My Mountain Again–My World Tuesday

I have shown “my” mountain before, but this weekend I was in Corrales, a quaint country village outside of Albuquerque, walking along an arroyo and got some new pictures from a different angle. It was a springlike day, giving me some hope for warmth, but it is over now. We had more rain and snow today.  (Sorry for the graininess in some of the pictures. I did not realize until I uploaded that I had one of my camera settings not exactly where it should have been.) All pictures will enlarge when clicked unless otherwise noted.

This is the arroyo along which we walked. Chicklet is in the bottom. During other seasons there are varying amounts of water in this. It stretches for several miles along the "back road" of Corrales. One rarely can take even a short walk beside it without seeing people with dogs and horses.

this photo will not enlarge when clicked

My World is a weekly meme in which participants are virtual tour guides. Go check it out and see the worlds of others. Or better yet, take a look at the guidelines, and do your own My World Post!

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On Parent-Teacher Conferences, Part 3

For Part 1, go here.

For Part 2, go here.

Ms. A came in and told us that the kids made fun of chic, and she was too immature to handle it, so they could not move her.  We were more than a little shocked by this. First, it was Ms. A’s suggestion in the first place that Chic be more challenged in math. Second, we had been talking to and working with Chic to prepare her for this. And also, in our nearly 8 years of being Chic’s parents, we had never, ever heard the word “immature” coming out of the mouth of any adult relating to her. We have only heard “extremely mature, ” “well-behaved,” etc. even if we questioned deeply to make sure they were not saying that just because we were her parents. I do not say this as a blind parent. Anyone who knows me knows that I am extremely objective about my children.

At this point I was tired of the fake smiles and general crap that manifests itself in these PT conferences, so I explained how we had worked with Chic on this very topic and she WANTED to do something more difficult. Ms. A spoke very little, just nodded her head in agreement with Ms. J who told us again how immature she was and how she got in so much trouble. WTH?????? Why was I learning that my child was a trouble-maker in a PT conference? (Upon further investigation, this was a smokescreen.  Chic did indeed get in trouble for hitting a boy, but she and the boy were playing around and just play-punching each other. (The boy did not get in trouble.)  The teacher did not even see this, but this was the result of a tattletale.  I told Chic this was not appropriate and did not undermine the teacher, but I was more than a little angry this was the incident (singular) that labeled her a “trouble-maker” by Ms. J.)

I asked what the solution was if my child was bored with classwork and there was clearly a general unwillingness to modify it. Ms. J then said that she had tried to have Chic help other students, but when she sent them to help, she did not teach them; she just did it for them, so Chic was not good at that AT ALL. (By this time I wanted to punch her in the nose for insinuating that we had failed as parents because our then-7-year-old daughter was not a qualified teacher.)

We discussed the social problems and the ridicule and asked why teachers were not doing anything about the ridicule. I stated that I realized we do not live in a perfect world, and I teach Chic that, but for a 7-year-old to bear it bravely 100% of the time without any intervention from teachers might be asking too much. I also mentioned the social problems that I had discussed before (regarding Chic’s friends leaving her out when Ms. J’s answer was “Oh, I didn’t notice.”) and said that I understand Chic’s position because her personality is much like mine. If kids are repeatedly excluding her, she is not going to make a nuisance of herself and continue to push herself into their circles. All of this was met with no response other than “she is not mature enough to do more advanced work in math.”

After I had made the comment about Chic and me having similar personalities, Ms. J said (in a sickly, patronizing voice), “Now, Mom, are you going to be OK? You said you were like your daughter and I don’t want you to be upset because you are hearing unhappy things.” Yes, she said that.

We got back to math. The truth started to surface. Ms. J said that if Chic did 3rd grade math, she would miss her reading class. I really did not see this as a problem as she was so far advanced in reading. I told Ms. J we were fine with her doing more advanced reading. “But then I would have to change this or that!” she whined. Yes, she whined. So we realized that the real reason for not challenging Chic was that it might require a little extra work for the teacher. And to be honest, probably not actually extra work, just different from what she was doing. And the thing that got me the most is that Ms. A, the teacher that suggested the change in the first place, had totally reversed her position to support Ms. J.

Prince Charming had had enough, so he changed the subject to the awards from the previous year in light of the ridicule. He mentioned there seemed to be little/no incentive for succeeding in school (using the awards as an example) and no deterrents for not succeeding and for bad behavior. Ms. J side-stepped this with “I give awards for fruits of the spirit, not necessarily scholastic achievement.” It was a good thing I was walking out by that time and did not hear this response.  First, she DID give scholastic achievement awards, of which my daughter got NONE though being the top student in at least 3 subjects. And she was saying my daughter had NO fruits of the spirit?????

The fifth parent-teacher conference lasted 63 minutes. We left feeling angry and dejected. The teacher/s had done all possible to make us feel like bad parents for raising a girl who was different than the others and who got her 7-year-old feelings hurt when severely ridiculed for being successful.

Yes, I believe there needs to be a class for an entire semester devoted to holding successful parent-teacher conferences. And if an education major fails that class, maybe s/he should not be allowed to even hold PT conferences.

Now what? I hope the next post on this topic concludes this series (for now). It may be extra long to avoid breaking it up into parts like this and so many others in this series have been. Right now I cannot see how that can be told in parts.

 

Chickens on the Porch–My World Tuesday

When I was visiting Reluctant Farm Chik, I saw this scene that I had to capture. Let us remember that I do not live in the country (though I would love to). This looked like a painting to me, and if I was a painter, I would paint it.

click photo to enlarge

One of my bucket list goals is to live on a farm and have chickens (and goats). I am not sure I want them on the front porch because I think they might leave behind a bit of a mess. But they make a pretty picture, regardless.

My World is a weekly meme in which participants are virtual tour guides. Go check it out and see the worlds of others. Or better yet, take a look at the guidelines, and do your own My World Post!

 

On Parent-Teacher Conferences, Part 2

Part 1 is here.

These photos are from the 2007 Mother's Day hike as the prequel post.

The spring parent-teacher conference for Chic’s first grade year was also useless. We got Ms. J’s fake smile and the fake “she is a joy to have in class.” I am sure not everyone thinks these things are fake, but I have really, really good perceptive powers, and I know. I did ask a question about Chic’s best friend who I knew from art class to be a complete airhead. I was concerned about this friendship because Chic is NOT a complete airhead, and I did not want her to be trampling someone (even unwittingly) because that someone might not have the wits to not be trampled. Ms. J assured me that Chic’s friend was one of her brightest students.  This seemed quite strange to me because the girl was only somewhat creative in art class but could not follow a simple instruction to save her life.  I chalked it up to my not being properly perceptive when it applies so close to my life. (Which is not true, but I often do not trust my powers of perception when it involves me or those directly related to my life.)

Now to the fifth parent-teacher conference, October 2009. Chic was not-quite-8 and was in second grade. We had 20 minutes of the fake smile and fake “she’s a joy to have in class” garbage, but Prince Charming and I had other issues to discuss, so we said, “What is going on with math class?” Ms. J sputtered, then said Chic was much too immature and that she would have to call in the math teacher to explain. (We have 2 teachers for grades 1-5. Ms. J is Chic’s main teacher, but the other teacher, Ms. A teaches math, science and social studies.)

Let us back up to the school Open House in September. I had to be in the art room the entire time, and Prince Charming had a prior appointment (the date changed), so at the end I asked Ms. J how Chic was doing. “Just fine,” she fake-smiled. So I asked Ms. A, the math/science/social studies teacher, who I respected much more (at least at the time). She said she wanted to talk to me because she wanted to move Chic to 3rd grade math; she was completely bored in 2nd grade math. I do not know how much math has changed since I was in 2nd and 3rd grade, but I remember 3rd grade math being a LOT more involved than 2nd grade math, so I expressed concern about the concepts missed in 2nd grade affecting how she would do in the 3rd grade class. (Mind you this was not accelerating her, but just advancing her work in one class. I have no problems at all with this. I really have no problems with accelerated work in most classes, but keeping them with classmates their own age is important to me.) Ms. A assured me that neither the 2nd or 3rd graders were where they should be (there was no team teaching before, and Ms. J does not excel as a math teacher), so Chic would not miss anything. She was already as advanced as far as the current 3rd graders. I said I would need to talk to Prince Charming, but unless I spoke differently in the next 2 days, I was in favor of it. Ms. A said she had not discussed it with Ms. J, but she would.

This picture in dry, dry New Mexico could pass for one taken in wet, wet Iceland.

After a week I started asking Chic about math. She made no indication that anything had changed, so after two weeks, I asked Ms. A about it. She said she had talked to Ms. J who said that the students made fun of Chic for being so good at reading, and it really affected Chic, so she was not in favor of moving Chic up. Ms. A told me she would wait until the quarter was over. I again expressed concern about 3rd grade math and starting too late in the year with it and was again assured that the 3rd graders were so far behind that it would be just fine.

At this point I started talking to Chic about the problems at school and also about math. She was bored with math, and she was a little afraid of how the other kids might treat her if she moved, but she wanted to move anyway. We talked about how to deal with bullies and why people make fun of other people, and she was prepared for the change. Also I spoke to the principal about the problem (since talking to Ms. J is useless and often detrimental and Ms. J seemed to not be curbing the ridicule in the least), so the principal singled out Chic a couple of times to call attention to and reward her academic excellence. All systems were “go.”

I knew the quarter was over because I had to turn in art grades. Nothing changed which is what led us to ask about math at the PT conference in October.

To be concluded… Tuesday, February 2. (Yes, February is almost here. Maybe I should take the Christmas flowers off my front door.)

 

Gloomy Sky — SkyWatch Friday

My life the past month has been packed full of travel. The biggest part of three (out of four) weeks have been traveling here or there. Last week/weekend, I went to visit my friend, Reluctant Farm Chik.  It rained. Then there was fog. Then it rained. Then there was sleet. One day the clouds were thin enough that one could barely see a shadow, and everyone was so excited that “the sun was shining.” I think I have lived in the Southwest too long. The sun was NOT shining. It was gloomy.

Usually this time of year I get comments about how my sky is bright and pretty while the other skies are gloomy. I apologize that I have not been home enough to give you a beautiful, cheerful sky picture, but I think this one has some interesting elements. (If you go back a little on RFC’s blog, you’ll find her “Pond Watch” entries to SWF. This is the same pond.)

click photo to enlarge. (It WILL be prettier.)

To see LOTS more terrific sky pictures or to find out how to participate in this meme, head to the SkyWatch blog.

 

On Parent-Teacher Conferences

This post is a continuation of my series about some things going on in our family right now. Those are posts are:

On Tolerance, Part 1

On Tolerance, Part 2

On Education Rankings, Part 1

On Education Ranking, Part 2

On Awarding Mediocrity

As usual for this series, the pictures in this post have nothing to do with the post. These are from a hike our family took at the extinct volcanoes near us on Mother's Day, 2007. But before we could go, we had to wake up Chic who would have been more than happy to sleep in longer with her favorite cat.

You teachers and education majors, is there a class on how to pull off an effective parent-teacher conference? I am inclined to believe there is not, but if I were in charge of an education curriculum, I would make sure there was some such class.

Prince Charming and I have attended five parent-teacher conferences in our short history as the parents of a 2nd Grader, and I can promise you that none of them were much worthwhile.

Our first experience in this new world was October of 2007 when Chic was almost six and in Kindergarten. We walked in, the teacher was beaming and asked us to sit down and have a snack. (Do parents of Kindergartners need a snack for a 15-minute conference???) She had a folder in front of her with all kinds of stickers on it. Before she opened the folder, this teacher, Ms. S, started pointing at the stickers, still beaming. She then read each sticker to us: “Well done,” “Good Job,” “Excellent,” etc. My mind was reeling. I cast a sideways glance at Prince Charming and nearly choked at the look on his face. Wisely, he did not look at me.

We got a brief look inside that be-stickered folder to see that Chic’s work was indeed worthy of such praise, but that is something we already knew, and my guess was that every other student’s parents who arrived got the same beaming presentation.

A hill of very busy, giant ants.

I wanted to know how Chic was behaving in school.  Was she being nice to the other students? Was she getting along well with the others? What was the teacher’s perception of the whole school situation since, well, since she saw her 7 hours a day at school and I only got a couple of hours of which approximately 13 seconds could be attributed to Chic’s report of the school day.

So I asked questions. (The folder was closed by now.) The answers to my questions were actually the beaming teacher pointing to the stickers on the outside of the folder. “Her work is ‘well done.'” “She’s doing ‘excellent.'” You get the picture.

Since I knew Chic was a pretty well-adjusted girl and learned things easily and this was only Kindergarten, I decided to not let this bother me. She loved school, and I have come to think that loving school is the biggest key to learning.

In the  Spring we got exactly the same  useless thing, so I asked, “But I am guessing that every parent gets a folder like this with all these stickers on it, riiiiight?” “Yes,” admitted Ms. S, a little of the sparkle fading from her beaming face. “Well, what I really want to know is how CHIC is doing, not the same thing you tell everyone.” She was taken aback, but we had somewhat of a reasonable conversation after that. It did leave me to wonder if we were the first parents to think that the folder covered with stickers might not exactly be what we needed to know. (See the posts on education rankings for my opinion on this.)

Chic had a different teacher, Ms. J (referred to in Awarding Mediocrity) for grades 1 and 2. (She is still in 2nd grade as I write this.) I must admit that Prince Charming and I went into that first parent-teacher conference beaming. Part of that was because we knew Chic was doing so well, but most of it was because we were just excited to be going to a teacher we were pretty sure was not going to throw a folder covered with stickers in front of us. We sat down. We were offered snacks (apparently not limited to Kindergarten parents. For the record, we have never taken any of the offered snacks at these PT conferences.) We waited for an awkward moment, then Ms. J said, “We usually do not like to accelerate kids in first grade.” Prince Charming and I lost our beaming faces immediately as we searched the faces of each other to see if the other had ever said anything to anyone about Chic accelerating. It was easy to see that we were equally confused.

Now let’s point out that I do most of the talking at these events. Prince Charming steps in when I am totally fed up. He is not timid about these things, but we save his words for the really important times. So I said, “I was not aware we came here to talk about Chic accelerating. As a matter of fact, we do not wish her to accelerate in school. We wish her to be challenged and not bored, but we have a few reasons that make us want to not pursue acceleration, at least for now.”

Ms. J responded, “Oh. Well. Most parents with children who do ‘this well’ want to move them up.”

My response was, “We came here to see how ‘this well’ she is doing, and we are not most parents.”

My memory of the rest of that useless interview is gone. I have mentioned in a previous post that this teacher has trouble putting together two coherent sentences. (You may wonder why we sent our daughter to be taught by such a teacher, but we are open-minded, and just because a person cannot communicate with adults does not mean they cannot teach children. And someone whose opinion we trusted much told us this teacher was an excellent one.)

To be continued… (Friday, January 29)

 

New Hampshire Stone Arch Bridge — My World Tuesday

Going back to my New England trip in October. I saved this one for a post of its own, but then had too many other things I had to post, so now its turn is here.

The pictures speak for themselves. I love all the stones in New England, and this was the height of stonework I saw. All photos will enlarged when clicked.

My World is a weekly meme in which participants are virtual tour guides. Go check it out and see the worlds of others. Or better yet, take a look at the guidelines, and do your own My World Post!

 

Phoenix Sky From Hotel Window — SkyWatch Friday

Last week I was in Phoenix at a stamping Leadership Conference. Unlike last year’s conference in Orlando, I was not completely wiped out and actually went to it. But I did skip one class, and the view from my window when I did that was worth it to me.

This was through a thick and dirty window, but I thought it was beautiful anyway.

To see LOTS more terrific sky pictures or to find out how to participate in this meme, head to the SkyWatch blog.

 

On the Road Again!

Hi Everyone,

It is travel time again, and although I actually wanted to do some posts ahead, time did not allow.

I know I owe all of you an ending to the stories about Chic and school. The holidays took over in a big way–a good way, but busy. And as always in everyone’s lives, unexpected things happen that sap our time and energy, so that will have to wait a couple of weeks.

So no posts at all while I am gone, but I will leave with you a sky picture from that wonderful reststop in Amarillo (which I will see today).

And after all of this is over, I really do hope to catch up a bit on the visiting! As the holiday stories unfold, I think you will understand about my limited time lately.

Have a Happy and Safe New Year!

I do not know what this was, but I liked the colors and textures.

 

A Very Nice Route 66 Rest Stop — My World

You might think I am fixated on bathrooms. Not really, but I do appreciate a nice one, and especially a clean one, so here is another My World Tuesday post that is basically about a bathroom!

I live in New Mexico, and New Mexico has lousy rest stops. Honestly, do not stop at one unless you are dying. I would rather go behind a tree (which is a problem because there are not a lot of those along the highways in New Mexico) than stop at a rest stop in this state. I have more than one horror story relating to rest stops in New Mexico.

But Texas is different. Now it is quite a large state, so I cannot speak to every rest stop on every highway. But in the panhandle, the rest stops are nice–extremely nice. There are not many of them, but the panhandle is small. My favorite one is on the east side of  Amarillo at Exit 76 on I-40.

This rest stop is spacious and clean and just a nice place to stop. On our trips to and from Missouri, we always get gas in Amarillo (and often food), but we go to the rest stop additionally because it is cleaner, and we used to have a dog with us, so it was a better place to let him out.

Take a look.

This row of flags greets us upon entering. We think (but I was too lazy to research it) they are for all of the countries that have owned Texas.

The front entrance.

When walking into the building from the front, one crosses a bridge over this ornamental, dry riverbed. (My kids beg to play in it. I don't let them.)

A giant open field with rusted western ornaments surrounds the building on three sides. I let my kids run here. And the dog. But beware. Goatsheads may be prevalent at certain times of the year. Shoes and socks required, and you might have to take a spike out of a tender dog paw.

This is the back entrance. I just love that it is almost as nice as the front entrance.

When first entering the restroom, I am always taken by the cleanliness and nice smell. I kind of like the ceiling in there, too!

This is the floor of the bathroom stall. I think one would be hard-pressed to find a stray hair or even a spec of dust on it, let alone paper scraps and other debris!

The row of sinks. Rarely a drop of water on the counter do I find. I have never seen a janitor or worker in the bathroom. Maybe they are just so nice they inspire passers-through to keep them clean and dry.

This corridor leads from the restrooms to the front door. I like all the light.

I call this "the library." I have never seen such a large and tidy display of area information and brochures. The people working there are friendly. It is just a lovely place that makes me wish I had more time to stay.

My World is a weekly meme in which participants are virtual tour guides. Go check it out and see the worlds of others. Or better yet, take a look at the guidelines, and do your own My World Post!