Two Kids With P.A.T.'s - I stress...

So, I have kids who are three grade levels apart.  What that means is that every three years they will both be writing P.A.T.s (Provincial Achievement Tests).  As a former grade nine teacher I am all too familiar with these.  For me as a teacher, it was always about trying to figure out from the results how I could teach my kids better. For me as a parent, it becomes something completely different.  I have written before that I have been very frustrated by the Elementary School reporting system.  I find it useless to me in terms of evaluating my children at least as a communication tool.  I have my own observations of my kids, and I want to be able to help them achieve and learn better, but the evaluations seemed more based on "Goal Setting Booklets" that I have to fill out with my kid or whether or not I sign off on their reading than on actually evaluating what they can and cannot do.  My kingdom for a Rubric or a list of acquired Curriculum Objectives! Anyhow, the idiocy of the report cards and reporting methods (all the Parent Teacher meetings are student-led and never is there an opportunity to look at their marks on things and marks seemed to be more tied to behaviour than actual cognitive measures) made me curious about how much they do know.  I know that in the big scheme of things elementary grades mean nothing, but I still want to be sure they are both developing cognitively as they should be and I must admit my expectations are on the high side.  So, today we investigated the website that the school provided for practicing for P.A.T.s.  Oliver has done a few practice Math ones and is working on his second Reading Comprehension one and it has highlighted some gaps.  I think that they 'missed' a couple units in the math curriculum because there were terms that Oliver didn't have a clue about.  We made a visit to his textbook and he said they hadn't done that chapter yet which at this point of the year concerns me.  They should be reviewing about now... sigh...

Anyhow, I am very happy that the school has this website set up for us to practice on.  They do their tests on the iPad and can post their initials and school if they do well and they both seem to actually enjoy it. Oliver actually asked to do a few more!  For me, there is a relief that they both seem to be doing okay.  All of their scores on the mini-tests have ranged from 80-100% so that makes me happy.  And because we can look at what they got wrong, I can cover those concepts with some individualized instruction. We are doing the English tests... that is a drawback, because I cannot understand the French well enough to help, but I will get them to do those closer to their testing.  I am more concerned with evaluating what they do or do not know and the English tests will do for that purpose.

Here We Go!

The boys have one more day of summer holidays and then they return to school. Gibson is entering grade 2 and Oliver will be going to grade 5 this year. I get more and more relaxed as the years go by. I knew with Oliver that he would settle in as he grew more mature. He had a challenging time socially and behaviourally in the first few years of school, but by the middle of grade 3 those issues disappeared. He still wants to work fast and not necessarily well, despite being capable of better, but that too is improving. Hey, when my kid consistently cites Math as his favorite subject, I am going to be happy about it. Gibson has been a bit of a surprise as he seemed more mature socially than Oliver but the end of last year and this summer has shown a crankier and less cheerful child. I know some of the crankiness is a frustration with others when they do not get things as quickly as he does, but it is not going to serve him well in school. Academically he excels, and I want that to continue, but his social impatience needs to be tempered a bit. I think grade 2 will be challenging for him in this regard. We shall see. I expected smooth sailing from him behaviourally, but I think I should never ever plan for kids to be as I predict.

I know I shouldn't let it bother me, but a blog post by one of the Edmonton Journal writers has me cranky.

http://blogs.edmontonjournal.com/2011/08/30/the-best-choice-for-your-childs-school-is-most-likely-the-local-school/

I know that it is opinion, but I am annoyed by the push for community school when Edmonton has designed their system based on program based education. The community school model works when all the schools are not program based, but when you want something different for your child they don't always work. For example, in my case I wanted French Immersion for my kids. I also wanted strong arts education and good physical education. I 'assume' that with public schools that the basic educational needs will be met in any school (reading, writing and arithmetic...). After all, that is what the Alberta Education Curriculum guidelines guarantee. Now, I can meet the arts education and physical education needs outside of school by using my own resources. I cannot, however, do French Immersion outside the school, therefore I had to make my choice based on the delivery of that program. I also know people who have children with specialized education needs who have home schooled or who have sought programs that met those needs. Not their community schools. Another interesting point I would like to make is that OUR Community school is just as far away if not further than the non-community, program based school our kids attend. The closest school is the Mandarin school... So there are no advantages such as proximity. For many kids in Edmonton the closest school is still a 45 minute bus ride away without even taking into consideration the programs offered. The article is written without thinking about the realities of how our schools are programmed and how the schools themselves are laid out. It doesn't take into account the needs of language based immersion programs (late immersion is possible, but not preferable). Anyhow, it bugged me. It also bugged me because when the writer posed his question on Twitter the night before posting his blog, I responded with my reasons for program choice, but he only responded to those people who were rah-rahing the community school choice. I think he was only looking for agreement - not really exploring the value to both options. I know that the community school is NOT the best place for my children to learn and I know many others who have different reasons for not choosing the community school and I feel that they are equally right in their choices.

Frustration... trying to stay engaged but it's getting to me...

This week I have been kind of annoyed with recent events with the EPSB. A couple of newspaper articles about the EPSB making a statement about urban sprawl at the expense of children within the district raised my hackles. Not because I think urban sprawl is a non-issue, but rather because I do not think it is the 'job' of the school board. Their job, as I see it (as their employer and share-holder) is to manage the education of the children within the district whatever their postal code. An email and subsequent phone call with Dave Colburn, the Board Chair, to express my concerns did not alleviate my concerns. It was quite clear to me that he valued some children's education more than others. He also treated more like an opponent during an election than as a concerned parent within his district. Did not like that at all. I know I shouldn't let it get me angry, but it did. These are my children.

I will continue to do what I can to maximize the educational results for my children, but what frustrated me the most was the implication that because I do things like read and work with my kids, volunteer at my kids school, and provide an enriched environment for them, that the Board felt that they were less deserving of priority within the school system. I think all students should have the same things when they walk in the building. My kids should not have larger classrooms and less resources because of the 'extras' that I, and parents like me, do. I do those things to enrich, not to bring them up to a baseline. Will I stop volunteering and doing the work I do - No. But I felt like I should, because he made me feel like those things were the exact reasons why certain postal codes were not a priority.

Now there's an article about cutting positions due to lack of funding from the province. My fear is that the inner-city centric Board will drain more funds from the outside the core of the city and the larger classrooms will be from those less-prioritized postal codes. I have already had one child who has been in a 29 student grade 3 class and a 26 student grade 4 class (those are huge for elementary) and I have a second who will likely be going into a split class. My fear is that they will do away with the split and operate with a plus 30 student grade 2 class. Ours is a school (in a neighborhood that is over 25 years old - not brand new) that is over-capacity and over-compensating for those under enrolled schools that they do not want to close. So it is hard for me to feel sympathy for those who don't want to close schools. Your children are not more important than mine and nothing you say will convince me that they are.

On Educating Young Children...

I found this article from a Twitter feed and it really sums up a lot of what I believe about full day Kindergarten.

http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2010/09/08/marni-soupcoff-all-day-kindergarten-is-a-waste-of-money/

It's a little harsher in tone than I would be, but it does put it's finger on why I am not in favour of full day Kindergarten across the board, at least not for the reasons that people keep putting forward. It can be good for some kids, but not for all. I think that for both my children it wouldn't have been a benefit. Oliver had a tough enough time with full day Grade One (it took him at least 3 months to adjust). Gibson flourished without the extra time and many of his less positive social behaviours developed when he went to school (the sass factor went way up when he started interacting with other kids so much). For some kids the enrichment happens at home, not out of it. There are exceptions - lower income families and families with lower levels of parental education. I am all for leveling the playing field by providing those opportunities to children whose pre-testing suggests they would benefit from it. However, if it is for a child and the main purpose is daycare - call it what it is. I like this idea of saving money by having half-day Kindergarten with half-day Daycare. What is the problem of correctly using the time and not covering it up with the false labels of enriched necessary education?

Solutions...

So, frustrated with my perception of 'too late' with Ollie's grade 2 year I decided to put together a plan for doing what I can this summer to help him improve over the summer. The big issues seems to be focus (behavioral) and writing (cognitive/process). I can only do so much with the focus issue as it is one thing to get a a single child to focus and quite another in a class of 28 (what his class in the fall will have). So, today I made a worksheet up asking simple questions about our trip to the museum yesterday. The answers could then be taken and used to write a short story about the day. I am not skilled in Division I. I do not know what they are supposed to be able to do, so I had to rely on Ollie's cues about how skilled he should be. He wasn't happy about the exercise, but once we finished it, he seemed a lot more relaxed about it. He was really stressed about the idea of writing a story. This is hard for me to deal with because prior to this year he would try just about anything fearlessly. This school year has changed him in that regard. I am not sure why, but hopefully I will be able to help him enough so that he is comfortable writing in the fall.

What are the Proper Things to be taught?

I read a response to an article on Bill 44 wherein the writer said that Bill 44 was needed because the proper things were not being taught. What are the proper things? In my mind, those things are the Alberta Curriculum. That IS what is being taught. This curriculum has been developed with input from many educators, industry input, and legislators, many of whom are parents so one could that parents have had an opportunity for input. It is designed to be culturally neutral. What Bill 44 will do is hamper teachers form being humans with personal viewpoints. Sure, they should not be teaching their opinion, however, often in classes you take a position to stimulate discussion. Sometimes it is your own, sometimes not. I worked with a Social Studies teacher who only had one student guess his political affiliation correctly over the course of 20+ years of teaching. He was very good at teaching 'everything' without bias or slant. Not everyone is that good and it is an unreasonable expectation. The important is that kids are able to see that different points of view and opinions exist. Parents always cry out to teachers to involve students so that they engage in the learning. What Bill 44 will do is produce such a neutral delivery that no one will be involved. Teachers, good teachers, will quit and go elsewhere because it will be impossible to work in an environment where they are not allowed to be human.