This week had so much that seems applicable to my own life that it is hard to know where to start.
Schooling is on my mind a lot these days - for my kids I mean. My daughter has been going to a Montessori Preschool for 2 years and I have been so happy with her learning progress and the way they approach teaching. She has been very happy in the school too. Coming into Kindergarten I felt she needed more to occupy her time, but I didn't want to take her out of her final year at this school (it is only Preschool and Kindergarten - and Montessori methods tend to deal in sets of 3 years). A very good friend is the Kindergarten teacher in our public school district. So I ended up talking to them about having my daughter go there in the morning (though it is a full time program) and to the Montessori in the afternoon. So I have lately been in a position to compare the two programs. Mainly what I have to say is AAARRGGGGHHHHHHH... I would dearly love to keep my daughter in Montessori for her entire elementary school education, but costs are prohibitive. However when I look at what she is getting at the public school I just want to cry. It makes me feel like I am selling her future down the river. There are just too many kids for one teacher, and many of the kids are not even at a Kindergarten level. My daughter has been reading simple books for the better part of the last year, but now she is spending her time at school learning the alphabet. The public school system has so many parameters that it cannot meet the needs of most kids and tends to serve the kids who are struggling more than anyone else. I don't know how to fix this or if it is even possible to fix it.. But it was really helpful to read about elementary education in this section of our reading. I just wish there was a magic answer in the pages of our textbook!
One other thing that I thought about as I was reading the section on reading comprehension was this email I received a while ago. Probably everyone has seen it, it surely was doing the rounds.. It involves reading a sentence and counting a certain letter. Here is a link to the test.. Anyway, I was amazed at the results of the test and wondered if it had something to do with reading the actual words - so I asked my daughter who is only just learning to read to do the test, but despite being unable to read half the words, she still had the same results with the test... I thought that was interesting anyway.. Not sure what it means!
I registered my oldest daughter for kindergarten, (this was a few years ago!) in Bellingham. About winter quarter our family decided to take an extended vacation, three months, in Mexico. When I approached the kindergarten teacher about this she absolutely flipped out. How would my daughter ever keep up? Didn't I know what risk I was putting her at for not learning her numbers? I pulled my daughter out anyway and we hit the road for three months. In that time, not only did my daughter's reading level advance to almost FORTH grade, she also learned a lot of Spanish and how to convert dollars to pesos, along with many wonderful real life experiences, (those bug jump?!) The school system has it's rules, but I don't feel it's always in our kid's best interest to follow them.
ReplyDeleteThe public school system is an absolute JOKE! I wish I had the money to be able and put my daughter into a private school with lower child/teacher ratios, advanced activities for the children who excel, and most of all the respect factor. We as parents, all have standards for our children while other parents have different standards for their own children (or NONE at all). I believe not only do the teachers influence our children to do good and be good, but classmates have the bigger impact (some with the do bad, be bad mentality) as they have no guidence at home! What happened to the good ol' days when teachers actually had a passion for encouraging ALL children to learn, not just the ones who are struggaling with everyday grade level work? Geeezzzz, I don't think their is an answer!
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