This afternoon I dropped off a letter to the principal, complaining about a lunch monitor's discipline strategy. His response to a minor squabble: take away Joe's recess and ignore the--
--oops. Hit publish accidentally instead of saving as a draft. Here's the bullet point version of what was a much longer post in my head:
- If you keep a kindergarten student inside sitting still all day, you will have one squirrelly kid.
- If the goal of your discipline strategy is to encourage better behavior, you shouldn't do something that will set a kid up for further behavior problems later.
- If two kids are involved in a brief tussle (a kid grabbed Joe's shirt and Joe tried to pull away while he held on), it is unjust and counterproductive to take away recess for the kid who responded (while nothing happens to the kid who initiated).
- To someone with Seasonal Affective Disorder, taking away a kid's chance to play in the sun during the dreariest part of the year seems entirely unreasonable.
But:
- I have major baggage about disagreeing with people at the school.
- Last year I had enormous angst about telling Marty's first-grade teacher that we needed to modify a homework assignment because it was making Marty cry every night.
- First-graders shouldn't cry over their homework.
- That's for grad students only.
- And especially not (back to first-graders here) their reading homework, when I think the major goal of first grade should be to foster a love of reading.
- And FOR THE LOVE OF PETE not reading homework written by people who hadn't read the book. For real. Worksheet questions with no answer, clearly cranked out by someone skimming through without paying attention.
- But I still feel a little defensive about suggesting an alternate plan, esp. since the teacher wasn't happy about it. Better for Marty to stick with the program and cry over badly written questions, I guess?
- Maybe sometime I will post about first grade, because that teacher drove me a little nuts. For instance: if you have a left-handed kid in your class who isn't cutting neatly, do you think maybe it is prudent to see if he does better with left-handed scissors before you send home a note saying, "Marty needs to work on his cutting skills!"? For the record, he cuts just fine with left-handed scissors.
And:
- I have been thinking all year about the complicated question of educating kids.
- I'm not thrilled with public school.
- We're thinking about our parish school, but Alex says he doesn't want to go (too much homework, according to the boys in his Webelo den) and he's being pretty noisy about it.
- He doesn't, obviously, get to decide but he knows how to make a decision complicated.
- There's so much that's good about homeschooling.
- Except for the exhausting parts.
- The boys, Alex especially, reminisce fondly about homeschooling.
- But I just don't think I can juggle being ABD and homeschooling without burning myself right out.
- So I don't know what to do, which is why I meant to save this as a draft.
- But it's a safe bet that it would never have left my draft folder.
- Ergo, bullets.
I just invited eight people to come with their children and have cake and coffee. This means I should go make a cake.
ETA: My note to the principal wasn't "How dare they take away recess from my precious angel son!" Joe needed a better reaction to the other kid, and I know the lunch monitor has a tough job. I wrote the letter because this is the second time Joe has lost his entire recess over what seems to me like a minor infraction. This is a strategy that will only make life harder for his teacher in the afternoon: Joe is better at sitting still and being quiet if he has some time to run around outside.
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