Thanks for not yelling

Evidently I yell when I find out he hasn’t been doing his school work. Though I do not want to get mad and/or yell, I get very frustrated when I find out he has not been doing his work. So last night after I asked him about his work and he said he did not have any school work and he went to bed, Pattie went on line and found out he was missing more work. She found on page of math in his back pack. Pattie had helped him last night on an extra credit assignment for science and I had him do some other math work but some how he forgot to mention that he was behind with his math. So this morning I got him up early enough to work on the one assignment Pattie had found. Though I wasn’t happy, I evidently did not yell, because after doing his work (before breakfast) he thanked me for not yelling. Do I yell that much? Evidently he thinks so!! The question still remains!!! Will he get his other work completed at school (as he says he will)? or will I still need to bite my tongue while trying not to yell tonight? Will he remember to actually do his work during recess, while his friends are telling him to come out and play? After all they might be aloud to go outside now that it has warmed up to almost freezing. This global warming is a killer. At any rate, first thing when he gets home this afternoon I will be asking him if he actually did his assignment during recess. I will try not to yell.

Tags: Public education RANT, parenting by Randall
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Trying to see how much time I have to spend helping Alex with his school work as well as going down to the school for meeting with the TEAM. They say that we are a team – Yea – most of the time it seems like they are the team and I am just trying to not get run over.  Them against me. The goal is to get the kids to make progress in their reading and writing, and arithmetic. At least that is what I believe and I foolishly think that the main responsibility should be the teacher – the professional teacher. And yet, it seems that every time I go into these meetings I get the: “What are you doing to help him at home question from the teachers. What am I doing? What are you doing?” Well we are trying to help you help him. Nice! But what are you the professional teaching team doing to teach. Sorry I digress.

At any rate while trying to help Alex stay caught up we get a “Grave Yard” list of things that if he does he will receive a zero. Evidently, the kids have a chance to re-edit and revise, however aside from the fact that Alex is pressed to get the assignments done once – trying to get him to re-do it will not be easy. Also one of the things on the Graveyard list is handing in an assignment late – will he be given extra time to re-edit or will he be given a zero anyway.  I will be headed to the grave yard trying to keep up with this crap!!

So Pattie e-mailed the principal and he actually called back (twice). I do appreciate his effort to keep up with us. However,

 I am not looking forward to another meeting with another teacher.

Tags: Public education RANT, parenting by Randall
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the family

This is from last summer at Glenwood Springs.   just wanted to have some fun with these images.

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Alex had a long two week graphing project for math. 

I spent a little time the first week getting him started with some data sheets so he could get a good start.   Not keeping on him about it he slowed down to the point that Thanksgiving weekend had to be spent working on his project.  Pattie and I helped him a lot.  I think we made him work on it to the point that he was learning and understanding the basic idea of  the various graphs (some I had never seen before).    At times we had some high tempers as I tried to get him to be neater to try harder to care more.   I would get upset with him and he would get upset with me but we worked through it.  I just do not wont him to give up and not try.  I want him to see how good it feels to do a good job and to see how good it feels to learn and understand something new.   Later he thanked me for helping and he told me some of his friends at school do not get any help  from their parents at all. 

This brings up the question – do I help him too much with his home work?  

Tags: Alex, Public education RANT, parenting by Randall
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