A typical day with Gabby has her in school from 9am to 3pm. She gets 20 mins to eat lunch (including if she has to stand in line for hot lunch, sitting down, and all transitions), about 12 minutes of recess in which she may actually "play", and then 30 mins of gym or music. And after that long day she has homework EVERY night, plus spelling words to review, oh and did I mention that her teacher handed me some extra sight word cards because apparently Gabby doesn't know them all perfectly so I am to make a game of them and practice every night with her those as well. Doesn't this seem like a lot of school and not enough downtime/childhood time? And obviously whatever is going on in class isn't sinking in enough for the tests since I am getting sheets with more red slashes than positives on them. With all the demands of "please practice this at home" it just makes more sense to do it all at home since I basically am anyhow.
Maybe I wouldn't care about all this as much if Gabby was actually learning the material and wasn't getting these less than stellar marks.... but I do care, a lot, because the last thing I want is her school to make her not care about or even worse hate the learning process. And maybe she doesn't care right now that she is getting mediocre marks on these silly tests, but she will care as she gets older.... and what is that going to do to her confidence?Tomorrow we are going to have another unschooling/homeschooling day and I don't know who is looking forward to it more, me or Gabby lol. Today I will be picking out some curriculum to just guide me and going over the ins and outs of starting to home-school in the middle of a school year.
This is going to be fun, interesting, and definitely a solution to the stress of sending Gabby to a place that is not the best for her.
I am so sorry that Gabby school doesn't seem to cater to her needs. i am glad that the teacher joesph has gotten have been all but accepting to his antsy ways. he is a smart little bugger but when it comes to sitting still and listening he isn't quite so good. so yeah he has had to sit away from the group and on a real bad day it has been a few times. the teachers he has gotten have been wonderful and sometimes i think a little too accepting of his behavior which worries me for the higher years. though reading what Gabby has/is going though i feel so bad. it just seems so harsh, and terrible that no one thinks maybe she needs a little more guidance and understand than other children instead of harsh punishments.
ReplyDeletei think the homework jojo gets is just fine for him but then again he loves to learn and read and show how smart he is. plus the spelling and math homework is really easy for him that i skip spelling until the night before the test.
i give you credit for the homeschooling thing. i am in no way disciplined enough to do it,which is way i love the schooling system and am glad that his teacher make it fun and challenging for him.
i wish you luck and i am sorry that the school that Gabby goes to doesn't wish to help her and instead wants to hurt her.
Thank you Rebecca for reading this post and chiming in. I don't think that the school is out to hurt her, but just doesn't care to accept the fact that a cookie cutter system of teaching is not effective with her style of learning. Since she is not a visual learner things need to be approached differently and all we keep hearing is "Gabby will adjust", meaning that they will MAKE her learn their way.
ReplyDeleteWe are going to be relaxed about the schooling since she is only in 1st grade, but I am sure there will be plenty more posts about what we are doing!