Ask a Teacher: What should I do with my kids this summer?

For some, summer is already here. Some of us are hanging on for a few more days before we get to enjoy the sweet, sweet freedom of summer. For parents, summer is a whole different challenge. Suddenly you have these kids and they need to be entertained and summer just feels so long. There are three things you need to try this summer to help you get through the weeks ahead.

1. Check out local kid programs!

This may involve some travel for those living in more rural locations, but it will be well worth it. Check out what free or low cost programs are available in your city. For instance, in Louisville, my hometown, we have a cultural pass for everyone ages zero through sixteen. What does that mean? They get one free admission to most local museums, and so does the parent accompanying them. It's great for kids who want a trip to the zoo, a swing by the science center, or a glance at our art museum. While your city may not have such a low cost program, odds are your local attractions will have some kind of deal going on, you just have to check their websites and maybe start following their Twitter to get in the know.

2. Check out the library programs!

Your kid might be too old for toddler story time, but most libraries have programs all the way up through the teen years, such as reading challenges and classes to attend. You'll get a really cool experience and you can avoid the summer learning loss through programs at your local library.

3. Leave some unstructured time!

While filling the days with activities can be an issue for some parents, overfilling the days can be a whole different ball game. If you've signed your child up for five different summer camps and put them on the swim team and started a reading challenge and on and on, your child won't get the rest they really need from summer. A lot goes on during those school days and kids are exhausted. There is such a thing as doing too much. Try to give your child unstructured time every day and entire weeks off to be a kid.

Remember to have fun and enjoy the days with your children. I know they days seem long and sometimes it seems like a lot, but I promise this time is a great time to get to know who your kid grew into over the last school year. Enjoy each other and put aside worries about next school year.

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Emilie is a high school English teacher with two children. She holds a Bachelors in English and a Masters in Secondary Education. After completing student teaching at an urban, Persistently Low Achieving (PLA) school, she was placed at another PLA school in the same school district. Her Ask a Teacher column can also be found over at Teaching Ain't for Heroes.

Ask a teacher: What's the deal with these $*#%ing fundraisers?

How many fundraisers have you gotten this year? Five? Ten? Did you lose count? I lost count a while ago. So what's the deal with these fundraisers? Aren't schools well funded enough on their own?

Eh, the short answer is not exactly. The long answer is that budgets are really tight and earmarked months in advance. But fundraisers? That's just money growing on trees for schools. As long as the random teacher fills out what they might use as a fundraiser at the beginning of the year, a process very similar to throwing spaghetti at the wall and seeing what sticks, they can continually come back to the fundraisers when they need things.

There's been a crack down in my state this year on fundraising, but again, as long as you put a possible description of what you might do on a list at the beginning of the year, you're usually good to go ahead with whatever fundraiser you have.

The gimmicky ones, like selling wrapping paper and magazine subscriptions are an easy go to for schools. The prizes are already included for overachieving families who go above and beyond the call of fundraising. Sure, schools get less of a cut because there's a middle man in the process, but it's much less work than organizing incentives for your individual school. The prizes get talked up big by teachers who get the kids all excited and then you've got a kindergartener complaining that they just neeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeed that cheap SpongeBob shirt. Sure you can buy them one at the store, but the cheap one at school is the one that everyone else is getting and they have to have it.

Fundraisers are an easy bandaid over the shortfalls in budgeting at schools across the nation. Schools that can afford to do so nickle and dime their parents through these fundraisers as a means to pay for programs that hopefully lure in the parents that have the disposable income to be nickle and dimed. My school does not do many fundraisers like these. Our school is 100% free lunch. Mom and Dad aren't going to be purchasing the minimum rolls of wrapping paper to just hit the small goal per student. We don't even bother anymore. Most fundraisers end up entirely funded by the teaching staff at the school, like when our band sells Amish food (don't ask, it's just delicious and there's no calorie info so I assume there's zero calories and oh God I ate a whole pound of fudge).

Money that my school uses on basic things like pencils and paper, at schools that can afford fundraisers is then used to fancy things that make the school look better. It's a way around that whole "free" education thing. Because when buy $50 worth of delivered groceries just so your kid can get a cheap prize and won't complain about how all the other kids, you can bet all the other parents are doing so, too. I've had multiple parents comment that they'd rather write a blanket check at the beginning of the year than have to call grandma and grandpa hocking cheap candles one more time, but there's the problem. You can't just write a check and be done with it because public school is meant to be free.

I wish I could tell you it was okay to just not do the fundraising. I've got a kindergartener at a school that can afford to nickle and time parents and boy have they. My son comes home super excited about some random toy he might get and I'm sucked into buying a subscription to National Geographic or something random just to try to hit the quota. Do what works for your family, but I know the sting of that peer pressure all too well. I may or may not have bought half a dozen scented candles myself. Mostly may. At the end of the day, I just can't stand the thought of my kid being the only one who didn't get the minimum prize because I didn't want to play the fundraising game.



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Emilie is a high school English teacher with two children. She holds a Bachelors in English and a Masters in Secondary Education. After completing student teaching at an urban, Persistently Low Achieving (PLA) school, she was placed at another PLA school in the same school district. Her Ask a Teacher column can also be found over at Teaching Ain't for Heroes.

White privilege starts with the kids

I'm currently writing a piece on a course being taught at a local university, and off the record, one of the professors relayed to me this story, which I will now relay to you, here. (It's okay, no names).

This week, a woman professor had her 300-student lecture hall stand up. She read statements from cards, and the students were instructed to take a step forward or back as the statements applied to them.

Examples would be:
"If you've ever had to explain your hair, take a step back."
"If you've never been afraid of a police officer, take a step forward."
"If you've ever had someone ask you where you're really from, take a step back."
"If you've ever had someone react positively to you because they knew your parents or a family member, step forward."

At the end of the exercise, the white men were at the front, the white women behind them, next the black men, and in the back, the black women. The professor did not relay to me where other minorities ended up in the line.

To me, this is the obvious conclusion, but to most of these 18 year olds, it was a surprise, regardless of their race. Many of the less advantage felt validated, one saying, "You know, you never think of these little things, they're just your life, but they add up over time until they become back-breaking."

At the end of the class, a young white man made his way to the front, to speak with the professor after class.

He had suggestions for the professor as to what was wrong with the exercise and how she could achieve better results.

I'll just let the meta of the situation sink in for a moment.

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Ready to unpack?

Okay, so here is a young white man, who after this whole exercise on privilege, didn't like being told he was lucky. Out of everyone in there, he decides without a second's hesitation, to question the woman professor, assuming he knew better, because his whole life, he's assumed he's known better.

The professor calmly recounted her history teaching the course, and her credentials to do so (which is what women have to do all the time to be taken seriously), in order for her exercise to maybe kind of hold muster against the ingrained beliefs of this young man. It probably didn't matter a bit. He probably has no idea that he just questioned a woman in a position of power. He probably thinks (and maybe actually would have) he'd have questioned a white man professor. He's entitled to, after all. He has ideas and merit. He knows this. And people listen to him. He's used to that.

That is the privilege.

Anyway, his suggestion? He wanted the professor to have the students close their eyes as they went through the cards. It was his belief that the people of color in the room were taking cues from each other to move backward as a group to make the difference seem more extreme.

I'm serious. That is what he thought.

And that is the same exact thought we come up against on the internet and in real life each and every day as we deal with trying to educate people about their privilege. Only they're not 18 anymore, and they're not nearly as easy to teach or as willing to learn.

This is the problem. And it starts with the kids.

Ask a Teacher: What should I send for the school food drive?

It's that time of year again. Your child's school has either already started or is about to start collecting food. How can you make this a good experience to help your child appreciate the spirit of giving? How can you not be running around at the last second throwing together a bag of canned green beans and canned pineapple? Here are some things that most shelters and food banks need so you can help out the most.

1. Formula - A lot of people tend to forget that babies need to eat, too. It doesn't need to be a fancy name brand, but if you remember to pick up soy or one of the other special versions, that won't hurt either.

2. Baby food (NOT glass jars) - Speaking of babies eating, they eventually need more than just formula. While you might have been a master of Baby Led Weaning, baby food is a necessity for many families. Plastic containers are better and aren't likely to shatter in your kid's backpack when they take it to school.

3. Canned meat - Things like canned chicken can be really helpful. Eating protein can help people feel fuller longer and not everyone is a vegetarian.

4. Spices - It gets old eating food without spices. Even when you're down on your luck, you deserve a little deliciousness in your life.

5. Juice - People need to drink something and juice can provide some helpful nutrients. Also, there are kids with them sometimes and they deserve a treat drink every now and again.

6. Shelf stable milk - Milk is a HUGE part of my children's diet. If we are ever down on our luck and in need of help, this is the number one thing we'd need as a beverage. I know most families are the same as us.

7. Cereal - Cereals are a quick and easy breakfast. Add in some shelf stable milk and you can help a family have a balanced breakfast.

8. Snacks - Popcorn, granola bars, anything shelf stable that is good to munch on. People get hungry in between meals. Having a little something to snack on is important.

Remember there are two main reasons schools do these drives. First, to help the community. Without these drives, many food banks and shelters would be without the resources to help everyone. Some are STILL without the resources to help everyone even with the help of the schools. Second, it's to help teach your children about compassion and to give to those who are going through a bad time.

If your school does not have a drive, see what you can do to start one. If you're looking to do something different, I would highly recommend a coat drive. In some schools, you'll find kids waiting for the bus in nothing but a pair of school pants, t-shirt, and sweatshirt in freezing temperatures. They're not being foolish, they just don't have a coat. Our entire district has done a coat drive for the last couple years and it has been very successful. Helping out whenever you can is a great lesson to teach your children.


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Emilie is a high school English teacher with two children. She holds a Bachelors in English and a Masters in Secondary Education. After completing student teaching at an urban, Persistently Low Achieving (PLA) school, she was placed at another PLA school in the same school district. Her Ask a Teacher column can also be found over at Teaching Ain't for Heroes.




 

Ask a Teacher - What'd you do today?

We've all had that conversation with our kids. You excitedly pick your child up from the carpool line and the first question you ask is "What do you do at school today?" The answer most often is "Nothing."

Why do they do that? You've been gone from them all day and you just want to hear what they did all day. But they just finished a long day at school and they're ready to not be in school mode. Pushing and saying "C'mon, you had to have done something! What'd you do today?" is only going to produce an irritated "NOTHING!" in reply.

Instead of launching into questions at pick up, it's a good idea to give your child a little bit to decompress. When you get home from work, the last thing you want to talk about is work. Your kid is the same way.

Wait until dinner time or when you have a quiet moment to ask, but don't just ask what they did today. If you asked me what I did today, I'd stare blankly and try to figure out which part you want me to tell you. Help them out by focusing on one thing. My go to is "What was your favorite part of school today?" Sometimes this doesn't work and my son just tells me he liked recess the best. You can also focus on one part of the day, such as asking about what book was read in class or what they did in science.

Getting kids to open up can be difficult at first, but it's an important habit to start with your child.


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Emilie is a high school English teacher with two children. She holds a Bachelors in English and a Masters in Secondary Education. After completing student teaching at an urban, Persistently Low Achieving (PLA) school, she was placed at another PLA school in the same school district. Her Ask a Teacher column can also be found over at Teaching Ain't for Heroes.

Ask a Teacher - What's the Price of Standardized Testing?

Standardized testing has become a growing tradition in public schools across the nation. In 2001, President George W. Bush signed into law the No Child Left Behind Act. A major objective of this act is that by the 2013-2014 school year (last school year), all students across the entire country would be proficient or higher. The idea of "proficient" was set individually by each state with a myriad of standards covering reading, writing, and math over all 50 states. States strove to reach the unattainable goal of proficiency as the deadline swiftly approached.

With the goal of "proficiency" there was no incentive to teach to higher levels as being above grade level carried no benefit for schools or districts. Students who were performing below proficiency, even with a host of issues influencing their performance such as placement in Exceptional Childhood Education programs (what you remember from your school years as Special Needs), identification as an English Language Learner, gross differences in socio-economic status, and other obstacles, were targeted to reach proficiency at all costs while their proficient or higher peers were left with squandered potential. Children who were incapable of reaching proficiency were shortchanged by being taught the test and those who were beyond capable were short changed by never being challenged at an appropriate level.

In 2009, President Barack Obama signed into law the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. This Act then funded an education initiative designed to encourage "innovation" and education reform in struggling states. This initiative was called Race to the Top. With the deadline for nationwide proficiency four school years away, states were encouraged to overhaul their education programs and curriculum. Points were awarded for accepting and implementing the newly created Common Core standards, turning around "persistently low achieving"schools, and other education policies. The reward was desperately needed funding to the tune of millions of dollars that could be awarded to states from federal funding. In an effort to win the money, my own state instituted an education audit that cost taxpayers thousands while teachers interviewed to keep their own jobs before dozens of teachers per school were displaced and rehired at other schools in the district. An elaborate game of shuffling the deck left schools gutted and teachers disheartened and burnt out. In 2010, Waiting for Superman came out demonizing the public school system and public school teachers alike. A profession that already sees half of new teachers quit by their fifth year became a target for politicians and talking heads. Would you want to be a teacher?

As the new standards were accepted by more and more states, a secret war went on to create the perfect test for accountability. There is no one great test for accountability yet. Instead there is a virtual smorgasbord of testing that happens throughout the year thanks to a combination of accountability and the goal of College and Career Readiness. Students take End of Course assessments (called EOCs) in all core content areas, math, English, science, social studies, starting in sophomore and ending in senior year, the PLAN, the ACT, On Demand Writing testing, COMPASS for the unlucky seniors who didn't hit benchmark on the ACT, KYOTE for the unlucky seniors who couldn't pass the COMPASS either, and on and one. The game of standardized testing is a billion dollar a year industry. There are so many tests and so many varieties with schools hoping to achieve points to show how good they are.

The price of standardized testing as it currently stands is too much. The goal of accountability is fine on its own, but the implementation has been a mess that does little to help our students who need it most, turned those who would be excellent teachers away from the profession, and cost the taxpayers billions.
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Emilie is a high school English teacher with two children. She holds a Bachelors in English and a Masters in Secondary Education. After completing student teaching at an urban, Persistently Low Achieving (PLA) school, she was placed at another PLA school in the same school district. Her Ask a Teacher column can also be found over at Teaching Ain't for Heroes.




 

Ask a Teacher: When should I intervene if my child is having friend / social problems at school?

Resident teacher Emilie Blanton from Teaching Ain't for Heroes helps us navigate the difficult terrain of first friendships.


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Q: When should I intervene if my child is having friend / social problems at school?


A: It happens. People stop being friends all the time. For kids, this can become an ongoing issue as they deal with the inability to escape their new Not Friend during the school day and the fact that children are inherently less socially developed than adults. Most of the time, adults don't handle this transition well, so it's inevitable that children navigating this social dilemma will have their own problems.

The best idea is to speak with the teacher before it becomes a classroom issue. If there already are problems going on in the classroom, contact the teacher as soon as possible. Try to use whatever mode of communication the teacher prefers, be it email, phone call, or a note in your child's folder. It's important to try to remain objective when you contact the teacher. It's hard to not be upset when your child is hurt, so planning ahead what you want to say is probably the best idea.

Oftentimes students have group work or work in partners and teachers can assign these groupings. Making a teacher aware of social issues isn't just to blame the other child, it really is important so a teacher doesn't unknowingly pair your child with their former best friend and current archenemy. While teachers can pick up on friendship cues, sometimes the dynamics change so quickly, it's hard to keep track.

At home, talk to your child and encourage them to make the teacher aware of things that make them upset or uncomfortable. This is a good time to go over the difference between tattling and actually needing an adult.

Remind your child that not everyone will want to be their friend and that's okay. They won't want to be everyone else's friend, either. Remind them of the other friends they have and the opportunities to have to make new friends.






 

Ask a Teacher: How do I get my child school-ready after summer break?

Our resident teacher, Emilie Blanton, who blogs over at Teaching Ain't for Heroes, answers the summer-old question, how do we prepare our kids for another year at school after a few months of a totally different (in some cases) schedule?


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Parents are rejoicing across the nation as the new school year approaches. Some of our southern friends are already back in session! Somehow summer always seems so long until you're staring at the calendar wondering how the first day of school approached so quickly. What can you do to help your children begin the new year well?

First, try to get them waking up a little earlier. This isn't a problem with my children who seem to think 5 a.m. is an appropriate time to start the day, but if you have older kids who have started the magical sleeping in, see if you can give them at least a few days adjustment before the harsh reality of getting ready for school is upon them. It might help you get back in the swing, too. Some schools start early and parents might have gotten used to sleeping in a little later as well.

If this year is your child's first year of school or their first year in a new building, try to get them there before the first day. Some schools have Meet The Teacher days or orientation. However, if you're like me, these actually conflict with your work schedule. If that's the case, call up to school some time when you are free and see if you can at least get your child into some common areas like the cafeteria or the main entrance at least. Sometimes it helps that the building isn't some great unknown. If you can't swing that, some pictures from the school website are better than nothing.

Try to call school before orientation or the first day to ask about fees that you might not know existed. While everyone is guaranteed a public education, it's not actually free. Some school related fees can run in the hundred and parents can be surprised by this reality. Do you qualify for fee waiver or free/reduced lunch? Now is a good time to find out if you haven't already. If you don't know, ask. It's better to be told no than to qualify and never get the assistance. School related expenses can be much more costly than people realize.

Don't forget the practice some simple school related activities. Don't bog your child down with "Now it's HOMEWORK TIME!" but try to integrate some reading or writing into your day. Most students experience at least a little Summer Slide. Getting them back in the swing of school related skills can help your child avoid playing catch up for the first few weeks. It can also save them from the horrible hand pain of the first day of school that I've discussed before.

Brace yourself! The school year is almost here!








 

Ask a Teacher - How Do I Get My Child to Behave?

In the girls' classes they had this thing called "Shining Star". In addition to their green and yellow and red cards that got flipped for everyday decisions, the teacher would pick one child a week as the best child and send them home as the shining star. Oh, the tears. THE TEARS, GUYS. Shining star was absolutely the bane of my existence, escalating to an unparalleled scale when one of my twins brought home shining star months before the other twin. THE TEARS. Anyway, this system, while very well intended...didn't quite work out for us.

Emilie Blanton, who blogs over at Teaching Ain't For Heroes, has some suggestions on the best ways to reward a child for good behavior, and how to supplement that system at home.

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How can I help my child behave during school?

Every kid is different. If my contributions have a common theme, it would be just that. Every single kid is different and one size does not fit all. It's with that in mind that we had to reevaluate how we were motivating our son in Pre-Kindergarten.

My son's teacher has a system that works really well. Students move up and down a ladder based on their behavior. They start neutral green and can move up with good behavior and down with bad behavior. Students who are green or better receive a stamp at the end of the day to let their parents know. Students who receive a stamp every day that week visit the treasure box on Friday.

The problem for us was that five days in a row was a lot for our son. His teacher and I were both frustrated by his behavior. He wasn't intentionally being bad, he just wanted to play. He would be good on Monday and Tuesday, but if he didn't get a stamp Wednesday, he didn't seem to care about Thursday or Friday.

At our house we devised a color chart that he colored in with his behavior color. Instead of focusing on five consecutive days, we focused on five days, period. If he was good Monday and Tuesday, but then didn't do so hot Wednesday, he still cared about filling in good boxes for Thursday and Friday. He could earn things like a book, an iPad App, a toy from the dollar bin at Target, and so on.

We also had a bad decisions bar that filled up with five no stamp days. After five no stamp days, he lost a privilege that he had to earn back. The bars helped him see his overall behavior and give him a more achievable goal to reach.

There are kids in my son's class who are completely capable of five consecutive good days in a row and maybe next year, my son would be one of those kids. He's just not this year and rather than fret about him being "that" kid in class and wondering why other kids were able to meet the goals set by the teacher, we made our own goals.

If your child is struggling with behavior in the classroom and the teacher's system isn't a good fit for them, making a complementary system to help encourage good behavior and discourage bad decisions is great. What we did might not work for you and it may take some time to get it just right. We'd tried giving and taking away privileges on a day by day basis before trying the chart, but it didn't work for us and we moved on to something that did. Helping your child be successful is about finding ways to facilitate success rather than react to negative behavior. The ultimate goal is to remove these incentives once the behavior becomes habit. It's a lot easier to start with baby steps and work your way up than to expect giant leaps that your child can't or won't take.








 

Learning Disabled or Teaching Disabled - Guest Post

Tracey over at Inside the Mommyvan has some really great tips on teaching when your child seems stuck on a concept. And I have to be honest, when my kids have to do this, we're screwed. I have no idea what she is talking about. Give me sine and cosine any day over this!

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Last fall, one of my young students began to struggle with a particular math concept. In his case it was adding numbers with sums just beyond the next ten, like 8+7 or 43+9, and doing similar subtractions "across a ten.". i put that away for a bit and moved on to some different math topics, thinking maybe we just weren't quite ready to tackle that. The "Asian math" curriculum we've been using as our primary is known for being fairly rigorous and fast-paced.

When i revisited it in December, the results were no better; if anything it was worse. i tried every teaching method i could think up or read about, but nothing seemed to stick with this child. ALL of the manipulatives came out: the unit blocks, the base-ten set, the abacus, the ten frames. i drew pictures and diagrams. I explained with words and we counted on our fingers. We used online programs and iPad apps to make it more interesting. I offered bribes and made dire threats. He could get to the correct answer by brute force (and, interestingly, he had many of the sums between 10 and 20 already memorized) but i could tell that he just wasn't getting the key concept.

(That concept, for those interested, is that the "ones" being added are split into two parts. First enough are "given" to the other addend's ones digit to complete "the next ten" and then the remainder become the ones digit of the sum. 28+5 becomes, first physically with blocks or abacus and then on paper with little tens-and-ones pictures and finally with numerals, (28 + 2) + 3, and on to 30 + 3, and finally 33. That they learn this before the old "carry the one" vertical addition algorithm is critical to developing strong mental math skills.)

We'd hit a brick wall. This child was going nowhere, and I had exhausted all of the topics with which I could work around this one. If we were going to progress, I had to find a way to get this idea into his brain. My patience was wearing thin at this point, and i was about ready to throw in the towel and... i don't even know. We even tried an outside enrichment program, to no avail (it wasn't a very good one).

Finally, I took a leap and purchased another popular math curriculum. I'd previously shied away from it because it seemed to have a lot of busywork, drill questions which looked like duplicates of work we were doing online. it wasn't cheap for something i wasn't even sure we'd use, but i was desperate. It devotes a couple dozen pages to slowly building this particular topic up, step by tiny step. Surely the kids would be bored before we were halfway through, going over and over the same material.

I pulled every page relevant to our trouble topic out of both the main text/workbook and the supplement. i reviewed the first baby step with our manipulatives. I took a deep breath, and set the first page in front of him. He breezed through it! We tried two more pages the next day... same result. I could see the light bulb flickering to life! Before long, he'd made it through the entire section. Best of all, he's gotten a taste of success where previously there had been only frustration, and he's enjoying it! He is now doing sums in his head that he could previously do only with base ten blocks and lots of coaching.

Often, a failure in the classroom - even a homeschool classroom - is unilaterally placed on the student's shoulders. It's inattention, carelessness, laziness or willful obstinance, even a learning disability. For some students this is accurate, but before slapping one of those labels on we need to be sure it's not instead a failure of the teaching. As homeschoolers, we have the luxury of slowing down, even backing up to try a different teaching method or curriculum, but we must remember to take advantage to that and not be slaves to the checkboxes in our lesson planners. In our case, a simple change from one math book to another was the ladder we needed to hop right over that brick wall we'd slammed into a few months back.





 

Ask a Teacher - What's with All the Professional Development?

If you're like me (a parent who is not a teacher), you see "professional development" (I can use scare quotes because see first part of the sentence) days as a nuisance and sometimes you wonder if they are really necessary. Teacher Emilie Blanton from Teaching Ain't for Heroes says they are and better than that, she tells us why.

What's with all the professional development?


With the abundance of snow days in my district this year, it has been brought up by multiple parents across social media that professional development days should be used as make up snow days. A common thread is most of these assertions is that teachers don't need all this time without students.

But do they? Disregarding the weather issues going on in my state, the professional development days do serve a vital purpose in the education of your children. Professional development can be used in a variety of ways. It can be a time to take continuing education type courses in all types of subjects, meet with fellow teachers to analyze current student learning, and even catch up on planning and grading for classes we're teaching.

The majority of a teacher's work week is spent in direct contact with students, teaching and conferencing with their classes. Most teachers get a planning period, but that time isn't generally enough to get copies, plan lessons, and grade all the student work. It's true that we can always take work home, but most of us are parents as well and have a limited amount of time to spend with our own children as it is. That time also doesn't allow us time to grow and learn from fellow educators the way professional development courses can.

The majority of professional development can be taken care of during the summer, but the best teachers are those who continue to grow, learn, and change throughout the year, not just during the summer.

Professional development opportunities should not take precedence over student learning. Using too many substitute days to attend courses isn't good for students, especially if those days all happen directly before end of course testing. It can be frustrating and inconvenient when professional development days create havoc in a parents' life by making them have to take a day off work. Ultimately, the professional development days help students in the long run.




 

An Open Letter to a Third Grader's Teacher - Contributor Post

We all have back-to-school jitters, and things we want our children's teachers to know, so that we can give them the best start possible to every school year. Sometimes knowing what to say, and what not to, can really help. Accidentally Mommy helps me out.

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An open letter to a new teacher at the start of a new year. Since we can’t actually make our correspondence to our childrens’ educators both confessionals and on-our-knees pleas for help where we’ve failed in the past, I couldn’t actually send this. It was written, though. Here you go, Village. I wrote mine—don’t feel foolish if you’ve ever written or need to write yours. And as you save it to gather dust in the drafts folder, remember one thing: No matter your fears and concerns at the beginning of each year, sometimes just the change in and of itself is all that we need to find balance again. Dancing Queen has found her love for school again, without my tear-stained e-mail going out to her teacher after the first week.

Dear Mrs. 3rd Grade,

First off, I want to say thank you. Upon reflection, I realized when we were talking that I was pointing out many of Dancing Queen's weaknesses. You lead only with her strengths. That means a lot to me, and I wanted you to know that it didn't go unnoticed.

Dancing Queen is a very, very special person. I know every parent says that, and for every parent, it's true. I see a strength of character in Dancing Queen that I don't see in many other people, though -- adult or child. As you said, she's a very social individual and genuinely interested in being friends with just about everyone. I've had the chance in the past to observe her in a social situation that another person could have handled in a much more negative way. Instead of reacting with scorn, or suspicion, or gawking curiosity, she reacted only with a smile and an offer of friendship. While the children around her were making fun or asking hurtful questions, she was standing up to bullies and holding her new friend's hand. I have encouraged tolerance and good will in her from the beginning, but I cannot in good conscience claim to be the reason for her good nature. That would be a false humblebrag; kindness is simply a part of who she is. Don't get me wrong -- I'm not saying she's without fault. She's eight. She has the same quirks and frustrations that come with being eight and expanding her boundaries. She has a good heart, though.

You'll have to bear with me. I can get verbose and sometimes it takes me a little while to get to my point, which is why I wanted to email you instead of talking to you tonight. It takes far less time to skim an e-mail than it does to listen to a parent awkwardly fumble through trying to get their thoughts to come out right.

As her new teacher, you need to know that she didn't have the strongest start in school, and I feel like you need some of her history. Pre-K was marred by drama with her father and the very difficult pregnancy and subsequent birth of her brother who was very ill at the beginning. Because of this, she didn't have a parent who was the most engaged and involved. This continued into kindergarten, as I was consumed with maintaining her brother's health. We have a very strong support system in my parents and my siblings, but that can't always replace having mom directly involved. First grade found her with a teacher that was very clearly under personal strains who unfortunately took it out on her classroom. Dancing Queen is a very, very sensitive child. She's naturally averse to conflict and sensitive to what she perceives to be negative judgment. She was made to feel inadequate a handful of times, and that was enough to start the downhill slide. By the time second grade rolled around, she found that she dreaded school and everything about it. She dreaded tests. She dreaded reading. She dreaded writing. She felt like her teacher was passing constant judgment on her, and because of that often felt persecuted, even though she was reassured at home that this surely wasn't the case. Still, though, I met with her teacher early in the year to discuss these feelings she had, and I was met with a stony expression and monotone, emotionless, flat answers to my questions. Questions that I should have been asking all along, like "What are some suggestions for things I can do to enrich her at home and help her to enjoy learning again?" Questions of that nature were answered with "I don't know." Fast forward to this summer, and we have a normally bright, sassy little girl presenting herself dimmed, defeated, convinced that school sucks and she just doesn't want to go.

I don't want that for her. And I see that in your class, that won't be the expected behavior. While she will still answer when asked what she likes about school is that there's pizza and fruit-flavored water, it is my dream that she tacks on something about actually receiving her education, too.

Now that I have that said and out of the way, there are some other important things you need to know. Dancing Queen, as I said, is a worrier. She is definitely her mother's child in that she dwells on things that bother her and lets them interfere with her daily life sometimes. Her biggest school-related anxieties are centered primarily on test taking and reading/writing. Some things were said to her last year that she interpreted to mean that she wasn't good enough, wasn't smart enough, to succeed this year.

 In addition to this, Dancing Queen is also epileptic. The medication she's on can sometimes have an effect on her mood, sleeping patterns, and even her short-term memory. If she seems more forgetful, it is possibly a side effect of her meds.

(Disclaimer: I won't pull the meds card if you come to me and tell me that you truly feel she isn't paying attention. I'm not that parent. Please, please, please let me know if you feel that her behavior is questionable. I don't allow her medical condition to be a cover for lack of effort.)

She needs to play catch-up at home, particularly with her writing skills (punctuation, grammar, vocab, and sentence structure specifically,) and to discover a love for reading. I am the first to admit, though, that I don't make a very good instructor. I know I already ask a great deal of you by simply sending my child to be your student, but may I ask for a little bit more help? Can you point me in the direction of some resources  that I can employ at home that take a fun approach to these subjects so that she and I can work on them diligently without frustrating each other to the point of misery?

Thank you so much for your time, and thank you so much for your dedication to the kids. I wasn't paying lip service when I said earlier that I'm excited for this year. I'm truly  looking forward to being more involved with both her and you.

Sincerely,

Accidentally Mommy





 

Ask a Teacher: What Do I Do If my Child Is "Struggling"

Today, Emilie from Teaching Ain't For Heroes gets personal. She talks about what parents should remember should their kids get a "struggling" assessment in a certain area during the early grades.

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I received my son's first report card. As a teacher, I've prided myself on knowing how to teach and when to teach various things. My first fieldwork experience was with kindergarteners (22 of them), so even though I teach high school, I felt that I had experiences that could help me teach my son.

My son received all checks and his report started out glowing. His teacher talked about how he was sweet and hardworking. She said that sometimes he's disruptive with talking, but he's easily corrected.

And then she said that he was struggling with printing and letter sounds. My pride took a hit with that word "struggling" because I know what that word means in my teacher jargon. In my classroom, I use struggling for kids who are below grade level and in danger of being left behind. I don't use struggling lightly. Struggling is for kids who are missing basic skills necessary to master standards.

It stung. I've been doing everything right. We read every night. He practices writing at home. We always do his homework (yes, homework in preschool!). He loves learning. He loves playing school. He's said he wants to be a teacher, just like me.

But he's struggling.

The idea of a range of normal is just that, a range. There's early readers and late readers and kids who fall somewhere in the middle of that enormous spectrum.

Not every kid can be advanced and perfect at everything they do. It's hard to accept that your child isn't the best in their peer group.

Despite my son's struggles in the first term of preschool, it's unlikely that he'll struggle in the same way that many of the students I have known do. He may not be an early reader like I was, but that doesn't mean that I have failed in someway. Every kid is different and will learn at their own pace.

As parents, it's so easy to get hung up on the successes of our children that we forget that they are individuals who don't need to be measured against their peers.

The fact that so many of us Facebook craft our children's lives so that they appear perfect doesn't help. Hey, I'm guilty. I held my phone just right so that the part about disruption and my son's struggles wasn't visible when I posted a picture of his report to Facebook. When you find yourself feeling down on yourself as a parent, remember that just out of frame, others' lives aren't perfect either.






 

Homeschooling Is Not Anti-Social - Guest Post

Today, Tracey from Inside the Mommyvan has a post about something that scares the crap out of me. Homeschooling.

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Anyone who has homeschooled, or has even discussed homeschooling with others, has undoubtedly heard the socialization question. It is #2 on the hilarious—and accurate!—Bitter Homeschooler's Wish List:

Learn what the words "socialize" and "socialization" mean, and use the one you really mean instead of mixing them up the way you do now. Socializing means hanging out with other people for fun. Socialization means having acquired the skills necessary to do so successfully and pleasantly. If you're talking to me and my kids, that means that we do in fact go outside now and then to visit the other human beings on the planet, and you can safely assume that we've got a decent grasp of both concepts.

I've heard several variations on this theme: an acquaintance who allowed that homeschooling was OK, except that it's too easy for the kids to be abused and no one to notice (if you require an explanation of the absurdity of this thought, please let me know); the generally well-meaning-but-ignorant queries that seem to all start from the (erroneous) belief that I'm trying to shelter my children from the evils of the world through homeschooling; the ones who believe that the only path for a child to learn social skills is in a grade-school classroom setting.

Recently a new type popped up out of nowhere. It's not the Socialization Question, it's the Socialization Compliment. Just in the past few months I've been praised, once embarrassingly effusively, for nothing more than taking my children out of the house for the purpose of participating in extra-curricular activities. I suppose I could be thankful that I'm not being grilled about the particulars of our every social interaction, but at least those people stop after I give them a reasonable and straightforward answer. I've got those stashed away in a special corner of my brain, you see, right next to the Answers to Twin Questions I've been practicing since the birth of my elder two. I feel as though perhaps I'm contributing to the homeschool community, in some small way, by taking the time to politely but firmly educate the masses on one of the most misunderstood areas of non-traditional education.

The Socialization Compliments, though, just keep coming, and any response at all is awkward. "It's so nice that they have friends who go to regular school!" Really? Are your kids' only friends the kids at the adjacent desks in school? "That's so great," another says, "That you let them go to scouts/dance lessons/summer camp!" Really? Isn't this part of that whole parenting thing? I haven't heard of one other parent at the Wednesday children's program at our church earning any words of praise whatsoever for dropping their kids off for a couple of hours of free activities once a week. More important is the erroneous, and frankly, quite insulting assumption that any of this is an effort worthy of a Mother of the Year nomination. You know, for a homeschooler, as if a run-of-the-mill homeschooler would, by default, keep their kids locked in the cellar 16 hours a day. To attempt to correct that notion makes me come across as an ungrateful jerk, but to quietly accept their praise seems to verify it in a way that makes me very uncomfortable.

Let me tell you a little about the reality of socialization for homeschoolers. There are a few families who do, in fact, wish to shield their young children from the world's ills for a while longer. I really can't fault them for that desire. How it will affect their children remains to be seen, but I knew just as many kids growing up in a traditional school setting who were expected straight home after school, who weren't allowed to visit friends' houses, and so on. In addition, homeschooling used to exist on much shakier legal ground than it does today, so many of the past stereotypes may well have been driven more by a desire to stay under the radar than from willfully keeping their children away from social activities.

Anyway, back to how it really happens for my children, which is remarkably similar to most other homeschooled kids we know. First off, understand that the term homeschooling does not even imply that all of our educational activities take place at home, much less our social interactions. My kids attend co-op classes, including plenty of time in the lunchroom and on the playground, one day a week. We generally have a fun activity or field trip of some kind planned with friends—homeschooled or not—on another day each week. We currently attend dance lessons, children's program at church, scout meetings, church, and Sunday school, all weekly. Only a fraction of this time is spent primarily with kids their own age; the rest of the time they play, converse, and interact with everyone from infants to senior citizens. They also accompany me shopping and going about our regular household business, plus occasionally to doctors' appointments, choir rehearsals, community organization meetings, and other places where we meet people and make friends the same way most adults do, by introducing ourselves and making conversation with people we find interesting or who share common interests. My children do this comfortably and naturally, much less hesitant than many of their traditionally-schooled peers to speak to an adult to whom they've just been introduced.

They also show kindness and compassion to children younger than they are, but don't let themselves get pushed around by bigger kids. Bullying is extremely rare in the homeschool groups we attend, and is generally rapidly dealt with by the kids themselves or a nearby parent, but we've run into a few at other activities. Oddly, it's been the worst at the activities populated mostly by those paragons of socialization, kids who spend their days in traditional classrooms. My son learned a couple of weeks ago, thanks to a group of these kids, how to gang up and harass the girls on the playground. Fortunately I observe enough of their interactions up-close that I could nip it in the bud. Maybe not permanently, but it's stopped for now, and my son has a very clear idea of why it is undesirable behavior. How well are those anti-bullying programs working at traditional schools? How many of those boys' parents, I wonder, had any idea that their kids were instigating this sort of behavior?

I'm not here to bash traditional schools, nor to promote homeschooling as the one true way (all I know is that it's working for our family so far, but that could change next week). I will point out that sitting at a desk next to some randomly-chosen other kids within 12 months' age of each other for 6-8 hours a day (with maybe 30-60 minutes of lunch + recess, for those schools that still have it, where kids are mostly unsupervised as long as they don't actually throw the food) is most certainly not an ideal environment for teaching, or learning, social skills. And I will ask that you consider, before you open your mouth to (or about) a homeschooler, that we're probably doing everything within our power to set our kids up for happiness and success as adult human beings in the real world where we live every day.




 

Ask a Teacher: What to Do About Bullies?

Now that school is back in full swing, you may be noticing some social problems you'd hoped you wouldn't have to deal with. Namely, bullying. Teacher Emilie Blanton from Teaching Ain't for Heroes gives advice on what parents can do about this common, but shitty, reality.

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Bullying is a huge issue in schools. It's been an issue. It will continue to be an issue. Bullying will involve your child at some point in their lives. I get so many questions about bullying, I decided to tackle several of them at once. Bullying is persistent, aggressive behavior that is meant to emotionally or physically harm another individual. Bullying takes on many forms, from passive aggressive insults to outright physical assaults. All forms are serious and dangerous and need to be stopped.

How do I keep my child from being bullied?

Unless you lock them in a bubble, there's no way to shield your child from bullies. Even if you homeschool your child, there's the park, birthday parties and the eventual real adult world filled with bullies to deal with. Someone is going to attempt to bully your child at some point. Bully-proofing your child is important. Building up your child's confidence is the first step. Give them a happy, safe home to come to. Encourage them to advocate for themselves. Teach them the difference between tattling and advocating. Be there for them. If their attempts to stand up for themselves fail, be there to back them up. Realize that sometimes they have to fight their own battles and always be an open, caring person for them to talk to. You can't protect them from everything, but you can give them tools to help keep them happier.

Help! My child is being bullied!

Again, teach your child to advocate. Approach the teacher first and let them know what you know. Be as specific as possible. "Little Johnny is making my daughter uncomfortable. He pokes her and pulls her hair. It needs to stop." Don't vaguely state that Little Johnny is bullying your child, say what exactly is going on. The more specific you can be, the better. This part is important. Not all teachers will take action. Make sure you are recording when you talked to the teacher and what was said. Email is perfect for this. If the bullying is still going on, move a level up and seek out a counselor or administrator. The next step after that is the school board. Record everything and be as specific as possible.

Remain calm as you talk to each person. It is hard. Your child is being targeted and it feels horrible. Be firm. Be confident. Hold your head up and demand respect for your child's well being. Screaming and yelling won't get anything done faster, but that might be what you want to do. It's okay to have a strong reaction to your child being targeted. Staying calm will help you remember everything you want to say. If you need to, when speaking to someone in person, bring notes or index cards with important information. There's nothing wrong with having reminders to help you. I go into meetings with notes and you can, too. If you get flustered, take a moment, breathe and begin again. Your child deserves to feel safe and it's okay if you need to take a little longer than intended to ensure that safety.

I've failed. My child is a bully.

You haven't failed. Not all bullies are budding sociopaths bent on tyranny and extra milk money. Bullies come in all shapes and sizes, from all types of families. Your child stumbled while learning to walk. They're going to stumble while learning to be a decent human being. Haven't we all?

If you are contacted about your child being a bully, don't go on the defensive. It's okay to be concerned. It's not okay to try to explain it away. Regardless of the reason your child may be bullying others, it does need to stop. If you explain it away to the teacher or administrator, you might start explaining it away to your child and they'll think the behavior is okay. Talk to your child. Impress upon them the importance of empathy. Remind them what it feels like when others are mean to them. Break out that old phrase "treat others as you'd want to be treated!" Just don't brush it off. Don't say "Well, kids will be kids." Yes, kids will be kids, but it is on us to make sure that they grow and develop into decent human beings capable of love and compassion.

The other parents are bullying me!

They probably are. I know people say that middle school is when bullying is the worst, but I'd posit adults are the worst bullies. There are mommy bullies, work bullies, frenemies and more. Hold your head up. Don't get sucked into the drama. It's hard to resist. I know. I've been there. Be a positive example to your child about how one deals with bullies. Be confident and avoid the people who cause the worst stress.


 

Teaching Kids About God - Contributor Post

Kate Allen, resident theologist (no, really), who blogs over at CornDog Mama and just had her second beautiful baby, was able to take time out of her busy schedule to write an important post about children and God. Thanks, Kate.
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Parenting in the United States looks different in 2013 than it did in, say, 1982, the year I was born.  One of the quandaries I face as a parent, an issue that my own parents didn’t have to mull over quite as much, is the issue of religious education and “churching.”  Although I’m a self-proclaimed Christian like my parents, I don’t limit my religious practice to Christian practice.  I also don’t believe Christianity has an exclusive claim to what is good, true, and right (in fact, I believe Christianity, or at least Christians, often get it Jesus’ message wrong).  My practices and beliefs put me on the margins of Christianity (not to mention the margins of my childhood family!), and I find myself in growing company.  Many of my parent friends, though they grew up in some sort of faith tradition, have either come to pick and choose what they’re willing to pass on to their children from that faith tradition, or they eschew religion altogether.  The big question I hear, especially from friends who no longer embrace religion or believe in God, is: “If I don’t believe in God or don’t know what I believe about God, how am I supposed to teach my own child about God in a way that feels authentic rather than misleading?  Should I teach my child about God?”

As someone who sees systemic problems in her own faith tradition, I struggle along the same lines.  I don’t want my children learning about Christianity from just any Christian church community—I need to know that the Christian message they receive is more than mindless dogma that is inconsistent with the radical teachings of Jesus.

So how do I go about teaching my child about God in a way that a) isn’t contrived, b) offensive to me, and c) illuminating and helpful to my child without being oppressive?

I offer the following questions as starting points for any parent who asks this question, whether they belong to a faith tradition or have rejected religion and God but still wish to offer God as a possibility to their child.

First, what is it that teaching God/religion/faith to my child will accomplish?  Is this for me, or for my child?  What do I hope my child will gain from learning about faith?  Is it an intellectual exercise, or is there something more—something I remember from my own childhood that I want my child to experience, even if she rejects it later? 

Second, do I want to give my child a variety of faith perspectives, or do I want her to experience one primary tradition with occasional references to others?   Do I feel competent enough to teach my child about many faiths?  Do I feel competent enough to teach her primarily about one without tearing down others? 

For someone who wants to go the former route but isn’t sure where to start, a good place to begin is the Unitarian Universalist Church, which is intentionally embracing of all faith and no faith at once—Unitarians include theists, atheists, Christians, Jews, Buddhists, you name it.  For someone who prefers to allow her child to experience one faith tradition primarily (in my case, Christianity), one might start in a “safe” denomination.  The United Church of Christ is a Christian denomination that is progressive, socially conscious, and warmly inclusive—all things I know I want my children to be exposed to (and formed by) in a religious context.  On the other hand, my childhood denomination, Roman Catholicism, is home to really rich, symbolic ritual, and it’s extremely important to me that my children learn about the power of great ritual, the sort that gets repeated often enough to get into their bones.  A compromise might be to search for religious communities that straddle the margins as much as I do.   One way to figure out whether a community honors and dwells in margins without risking an in-person visit is to visit their website.  Is there anything about this place that stands out as unusual (and good!) in comparison with other communities of the same tradition?  To use a personal example, my husband and I heard about and joined an African American Catholic Community and eventually had our marriage blessed there, even though neither of us is African American.  African American Catholics certainly aren’t a majority among African Americans or Catholics, so they’ve had to make their own creative way, weaving those two strands of identity together in a way that honors each without diminishing the other.  Church communities like this, that push against whatever “the usual” is because of their “unusual,” marginalized status, are the most likely to honor the questions and concerns that I bring to the table where the religious education and formation of my children are concerned. 

That brings me to the final big question: to what religious institution can I go and share my own concerns and misgivings about religion and God while being taken seriously, rather than dismissed (or, worse, regarded as sinful/shameful/naïve/unfaithful)?  A religious community that fails to admit its own ability to be wrong is a community that I’ll never want my child to learn from.  I need my child to learn that even though God is good, religion sometimes really isn’t.  A religious community that can’t admit its own failings is a religious community whose images of God I won’t be able to relate to (and certainly won’t be able to teach my children about with any conviction). 

Even though I’m a lifelong Catholic, I am more importantly a person who has put “God” and religion to the test—questioning whether masculine images of God are the only valid ones, or even the best ones, for example.  I’ve also dug deep into Christian scripture to see how/when Jesus and other holy figures contradict themselves, promoting prophetic good in some ways and making grievous wrongs in action and judgment elsewhere.  I don’t mind the digging—I’m not afraid of what will come of my search.  I surround myself with people who can help me explore—I trust that they haven’t planted answers ahead of time, even if they’ve dug their own digging and found gems of their own for me admire.  For me, the search is the point, and I think this is especially the case for parents who have rejected religion and/or God but want to give their children the option to embrace one or both. I want my kids to see that my answers about God (and the answers of the faith traditions I choose to expose them to) are not final, because if they were final, they’d be missing the possibility of transformation, expansion, and surprise.  Whether my kids ultimately choose to embrace religion or God is not so important to me as whether they learn what my own faith-on-the-margins has taught me: to love abundantly, to turn again and again toward goodness, and to approach both new and familiar experiences with wonder.

 

Ask a Teacher - Parental Involvement

In this month's edition of Ask a Teacher, Emilie Blanton, who blogs over at Teaching Ain't for Heroes, answers the question: How much parental involvement do schools want to see? 
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Parental involvement is a complicated subject surrounded by tiny landmines. Is there such a thing as too much involvement? Ideally, no. However, there can be a wrong way to be involved.

Positive, proactive parental involvement is, with very few exceptions, always a good thing. Working together with educators to ensure the success of your student is best for all parties involved. So what does positive, proactive involvement look like? There isn't a set guideline for how often your can call or email, nor should there be. You and your child are individuals, so trying to fit your family's needs into a prescribed schedule isn't the best idea.

How often to contact a teacher depends on a number of factors, such as your child's age, services needed, and behavior/performance in a given class. An elementary homeroom teacher will have less than forty students and can speak with you more frequently without taking time away from other students' parents. An elementary elective teacher will likely be working with several grade levels and classes in each grade. An high school teacher can have nearly 150 students in a given day. A student with an A, while wonderful to talk about, may not need a weekly parent check up, barring other issues such as evaluating a student for giftedness.

I've found the best course of action for parents who contact me is to do so through email. I'm already awkward on the phone anyway, but email is optimal for me for a number of other reasons. First, we're not tied to a set schedule. You may have work while I'm on planning period and I'm not at school into the evening for later phone conversations. By dropping me an email, I can get back to you as soon as I receive the email and we're not left playing phone tag for the next several days. Next, both of us now have an easy to access record of the communication. You can show your child exactly what the teacher has said. Unfortunately, there are some not so great teachers out there. These emails can provide the evidence you need to bring to the administration.

There's nothing wrong with contacting a teacher for good things. In fact, the best thing for both of us is for or first interaction to be a good one. This is what I mean when I say positive and proactive. I want to hear from you before Little Johnny is failing my class. If we're already acquainted, it makes those troublesome communications go much smoother. It lets me know you're an ally and that you will be a team player in the success of your child.

But can you really contact me too much? Honestly, yes, BUT, and this is a huge but, if you're contacting me too much, odds are it's the wrong kind of contact. Here are a few things to keep in mind to keep your communication positive:

• Get the teacher's side of the story before making judgments based on something your child told you happened. I'm not saying Little Susie is a liar. I'm saying think about how Little Susie might describe some "negative" interactions with you to someone she wants to get on her side. There may be added context needed to understand the full story. 
• Don't start by going over the teacher's head. If you have a problem, speak with the teacher first. It's awkward for everyone involved if you first call an administrator or counselor and the teacher is blindsided by the issue. If the teacher isn't resolving the issue or you have a personality conflict, that's when it's time to involve a third party.
• If you're calling, be aware that it may take more than 24 hours for a teacher to get back to you. We can only call during the school day while we are on planning period. Sometimes these periods are eaten up by meetings and we are not able to call you back right away. We are not avoiding you, we're just busy. This is why email is optimal for me and a number of teachers. 
• Be cognizant of the fact that your child is not our only student. If you ask me about a grade, I have to actually pull out my gradebook to look it up so that I can give you the most accurate information. This doesn't mean that I don't care about your child. This means I have over a hundred students and I don't have all of their grades memorized every single day.
• If your district has an online gradebook option, try to utilize that instead of calling or emailing for a daily or weekly grade check. I don't mind answering grade check questions, but if that's all you want, most districts offer a way for you to check all of your child's grades at once. If the gradebook is not updated at least once a week, checking in on the teacher is a good idea. We are human and sometimes we fall behind. I personally keep a written gradebook that I update daily and update my online one once a week. Sometimes updating the online gradebook gets put on the backburner in favor of grading more assignments and passing them back to students in a timely manner.

When it comes to parental involvement, it's best to err on the side of offering too much. I'd rather deal with overinvolved parents than the opposite. Remember that your child will make mistakes. No one is perfect and it's okay for them to have shortcomings. Teachers are not out to get your child anymore than parents are out to get their own child. I can't stress enough that it's not about how often, but how you approach the involvement that is the key to the success of your child. We're a team when it comes to the education of your child. You want your child to succeed and I do, too. It's best if we work together to achieve this goal.

 

Smarts Aren't Just About the ABCs

I spend the majority of my day playing with and catering to my kids. We do spelling games, sound games, and rhyming games. We draw, trace and identify letters and numbers. We talk a lot. They used their first adverb the other day. They know synonyms and homonyms. (Not by the names, just by definition.) They're constantly asking questions and internalizing the answers. They amaze me every day.

So why is it that in an emergency situation, they would have no idea what to do?

Parent fail, that's why.

I didn't even realize I hadn't imparted this pertinent information until a few days ago. My husband was playing with them with a toy phone that came with their kitchen. They were gleefully calling the police and taking him to jail. But they didn't know the number. Then my husband said, "oh! I'm hurt! Call an ambulance."

And the game stopped.

The girls just stared at him, like, what?

They knew about doctors and well visits and bandages, since they've had experience with all of those things. But, thankfully, they've never witnessed a true emergency. And since it never crosses my mind, I never taught them about it.

And in one night, the girls went from clueless to knowing exactly what to do. And they never had to leave the premise of the game.

"Call nine-one-one!" My husband said, missing just a beat. And the girls sprung into action.

"Wait!" they shouted. "Where is it? Where are the numbers?"

My husband showed them.

Within minutes, they had taken control again. "Call 9-1-1!" one of them shouted, and the other would dial the correct numbers. We told them what to say. "Hello, there's an emergency. Please come quickly."

And now they know. The girls went from playing to prepared, and they didn't even know the difference.

Now, will they really be able to call 9-1-1 in an emergency? Probably not. They'll probably try to use their toy phone. But it's a start.

When you teach your kids, you can't forget the basics. I'm guilty of that often. Luckily, my husband has my back.



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The Common Denominator

What do teachers and students have in common?  They're all people.  Too often, this similarity is overlooked if not entirely forgotten.  Teachers good and bad fall into their roles, and students, often with some resistance, follow suit.  Ignoring humanity in our school systems does no one any favors, and it only gets worse as the government focuses on test scores and statistics instead of on students.

As I considered who to highlight here, the choices seemed endless.  I could choose the tech teacher, who let me come to class late if I brought him coffee and taught me about being in news.  I could choose the math teacher who specialized in broadening our social consciousness.  I could choose the science teacher who preferred lengthy interesting discussions to papers and multiple choice questions, or the art teacher who was so clearly passionate about her subject.  In my long and illustrious school career, I had dozens of teachers, some good, some bad. But I only had one person.  Mr. St. Peter.

Mr. St. Peter was a short Irish man with a stubbly mustache.  He wore too many turtleneck sweaters and worked in as many bad puns per lesson as possible.  He used the Socratic Method, annoyingly at times, and always made you answer your own question through thinking.  He taught me chemistry.  Then he taught me physics.  It is because of Mr. St. Peter I pursued and completed a degree in Biology, even though I am bad at science.  It is because of Mr. St. Peter I forced myself to retake college physics twice, not giving up.  But these are all things he did as a teacher.  It's what he was as a person that really made him special.

As a kid, I never saw teachers or parents or anyone with any authority as a whole person.  I only thought of them in terms of how they related to me, and since they rarely if ever related to me as if I were a real person, I could never see them as a person, either.  Without that connection, the space that remained between us - teacher and student - was too wide to overcome and learning over the gap was difficult at best.

Mr. St. Peter was a teacher, above all, yes.  But if he was having a bad day, he didn't try to hide it underneath his professionalism.  He didn't bottle it up and take it out on students accidentally.  He explained it to us as if we were people capable of understanding human emotion, and because he did that, we became people capable of understanding human emotion.  Don't misunderstand, it wasn't all about him.  On an off day, he would honestly say at the beginning of class that he was having a rough time that day, and that it had nothing to do with us (he wisely remembered that to students, everything is about them, always).  Then he moved on with a weak pun, and we learned more about electricity or whatever we were learning that day.

When students didn't get it, he took pains to help them.  When students didn't care, he took pains to make them.  He appealed to these students not as a teacher trying to impart invaluable knowledge, but as a person trying to understand where the mental block lay.  More often than not, the student's problem had nothing to do with physics at all, and instead had to do with something personal.  Instead of completely ignoring this (as many teachers do because they don't know how to handle it) he acknowledged it and brought it into the lesson in a general way.  He was gentle when he ought be, playful when it helped, and intuitive always.  He never made a big deal out of the students' lives beyond the classroom; he simply let them know that he understood they existed, and he empathized by showing students that he, too, had a life outside teaching.

This knowledge of humanity - not pushed or promoted, but not ignored out of ignorance, laziness or helplessness - gave Mr. St. Peter a camaraderie with his students rarely achieved in the school system.  Many teachers can manage having a 'pet,' a student they believe in, a student they connect with, a student they view always as human.  Seldom can teachers manage seeing every student they come into contact with on that level.  So, as I write this piece in praise of him, know that it was not just me that he graced with the human elements I actually possessed, but every student in that school.

Even now, as a parent, I look back on Mr. St. Peter as a role model, as I struggle to remember that my two year olds are people, too.  They are not just babies, but people.  When you realize the common denominator, you make your job - and your life - easier.  You earn respect without trying.

Cheers, Mr. St. Peter.  I hope you're not having a rough day today.

**This is in cooperation with the blogshare over at Teaching Ain't For Heroes.  You have until the 12th to join, if you'd like!

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