kitchen table math, the sequel: sticky note

Friday, October 17, 2008

sticky note

Max got stuck again on a history paper last night.

Max got stuck because he got home at 8 p.m.
Max got stuck because he had a shitload of other homework as well.
Max got stuck because he was so tired.
Max got stuck because history papers are sticky.

Max got home at 8 p.m. because I was doing errands and didn't call to
grill him about his homework.
Max got home at 8 p.m. because he was hanging out with friends.
Max got home at 8 p.m. because his dad was working in his studio and
assumed I'd call him.

Max had a shitload of other homework because he's in high school now.
Max had a shitload of other homework because he's a slow reader, so
even not much homework can amount to a shitload.
Max had a shitload of other homework because he probably saved some
for the last minute—when you do that, even a "small shit" becomes a
"load."

Max was tired because he couldn't get to sleep the night before.
Max was tired because he was bored.
Max was tired because instead of taking a nap, he hung out with his
friends.

History papers are sticky because some CocaCola spilled on them.
History papers are sticky so that even your dogs won't eat them.
History papers are sticky so students will adhere to them without
escape.
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7 comments:

Catherine Johnson said...

This was written by a friend of mine, who is a poet and an artist (and an ex-attorney & ex-reporter).

Her son attends an extremely high-quality private school, so we can all put our heads down on our desks right this minute & sob.

That's what I intend to do.

October 17, 2008 at 10:41 AM
Catherine Johnson said...

When I say "extremely high quality," I mean "extremely high quality" as in "one of the best private schools in the country."

This is the qualifier I've always heard attached.

October 17, 2008 at 10:45 AM
SteveH said...

"one of the best private schools in the country."

My knowledge of a few of these schools is that they are not for the faint of heart. They are also for the "Type A" personality. I wouldn't send my son to one of those schools unless he really wanted to go and knew what to expect. I still probably wouldn't do it unless our high school really went downhill. (Speaking of which, I better get the latest scoop from other parents.)

One of the things I didn't like about the K-8 private school my son was at was that his whole day was programmed, even after school. Everything revolved around the school. He was on track for getting into one of these top prep schools, but we got off the bus, as Ken Kesey would say. We're off the fast track. But he is now doing as much as he would at the private school, except that he gets to choose, and his (and our) lives don't revolve around the school.

I will say, however, that this top prep school does a good job of not letting kids fall through the cracks. A friend of mine who teaches there says that the top students do fine, so they spend more time with those who need help. It definitely was not sink or swim.

"High quality" might refer to image rather than the quality of teaching.

October 17, 2008 at 1:20 PM
Catherine Johnson said...

This school is the opposite; it's progressive ed -- good progressive ed.

Ed knew or knows at least two of the teachers there.

The demographics have had a huge change; when my friend enrolled her son it was still......middle class, I guess.

Now there are children of celebrities attending.

(He started at the school when he was in Kindergarten.)

She put him in the school because she'd taken courses on the Keller plan in college, as I had, and the school's philosophy sounded close to Keller. (Lots of testing, but no grades.)

A friend of mine who teaches there says that the top students do fine, so they spend more time with those who need help. It definitely was not sink or swim.


Oh, that's interesting.

Very encouraging.

I don't know how much I can say while still maintaining privacy.

Basically, private schools here are in a seller's market (I don't know how much that will change -- apparently it's already changed for NYU).

He's being given lots of assignments that are over his head; his tutor is supposed to directly-instruct him through each assignment.

This is a huge flaw with private schools. They don't seem to address learning problems well at all. (I'm not sure whether her son would "meet criteria" for a SPED classification in public schools....it's possible, but he'd be extremely high-end SPED.)

Basically, he's a slow reader, as his mom says, and the school seems to have made made no provisions for teaching a slow reader -- or for helping him become a faster reader.

(I don't know how or if that can be done --- need to check in with the two Liz's.)

October 17, 2008 at 4:43 PM
Catherine Johnson said...

"Hogwarts" is amazing.

C. told me the other day: "Hogwarts is like summer camp with homework."

That seems exactly right. He does a fair amount of work, but it's nowhere near overwhelming, and all of it is things he can do. The work is at his level.

He didn't get any "Deficiencies" last Friday (those are reports from teachers saying your son is deficient in the subject the teacher teaches), so I think that means he's getting all Bs and As, though I don't know that for sure.

The school told us to have our kids write down every grade they get in their planners & then go over the grades with our kids on a regular basis, but I haven't done it.

I plan to get my act together to do it this next quarter.

I wasn't too motivated to track his grades this quarter because we're decompressing from our public school fiasco & I think we all kind of wanted to have less "parental involvement" here at the start.

He's launched now, so I can tell him I need to see his grades every day as a way of teaching him to do daily recording.

October 17, 2008 at 4:51 PM
ElizabethB said...

Some people just read slow, there's not much you can do about that.

Most slow readers are suffering from a degree of sight word problems, an overlearning of phonics with an emphasis on nonsense words, syllables, and spelling will eventually help--but, there is a month or two of even slower reading to plow through while the brain is being retrained.

They can find out which case he is by giving him the MWIA, a slowdown of 10% or greater, or more errors on the phonetic words than the holistic words means phonics will help. A really slow reader may read the lists equally slow but have more errors on the phonetic list--that's the case with one student I'm teaching now, and he's improving!

MWIA here:

http://www.thephonicspage.org/On%20Reading/readinggradeleve.html

October 17, 2008 at 8:57 PM
Tracy W said...

My mother's business partner's daughter was attending a state school. They called her up one day and said "Your daughter has a reading problem". Business partner went "Oh my god!" and immediately hauled kid out of state school and into one of the best private schools in the country (NZ being the country in this case). Two years later the private school calls her up and says "Your daughter has a reading problem".

October 19, 2008 at 12:15 AM

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