Education mom

In the first part of this two-part series, I wrote from the perspective of an administrator who honors parent/guardian requests for specific teachers. For the second part of this two-part series, I’ll share the perspective of an administrator who does not accept parent/guardian requests for specific teachers. There are a number of valid reasons for not allowing this sort of teacher selection to take place.

1. Self-selection makes it nearly impossible to create balanced classes. In other words, a class could end up with 5 boys/25 girls or 10 students with special needs or 15 students who are English language learners. When parents make specific requests and they are all honored, it leaves little room for school officials to balance the classes into a heterogeneous mix as needed.

2. I’m a firm believer that perception is reality and as such, many a teacher has been chosen (for better or for worse) based on general public perception and reputation. The problem with this type of selection process is not every good teacher is a good teacher for each child. Don’t just go by word of mouth as a teacher’s personality/style may not fit your child’s.

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Have you ever wondered: how are students placed in classes? How are they separated? What are the factors that are involved? Do the teachers do it or does the principal do it? Can I as a parent have some say in the matter? What about new students?

In all likelihood, your child’s school has a process just like every one of the schools where I’ve worked. At the first school where I worked as a teacher, there were 5 grade-level teachers. At this school, the teachers did the bulk of the work in sorting the students into classes for the following school year.

In my opinion, teachers are best equipped to do placements (even as they may not be satisfied with the class sizes) as they know the students within the school setting and usually know their teaching colleagues in the next grade level.

Starting in May, we completed a grouping card for each student in our class. These were color-coded (pink for girls and blue for boys–yes gender-stereotyped colors, but simple for everyone to recognize), 4×6 index cards that included information such as: overall ability level, special needs (ie. Special Education, Gifted, or ELL–English Language Learner), allergies, wears glasses, overall behavior, degree of parent involvement, names of other students from whom to be separated or placed with together, special interests/talents, and space for the current teacher to write any additional information that may be helpful to the next teacher.

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Have you ever wondered, “Whatever happened to field trips? Do kids still go on field trips?”

When I was a teacher a long time ago, we took our third-grade students on several field trips throughout the year. From what I can recall, there were around 5 total, including a big day trip to downtown Chicago, which was the culminating trip for our Chicago unit. (At the time, the history of Chicago was a required part of the curriculum in Illinois.)

This field trip was a lot of fun because we took the kids to the Sears Tower (now, sadly, called the Willis Tower) and a bus tour of the city. Although as a teacher I wasn’t a big fan of field trips, simply because they are hectic, I felt they were a value-add to the kids’ learning experience.

The fellow grade level teachers and I planned the field trips (where to go and when) together and then ran it past our principal for approval, almost always without any objection. Since our school district was in a fairly affluent area, there typically weren’t any issues with field trip cost or frequency.

Nowadays, field trips are not as often nor as common. There are a few reasons that come to mind:

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The past few days have been busy due to the holiday and because as of late, I have been engrossed in watching Korean dramas that stream for free on Netflix. Watching Korean dramas got me thinking, how important is it to learn a second language? Or maybe more appropriately, I should say how important it is to learn a second language.

Thirty-some odd years ago when I was a native Korean speaker entering the school system in the U.S., there was no value-add for knowing Korean or any other foreign/world language.

In fact, my school teachers discouraged my parents from continuing our Korean language development and insisted that we solely speak English in order to help my English language skills to develop quicker. Back then, it made all the sense in the world.

We lived in the U.S. and therefore, we should speak English. Nonetheless, my parents were relentless in their belief that although we lived in the U.S., we were still Korean and should learn the Korean language and embrace Korean culture. There was no ESL (English as a Second Language) program at our school so I learned English through the proven teaching method called “sink or swim”. (Forgive my sarcasm. )

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One of the toughest questions that parents ask me is, “Should I hold my child back in the same grade?”

As such, I’ve given this topic a lot of thought, and the various professional experiences I’ve had with students and parents/guardians helped shape my views on holding kids back a grade.

One of the books in the reading program that I used as a teacher is called The Flunking of Joshua T. Bates.

At first, I wasn’t sure this was a good book to read since it was about…well…the flunking of Joshua T. Bates. Joshua is a student who finds out that he has to repeat third grade.

Despite the less-than-happy theme of this book, it turns out to be a genuine story about the struggles of repeating a grade and the success this student finds with the help of his caring teacher.

Reminiscing about this book and the school year rapidly coming to a close got me thinking about all the decisions that have to be made towards the end of the year. Perhaps the class since is too big in the eyes of a parent, maybe there are other considerations.

Helping a parent make the final determination about whether or not to retain a student in the same grade is probably the least enjoyable responsibility as a principal.

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Modern Mom Blogger, Andrea Benton, posted an article titled Why Parents Should Pay More for Educational Apps. While it’s probably not the best lead-in title for someone like me (read: frugal), it still piqued my interest so I read on. In her post, Ms. Benton cites three main points:

1) Apps cost money to make.

2) Think of apps as a long-term investment.

3) The “One and done” mentality meaning, once our kids have played them they move on to something else

Here’s what I would add in support of Ms. Benton’s position as you consider how much an iPad app for kids is worth:

4) The old saying, “You get what you pay for”, definitely holds true in the case of apps. The difference between a $1.99 app and a free one is often noticeable. And typically the difference between a $9.99 app and a $1.99 app is even greater.

5) Install the AppShopper for Apple products. It costs $.99, which you will easily earn back with your first discounted app purchase, and sometimes it’s free!

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In order to bring some meaningful traffic to my blog, I have been participating in online mom communities like Mamapedia and Modern Mom. It’s fascinating to me the questions that people have about all sorts of topics. Today, one such question got my attention:

“What is the proper etiquette for gift-giving? Do you give gifts for a 5th-grade graduation party?”

As an educator (and a mom), I’m a big believer in celebrating accomplishments: earning a good grade on a long-term project, making the honor roll, placing first in the spelling bee, earning a letter in a sport, being chosen to design the cover of the yearbook, so on and so forth.

However, I am having a hard time with all of the various graduation celebrations these days. Let’s just hope that soon the reduction of class sizes will become reality. That’s more important, wouldn’t you agree?

Pre-school, Kindergarten, Fifth grade, Eighth grade, High School, College, and beyond. It’s overkill. I know for some kids, maybe Eighth grade is as far as they will get, and I’ve worked at schools like that, but is this really what the U.S. education system has come to that we now celebrate the completion of Fifth grade? Fifth grade. Long ago when I was a kid, we didn’t graduate from Fifth grade. We completed it and then moved on to Sixth grade. There was no hoopla.

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My kids are 5 and 2.5 years old, and I am a chronic sufferer of momnesia. If you’re a mom, you may know all too well what I’m referring to. And the more kids you have the stronger your momnesia. I go downstairs to the kitchen and stare at the cabinets wondering for what reason did I come downstairs.

I come back from the grocery store with a bag full of items, only to realize that I forgot to get milk, which was the main reason I went to the store. I spend 30 minutes looking for my sunglasses only to find that they were perched on my head the entire time, and it’s my 2.5-year old who points that out to me.

Momnesia

One time I asked my mother-in-law if My Man (who is now 41) was a good baby. She says she doesn’t remember. I say, she has momnesia…or she doesn’t want to tell me because he was probably the devil’s spawn.

Either way, moms who have older kids often tell me that they don’t remember what their kids were like as babies and toddlers or they gush about how lovely their child was as a baby. That’s called MSM (mom’s selective memory). It’s another disorder common to moms.

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