Rude student

Geez. If there's no backup from the parent, what can you do? Put everything down on paper and be prepared to defend yourself when this kid's mother threatens to sue the school for not teaching her daughter anything.

How is she a cheerleader? Isn't there a mandatory grade point average for cheerleaders?

Putting her out of the class is good. That way the others don't have to suffer because the teacher is spending so much time battling with her. When she flunks, she flunks and that's all to it.

You can't flunk kids nowadays. It looks bad for the principal, and they come down hard on teachers who flunk kids.

And there lies at least a part of the problem.

One of my two closer cousins was as we know now dyslexic, but that wasn't a word then, at least that we knew of.

She flunked Latin I, twice. Too bad her sister and I, the cousin, were seeming smarties three or four years ahead of her, the adopted child.
(I love both of these cousins as cousins and friends.)
Decades pass and her sister and I have our own learning snafoos.

But back to Little Cousin.

I guess the nuns let her go on the Latin. She got an 800 on the Math SAT
back in, probably, '62, is a CPA now for a serious agency.

Her sister is now an expert on ADD, ADHD. I round out the familial ball by probably having add by not giving a whit.

That was a roundabout way of saying the girl with care could end up doing satisfyingly well.

I've no answer for how to get there from here.

Oh, my dyslexic younger cousin recorded her classes, versus taking notes, back in the early sixties. Got a degree in sociology doing that, before going for the marriage, family, further school thing.


Interesting. One of her sons graduated from Cal Tech. Another failed math twice in grammar school, is now an elementary school teacher, and last I knew, was heading towards principal status.

Did your cousin keep her back turned to the teacher? Was she disruptive in class and threw temper tantrums (or whatever this students' screeching is) when the teacher would ask her to not chitchat with everyone around her and pay attention?

When I was a kid there was no such thing as ADHD. You did what the teacher told and you kept your mouth shut.

I'm guessing I and my cousins of our level of family are about fifteen years older that Nick.

A lot of primo posters on a2k are about there on age, and those of us above that or below relate one way or another to it.

I'm just talking for my time, high school, 1955 - 59. That can be boring, but also a beginning of the cusp.


On my young cousin turning her back to the teacher, I don't know, I wasn't informed. The cousin closer to me in genes and age (the smart one) was a big mess for a bunch of years and acted out more. She's the present expert, fifty years later, with a CPA sister.


I'm no education expert, except to say, don't condemn people out of hand at early age. I know so many, many, many examples of people being done wrong by that.

I attended high school '74 to '78. I thnk too many kids today are using their illnesses as excuses. "I can't help it, I have ADHD!" Many great people with ADHD have gone on to become remarkable students and succesful in society. Richard Branson says he would not have achieved his heights without ADHD. Same for Howard Stern.

I was right, I'm just about fifteen years older than you, Nick. Am not argueing with you here, yet. (not that that should be a fright, just sayin'.)

I can appreciate that a person can be smart, but have difficulties in school, however, the issue I have with this is the disruption for the other students. Is it fair for the other 20 some odd students to miss out because this particular student is screaming in class? She may be bored because she is so smart, but the other students need the teaching to help them. I say boot the child out of the class and put her in a different type of classroom that is more suitable for those unable to learn in a traditional environment. No sense in hurting the other kids simply to accommodate one.

By the way, I also was bored in math class because it was so simple to me. I sat in the back of the room and spent my time flirting with the two boys that sat on either side of me. They were failing because I distracted them while I was getting As. The teacher moved me to the front of the room next to the one girl that I wouldn't want anything to do with. She fixed my little red wagon.

Smart teacher, Linkat.

I feel the same on this issue. In school, I had classmates who were smart and bored and slept through their classes. I came close to failing many classes in high school myself because I didn't care about them. I was an artist, completely focused and did just enough in my other classes to pass. The point is, we weren't allowed to get in the way of others learning.

Smart, spoiled, whatever this student's problem is, she's completely undisciplined and that shouldn't be tolerated nor should it be coddled.

I am a tad dyslexic. Not in the way the effects my ability to read but my dyslexia prevents me from knowing left from right. I do well with the cardinal directions and am a good map reader but right and left always baffled me.

I used to work at distinguishing them, setting up little codes and markers to help me. What finally alleviated the situation was a doctor telling me, when I was in my late 40s, that I was slightly dyslexic. I stopped working so hard on the matter and actually mix the two up less than I did prior to the diagnosis. My daughter is also slightly dyslexic. Her problem is accurately recording phone numbers. We never understood why she couldn't give a proper phone number to us so I asked that when someone left a message with her, that she simply take their name and whether they were listed in the book. If they weren't listed, she asked them to call again later.

Someone I discussed this with recently said that learning you have a "disability" like dyslexia when you are an adult is often liberating but that too many kids use knowledge of disabilities as a crutch. BTW, my daughter speaks six languages and plays eight instruments, so a little dyslexia never hurt anyone.

I never heard of the left right thing before - I always have difficulty with that and people make fun of me all the time. I have to envision picking up a pencil to make the connection.

Funny story regarding that - I am in a car with a friend and her husband. She is driving and I am giving her directions. I tell her at the end of the road take a right - she gets to the end of the road and takes a left - neither one of us says a word and she continues driving. Her husband starts freaking out - what's going on - you told her to take a right she takes a left - what? Oh, that's what I wanted her to do.

Why is this girl a cheerleader? Apparently, there is no grade average that has to be maintained. She constantly says that she can not remember things but I asked her if she remembers cheers and she says yes. So, I told her about a French teacher my daughter had in middle school who sets parts of speach and irregular verbs to music and sings them to the kids. My daughter says she has never forgotten those words and she has extended the use of music as a memory aid to Spanish.

So, I suggested to this kid that she adopt a cheer to grammar parts. She refused to do so.

Now, this kid functions well at the fifth grade level. That would have been ok during the first half of the 20th C when a person with that level of education could support themselves. However, my job is to get her into regular a standard (CPII) track for the next year. She won't meet me half way.

If she put her shoulder to the wheel, she could do the work. She thinks "big words" are beyond her. I told her that she is now a freshman and when she is a junior or senior, she will have a job and will need to speak to adults and understand not "big words" but "adult speech." I honestly wonder is she has ever spoken to an adult!

BTW, the kid is not above average in intelligence but would be average were she to allow herself to be challenged.

She is in sheltered classes and has been for several years. Unless a child has a real disa bility, like Downs, I think -- as we said in the 60s -- that special ed classes are part of the problem and not part of the solution.

The science class is a mainstream albeit low level class. There are 11 students and a co-teacher, me. Both the lead teacher and I have headaches at the end of class because the kids are so rotten.

I wrote on another thread about kids who are unteachable and someone rushed in with the notion that no one is unteachable. There are unteachable kids. Unfortunately, they are often blended into classrooms with kids who just need more time and end up disrupting the learning of the kids who need that extra time, as many of you have pointed out.

This girl's counselor (do not know if she is a social worker or a psychologist) this the kid is cute. She is rather homely, with her heavy, Germanic face. What's worse, like the other girls in the science class, she assumes a forced bored expression that says, "I dare you to interest me." These kids are bored largely because they think science is a waste of time.

I emailed mom and said that after reading, science is the most important subject in the curriculum. The kid is behind in her reading comprehension but I gather that mom thinks that's fine. Reading at the fifth grade level is not fine.

Whether the mother feels a need to protect her because she is intellectually behind (I suspect by choice) or because she is divorced from the kid's father or because the girl was once sexually assaulted is beyond me, but the mother is preventing the kid from learning.

She is in an English class with a girl who declared her mother hates books and now she has taken up the same chant.

I hope I have a different job next year.

Linkat -- If you and I were in the car together and you told me to turn right and I was in the right-hand lane, chances are, I would move over to the left-hand lane.

Here's what you need to do. Sit her down and tell her that boys only like stupid girls in high school because they think they're easy to screw. That most of them will be tired of her stupidity by graduation, and that nobody but janitors and inmates will want anything to do with her by the time she's 20 if she doesn't find something to do with her brain besides let it bounce around in her head. Or if you prefer a more positive approach, you could explain to her how refreshing it would be to meet an interesting, intelligent, and curious young cheerleader rather than the stereotypical dumb barbie girl.

This girl isn't trying because she doesn't want to. Why she doesn't want to I'm only speculating about. But that's as good a guess as any at this point.

I kinda liked the dumb cheerleaders. And they WERE easy to screw. Now I see them at reunions and they don't act as dumb nor would anyone want to screw them.