"It's a mad mission, under difficult conditions..."
Thursday, October 15th, 2009 09:31 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
auntbijouJust when I think I've gotten over being furious with the Impossible Son's second grade teacher... something happens that makes me furious all over again!!
*takes slow deep breaths to calm down*
I knew he had lost a lot of instruction time last year, thanks to Oblivious Teacher and the bully incident , but I didn't realize just how much until yesterday, when I was helping him with his math homework.
AAAAAUUGGHH!!!!
It was subtraction. Now, it's not like I haven't worked with him before, doing flash cards, and trying to help him memorize the simpler equations, but I haven't worked as in-depth with him as I might have (or should have). He didn't seem to be getting the answers, but I never thought to try to figure out why, so... that's my fault.
Now, though, they're working with larger numbers, and his third grade teacher had raised concerns with me that he spends a lot of class time (mostly during math lessons), staring off into space, playing with his clothes, or breaking his pencil tip so he has an excuse to go to the pencil sharpener after she's done instruction and set them to practice what they've learned. I've already filled the teacher in on his problems last year, so she's been watching him. However, she also mentioned that he's not finishing his work in class, and when she'd ask him why, he'd shrug.
So we lay on his bed together to talk and I asked him what was going on, and he said, "I don't understand how to do the stuff she's talking about, I don't know how to do it."
"Well, Impossible, she's your teacher, so if you're lost or confused, you can always ask her to explain it again. Just tell her you don't understand, and she'll work with you until you do. That's what she's there for, you know!"
He shrugged. "I guess."
I waited and then, "Don't you like her?"
"Oh, yes!" he said happily. "I really, really like Mrs. Teacher, she's nice and she's really good at explaining things, and she's so good at science!!"
Science is his favorite class, by the way.
I nodded, then said, "Is she good at helping you?"
"I don't know," he said, shrugging again.
"Doesn't she help you when you ask?"
"I don't know," he said again. "I don't ask her."
"Why not?"
He sighed and looked up at me, looking miserable. "I don't ask her because... what if she won't help me? What if she tells me to go sit down and pay attention? Or what if she sends me to time-out for asking so many questions?"
I blinked and said, "Um... does she do that sort of thing?" I was wondering if I needed to ask for a transfer out of that class, even though I liked Mrs. Teacher very much.
"Well, no... but what if she does? Oblivious Teacher did, all the time!"
*jaw drop* "Wha-a-a-at??"
"I would ask Oblivious Teacher for help, because I didn't understand her explanation in class, and she'd tell me to sit down, or to pay attention better next time and I would understand it. Or she'd put me in time-out, because I was bugging her!" It was alike all his hurt feelings from last year were just pouring out. "And when I complained about the Bully, she'd tell me to stop trying to get attention all the time!" Then he told me about how Oblivious Teacher would move the Bully and it wouldn't work, because she never moved him away from the Impossible Son... she'd just move the Bully around him.
I began to understand why the Impossible Son had felt he couldn't confide in me last year. You see, he'd tell me that he didn't finish his assignment in class, or missed part of the explanation, etc, because the Bully was bugging him, or talking to him, or bumping his desk, or being loud, etc. So I'd talk to Oblivious Teacher and ask if she could move Impossible or Bully so that this wouldn't happen.
The idiot Oblivious Teacher would move Bully... but not away from the Impossible Son. She'd move him... behind Impossible... or in front of Impossible... or to the left and behind Impossible...
There were eight different spots she could move Bully to that were still in reach of and near Impossible Son and she moved the stinker to all of them. It wasn't until after the school counselor ripped Oblivious Teacher a new one that the woman moved Bully to the other side of the room entirely... and put the Impossible Son in a desk right in front of hers.
What I realized after this little talk was that the Impossible Son had lost faith in teachers... PERIOD. He did not think Mrs. Teacher would be any better at helping him than Oblivious Teacher had been. So I told him to give her a try. Give Mrs. Teacher a chance to prove she could be a really awesome teacher. So he did. And when she realized what a big problem he was having, she moved him right next to her desk, so that when he had problems, he could just turn to her and she could work with him. And he's much happier.
Now, let's get to his problem with subtraction. I was working with him yesterday, and realized quickly that he just wasn't getting it, that he just did not understand the concept of subtraction at all! So, I tried taking a different tack, thinking if I could just show him that subtraction is addition backwards... he might get it. So I took the problem we were working on, 12 - 6 = ___. Really easy one, right? So I said, "What plus 6 equals 12?"
The confused look on his face almost made me laugh, so I backed up and said, "What number would you have to add to 6 to get the answer 12?"
He frowned again, and said, "This is subtraction, Mom."
I said, "Yes, but, dude, this is another way to look at it." Then I stopped and said, "Okay, how do you do it?" Because I have found I can help my kids better if I know how they look at it.
He frowned again and said, "Okay, this is how you do subtraction, okay?" Now, there is no possible way I could even come close to replicating his answer, because it was incredibly complex, and he even drew little things, and sounded so logical, but he got the answer completely wrong, "It's 18, but you have to say it's subtraction, so it's not 18, but it is." I felt my mouth fall open and I stared at him, thinking where the hell did you get this??, and then he said, "Because Oblivious Teacher said you had to do this, and this, and then you would get the answer, because this is just what subtraction does!"
WTF????
Talk about buckling down to a grim task! OMG, I thought I was never going to get the point across! I had to literally wade through that incompetent woman's bizarre explanations and shoot every single one of them down before I could explain it to him. I tried using buttons, I tried using his fingers, I even tried Legos!!!
When did he finally get it? When I wrote this on the scratch paper I was using to help him:
12 = 6 + 6 = 12
- 6
6
He stared at it and went, "OHHHHHHHHHH!!!"
And he suddenly got it!
I seriously needed alcohol after that!!! Mass quantities!!!
Then there's his handwriting.
*head-desk*
It's awful, it's messy... but... they only spend 15 to 20 minutes on handwriting in class.
Yes. That's right. 15 to 20 minutes. And the teacher does not have time to walk around and individually correct what they're doing.
The Impossible Son has had to figure out, as best he can, how to write certain letters. I looked at the way he writes his letters and numbers and realized that... he's not writing his letters... he's drawing them.
Huge difference!!
So... I'm working on his handwriting, too, and teaching him to put spaces between his words, and narrow the spacing between the letters of each word. The hard part is getting him to apply what he's learning with me and use it in class, rather than writing really well for me... and then going back to his old way of doing it at school.
Okay, why am I not homeschooling him again??
AAAAAUGH!!! And you know what's worse?? Oblivious Teacher has been promoted. She's teaching FIFTH GRADE!
What the bloody hell are these people thinking???
Okay, if the idiot is still teaching when the Impossible Son reaches fifth grade, and he gets her (and he will, because she's the "science" teacher, and he's really strong in science), I will walk straight to the office (because we find out who the kids' teachers are the Friday before school starts) and tell them I want him transferred. I won't care if they say, "Oh, but he's so good in science, and she's the science teacher!" I'll just say, "I don't care if she's Bill Nye the Science Guy in drag, she's not teaching my son. The woman is a mathematical idiot and a social moron, not to mention sexist, because she prefers teaching girls to teaching boys. I'm not having her teach my child. Transfer my son now, or I'm transferring him to another school!!"
Hopefully, though, she'll be so stressed out after a year of teaching hormonally charged fifth graders (you know, boys start going through puberty right about then), that she'll quit, or decide to teach in an all girls school somewhere else! She's already looking completely frazzled, and it's only October!
I hate this school district!!! *wants to scream*
*takes slow deep breaths to calm down*
I knew he had lost a lot of instruction time last year, thanks to Oblivious Teacher and the bully incident , but I didn't realize just how much until yesterday, when I was helping him with his math homework.
AAAAAUUGGHH!!!!
It was subtraction. Now, it's not like I haven't worked with him before, doing flash cards, and trying to help him memorize the simpler equations, but I haven't worked as in-depth with him as I might have (or should have). He didn't seem to be getting the answers, but I never thought to try to figure out why, so... that's my fault.
Now, though, they're working with larger numbers, and his third grade teacher had raised concerns with me that he spends a lot of class time (mostly during math lessons), staring off into space, playing with his clothes, or breaking his pencil tip so he has an excuse to go to the pencil sharpener after she's done instruction and set them to practice what they've learned. I've already filled the teacher in on his problems last year, so she's been watching him. However, she also mentioned that he's not finishing his work in class, and when she'd ask him why, he'd shrug.
So we lay on his bed together to talk and I asked him what was going on, and he said, "I don't understand how to do the stuff she's talking about, I don't know how to do it."
"Well, Impossible, she's your teacher, so if you're lost or confused, you can always ask her to explain it again. Just tell her you don't understand, and she'll work with you until you do. That's what she's there for, you know!"
He shrugged. "I guess."
I waited and then, "Don't you like her?"
"Oh, yes!" he said happily. "I really, really like Mrs. Teacher, she's nice and she's really good at explaining things, and she's so good at science!!"
Science is his favorite class, by the way.
I nodded, then said, "Is she good at helping you?"
"I don't know," he said, shrugging again.
"Doesn't she help you when you ask?"
"I don't know," he said again. "I don't ask her."
"Why not?"
He sighed and looked up at me, looking miserable. "I don't ask her because... what if she won't help me? What if she tells me to go sit down and pay attention? Or what if she sends me to time-out for asking so many questions?"
I blinked and said, "Um... does she do that sort of thing?" I was wondering if I needed to ask for a transfer out of that class, even though I liked Mrs. Teacher very much.
"Well, no... but what if she does? Oblivious Teacher did, all the time!"
*jaw drop* "Wha-a-a-at??"
"I would ask Oblivious Teacher for help, because I didn't understand her explanation in class, and she'd tell me to sit down, or to pay attention better next time and I would understand it. Or she'd put me in time-out, because I was bugging her!" It was alike all his hurt feelings from last year were just pouring out. "And when I complained about the Bully, she'd tell me to stop trying to get attention all the time!" Then he told me about how Oblivious Teacher would move the Bully and it wouldn't work, because she never moved him away from the Impossible Son... she'd just move the Bully around him.
I began to understand why the Impossible Son had felt he couldn't confide in me last year. You see, he'd tell me that he didn't finish his assignment in class, or missed part of the explanation, etc, because the Bully was bugging him, or talking to him, or bumping his desk, or being loud, etc. So I'd talk to Oblivious Teacher and ask if she could move Impossible or Bully so that this wouldn't happen.
The idiot Oblivious Teacher would move Bully... but not away from the Impossible Son. She'd move him... behind Impossible... or in front of Impossible... or to the left and behind Impossible...
There were eight different spots she could move Bully to that were still in reach of and near Impossible Son and she moved the stinker to all of them. It wasn't until after the school counselor ripped Oblivious Teacher a new one that the woman moved Bully to the other side of the room entirely... and put the Impossible Son in a desk right in front of hers.
What I realized after this little talk was that the Impossible Son had lost faith in teachers... PERIOD. He did not think Mrs. Teacher would be any better at helping him than Oblivious Teacher had been. So I told him to give her a try. Give Mrs. Teacher a chance to prove she could be a really awesome teacher. So he did. And when she realized what a big problem he was having, she moved him right next to her desk, so that when he had problems, he could just turn to her and she could work with him. And he's much happier.
Now, let's get to his problem with subtraction. I was working with him yesterday, and realized quickly that he just wasn't getting it, that he just did not understand the concept of subtraction at all! So, I tried taking a different tack, thinking if I could just show him that subtraction is addition backwards... he might get it. So I took the problem we were working on, 12 - 6 = ___. Really easy one, right? So I said, "What plus 6 equals 12?"
The confused look on his face almost made me laugh, so I backed up and said, "What number would you have to add to 6 to get the answer 12?"
He frowned again, and said, "This is subtraction, Mom."
I said, "Yes, but, dude, this is another way to look at it." Then I stopped and said, "Okay, how do you do it?" Because I have found I can help my kids better if I know how they look at it.
He frowned again and said, "Okay, this is how you do subtraction, okay?" Now, there is no possible way I could even come close to replicating his answer, because it was incredibly complex, and he even drew little things, and sounded so logical, but he got the answer completely wrong, "It's 18, but you have to say it's subtraction, so it's not 18, but it is." I felt my mouth fall open and I stared at him, thinking where the hell did you get this??, and then he said, "Because Oblivious Teacher said you had to do this, and this, and then you would get the answer, because this is just what subtraction does!"
WTF????
Talk about buckling down to a grim task! OMG, I thought I was never going to get the point across! I had to literally wade through that incompetent woman's bizarre explanations and shoot every single one of them down before I could explain it to him. I tried using buttons, I tried using his fingers, I even tried Legos!!!
When did he finally get it? When I wrote this on the scratch paper I was using to help him:
12 = 6 + 6 = 12
- 6
6
He stared at it and went, "OHHHHHHHHHH!!!"
And he suddenly got it!
I seriously needed alcohol after that!!! Mass quantities!!!
Then there's his handwriting.
*head-desk*
It's awful, it's messy... but... they only spend 15 to 20 minutes on handwriting in class.
Yes. That's right. 15 to 20 minutes. And the teacher does not have time to walk around and individually correct what they're doing.
The Impossible Son has had to figure out, as best he can, how to write certain letters. I looked at the way he writes his letters and numbers and realized that... he's not writing his letters... he's drawing them.
Huge difference!!
So... I'm working on his handwriting, too, and teaching him to put spaces between his words, and narrow the spacing between the letters of each word. The hard part is getting him to apply what he's learning with me and use it in class, rather than writing really well for me... and then going back to his old way of doing it at school.
Okay, why am I not homeschooling him again??
AAAAAUGH!!! And you know what's worse?? Oblivious Teacher has been promoted. She's teaching FIFTH GRADE!
What the bloody hell are these people thinking???
Okay, if the idiot is still teaching when the Impossible Son reaches fifth grade, and he gets her (and he will, because she's the "science" teacher, and he's really strong in science), I will walk straight to the office (because we find out who the kids' teachers are the Friday before school starts) and tell them I want him transferred. I won't care if they say, "Oh, but he's so good in science, and she's the science teacher!" I'll just say, "I don't care if she's Bill Nye the Science Guy in drag, she's not teaching my son. The woman is a mathematical idiot and a social moron, not to mention sexist, because she prefers teaching girls to teaching boys. I'm not having her teach my child. Transfer my son now, or I'm transferring him to another school!!"
Hopefully, though, she'll be so stressed out after a year of teaching hormonally charged fifth graders (you know, boys start going through puberty right about then), that she'll quit, or decide to teach in an all girls school somewhere else! She's already looking completely frazzled, and it's only October!
I hate this school district!!! *wants to scream*
