

Ok, enough with the prolonging and introducing you to what I am going to talk about next.  The time is now…. it will probably take several posts but I’m ready to read the rest of my book, The Case Against Homework by Sara Bennett and Nancy Kalish, and take some action, but as I said before, I want it to be fresh in my mind.

One thing that caught my attention and a few people mentioned in comments is the beauty of a small school.  I attended a really small elementary and junior high school.  Normally there were between 15 and 18 students in my class, I loved it.  There was one class of each grade and at one point, a couple of grades were combined to maximize teachers. 

I would love my children to have that opportunity, however, even right here where I grew up, small schools like that simply can’t make it.  And, so they close and other schools get the overflow even when their building and equipment aren’t prepared to handle. 

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There’s a quote in the book, TCAH, that reads almost like a quote I received from a friend who is a reading coach.  This is it, and this should be the end of it…but it isn’t…

“Homework is designed to reinforce the concepts taught in school, not manipulate people’s schedules.”

Enter problem:  teachers lose track of that train of thought and people’s schedules are messed up and kids free time is wasted, sorry to be so blunt, but it is the truth.

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This is the part that every parent needs to commit to memory (you know, like homework, haha, I crack  myself up),

“As LeTendre wrote in his 2007 report, A Nation Spins Its Wheels:  The Role of Homework and National Homework Policies in National Student Achievement Levels in Math and Science, “when schools are effective, students gain little from doing more homework.”"

Therefore, it would be safe to say, maybe someone somewhere (especially in the realm of education in my world), that possibly some schools feel that what they do during the day is inadequate and thus homework becomes necessary to finish what they should have handled during the day.

End of sentence.  End of thought.  End of it.  Period.

And…I know, I said end of it but …..another thought goes like this, “do teachers actually grade all that work?”  Of course not, so why keep assigning it? 

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I have repeated this next sentence over and over and obviously other folks out there feel the same,

“Few people over forty can even remember their parents asking them if they had homework, let alone supervising their assignments.  And, doing work for your child - a common practice today - was unheard of.  Partly, this was because homework was seen as the child’s job and the amounts were so manageable that it could stay that way.”

I honestly felt that my parents viewed school work in that very manner.  And I hear parents all the time talking about doing their child’s homework for them.  I want to eat their head off, I mean gently tell them what a mistake their are making.

So, in case you got lost in all the mumbo jumbo from waaaay back when I first started reading The Case Against Homework by Sara Bennett and Nancy Kalish (which was sometime around…oh September 3rd), the approach I chose was to read the first half of the book Fried Brains and Frayed Tempers, and comment here on different parts of the book that I found interesting or that I had something I thought might add to the thoughts already out there. 

At the time, I was going to get those posts written fairly quickly and then I was going to read the second half of the book, Ending Homework Hell.  And, of course, I will have much to say there as well.  But, I got sidetracked because I was also reading 2 other books and trying to maintain seven or is it eight blogs.

Anyway, as I sit in my living room listening to the sounds around me, one kid snoring in one direction, an adult snoring in the other and crickets going crazy outside along with an occasional hot rod headed in one direction or another, I try to concentrate.  I’m ready to get moving, just so far behind from this week’s lack of work on my part.

The Mono thing coupled with a change in anti-depressant kept me down all week.  I slept approximately 18 to 20 hours a day 3 days about 15 the other days since Sunday.  I am better today but tomorrow brings a lot of work as we try to finish our deck.  We are planning to finish laminating the living area floor (we only did half of it way back when, long story) but we are going to pain the room first.  So, anyway, it won’t be long before I’m ready to read the second half and then….

then….I’m going to be seeking advice on how to make my moves and to make them in the right direction.  Bear with me here, it’s been a long sickly summer and I’m ready to make strides toward somewhere else.

Keep reading, it’s coming…..

I’ve talked in depth about speaking with my son’s teacher, the administrators as well as approaching someone about the behavior of another teacher.  So, I think it is important, from a teacher perspective, that the manner in which all parents should look at each and every situation is approached and discussed.

I had to repeatedly inform parents of this philosophy when I owned the daycare, as an owner, people would gossip about me, and about my teachers.  I encouraged the parents of the children in my care to come to me first when they heard a rumor, let me tell them how I saw it “go down” and then make their decision from there.  So, here it is, as it relates to children and teachers in public schools.

I’m going after this bullet style:

• Trust your instincts, if the story your child is telling seems too far fetched, it probably is.  That doesn’t mean you need to simply write it off as if the child has said nothing, it means you must remain objective.
• Get all the details from your child or the gossip source.  Write them down so you don’t get confused when you get an opportunity to speak with the person involved.
• Go to the source with your written list in hand. 
• Don’t make accusations, simply state that you “heard” rumors or your child came home saying something odd and you would like to get his/her perspective on the situation.
• Listen, again, make notes.
• Then, figure that 50% of what a child tells you and/or 50% of what you get from a rumor is probably accurate with no bias what-so-ever. 
• Then, figure that 50% of what the teacher/administrator is telling you is objective and unbiased.
• From there, make a decision on how you feel. 
• Act last.

I say this for obvious reasons and I think any logical thinking person does this anyway.  However, when it is our own children that are involved, we tend to over-react, get involved too quickly and accuse without knowing the full story.

One example of this was an employee that I had to let go for various reasons.  Once she left, she started all kinds of rumors.  The kind of rumors that some folks knew to be so ridiculous they weren’t true.  And, lucky for me, 95% of the parents of children in her class came to me before they took action. 

The final straw for most folks was, “this is a  disgruntled ex-employee, is she being objective?”  Some really specific examples went like this:

• rumor was “she serves them ruined food/milk”  the logical thinker said to himself/herself “she has kids in that school that eat and drink that food every day, why would she serve food that was dangerous?” Logic wins on that one every time
• rumor was “she served ruined hamburger meat” the logical thinker said, “this teacher admitted that she ate at the school every day, so why would she continue to eat there for over a year if the food was contaminated?”  Logic won that one too.
• rumor was “she mistreats the children” the logical person said, “this woman allowed her own kid to be in that daycare every day for almost 2 years, if it was bad, why did she leave her kid there?”  So, again, logic won.

And, that’s kind of what I’m talking about when I say, “listen to your child, support your child, but know that a disgruntled child can’t be objective”  so, get the other side of the story before you get worked up.

I have one more example of a wonderful parent who is also a teacher in the public schools (and a doggone good one) who knew the proper way to handle a situation.  Here’s the example:

Dad drops off his son who is 2.  Dad overheard another drop-off parent explaining that “he had a bit of fever last night and he has had diarrhea” but he didn’t hear the part about slobbering and teething. 

Dad called Mom and she called me immediately.  She said, “I want to know why you are allowing sick babies with fever and diarrhea to come to school when we always keep our son home under these circumstances?”

And, I answered her by saying, “this baby is 8 months old, he doesn’t have a tooth in his head and has been running a low grade fever accompanied by sporadic diarrhea for about a week”.  Before I could even get it all out of my mouth, this mother said, “I am so glad I called and asked about this before I got upset.  That makes perfect sense, there is no reason to keep that child at home at all”.

I couldn’t have been more proud of her for calling, asking her question and admitting that she felt better knowing what was going on. 

Ok, enough examples, just try to help me remember my own philosophy as I go about the remainder of my children’s school careers. 

I will need help, I’m sure of it!

I made no bones about it when I first took this blog that I knew very little about homeschooling.  I have tried to take the focus of education and give it several lives, that of the parent educator, the public school teacher as an educator, the parent as a homeschool educator, our ministers, our policeman, our fireman, everyone has a role and I hope to keep moving in that direction.

As of late, I’ve focused a lot strictly on a system that I know the most about and that is the Alabama System of Public Education and even more specifically, the education system where I live.  I’m trying to get back to gearing the site toward all variations of educators and I hope to get some more of the great feedback back in action.

In the meantime, I received an email from Edgar Acosta who is the editor at Opposing Views.  He asked me to take a look at a topic in particular and see if I thought you guys might be interested in reading it as well.  The topic, Are Homeschooled Kids at a Disadvantage?  I think even the people here who are pro public school (like myself - so far I am still pro public school anyway) will find the information to be beneficial.  I also think we’ve been very mature in our comments here by not pointing fingers and trying to one-up each other. 

So, go give the debate a read, see what you think and let me know.  I’d love to see if my perception of the readership here is correct.  I would appreciate it if you would go check it out, chime in with your own comments and keep in touch with me as to what you feel about the debate. 

I’m anxiously waiting…