There’s been some excellent commentary about education in the blogosphere in the past week. Harry writes about the problems with parent-teacher homework agreements. Lisa follows up on our discussion and writes about methods for parents to become more involved in their school, with a comment from me. BitchPhD writes that her son’s teacher steps over the line and involves herself in family business. The comments on her post were also interesting as some felt that school wasn’t challenging enough and others thought there was too much pressure on kids. Tim Burke sees an underlying political agenda in the debates about homework. And Professing Mama found her parent-teacher conference a wonderful experience.
With Jonah is now in 2nd grade, I’ve had three years of experiencing public schools from a parent perspective. After years of analyzing abstract studies and debating political theory around education, here I am in the middle of it as a participant. Rude awakening.
Two separate issues keep coming up around here: challenging kids and involving parents.
As we were waiting for the elementary school to pull up last week, Helen strolled up to retrieve her younger sister from the bus. Helen is the big girl of the block, a freshman in high school. Tall, pretty, and smart. We’re all proud of her for winning the big middle school award last year and take it as a matter of pride that she lives on our block. “How’s it going, Helen?” “OK, except for homework.” She explained that she spends six hours on homework every night, because she’s in the honors classes. Her mom later told me that her guidance counselor told her that she shouldn’t be friends with non-honor student kids, because they will drag her down.
A couple of weeks ago, Jonah told me that his teacher yelled at him for going ahead in his math workbook. I had been meaning to set up a meeting with his teacher anyway, but that little bit of information pushed me to get things going.
Ms. W. turned out to be warmer than I thought she was going to be, though she definitely had a strong perspective on her role as a teacher. She explained that she couldn’t have kids go ahead because she said that sometimes kids think that they know what they’re doing and they really don’t. That made sense to me. She couldn’t let kids do separate work, because she really had to make sure that they knew the basics to pass the big statewide test in the spring. She didn’t think that kids should get much homework in second grade because they will be getting so much later in their school career.
In short, Jonah wasn’t going to get challenged in this class. That might have bothered me a couple of years ago, but I’ve reduced my expectations. Jonah has a lot of other lessons to learn like how to keep his silliness in check and how to write neatly. If the school does that, that’s a good thing, too. Besides, he’ll be that kid with 6 hours of homework in a few years, so we’ll give him a few more years to coast. We’ll challenge him in our own unstructured, random way at home. If he wants more math work, then we’ll do more of that here. I just have to keep tabs on what goes on in school and make up for deficits at home.
The biggest problem that I have with the public schools system is their disdain for parents. Since the face of the parent at the school is usually female, ultimately it feels a whole lot like sexism to me. Parents should have more control over their schools. More say in the day to day operation. More opportunities to witness their kids in action, especially in the younger grades. Arrangement also need to consider the vast number of families with two full-time employed parents. Education schools need to offer classes on parent-teacher partnerships. Parents are the ultimate guardians of their kids, and they shouldn’t be shut out of the process. Those that afford it are going to opt out.
Apt. 11d 
So, what is Jonah supposed to do with his free time in school? I’m assuming that part of the reason he was working ahead in math is because he finished the assigned work before the alloted time was up.
This really spoke to me:
“I just have to keep tabs on what goes on in school and make up for deficits at home.”
Because this is exactly what I did with my daughter. Except then we hit the homework wall. The child was spending 6 hours in school, two or three hours doing homework and then another hour or so doing mommy homework. Even though she had nine hours of work given out by the school a day, there were still deficits that I had to cover. Little things like doing division for three days in a row and then never coming back to it. Even though she got it during that time, there was never any more practice and she quickly lost the skill. This happened in math over and over again.
And so, slowly, we moved toward the idea of homeschooling. I am not one of these people who think that public schools are evil. My daughter loved going to school, and she had some wonderful teachers while she was there. She was a straight A student her last year, and an above average student her entire career. But she also loves being homeschooled. She has really taken to heart the idea that she can take responsibility for her own education. And we can accomplish in four hours what in school she was accomplishing in six and a half or more with homework.
LikeLike
“The biggest problem that I have with the public schools system is their disdain for parents. Since the face of the parent at the school is usually female, ultimately it feels a whole lot like sexism to me.”
Heh. I think this is one of the great things about public schools.
Well, I’m half-joking. My dad was a public school teacher, and we learned that parents are mainly the enemy. In our house, it was understood that parents who intervened in school were usually trying to get special privileges and exceptions for their children or were in denial about their children’s problems. Now, I know that’s not entirely true, but those were the cases we heard about.
But I also read Wendy Mogel’s “Blessing of a Skinned Knee” a year ago, and it has really made an impact on me, particularly in terms of how I think about how *overly* involved parents can be in their children’s lives to the point that the children never learn independence, self-reliance, and resilience.
And I’m facing a conflict over that right now. I’m concerned about some things regarding my second grade daughter. First, I should explain that due to a town funding issue, one of the elementary schools was closed this year, and though my daughter’s class had 15 students last year, this year it has 26 students to accommodate children from the school that was closed.
Second, she seems to have been seated next to a student who has a lot of behavioral/learning problems, based on what she says. And it seems she has been asked to help the student with his work. I can understand this on so many levels, but on the other, I’m concerned because her performance is suffering. Whereas in the past she wrote slowly and carefully, now I notice her writing seems more rushed and messy. She doesn’t finish or pay attention to questions at the bottom of the page of her work. And she isn’t reading in school as much as she used to.
I went to my sister (who’s currently teaching preschool but is getting her masters and certification in elem ed and has been a sub in public schools) to ask about volunteering to bring some sort of extra enhancement project to the second grade, but I’ve lacked the time to follow up.
And on top of it all, I HATE her homework. I hate it so much. I hate that I have to be involved and I have to sign a jillion pieces of paper and I hate that it’s all pretty much below her level of learning. It could be, though, that I am the one who’s impatient. I read Harry’s post on homework and took his last paragraph to heart–the idea that we parents should be treating the homework as if it’s worthwhile. I haven’t done a good job with that.
Anyway, those are some of my thoughts. And to go back to parents: I’m very hesitant about parent involvement. I think that a lot of parents have to be educated to be partners–yes, even PhDs like you and me–and I think the schools have enough to do dealing with my daughter’s needs and the needs of the kid next to her who lies down on the floor and sleeps sometimes, or so she says, or the needs of her friend N who (I know from personal experience!) has trouble concentrating on her work in order to finish it.
So to conclude: this is difficult stuff. 🙂
LikeLike
Anne – Like I said, I’ve very much reduced my expectations about what a school can do. I think that even the best of schools can’t provide everything that your child needs. Every kid has their own strengths and weaknesses, and schools just can’t tweak their curriculum to meet every kid’s needs. Most schools just have to hope to bring the low end up, especially in this world of high stake testing. It’s great that you’ve been able to manage homeschooling. I’m not built for homeschooling, so I would rather be a hole plugger.
LikeLike
“The biggest problem that I have with the public schools system is their disdain for parents. Since the face of the parent at the school is usually female, ultimately it feels a whole lot like sexism to me.”
Given the fact that schools, especially elementary schools, are 90% female driven, I’ve actually argued the opposite: it’s sexism that we constantly question the decisions and skills of other women.
The struggle of women sharing power is always a challenge. Priviliged women suddenly having to share power with “school teachers” who are viewed with certain disdain by those with privilege (and society in general). No wonder there’s tension.
No other group of professionals are second-guessed more than teachers. Everyone thinks they are an expert on being a teacher and education and thus education has become a constant battle ground of people second-guessing these (mostly women) trained people.
Now, I’m not saying that we shouldn’t be good consumers of education and make attempts to become actively involved in decision making. I also think it is a good sign that parents are interacting with teachers more. I just think we need to understand the dynamics involved and consider that sexism is likely a two-headed monster here.
LikeLike
Yeah, Wendy this is difficult stuff. Wow, scary story about your daughter’s class size increasing so dramatically and the impact on her learning. That’s got to be very irritating. My 7 year old hasn’t really had that much homework, so that’s been a minor issue for us so far. On the other hand, we sure do get a lot of other papers to sign and many different requests for money. It’s really hard to keep up with all of it and I’m home full time right now. It’s going to much more difficult when I go back to work.
I don’t know how to resolve this tension between parents and teachers. I just came from parent visitation day at my 4 year old’s class. The teacher scheduled the time for our visit during her prep period. That’s how much she wants us around.
Good points, Susan. The teachers, especially in the lower grades, are usually women, but the principals and administrators are male. They set the culture of the school. The hierarchical model is male. When I’ve had a problem with my younger kid’s education, I have had to bring in husband, because he gets treated with much more respect than I do. Maybe the teacher-parent hostility is another case of women treating other women badly. Either way, it’s not a good thing.
I’m also not sure about your point that teachers are the most second guessed professionals. Most other professionals don’t have tenure. Clients have much more discretion in terms of what doctors or lawyers they choose. Do teachers have a lot of eyes on them? Yes. And in some cases, they are unfairly criticized.
For every parent, that has a problem with her teacher’s style, there’s another teacher who thinks that the parent isn’t raising their children properly. I think that the number one second-guessed professionals are parents.
LikeLike
I think you can make a long list of professions that get second-guessed and criticized a lot. Some don’t face much criticism to their faces, but others do. These are mostly male-dominated professions.
1. priests and ministers (I have mentally rewritten many a sermon.)
2. film directors (Think George Lucas.)
3. politicians (Think Katrina and Waco.)
4. judges and prosecutors (think of the OJ Simpson trial and the current Duke debacle.)
5. weather forecasters
6. professional athletes
7. referees/umpires
8. police
9. soldiers
10. obstetricians (and occasionally pediatricians)
LikeLike
The biggest reason we helped start a charter school was the degree to which we were dismissed in our efforts to have an influence/help at our kids’ public school. Not everyone can devote their life to home schooling. But it should be possible to contribute the time and talents you can afford to the education of your kids. Our charter school required a minimum number of hours of parent participation. Parents helped in the classroom, ran weekly seminars for half the kids each quarter that allowed regular blocks of teacher preparation time, built things including kids in the projects (a quiet time loft in the after-school care space; a student store), maintained computer resources… Our kids benefitted and the teachers benefitted.
I have heard many other parents reflect the same thought I had… we are spoiled by our pre-school experience with our kids, and suffer a shock when we reach the elementary school, because the institution stops welcoming our participation.
LikeLike
6h of homework? So this kid is spending 12-14h a day on schoolwork? Can anyone say “sweatshop?” Can anyone say, WTF???
LikeLike
Yes, WTF.
I just came from school visitation day at my big kid’s school. For the record, I would be the crappiest elementary school teacher on the planet. There’s no way that I could keep all those squirmy monkeys in line. Hats off to the people who do it well.
LikeLike