@OmSigDAVID,
Quote:In the 8th grade?
That 's news to me, but its been so long ago that I must admit
even for college or law school, I don 't remember when we did it
In a lot of school systems, the eighth grade is when students do start being identified and steered toward accelerated courses in math or English. This mom said that this girl was in an honor's English class. She would have had to be identified as a student who qualified and then she'd have had the option to either do honors or regular English. At least that's how it is in any school system I've worked in. So yes, once the students have their final English grade at the end of seventh grade, the students are broken up accordingly and put on a roster which the teacher gets so s/he can plan her curriculum for the next year.
Quote:I don 't know whether to interpret that language as punitive
or vaguely threatening the student; ( "do thus and so, or else . . . ." )
In some work environments, "counselling" an employee is deemed a penalty in and of itself.
On the other hand, a simple dispassionate n non-judgmental
discussion of the situation can be very helpful and supportive.
It can be good and re-assuring to know that those whom u hold dear r on your side.
On the other hand, I have been acquainted with mothers who were ex-teachers
and who advocated and favored the positions of teachers
ex officio who made their offspring the victims of illogic and injustice. The mothers bragged to me about it.
Thay were disloyal to their children.
I wonder how thay 'd think of reciprocal disloyalty from their own children
It wasn't punitive. I meant that I'd care much more that my daughter learn what she needed to learn to make her life more smoothly functioning than I'd care what the teacher thought about my daughter or about me or about the situation.
If she (the teacher) wants to jump to conclusions and operate on misconceptions - sad- but am I gonna be able to change an adult woman's personality or modus operandi? Probably not. But what I can do is teach my daughter how to avoid another such situation that ends in confusion and help her learn to work around such people by teaching her what will be a very advantageous life skill- I'd tell her to keep her nose clean and don't give the woman anything to complain about in the future.
I'm always a mother first David - because I know there's nothing better than a good teacher but there's nothing worse than a bad teacher. I've seen it with my own eyes and I am not loyal to and do not defend bad teachers just because I'm a teacher myself. Are you loyal to bad lawyers?
Quote:Candor moves me to question the merit of denouncing collaborative efforts in academic work.
What matters is the success of the learning process.
This can result from explorations of the subject matter
in co-operation with parents, friends, neighbors, or alone in an ivory tower.
Pleasing the teacher counts for nothing. U can 't learn from that.
U don 't go to an automotive showroom to please the salesman; u go to get a car.
U don 't go to school to please the teacher; u go to acquire information.
When a group project is assigned - that's one thing. But when homework is given, most teachers assume and hope that the student is doing it on their own, because the purpose of homework is reinforcement and practice of whatever skill or concept is in question.
So when two learners are doing it together, it's hard for a teacher to gain a sense of whether one child or both have mastered the concept. One learner might still be very confused, but the other learner supplied the methodology and answers that ended up on the paper to make it look like both learners know what they're doing.
My own daughter SUCKED at math David. And she was in a fifth or sixth grade class, I can't remember now, where the math lessons were in groups. So she'd sit and listen to the answers that the group came up with, write them down on her paper, get A's on all her homework assignments and then FAIL every test because she had no idea HOW the group got the answers they got - but she was perfectly within her rights as a member of that group to profit from and write down the answer the group got.
I got her switched to another math class where there were more traditional teaching methods used, where each child had to show evidence of his or her own work BEFORE they failed to learn enough to pass the test - because this is what she needed. Because she DID need to learn how to add, subtract, multiply and divide.
Group work is good for some things - projects and such as that - and if someone is tutoring someone else, that can be very helpful. But in general, homework is best done on one's own so the student, parent and teacher can all be aware what that child does understand and what that child still needs tuition in.
So stipulated!
Thus saith David
