thyme4change
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Post by thyme4change on Apr 1, 2014 9:32:21 GMT -5
I have mixed feelings on this subject. I don't help my kids with homework, because I am terrible at helping people think through work. We did have a long period of time where I would sit at the table while my son did his homework. I would read or whatever. As long as I was sitting next to him, he would keep working. If I stood up to go to the bathroom, he would find some excuse to get up also - glass of water, check the weather, the cat was meowing - whatever. So, every day I sat there and he did his work.
My daughter is totally self-motivated. Doesn't need either of us at all. Unfortunately, her school is very much into eliminating helicopter parents, which is probably very necessary for a lot of families at the school. It is a charter school full of those families. In a family like mine, it kind of backfires, because we think everything is going along okay, and everything is fine - and then all of a sudden we get a notice that if she is on the verge of having to retake English. What the what?! 75% through the school year and this is the very first contact we have had with the teacher, because my daughter was suppose to handle it. She was absolutely clueless on what to do, and had the impression that she wasn't allowed to talk to her parents about it. So...that is a little too far for me.
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thyme4change
Community Leader
Joined: Dec 26, 2010 13:54:08 GMT -5
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Post by thyme4change on Apr 1, 2014 9:48:36 GMT -5
I just read the whole article. Finding out that requesting the best teacher is a big deal - I will say that volunteering in school makes a huge difference in that. It is hard to determine who is a great teacher, unless you are part of the in-crowd. And in schools like mine, every pushy parent is in there trying to get their kid in with the teacher that has the halo. The people who volunteer have a better relationship with the people who make those decisions. So...maybe the PTA time isn't useless if you use it as a means to make sure your kid gets the best placement.
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Deleted
Joined: Oct 9, 2024 2:18:30 GMT -5
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Post by Deleted on Apr 1, 2014 9:51:00 GMT -5
My aunt will actually DO her kids homework for them. As in they're out doing whatever and she's sitting at the kitchen table working on a US history assignment. She's 65 and retired and says it wards off Alzheimers. I wouldn't do it, but it doesn't seem to be hurting her kids either. She has 8 kids. One is severely disabled and won't ever take care of himself and one has issues with drugs, but the other 6 are quite successful. Two have masters degrees, one is a high ranking officer in the Coast guard, and the other three are still at home, 17, 15 and 12. The 17 year old is an entrepreneur. He has so much money it's crazy. He deep sea fishes, sells produce, raises chickens, and works on movie sets. He is always raking it in while Mom handles the homework. I guess the verdict is still out on the youngest two, but they're doing well in school anyhow.
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thyme4change
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Joined: Dec 26, 2010 13:54:08 GMT -5
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Post by thyme4change on Apr 1, 2014 9:52:51 GMT -5
MPL - makes you wonder how much of this homework actually builds skills and knowledge and how much of it is just busy work to make it seem like they are teaching everyone. Or...most likely...needed by some kids and not others.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Apr 1, 2014 10:01:17 GMT -5
MPL - makes you wonder how much of this homework actually builds skills and knowledge and how much of it is just busy work to make it seem like they are teaching everyone. Or...most likely...needed by some kids and not others. That's what my aunt says. She says it's stupid, pointless stuff and it just makes kids hate school and learning. Her two oldest daughters went on to become teachers, so crazy as it seems to do it, it doesn't seem to have hurt.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Apr 1, 2014 10:04:36 GMT -5
I didn't like doing my own homework so there is no way in hell I'm doing theirs!!!
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sheilaincali
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Post by sheilaincali on Apr 1, 2014 10:23:34 GMT -5
I agree with MPL- I think a good bit of the homework that they make kids do is just busy work. It is better now that DS is older and in High School. When he was a GATES kid in elementary he had way more homework every night than he does now. It was all one packet after another. Hours of worksheets that were basically redundant. The spelling packet each week was like 20 pages long- crossword puzzles, word searches, etc. Tedious and annoying.
Now DS has very little homework. He is that kid that starts it in class the minute it's assigned and works on things all throughout the day so he doesn't have to do it at night. He did have homework last night and we did have to "help" him with it. He had to record the audio for his History Day project on the Japanese Internment Camps and he had to read a story to us. The story was the German version of Alice in Wonderland- in German. He needed to practice his inflections so when he presents it in class he has pauses in the right spots and the right tone to it. She wants the kids to read it like a story not like an emotionless, flat report. We had to sign a sheet saying he'd read it to us.
PS- holy crap that kid can speak German. I was no where near as fluent as him after 2 years of a foreign language. Now I'm less scared about sending him to high school in Germany this summer. We rarely get to hear him speak it so it was kind of shocking to hear him last night.
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tskeeter
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Post by tskeeter on Apr 1, 2014 10:51:47 GMT -5
MPL - makes you wonder how much of this homework actually builds skills and knowledge and how much of it is just busy work to make it seem like they are teaching everyone. Or...most likely...needed by some kids and not others. I think that's one of the challenges of our current educational theory. We mix kids of all different abilities and achievement levels into a single class as part of the social engineering of "mainstreaming". For kids who learn new material easily, or who have already mastered some of the material, they end up doing a lot of busy work just to keep them out of the way while the teacher devotes their time to other kids. For kids who aren't as far along as some of the others in the class, or who need more repetition to grasp the material, the busy work is of value. But, the teacher doesn't want to deal with a less capable kid pushing back and saying "why doesn't Bobby have to do all these workseets, it's not fair". Maybe one of the advances we could make in education is to start moving kids through the education system based on proficiency. With electronic testing, constant testing of proficiency is pretty practical. Once you've mastered the material, you can move on. If you get it in five minutes, great. If it takes you two hours and multiple testing cycles, that's OK, too, because our purpose is to make sure you have learned the material to a certain level of proficiency. Move away from the time-in-grade approach that we use today and provide the most/best education we can for each and every child. Not only will it probably provide our most capable kids with a better education, but we will also teach that our kids that a certain outcome is not a given. The outcome depends primarily on your ability and the effort you expend. If you don't have quite as much ability, you can help compensate by expending more effort. If you have the ability, but aren't willing to expend the effort, you probably won't achieve as much as someone who works harder. Not bad lessons to go into adulthood with.
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JustLurkin
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This is what you look like right now.
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Post by JustLurkin on Apr 1, 2014 16:35:29 GMT -5
I don't think volunteering helps my kid in particular but it helps the whole classroom to have an extra set of hands. A lot of times my job is to sit with the child that is the most disruptive that day and help them focus on their work. Oh, that brings back memories!! Once, they paired me with this kid Jeffrey (I will always remember his name because of the bit Bill Cosby did about the boy named Jeffrey on a plane), we went on a trip to this new state of the art community gym that had just opened. He didn't want to do *anything* and insisted he was miserable the entire time. After awhile I just started dragggging him into each activity and he'd say "I don't like this." and through clenched teeth I'd say "YES YOU DO" Yes, you like the bouncy basketball court, and sensory lights making designs on the walls while classical music played, and you like playing musical chairs and this is the best lunch you have EVVVVVVER HAD, YESSSSSSSSS.
When we got back to school, his class was going their way and ours was going ours, and he broke away from his group and run up and hugged me and give me the biggest smile and said "I had so much fun today!" and ran back. I thought I was going to cry. One of the teachers touched my shoulder and said I had done a really good job with him. I just nodded, because I couldn't even speak. I will always remember that!
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