Well there seems to be a lot of things wrong in this country. But at the top of my list is my children's education. I'm so tired of them being "taught" for THE TEST. You know the one that comes at the end if the year and will in some cases determine if they pass or not. I'm a teacher people so I'm not speaking as an unknown. I know there is a test at the end of the year. I know how important it is for them to pass it. But can we have some sort of fun in the process?
For the last few weeks many papers have been coming home from the kids school with scores and such on how they are doing. Of course they are all scan tron sheets that are determining if my children are where they are supposed to be. Which is all fine and good...but do they really need to take these tests every week? I have had conferences with 2 of the kids teachers so far. And the whole conference was about how they placed on this assessment or that. Hello where are the book reports, science projects, some sort of fun...
I see a lot of worksheets and not a lot of original thought out planned assignments. This is the reason I wish we could afford to home school. There are so many other things my kids should be doing. I know teachers are on a time crunch and under a considerable amount of stress and constant scrutiny on how their students are placing on their assessments. But man I would love to see something FUN come home. I feel like I have to make up for the things they aren't getting in their public education. Like book reports, science experiments, and creating hands on projects for them. And hello I work 50 hours a week, am raising 5 kids, and running them to various extracurricular activities trying to keep them well rounded.
My 3rd grade and 5th grade sons have tested out of their math classes...meaning the scored over 95% on the pretest. Well in both of their classes they were one of only two that achieved this. So while the rest of the class is learning the material that they already know they were working on a higher level project w/ this one other student. My 3rd grader was getting bored so his teacher gave me a call this week and wanted to know if it would be alright if she sent him to another class for math. A higher level thinking class...well heck yeah! Anything to keep him excited about his learning. Hopefully that will help to be with more students that are on his level. But my 5th grader is becoming a bit lazy...which has always been an issue with him..if you don't notice he's not doing anything then he will continue to do nothing. I give him extra learning experiences at home and I hear "My teacher doesn't care. I don't have to do that". So I'm beginning to trick him into higher level thinking...but it sure does take a lot of time for me to be planning these undetected learning moments.
It's just frustrating b/c I want them to go to school and have fun and learn new things. I hate the thought of sitting and doing worksheets b/c the teachers are so busy grading and assessing where they are.
Our school is one of the best in the county and "tests" very well. But it sure would be nice for them to assess them on so many other levels than just test scores. But my children are testing out of the pretests...so what is a mother to do?
Low expectations and political correctness kill the schools. Teachers should be teaching to the top of the class and allow the rest of the kids to be challenged - they just might rise to it. Instead, the advanced kids are stuck being taught average to low-level stuff... which leaves our most promising kids stuck in mediocre boredom. Never teach to the lowest denominator. But, unfortunately, that's what happens. (In my opinion). And I do think kids get more, regardless of intelligence level, out of being challenged and having high expectations than having their ego stroked at low levels of education.
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