So, I’m Hope You Are Wondering…
I sure hope I’ve been missed. No one seems to be commenting much anymore, so I think I shall start back to some thoughts on The Case Against Homework by Sara Bennett and Nancy Kalish. I’ll explain later what’s been happening and how I’m planning to move forward.
First of all, the letter I sent to Walker’s teacher regarding his emotional fall-out over reading that little 4 page, one -sentence per page book. His teacher was out the morning I wrote the note. She did come in yesterday long enough to get some work together but had to leave because she has a sick baby at home of her own.
My note was important enough to her though that she asked the Assistant Principal (AD) to call me. The AD happens to also work with the reading program in the school, so I was pleased that she took the time to call me.
Basically she explained that Walker had indeed been using those words and reading that booklet during class at school. We discussed his site words and the whole concept of sending homework home with a five year old. She wasn’t pleased with the following statement,
“I am not a big proponent of homework and especially in a child five-years-old.”
She didn’t respond when I repeated it a couple of times, she merely let me know that he was being exposed to the words daily and I was more than welcome to come sit in with him one day.
Because I know this lady, and I trust her judgements thus far. I’ve known her for quite some time and she has known me all of my life, so there is some repertoire there. I just hope it is enough to get us through this homework debacle.
September 26th, 2008 at 11:56 am
[...] his homework, most of you read the letter I sent to school as well. I explained what the assistant principal had to say in the matter and now, I want you to know our newly adopted philosophy on homework in our [...]
September 26th, 2008 at 4:31 pm
I say, go with your gut. If your gut is telling you to advocate for your child, then by all means, repeat whatever phrase you feel you have to a good 9 million times to get it in to their heads. If they don’t change their attitude towards your child regarding homework, then you can move on to other steps. But most likely they will. They don’t want angry parents. That causes issues. Public schools don’t like issues.
But, remember, your child is now one of many. When Alex (my oldest) was in 5th grade, his teacher was constantly emailing me with how awful he was being. She would use nice verbage, but it always had something negative to say. I ended up asking her what she was doing as punishment, and she said ‘keeping him indoors at recess time’. I told her, strait up, that I thought that was ridiculous to hold an ‘overactive’ child indoors at recess time to keep his behavior under control. I told her that I would appreciate it if that rule no longer applied to my son. Then I gave her options. “What we are looking for is an energy release, not energy build up. If he really is having issues, have him run around the building two times and then come back and try again, or see how fast he can make it to the tree and back, or have him wash your blackboards after lunch… taking away active time is completely ineffective with Alex and will make matters worse, not better.”
This speech, near word for word, had to be duplicated on three occasions before she actually heard me. Then I wrote it down, signed it, sent it to the principal and the councilor and her, and THEN she heard me. And what was crazy is that every time I said it, she thought it was a ‘good idea’ and then would promptly forget I had said anything and within a week Alex was the ‘problem child’ again.
Not that your case is near as severe, but sometimes they want to hear you, they just don’t have the brain power to adapt to just your kid at the moment in which the info is given.
(I was a kindergarten public school teacher, turned homeschooler.)
It seems that you have a good team working wit you and your kiddo. I think it will be fine. I really hope that you can deal with that other teacher though. Sending you strength for that… sigh. They really need to taken out of that system. They bring all the good teachers down.
Have a great day!
Val