Trust, cooperation and nuturance

These are three essential qualities that are fast being hammered out of my children's school. Supposedly for their own good;

1. We no longer have AV monitors because they cannot be trusted to do their job- they cannot be trusted because some children made mistakes (shock horror) and the backstops that we employ at school (teachers) weren't there to support them and help fix the mistake. So a kind person withdrew the kids from the line of fire. What is the lesson here: if you cannot do a job perfectly you may not have the opportunity to do it at all, even if it means you were a contributing member of our school community and made life easier for all. (Can I also note here that recently members of the senior staff had to call in the now defunct AV monitors to help them set up some equipment when they were unable to. Hello?
2. Our School Patrol Monitors are no longer allowed to go out on patrols if there is no duty teacher present. But our children may cross the road still. We instill in them that it is a position of responsibility they have the local constabulary come and train and certify them. And for years they just sorted themselves out and did the job. If a duty teacher was held up due to an emergency or such they got out there and did the job. And as far as I know there has never once been an issue and if there was an issue I'd be willing to bet it wasn't attributable to the patrollers. Now I have lost count of the times I had seen children including juniors crossing the road ALONE when the patrol monitors are sitting 5 metres away waiting for the duty teacher before they are allowed out on the crossing. And the kicker for me is the fact that a LOT of the time the duty teacher will end up having a friendly chat with one or more parents and aren't actually watching the patrollers anyway. What's the lesson here: We expect you to be trustworthy but we do not trust you. And we will put our mistrust above the safety of all school pupils.
3. a. Our school population has grown so much in the past few years that we can apparently no longer have the full school assemblies we once had. These were an opportunity for children in each team to work together and share their work with the whole school. b. Our senior children may not play on the junior playground and our juniors may not play on the senior playground. c. Merenia and her friends have been told by a teacher that they should only play with children within their school 'team' (in other words their age cohorts). d. We used to have 'wet day monitors' where pairs of senior students were sent to 'supervise' the junior children in their classrooms on those days where heading out into the playground wasn't an option. This system is now defunct. e. And finally we have a system called Peer support where a select bunch of senior students are chosen and trained to support their assigned new entrant buddy. Kieran has LONG wanted to be a Peer support buddy but because the students are selected and not asked to volunteer he has not had the opportunity a fact that I find very disappointing as he has shown himself to be a very caring and nurturing individual to his little brother and would no doubt have a lot to offer a junior school buddy. What's my point: Key opportunities for students to co-operate together, to nurture and learn from each other are effectively outlawed and abandoned. What's the lesson here: Senior students are seniors and juniors are juniors are virtually never the twain shall meet. (That said some of the classroom teachers are providing limited opportunities for this to happen and all credit to them for it.) And once again the children are taught you are not be trusted though we expect you to be trustworthy. It's funny isn't it how teachers expect children to obey all the rules all the time and yet I expect many of them aren't entirely saintly in living their own lives - perhaps a little speeding here and there....

And yes I know there is a long line of reasons and excuses for these actions. But essentially it boils down to all of the children having to bare the brunt of the 'misbehaviour' of a very few of the children- perhaps if we let them work together in the first place the misbehaviour may not have happened or even better the children would have sorted it out themselves in a manner that meant that the offender came to understand why their behaviour was unacceptable and what the benefits are of being a responsible member of the community. And no I'm not talking about some warped playground justice, children are vary good law makers and arbitrators and have a keen sense of true and fair justice. As opposed to the dictatorial crap that school law makers come up with. Children are excellent at caring for each other, they are fantastic teachers and capable learners long before they reach school- if only teachers and administrators could give them the credit they deserve as such.

NB; there are some great teachers out there who do realise this and struggle and fight for children's rights. In our school I believe they fight a losing battle in fact I believe most have either given up, are choosing to pick their battles, or have gone to schools where they don't need to fight so hard.

Why? Part 4 A Rose by any other name;

Kieran's class participated in an interesting experiment last week. After a suggestion during a Professional Development course his teacher challenged herself and the children to take the word 'work' out of their vocabulary. As a part the challenge they recorded who said work and how many times. Unsurprisingly, I believe, the teacher was the one who said it the most. This brings me to a point....

Children go to school to learn.

Learning is not necessarily the same as work.

The meaning most of us have when we consider work is probably better described as 'toil' (I would describe toil as work that is some, or all, of the following; arduous, un-enjoyable (is that a word?), boring, repetitive, difficult).

It's not unreasonable to expect children to put some effort into learning. But I am firmly of the view that learning should NOT involve toil. I'm not sure though that all teachers would share that view.

There seems to be a belief that play is frivolous and that if something is a lot of fun then it is not serious, and if it's not serious it's not worthwhile or valuable.

I believe that most of the time teacher's forget that all children enter school as accomplished learner's. Seriously they spent the last 5 years learning all day, everyday enthusiastically with absolutely no toil involved. For the most part I don't believe that school builds on that instead it starts the work of moulding children to fit the system of work and toil..... as opposed to making the system fit the children.

Many traditional teachers will say that the system has to be that way but it's simply not true. There is proof of that all over the world- I'd like to tell you about that but it's way beyond the scope of this post.

The fact of the matter is 'the system' has not worked for Kieran (despite a history of excellent teachers) and it is not working for Merenia. So rather than wait another 1, 2 or 3 years and realise what a huge mistake we have made when she is in year 7 (as we have for Kieran) we are taking her out now and making our own system, though there will be very little that's systematic about it.

Nb#1 Kieran has also been given the option to homeschool but is seriously keen to stay at school. He has been working hard throughout his school career with year 7 & 8 in mind. He believes, quite rightly, that he is amongst the smartest kids in school, he has worked hard to be a good citizen as a P.E & AV monitor, School patroler, Librarian, he has represented the school in sport and science and has hopes to be a peer support buddy and house captain. Both of which he is a more than worthy candidate for. Year 8, prizegiving, and graduation are what he has been working towards for 7 years. I respect his reasons for wanting to stay at school.

Nb #2; It's important for me to note here I have huge respect and regard for Kieran's teacher. I believe she is an excellent and professional classroom practitioner. My comments about her experiment were simply a platform from which to launch this post and not in any way a criticism.

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Why? Part 3 Values

Not so long ago those wise people at the government who like to dictate what we all do decided that 'Values' needed to be an official part of the curriculum.

So our lovely hard working teachers now actually have to record which of the ministry of Ed's lovely set of values they are going to 'teach' the children each term and I mean teach... not just live and demonstrate and expect... we actually have to 'teach' the children honesty and respect and so forth.

I have isssues about that on so many levels.

No. 1 We're the parents here, I think it should be our decision which values are instilled in our kids. (It's no wonder there are so many Christian families in the home school community).

No. 2 My kids and practically all the other kids I know all went to school with a fairly decent set of values. Why must the teachers now spend time 'teaching' them in a most artificial manner something they already know?

No. 3 There's a fair amount of hipocracy in the teaching of values- considering there are adults in our school who show very limited (if any) respect to their collegues and/or the kids. And also lacking in the area of integrity and honesty.

No.4 I believe values were introduced into the curriculum based on the actions of a few and the misguided beliefs of a few others. That's not a great reason to force something down the throats of the many.

No. 5 The Curriculum expects children to value innovation, inquiry, and curiosity but the school system stifles the same at every turn. Do as we say, not as we do.

No. 6 The Curriculum expects children to value ecological sustainability as the put the rough drafts of their work in the skip bin to be dumped in a landfill along with the left overs from their lunch.

No.7 This is a doozy- The Curriculum expects children to value EQUITY. And they are supposed to learn this in SCHOOL? That would be the same school where they get told what to do and when and how and get punished if they don't tow the line and yet are not afforded the option to do the telling (or the punishing either). Doesn't sound very equitable to me.

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Why? Part 2:I-Pods

At our school you get rewarded for behaving the way you are supposed to behave. In Merenia's team at the end of the week they get 'privilege'. If you have been a super little person for the whole week long you get to go play on the playground in school time. That's cool. At the end of term they have a movie and pop corn with the rest of the team. Even cooler!

There is also a 'school stars' scheme where amongst 500 kids a number (I don't know how many) earn 'tickets' each week which are then drawn from and two kids each week who have behaved as is expected of them shown 'outstanding playground behaviour and citizenship' are given a prize. Never mind the other 498 odd kids most of whom will have also behaved as they were expected- there's only two prizes to receive, so tough luck really. My kids and the other kids I know have a bunch of notions about these kids which may or may not be true. Whether it is true or not doesn't matter because it is what they believe and it's their beliefs that motivate their behaviour. These beliefs include but are not limited to the following:

• If you are a girl you have a better chance. (The numbers support this.)
  
• The younger you are the better the chance. ( I think the numbers support this too as I didn't recognise the bulk of the names and I know most of the kids year 3 up)
  
• Senior boys are not really in the running.
  
• Members of a certain teachers classroom are automatically disqualified.
• It's not what you do but who you know- and how much they like you.
  

If you happen to be the one kid who's name is magically plucked from 500 odd each term as being the School 'Star' of the term then you get an i-pod. I have issues with that for a number of reasons;

• $400 a year of the schools valuable and (dwindling) funding goes to benefit 4 children and not for specific learning needs.
• There was no consultation with anyone (teachers or parents when this i-pod prize was arrived at).
• There have been 6 year olds win this prize. I don't want my 9 and 11 year olds to have an i-pod let alone a six year old (if I had one).
• What about the other kids who, if we are rewarding people for doing what they are meant to do, are also doing what they are meant to do- where is their recognition?

A little bit about the choice of i-pods...

• It's not actually good for little ears to use head/earphones.
• It's a little anti-social to be sitting around plugged into an i-pod (not what I want for my kids).
• It is illegal to download free music on the net. It is legal to copy a CD you own to your computer/i-pod for personal use- (my daughter only owns one CD). So unless the child in question has a bit of a CD collection, cash for i-tunes or Disney has licensed Hannah Montana with a creative commons licence (yeah right!) then actually the i-pod isn't really all that much use.
• What message is it sending to our kids about what we think is valuable? Call me old fashioned but what about book vouchers?

School Stars is one of a number of intiatives that have been brought about this year. All have had various levels of commitment from staff, pupils and parents, one I believe didn't even get off the ground. All have taken time and effort and in some cases cash away from teaching our children. Human and physical resources already spread thin are spread thinner. In this case to reward children for doing what they should do as a matter of course. I mean really are we willing to expect anything less from our kids than good behaviour and good citizenship at school and at home? I think not, and I sure as heck aren't about to start buying my kids the latest cool toy when they do as they are told each day. And I don't respect a school management team that thinks this is a good idea.

Why? Part 1

The question I guess that is one of the most important to answer is why we are choosing to take Merenia out of her State primary school and educate her at home. And the first part of the answer is because she's in the middle and its not ok to drift.

She is an average to above average student in most school curriculum areas and as such she will just drift along through school. Each year she will improve by a year and that will be that. Her teachers we are lucky to be able to say have all be very very good classroom practitioners and we have no complaints at all there. In fact as a teacher myself I have a pile of compliments for the ladies and gent that have schooled our girl so far.

But one teacher in a class of thirty can only go so far. And when that teacher is in a State funded decile 10 school in New Zealand that's not very far at all. Especially if they want to have the life they deserve. I know from experience that you could work all 24 of the hours given in a day, 7 days a week 365 days a year and still never actually do everything you possibly could for every kid in your class.

Of course no teacher has the super power needed to work all those hours and nor would I expect them to. So they do what they can (too much in a lot of cases where schools demand so much and then some more so that they can have pretty graphs and placate daft parents). And then they get in front of their classes and their attention gets pulled in 30 different directions. There are the 'bad' kids, the 'sad' kids, the dim kids and the bright kids too and there are the silly girls, the noisy boys, the kid with the demanding parents, the ADHD kid and the one with a medical condition too. It's never good to be around 'average' in any school... much better you demand attention for some reason, or other.

Merenia is one of those nice middle of the road average kids- I think she has the potential to be pretty smart- I see inklings of it and she has been identified for the capable learners group at school as well, but essentially if she continues to drift along the path that she is on she will never meet her full potential.
We know this.
We've known it for a while.
And the other day a couple of weeks back we realised as parents it's not ok.
It's not ok to just let her drift along and be what she ends up as by default.

And that's just the first reason.

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