Jumbo Crayons

[CurlyLocks]

Remind me, would you? What did that one taste like?

Rapscallion

It had a little more depth of taste than the Sky Blue, but not quite as much as the Cerulean.

[Reyneth]

(If he's actually having trouble with the math, then yes, auntie should be sitting down with him and helping him figure it out with blocks or number lines or venn diagrams or whatever works. But if he's not having trouble, he's better off in the garden!)

But if he's not having trouble with the skills, the homework shouldn't hardly take any time at all. My homework was done correctly and quickly and left me plenty of time for other things - including your ideal of being out in the garden. Heck, I prefered doing homework to weeding.

The kids that often NEED the extra practice are often ones without involved parents. Homework is a necessary evil - and I say again that if as a parent you try to overrule the teacher for something as basic as doing essential homework it will cause your child problems in school.

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

Remind me, would you? What did that one taste like?

Rapscallion

Like all the others-plain and waxy.

I'm more partial to the scented ones. Cherry and banana and chocolate, yum! The challenge was to be discreet and avoid looking like Ralph Wiggum.

[Tria]

Night Angel isn't kidding. If you get stuck with one of these teachers (and sadly, there are more and more of them every year), you are DOOMED unless you become a lemming parent and jump off the cliff when the nice teacher lady tells you to.

And pray that you NEVER end up with your kid and the teacher's kid in the same class.... The teacher's kid will beat your kid up and the teacher will send your kid to the principal's office for crying and screaming.... *End flashback*

[Reyneth]

And pray that you NEVER end up with your kid and the teacher's kid in the same class.... The teacher's kid will beat your kid up and the teacher will send your kid to the principal's office for crying and screaming.... *End flashback*

I am a teacher's kid. If I put *one foot* out of line I heard about it at school and then at home. My mom knew if I misbehaved in any way before I even did it. So your situation isn't always the case, and I'm wondering why the teacher was able to have her child in her class - that should never happen unless it is the only class.

[Tria]

She was a micro preemie and was not even crawling at 18 months.

Micro preemie?

[FormerCallingCardRep]

A Preemie born under 3 lbs 8 oz. Rae weighed 3 labs and dropped down to 2 lbs 10 oz

[Noelegy]

I am a teacher's kid. If I put *one foot* out of line I heard about it at school and then at home. My mom knew if I misbehaved in any way before I even did it. So your situation isn't always the case, and I'm wondering why the teacher was able to have her child in her class - that should never happen unless it is the only class.

OMG...your "teacher's kid" experience is much closer to mine than the OP's. I didn't have my mom for English class, but I did have her for the gifted & talented class. I think if she hadn't been my mom, I'd actually have enjoyed the class and got something of a challenge out of it. As it was, half the eighth grade was sure I was getting away with murder, the other half thought I was a teacher's pet. I spent the eighth grade in a misery of attempted averageness.

And people who didn't like her as a teacher found me an easy target. In PE one day, a girl threw a basketball so hard at me that she nearly broke two of my fingers. When my mom saw my black and blue hand that night, she asked me what happened. I told her, and she got a funny look on her face. Turned out she'd caught that same girl cheating on a test that morning.

[reformedwaitress]

Oh my good GOD did I hate school growing up! My mother was a teacher and I had an older sister. I was reading on a fourth grade level when I was 5. I could do algebra when I was 6. I was BORED OUT OF MY MIND in elementary and middle school because the schools had to teach to the lowest common denominator. I had a few teachers that hated me because I would be reading in their class but ask me a question – ANY question – that they had taught? I would have the answer without really thinking. School was easy and it bored the crap out of me.

High school was a little better academic wise because we had honors and AP classes. I was in Junior math classes as a Freshman. That math teacher hated me because she had to change her policies because of me.

See, my head is a calculator. I hate math, but I’m really really good at it. Numbers and such just make sense to me. So I could look at a problem and tell you the answer. The answer would be right but I wouldn’t be able to necessarily tell you how I got there. My head would combine 4 or 5 “steps” into one and I couldn’t separate them.

Well, this teacher wouldn’t accept that. She failed me on my first test when NONE of the answers were wrong – purely because I didn’t show my work. Her defense? She said I must have been cheating. So I went to the principal. And in the principal’s office after school that day this teacher gave me problem after problem and, even though there was no one there for me to cheat on, I, of course, got every single one right. So the principal made a new rule that teachers could NOT require us to show our work.

That teacher was out to get me after that.

But yeah. I hated school. They really need to do something, because it’s just getting worse. That’s why so many kids are “ADD” — bet you a hundred bucks at LEAST half of them are just bored out of their minds.

(sorry about the rant -- it's one of my soap boxes )

[Rahmota]

I'll agree that a real world education with attentive parents can exceed what a lot of schools can do. Thanks to the teaching for th test attitudes and lack of budget and time in many schools. I am so glad that my kid's school is not that bad.

I was one of those who got bored with the "reading" class in school as I was reading at the high school senior level by 6th grade and collegiate level in freshman year. Memory retention was so good that I actually had to stand up and take a oral pop quiz in front of everyone in study hall when the teacher caught me doodling in my notebook D&D notes. When I aced the entire subject we where supposed to be reading in front of everyone he didnt try that again.

reformed waitress: I'll agree about the ADD idea of yours.

As for the teacher's kid problem. My school (same one the kids go to) is small enough that the teacher's kid sometimes wind up in the same class. If they have one of that age though.

[zzapp the witch]

When they gave us those standardized national tests when I was in High School, I tested at the top 3% of the NATION. And I was flunking High School. I finally went to the Community College and took my GED, then went back for my drop slip. Mom told me that if she had known that getting my GED was that easy, she would have let me take it in 10th grade so my parents could get me on to college.

I was just one of those kids that didn't do their work cause they already knew the lesson, I read ahead in Literature, I knew my history cause my dad's a buff, and I still use all the math skills I ever learned (except Trig) at least weekly.

The TAG (Talented and Gifted) program was a joke, it just singled me out and the other kids were meaner to me.

My dad used to go to the school and ask them, "How is it that all these tests say my daughter is so smart, and she gets A's on all of her class tests, and she's flunking High School??"

"Well, she needs to do her homework. We grade on homework."

I had a frikkin job all through High School and was saving up for college. The kids that could barely read and write were getting A's and B's simply because they were turning in their homework, even if the answers were wrong. Please, someone explain the logic in that to me?

[Miss Maple Leaf]

I always finished assignments early in school and would spend the rest of my classes reading. None of my teachers ever had a problem with that (in fact, they thought it was great) until my eighth grade Math teacher.

During that year she taught the class Algebra, which I found very easy and breezed right through. Most days I even had my assigned homework done during class as well.
For some reason though, she didn't like the fact that I read in class and told me to stop one day. She said that I was "distracting the other students" when all I was doing was quietly reading a book. None of the other kids even took any notice of me.
Well, since she was the teacher I had to listen to her, so I stopped reading and just sat there staring at the chalkboard, bored out of my mind.

When I got home I told my mother about it and she agreed to talk to the teacher about it at the next Parent-Teacher meeting. I'm not sure what my mother said to her, but the teacher no longer bothered me about reading in class.

I'd still love to know what the heck the teacher expected of me. Was I supposed to dumb myself down so that I went at the same speed as everyone else? Was being great at math not allowed in her class? Maybe she felt that an eighth-grader shouldn't have been so good at Algebra, and was angry at the fact that I was?

[BookstoreEscapee]

The kids that could barely read and write were getting A's and B's simply because they were turning in their homework, even if the answers were wrong. Please, someone explain the logic in that to me?

OK, homework counted and we lost points for not doing it, but we still had to get the answers right!

[Pezzle]

I think the differences between college and high school are appalling as well. Merely becuase of the restrictions high school offers merely a year or two before college. They're whining about writing on sensitive topics like suicide and marijuana legalization, where as a year later in college i'm writing 10 page reports on Bondage and Domination for A's Go figure that one out.

[CreepyCarrie]

I also hated school growing up. I remember getting in trouble in first grade because I didn't eat all of my Cup Noodles at lunch. My teacher yelled at me about how kids were starving in Ethiopia and that I was a horrible horrible child for not being able to finish my lunch. Later that same day she flat out refused to work with me on my reading (each student usually got a 5 minute session each day to work on reading aloud) because "I don't want to hear from people who don't eat all their food." I swear on the eyeballs of my dog, that's what she said

Later on, in 5th grade art, we were supposed to draw a picture of how we see ourselves. Now, in 5th grade I was big into The Addams Family. Obsessed, would probably be the word we're looking for. So anyhoo, I drew a picture of myself as Wednesday Addams, complete with the Addams mansion in the background and everything. I was proud of it. Unfortunately the art teacher disagreed because I got points taken off for my picture being "Too unconventional." Too unconventional my butt...she was just mad because I didn't use every nauseatingly bright color in the crayon box.

I was always bored in "reading class" also. I was reading before I ever started school thanks to my mom being determined that I would read early.