Sunday, September 10, 2006

Rants, Rants, Rants

Did I say rants?

I came up with most of these last night, when the cat woke me up MEOWWWWWING at 5 a.m. As I stumbled, cursing, down the stairs, and gave the cat her F'ing food, because you know cats must eat at 5 a.m., they can't possibly wait a few more hours, Harrison woke up from the hubbub. So, I had to get him to go back to sleep.

Then I went back to bed, but couldn't sleep for a while. I tossed and turned, and did lots of mental blogging, where I come up with all sorts of things to write about in my head. Things that will be forgotten the next day. I really need to design a brain wave reader, so I can just hook something up to my head on nights like that, and the next day, happily edit what my insomniac brain came up with before it finally gave up and went to sleep.

I remembered that I've been mentally blogging for a long time. I remember in my pre-teen and early teen years, having a running narration in my head as I went about my exciting pre-teen life.

The girl finished brushing her teeth, got dressed, and headed into the kitchen, where she was greeted by her mother. "Good morning!" they said to each other. The girl decided to eat instant oatmeal for breakfast that morning, so got out a bowl and opened the Maple and Brown Sugar oatmeal packet....


Snore. Oh, sorry, did I fall asleep, too?

Anyway, back to the rants.

So, in addition to the cat waking me in the middle of the night (Friday night it was 3 a.m., so it's getting better), I have more rants.

The next one came from reading Greg's blog, in the comment section on this post, where Chris posted, "teachers teach to the tests now, kids don't learn HOW to learn, and we pile on homework that serves mostly to stifle curiosity and interest," and Allie posted that her daughter Natalie already has homework for Kindergarten.

Reading that, I felt my horns coming out. Hutton, too, has homework in his Kindergarten class. Now, I can understand this in theory. The idea is to get the kids used to bringing home their backpacks, and remembering to put their homework back in the backpack to take to school. But, here's the thing. Hutton is in Kindergarten. He has Autism. He doesn't think, "Gosh, I better get my special homework tube out of my backpack and do my homework." He thinks, "Gee, what can I play with now that I'm home from school?" So, guess who gets to be in charge of making sure the homework is taken out, completed, and put back in the backpack? If you guessed, "Laura" or "The Mom" you get a gold star on the homework chart! Oh yeah, I also get to fix the homework tube when it gets broken because Hutton wants to play with it.

And here's another RRRRANT about school. One of his "homework" assignments was to redo an assignment from earlier this week. It was a worksheet that involved coloring two of the peanuts in the picture, then circling them. The worksheet had groups of 2, 3, 4 and 5 peanuts, and apparently when they were teaching this at school, Hutton didn't understand and wanted to color ALL of the peanuts. So, the teacher wrote this on the worksheet and included an extra worksheet for him to practice at home. Again, I can see this in theory. It's good to get extra practice on something the kid doesn't understand at school. But the RRR in rant came out when I thought of it the other way. Here's an idea, why don't you, the teacher, TEACH the child how to do it at, say, SCHOOL.

In addition to Kindergarten, Hutton has 4 hours of speech therapy a week, and 6 hours of ABA therapy. It's not like he's just goofing off all the time at home, and if he were, hey, he's 5 YEARS OLD. They're supposed to be goofing off, playing. That's how they learn.

Which brings me to another rant. This one about Hubby.

Yesterday, Hutton and Harrison were playing with the Stomp Rocket, a very cool toy. The problem was, Hutton kept taking the Stomp Rocket out of the driveway, and moving it to the front walkway, and aiming it for the roof. He'd already done this before, and lost a rocket on the roof, so I told him not to aim for the roof, or the rockets would get stuck on the roof. That was one rule. The other was, not to use the Stomp Rocket inside. We're pretty mellow around here. Not too many rules.

So, after a few minutes (yes, I was sitting reading a magazine, so wasn't really paying attention. I'm not in the running for Mother of the Year, or even Mediocre Mom), Hutton ran up and said, "I need help with the rockets!" and I saw them all on the roof. I got angry and told him, "I've told you 100 times NOT to shoot the rockets on the roof!" As I climbed out my bedroom window, risking bodily harm to retrieve the rockets from the roof, I yelled to Hutton that we were done with the Stomp Rockets for the day. And as I was still cursing under my breath, Hubby asked what was going on. I told him, to which he replied, "That's how kids learn! By doing the things you don't want them to do. Heck, I put stuff on the roof all the time when I was a kid." So, I stormed off downstairs to watch bad tv by myself and let Hubby be the Perfect Father.

Later I took the boys to get their hair cut, and they both got balloons. When we came home, Hutton immediately let the balloons go so they flew up to the top of the stairs where only adults could reach them. I told him I wasn't going to get the balloons for him every time he let them go in the stairwell. Hubby got them for him a few times, then started getting short and told Hutton NOT to let them go in the stairwell again. When he did it again, I told Hubby, "You know, that's how kids learn."

6 comments:

Unknown said...

Oh man, Laura- Natalie has a homework folder too that she also hasn't been getting out for me. She gets home and flops right down on the couch- exhausted. I'd been meaning to blog about how school is going for her, but she's only been in a few days. I figure I'll let her complete her first week and see how she feels. All I know is that with her being in school 7 hours a day, she'd damn well better not be coming home with too much homework on TOP of it. Not to mention that we have to fill out this "reading log" where she's supposed to get a minimum of 60 minutes of reading time per week. It's definitely doable, but I hate feeling guilty of after a night of running errands and getting dinner and trying to get ready for bed so my 5 year old can face ANOTHER 7 hour day of school, that I might not have time to fit in the required reading.

Anonymous said...

Our kids aren't dumb because they're not getting homework early enough. They're dumb because they're not taught in a way that actually serves to educate. It's just like Chris said. This is what I hate about bureaucratic approaches to thinks... Treat everyone the same, and you completely fail to identify the special and unique requirements of each child. That's how kids fall through the cracks. Also, I haven't met a single 5-8 year old that doesn't have A.D.D. Teachers have got to get these kids' eyes OUT of the books and teach them more practical and more hands-on lessons.

Kristen said...

Bryce has homework every night, too. However, his school is very conscientious about actually TEACHING him THERE. Also, they tell the parents not to remind and nag the kids about their homework. Obviously with a four- or five-year-old you end up reminding them, but they want the kid to be the one to get the folder out, do the homework, and get the homework back to class. If they don't, the kid has the consequence (doing their previous night's homework during recess), not the parent. And they are very clear with the kids about all this too, so it's well understood - even five-year-olds are capable of this, without creating stress for the parent or the kid. I agree that not every kid necessarily "needs" homework every night, but for Bryce, it's actually been a good thing. I don't think it WOULD be good, though, if it weren't for the very specific and focused way the teachers are approaching it. Laura, I would be extremely frustrated with the way Hutton's teachers are managing it, especially considering the additional therapies he deals with throughout the week (which they know about!!) and the specific needs he has as a child with autism. Very, very frustrating.

Schmoop said...

Loved the post...I agree with the comments that Chris made...It has been relatively evident that our kids are becoming nothing more than Test Takers...Critica Thinking and Creativity is becoming a thing of the past...

Anonymous said...

RANT RANT RANT

Boy am I glad that when I taught I was not one of these teachers y'all are complaining about!

But we did loads of hands-on learning and cooperative learning WHERE critical thinking was key. Than again I taught science and I wanted the kids to reason for themselves.

I remember when one student brought in an 'experiment' on how to make a bonsai kitten. He thought you could actually do this!

http://www.bonsaikitten.com/

And we took the rest of the class time to dicuss the many reasons why this would not work taking much needed time out of my curriculum that I was supposed to cover for my district.

Of course I burned out after 3 years. And why? Because my school district refused to fund my classroom making me constantly scrambling to find things such as desks and books.

My class sizes were always way too big averaging about 38 kids. Not to mention I had lots of developmentally and learning challeneged students who needed one-on-one care that I was not always able to provide because I had 30 other kids who also needed my attention. Throw in some teenage angst and horomones, a couple of typical class clowns, and some really quiet shy kids who needed to be singled out because they would never volunteer... (I found these type slipped through the cracks way more than the ADD, ADHD, Autistic, and Asperger type)... and the challenges of teaching all these very different kids in one classroom with only 50 minutes plus working on all my other teacherly duties... no wonder I was so stressed!

SOOOO before y'all blame the teachers, I ask you to think of all the dimensions of being a teacher and realize that it is a freaking hard job without much validation in our society today.

RRRRRRRRRRRRRAAAAAAAAANNNNNNNNTTTTTTT!


EAC

With that said I do not think kids in Kindergarten to 3rd grade need or deserve homework. They are too young.

Of course my speciality was much older kids so what do I know.....

Laura said...

EAC - I would be the worst teacher ever. I have NOOO patience. I just did Hutton's homework with him. I'm surprised my head didn't explode. The work - a worksheet involving tracing the lowercase letter a, then writing it freehand, otherwise known as having your non-existent patience pushed to the limits. Can I put Hutton back in preschool?

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