Thursday, October 30, 2008

Boo and School

Boo and school redux: we got her first report card --- and she could get anything from a 1 to a 4. 1 is bad, she's not getting it, 3 is she's got it, 4 is she's exceeding expectations. So of course, what you expect is lots of 3's.
Except, the numbers are all tied to "expectations": can she count to 10? (Yes, she can count to much higher than that --- isn't that exceeding expectations????): can she recognize these words? (Yes, she can, and all the other words on the list for the next ten months --- again, isn't that exceeding expectations????) etc, etc, etc.

She had all 3's, with the exception of two fields: art and music. Those were filled in by different teachers. My read of this is that her teacher either that she's exceeding expectations on a whole bunch of criteria, or she doesn't care. Either way, we are, to put it mildly, upset.

It's conceiveable that I'm suffering from standard "my child is a genius" syndrome --- but I don't think so: we had Boo read all the words on the list she's supposed to know by the end of this year, and she got all but three or four of the fifty or sixty words. She counts like crazy, and gets the idea of the difference between reciting numbers and counting objects. And she's older than most of the rest of her class --- she ought to be a bit ahead at this stage, on average. What really pisses us off --- and my choice of language compared to my usual language on the blog might indicate my true feelings --- is that her teacher doesn't even seem to care enough to realise that Boo is exceeding expectations.

Yours,
N.

1 comment:

awareness said...

We most definately went through the same thing with Max. I don't think he got one wrong on a Math test from Kindergarten to Grade 5! Luckily he had a few teachers who made school bearable and fun for him. However, he is now in Gr. 6 enrolled in late French immersion. As he was studying for a science test (to be completed en francais....first time!) he exclaimed....this is the first time I've been challenged!
All we can do is enrich his learning on this end and stretch his thinking and creativity outside of the classroom and promote the FUN part of being a lifelong learner.