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Oct. 5th, 2010
Random thoughts on school
Oct. 5th, 2010 10:18 pm
Ana's homework today was ANOTHER sheet where she's supposed to rewrite the sentence and add descriptive words. It's getting a bit repetitive, but it's a chance for her to practice - her cursive! (Yes, she has progressed enough that she's doing it on homework assignments!) Our focus this year is getting her sizing and spacing right. She finally seems to have her spacing down, but her sizing is... dubious, at best. Still, she's seven. I'm not worried. We're also still talking about holding her pencil properly, I should've been firmer about that back in kindergarten. (Evangeline gets to hear all about it now.)
And she had a math sheet, and she also had a page of paragraphs to read and answer context questions like "What does gaze mean in the paragraph above?"
The last gave me a chance to teach her a very useful trick - read the question first. By reading the question first she was actually able to ANSWER most of the questions without reading the paragraph above at all. Win! And the few she did have to read, she could skim because she knew what she was looking for. This is a useful skill, because next year she's starting a long and tedious career of test-taking. (Boo!)
Also, of course, it speeds up homework. Two pages of reading and questions boiled down to about 30 seconds of circling the answers.
Now, the nieces' school, of course, has uniforms - blue and navy. And PS 16 has uniforms, white and navy, and the charter sharing with Trinity Lutheran has uniforms, gold and navy, and Trinity Lutheran of course has white and navy, and PS 75, in the annex of PS 16 has uniforms, the dark green and khaki. (That last pisses me off. Every other school in the area has navy, and half the kids at 75 must have older brothers and sisters! I can understand having a different colored shirt so you can differentiate your kids from the ones at 16, you're sharing that space, but to make it so NOTHING can be handed down? There are families in this area with two or three kids, close in age, going to a different elementary school each (as they all scramble to stay out of 16 if they can, or if they can't to get into the bilingual program or the gifted program there), and you're screwing up the whole system by having your kids wear khaki!)
This of course is wildly different from when I was a kid, when only the non-public schools had uniforms. (Well, Trinity Lutheran isn't a public school anyway.) But a "law" was passed about a decade ago (if you call a totally opt-in ruling a "law") to encourage uniforms, and now something like 85 or 90% of the elementary schools have them, although they vary with how they're enforced and how strict the uniform is to begin with. (Some schools only ask for a certain color of shirt and whatever pants you like, which is sensible in a poorer neighborhood.)
As I recall, the rationale was primarily "Uniforms keep kids from arguing over who has better clothes, keeps the focus on schoolwork, and lessens gang activity in the schools". It seemed like a silly argument even then - surely, a determined enough gang will always find SOME way to differentiate themselves, and absolutely kids will find other ways to compare and contrast even if it's only by sneakers, but that's beside the point here.
The point is that it's only the elementary schools that require uniforms. After you leave the 5th grade, they don't. I mean, I think some charters do, but that's about it.
But... if the big push was "gang activity" and "let's not have them dividing themselves up by class", shouldn't uniforms START when kids are older? Pre-k kids are a lot less likely to do harm with any form of violence, even if they know what gangs *are*. And they're also less likely to try wearing very revealing clothes either.
Which leads us (sorta) into my segue here: The middle school options on the Island suck. I went to IS 61, and it wasn't a bad school then (academically, if you were in the "smart" classes... though they had a REAL problem with bullying, ask me how I know that - or don't, actually) but right now it's hideously overcrowded. And I don't see it getting better - we're finally getting new elementary schools (finally!), but the kids whose parents started pushing for this originally, they're already in the 4th and 5th grades!
And obviously the nieces will be zoned for the same school I was.
So the real solution right now is we need more middle schools. Charter school, regular public, I actually don't care, but we need more of them. And I have *no* idea how to go about doing that. But I'm actively trying to find out. (Everybody says I have to talk to Jackie down the block, who does know how to do things like this, but I'm putting it off and putting it off.)
And she had a math sheet, and she also had a page of paragraphs to read and answer context questions like "What does gaze mean in the paragraph above?"
The last gave me a chance to teach her a very useful trick - read the question first. By reading the question first she was actually able to ANSWER most of the questions without reading the paragraph above at all. Win! And the few she did have to read, she could skim because she knew what she was looking for. This is a useful skill, because next year she's starting a long and tedious career of test-taking. (Boo!)
Also, of course, it speeds up homework. Two pages of reading and questions boiled down to about 30 seconds of circling the answers.
Now, the nieces' school, of course, has uniforms - blue and navy. And PS 16 has uniforms, white and navy, and the charter sharing with Trinity Lutheran has uniforms, gold and navy, and Trinity Lutheran of course has white and navy, and PS 75, in the annex of PS 16 has uniforms, the dark green and khaki. (That last pisses me off. Every other school in the area has navy, and half the kids at 75 must have older brothers and sisters! I can understand having a different colored shirt so you can differentiate your kids from the ones at 16, you're sharing that space, but to make it so NOTHING can be handed down? There are families in this area with two or three kids, close in age, going to a different elementary school each (as they all scramble to stay out of 16 if they can, or if they can't to get into the bilingual program or the gifted program there), and you're screwing up the whole system by having your kids wear khaki!)
This of course is wildly different from when I was a kid, when only the non-public schools had uniforms. (Well, Trinity Lutheran isn't a public school anyway.) But a "law" was passed about a decade ago (if you call a totally opt-in ruling a "law") to encourage uniforms, and now something like 85 or 90% of the elementary schools have them, although they vary with how they're enforced and how strict the uniform is to begin with. (Some schools only ask for a certain color of shirt and whatever pants you like, which is sensible in a poorer neighborhood.)
As I recall, the rationale was primarily "Uniforms keep kids from arguing over who has better clothes, keeps the focus on schoolwork, and lessens gang activity in the schools". It seemed like a silly argument even then - surely, a determined enough gang will always find SOME way to differentiate themselves, and absolutely kids will find other ways to compare and contrast even if it's only by sneakers, but that's beside the point here.
The point is that it's only the elementary schools that require uniforms. After you leave the 5th grade, they don't. I mean, I think some charters do, but that's about it.
But... if the big push was "gang activity" and "let's not have them dividing themselves up by class", shouldn't uniforms START when kids are older? Pre-k kids are a lot less likely to do harm with any form of violence, even if they know what gangs *are*. And they're also less likely to try wearing very revealing clothes either.
Which leads us (sorta) into my segue here: The middle school options on the Island suck. I went to IS 61, and it wasn't a bad school then (academically, if you were in the "smart" classes... though they had a REAL problem with bullying, ask me how I know that - or don't, actually) but right now it's hideously overcrowded. And I don't see it getting better - we're finally getting new elementary schools (finally!), but the kids whose parents started pushing for this originally, they're already in the 4th and 5th grades!
And obviously the nieces will be zoned for the same school I was.
So the real solution right now is we need more middle schools. Charter school, regular public, I actually don't care, but we need more of them. And I have *no* idea how to go about doing that. But I'm actively trying to find out. (Everybody says I have to talk to Jackie down the block, who does know how to do things like this, but I'm putting it off and putting it off.)