What is your opinion of "behavior" charts in classrooms?

You've got to wonder what the heck they'd do if a kid had Tourette's Syndrome. His/her behavior could be quite disruptive but they can't help it.

If Mo's school required something like that it wouldn't be Mo's school anymore.

i'm sure they have to make allowances for physical/psychological problems

Actually if you have a good school system and process, they would compensate for behavioral issues around a medical or other type of condition. For example, I know two children with selective mutism and in one school they help positively with this issues (ie have a friend speak for him) whereas another the child has little assistance from the school. I wouldn't think (or would shudder to think) that a child would be disciplined because of a medical condition that causes outbursts.

You're sure?

My experience with American schools is that they often tend to overlook/ignore/forget medical and/or psychological problems if you don't make a huge stink about it several times a year.

I do think books like that can make you "think" or look at things differently - but I always read them with a grain of salt. I've seen positive reinforcement work well for some children (and others not so much) - sometimes negative reinforcement may help some children in certain situations as well. Positive reinforcement though should be "real" in others words you don't say you did a great job when you really did just OK. It should be used sparingly and when deserved to have an impact - otherwise you are just lying.

it seems on one hand (in another thread) you're saying that men are not taking enough responsibility in raising kids (sons especially, and now you're saying, hey don't blame the parents, odd, i think parents have a certain degree of responsibility for how kids act at school, they should be responsible for teaching them how to how to act in public

Yep - some do..... I've seen it with a particular school or a particular teacher...unwilling to be flexible.

i guess i'm looking at from the Canadian point of view, i've known folks with problem kids who had fairly good experiences getting help

You know, I think our problem is that Mo looks and acts completely normal except for the occassional flare up.

He doesn't release his stress/rage/frustration anywhere but home. It's mostly the attachement issues -- he doesn't trust anyone else to see it. Luckily, the new school principal is trying to adopt from overseas and has just finished the parenting classes so she totally "gets" it, at least theoretically.

As my adoptive mom/child psychiatrist neighbor puts it: nobody really gets it til they've lived it.

I wish I could show them what happens after school on a lot of days.

Mo gets an occassional yellow card. If he ever gets a red card I will know that it has been a completely and horribly awful day and that he simply couldn't cope for another minute.

Does that make him "bad"?

I don't like the whole value judgement thing with public behavior charts.

the grandson of a friend of my aunts, had a weird experience with the school system, the kid had been in an accident and had suffered a closed head injury, his only real problem was concentration, the insurance company for the person responsible for the accident paid for a helper to attend school with the child, the helper basically sat with the child and kept him focussed, no teacher ever complained about the woman being there and the child did very well in school, the principle had a real issue with it for some reason and took the family to court a few times saying the woman was a distraction (something the teachers denied), he even complained about the money being spent (none of his business since it had nothing to do with the school or school board)

the case never went anywhere, the kid and helper continued on, as the kid got older his brain seemed to reorganize itself and his concentration improved

one thing i remember his grandmother saying, was how hard it was at first to get people to accept the problem, since her grandson looked and mostly acted normal, she said if he'd been confined to a wheelchair, head lolling and drooling, they wouldn't have had half the issues they did

I think that the schools are run by the school admins, not the parents, therefor it is the responsibility of the admins to control behaviour with-in the schools, not the parents. As a parent my responsibility is to present to the school a kid who is ready to learn and who is able to conduct himself in an appropriate way for a child....it is not my job to make sure that he learns or to make sure that he behaves.

This is a partnership between the parents and the school admins to be sure, but I think that making me sign a contract for something that I can not control, that the school is better able to control, as well as fining me for the same, is and act of one partner (the school admins) abusing the other (me).

but too many kids get to school with out those core values (or so i believe), so who's to blame?

I fully expect my kids to conform to parental expectations.

Wow. That's a shitty principal.

But that's what I'm talking about. Same kind of thing. That's why I have the ADD battle once or twice a year.

I read somewhere, someone asking "what if, for some kids, learning diabilities/behavior problems are a result of the school environment, and not the cause of the failure to learn"?

Interesting question, I think.

he had many problems and run ins with folks, he was very educated (lot's of degrees) (notice i didn't say smart), got shuffled around and ended up in a fairly innocuous administrative position

he was east indian and not afraid to pull the race card when challenged, so unfortunately he got a fairly free ride until retirement

the statement "I fully expect my kids to conform to my expectations" says nothing about what your expectations are for the school admins, nor about their right to make demands upon you.

I know that you dont mean to say " I fully expect my kids to conform to adult expectations" because one your main job is not to have kids that are easy to manage, it is the raise happy fully functioning adults and to do that they need to test the world around them so that they can figure out the nature of the world and also who they are. Two, some of those adults what to abuse your kids.

Charts etc. etc. dumb ass idea!

They destroy the kid what where who has trouble learning and make the arrogant kid even more arrogant as they accumulate hundreds slips. I despised it when it was done with colorful ribbons when memorizing Bible verses. There was a year we had a chart with how many books read we, (beyond the required). I think there was a 1 page report as well. I had a few, there were a few with none, even with my few I felt like a damn failure when I saw the kids what read dozens. I hate competition in a classroom, it's not education encouraging.

It was 5th grade! I recall the teacher screwed up my name, I left her in March and went elsewhere (a different school). Justice was mine, I began faking it. Made up books (with authors) and then wrote and submitted reports.

Children need to encouraged be at learning, competing kills that for so many and they become lost and then statistics. Leave their achievements and places needing improvement at the report card.

I'm taking heart in that some of us who were on the failing end of the classroom competitions turned out pretty good, after all.

I faked one book report in middle school. I was sure I'd be caught but I wasn't.

I had a sister who did really well in school. She was four years ahead of me. I recycled a lot of her work, just dumbed them down a bit and rewrote them.

good point....do we really want to encourage our kids to be teacher pets??? I grant the sucking up is an important skill to learn, I just dont want it to get in the way of education. I also dont want to have my kids taught that sucking up to authority figures is a requirement to get through life, I want them to be who they are and to challenge authority when it is required.

This is more of how our schools are increasingly like Boot Camp, which I am opposed to.