[quote=DSchrute] In Kindergarten, are they just happy you made it through the day without peeing your pants or what? Pretty much. The idea is to get the kid to be ok being away from Mommy and home and to thing that learning is fun. My wife is ready to drop the hammer on her at the first sign she's slacking off. Puhleeeze. Tell your wife to put away the hammer for another year or two. She'll do more harm than good by making your child feel pressured at so young an age.

I agree, but do you guys take parenting critism from your husbands?

She just got back from the class Valentine's Day Party, and said that they definately grade on the curve, as there were kids that couldn't find their desk, let alone do their work. She said it was a real eye-opener.

Yes, I do take criticism from my husband. But we're both first borns and can be quite adament.

Side bar: How birth order affects individuals, kids, families, etc. is a very interesting topic. Once you get into it a bit, you'll have one of Oprah's ah-ha moments, I guarantee it.

God no! Maybe we're just setting you up. Maybe not? Mu, hu, ha, ha, ha...

The problem is, since she's our first in school, we have nothing to go on. The teacher will check over the worksheets and make some marks but nothing specific. Then we get this detailed three-page report card with a percentage grade taken-out two places....Where did that come from?

Then you have the babies on TV that can read before they can talk, and who knows whether we're doing things right.

I found it really funny (funny as in ironic) that this happened to my wife over the weekend. She's a high school english teacher, and it happened in one of her grad school classes.

She got a 0/100 on a project because:
1. Professor said to use Times New Roman or something similar. She used the default font in the new version of Word.

2. Professor said she did not cite her references correctly. The professor recommends them using a university database for periodicals - and in the database there is a link that will drop the citation into your paper automatically.

She complained, and cited the reasons she thought it was ridiculous... I think she had to change the font, but she did get full credit for it eventually.

Formatting is serious business in the English dept.

DSchrute: take a deep breath and relax If you don't understand the grading system...call the teacher and ask...at your daughter's age, teachers are looking to develop not only academic skills that will be the foundation for the rest of elementary school...but social skills..and THOSE are sometimes much more important. The kids are learning to share, express themselves, and work toward common goals.

Babies that can read?? OK, maybe, I'm still not convinced that it is an indicator of future school success. Much of that depends on a kid that likes and enjoys school...if there is too much stress and pressure....no kid will do well.

Childhood is only a brief moment in life...embrace it, enjoy it with your daughter...and you'll both be learning a lot.

DSchrute: Also the parent of a kindergartener. She is my one and only kid. We get report cards in kindergarten 4 times a year. The first is sent out and all students' parents have a parent-teacher conference. At this conference we talk about the report card and what each thing means, so we understood for the whole year. That was in October. We were told that if she has other issues, the teacher will schedule more conferences. To date there has been nothing more needed.

I guess my point is, to call or email the teacher. Ask the teacher what the drop in grades means.

I think you are doing a fine job, but that communication from the school, as it is lacking, is leaving you feeling like you are spinning your wheels. FWIW - my kid's low report card scores were (on a 4 point scale) two 3's for: 1. Using her time wisely, and 2. Talking to others during her work time. What can I say, she has her mother's gift of gab!!

I know I'm a little late in the game here, but I think one thing you have to keep in mind is to always remind your child to respect the teacher. My son's 4th grade teacher was HARSH... he lived in such fear of her, but at one point she actually gave them the wrong answer on a math question and I told him that he had to tell her. The entire class needed to know that the answer wasn't correct. He told her, she apologized to the class for the misdirection and life went on. My son learned that everyone makes mistakes, even teachers, but you still approach their authority with respect-even when you're correcting them!

<---- mean teacher

When I was teaching college courses a few years back, I had the "pleasure" of teaching "Intro to Word" as well as "Basic Writing Skills". Many of my students were adults going back to school so we really started from scratch with everything.

For the final big assignment for the "Intro to Word" class, I wanted to make sure they all understood and remembered all the things we covered during the course. Spacing, paragraphs, spell-check, margins, font size, font formatting, references, cover page, etc. Those are NECESSITIES as you progress through college and write papers.

I wanted to make the assignment easy so that they could just focus on the Word-related tasks as opposed to the subject, so I told everyone (and it was in the syllabus) that the topic is "My Dream Vacation." All they had to do was describe their dream vacation in 4-5 pages and do a little bit of research on it (so they had references to cite).

I tried really hard not to take too many points away for horrible grammar mistakes and such, since my job was to teach them how to use Word and how to write papers. But one girl got a 0 - total fail. Although she used the proper format, had a nice writing style, cited everything correctly - I failed her on that particular assignment. Why? She turned in a paper titled "Must Love Dogs - Why I Dream of Being a Veterinarian".

All fine and dandy but that was NOT the assignment. For all I know, she wrote that for another class and just turned in an additional copy for my class trying to avoid doing any work. Too bad for her, I gave her a big fat zero and wrote right on top "Didn't follow instructions - topic not approved". LMAO

She was mad and complained ("but the point was to show that I know how to put together a proper paper!") but the chair of my department supported my decision. She didn't fail the class, but she ended up with a B instead of an A she would have likely received.

Didn't follow directions = FAIL.

Was she on SNL Celebrity Jeopardy alongside Sean Connery?

We've been through this in our family and are equally frustrated. While we agree that learning to follow instructions and being accountable are important, we also think that a child should be graded on the substance of the subject matter...for example, does the child know the math? Schools should offer a separate class for time management and following directions. If my son earns an F there and an A in math, at least that would be an honest reflection of what he knows.

If the purpose of the paper was to demonstrate the students' knowledge of Word, why did the topic matter?

Because the purpose of all the introductory courses is to teach the students how to get used to college life - and following directions is something they have to learn to do. If I give them an assignment, they should not be allowed to turn in an assignment they already wrote for another class!

That would be like giving them a bunch of mathematical proofs to solve for geometry class and have them turn in a bunch of solved algebra problems. Sure, they know math, but they didn't do what I asked them to do.



LMAO I'll always remember the title of her paper because of the movie. Which, I'm sure, is the origin of the paper's title.

intro to word should not be a college course...talk about milk your students for tuition

Oh, I agree 100%! I was less than thrilled my first semester of teaching when I got saddled with "Intro to Windows", "Intro to Word" and "Intro to the WWW"

But those were each half-semester courses paired together and they were not required. However, many of the students who took them really needed them - I had one lady in the class who had no idea how to even turn a computer on, and several people on the first day did not know how to do the "control+alt+delete" to get it started...

That college caters to a lot of working adults who are going back to school. I had a few retirees in my class too who decided to get a college degree to make their families proud. It was cool.

And I did get a few young kids in there too, right out of high school. They only took those "intro" classes because they were easy and guaranteed A's for them. That girl who didn't follow directions fell into that category. So I don't feel bad for her. LOL

When I was at Miami U they had all incoming freshman take a computer competency test online. If you didn't pass the test you had to take a class like that^^^.

but I thought they were considered remedial courses and didn't count toward credit or GPA...

Maybe she was just vocab challenged and thought it said "My Dream VOCATION"---in which case you were just WRONG!! (jk.....)

LMAO, good point! See, she should have used THAT reasoning!

You're right... I don't think they did.

THAT, my friend, came from No Child Left Behind and accountability and all that jazz. I think it's ridiculous to have numeric grades in elementary school myself. And my first grader is already practicing in school to take the state profiencency test, which starts in 3rd grade. SIGH. Teaching to the test, anyone?!

RE: those babies that can 'read'. I really don't think they learn to read. I think they learn to recognize certain words and the correct response, but actually reading? No. Reading involves comprehension and ability to formulate ideas from the material presented. They're more like Pavlov's dogs.

In this particular instance, I think letting your child be a "victim" now will help save him from being a professional "victim" later (like 75% of the current U.S. population).

I still remember the DROP I had to protest for my daughter, and here's how it happened.

School sends us a letter strongly encouraging us to attend the student/parent orientation that took place about two weeks before the start of school. The main "selling" point, we would recieve her class schedule at the end of the day instead of having to wait until first day of school

I had to request the day off and boss was not happy and thought it was a frivolous request.

My daughter and I attend and go through a series overcrowded orientation sessions and waited in a long, long line to get the schedule.

Fine.

First day of class, my daughter reports to Homeroom, and the Homeroom teacher asks if any of the students did NOT attend orientation. He gave those students their schedule.

So my daughter goes about her day but when she gets to math class, her name is not on the roster. She shows the schedule to the teacher who tells her she has to speak with her counselor. So when class is over, she goes to the office but her counselor is not available. She leaves a request for appointment and indicates there seems to be a problem with the registration for her math class.

Counselor doesn't get back to her for three days. Meanwhile, daughter shows up for the class on her schedule. Turns out, her schedule was CHANGED AFTER THE ORIENTATION, and she did not receive the schedule because the Homeroom teacher was not told to give ALL of the kids their schedule.

Meanwhile, her REAL math teacher marks her dropped for not showing up for class and refused to re-admit.

It took some heated discussions with the school to get her re-admitted. Without that math class, she would not have been able to graduate.

And yes, the school acted like it was our fault. That's what we got for attending their "Orientation" day.

Bleh!

P.S. The school was one of those vaunted Charter Schools - the ones that were supposed to be able to cut out the bureaucracy of LA Unified.