I'll be honest - at this particular moment I am not sure that I am going to survive Tyler surviving school. It starts out so easy, at least it did for us, and so the complications we're seeing now are so hard to deal with! Kindergarten was, of course, easy. No homework & Tyler learned to read without any problems and when I went to his parent/teacher conferences, Mrs. Crump couldn't wait to tell me how wonderful my son was. Joy! I knew he was wonderful, but it was so nice to hear it from someone who wasn't biologically required to think so too. I was pregnant with Scooter that year and Mrs. Crump said to me 'whatever you've been doing with Tyler, keep doing it and do it again with the next one - it's working'. I now know those were deceptively flattering words that carried a big dollop of danger in them.
First grade wasn't much different really, we started homework and projects and then at his conferences I heard once again how great Tyler was and how he should be in the gifted program. Yada yada. I'll admit that during his spring conference that year while I sat there around 4 months pregnant with Riley watching Scooter at 14 months old and running around the room, getting into everything, while we talked that it probably wasn't always going to be this easy. At some point, with one child or another, conferences and school were going to get harder.
5th grade is proving to be brutal so far for Tyler. Even though he has a daily list of homework, he's forgetting to do some. He's forgetting books or worksheets or spelling lists at school. He loses 10 points off of each late assignment and gets a 'mark' for every little thing he forgets to do or doesn't bring in. After so many marks in a six weeks, he will earn a detention. Last week he brought home a progress report in the not quite complete 3rd week of school that included 2 B's, 1 C and (gasp audibly with shock here) a D! Are you kidding me? A 'D'? After some serious inquiry I finally uncovered that he was failing to turn assignments or projects in at school on time too that weren't even on the 'you have to remember to do ALL your homework' spectrum. I'm hearing a lot of 'It's not my fault' and 'It's not fair' these days.
The teachers asked at the beginning of the year that we don't coddle the kids, let them figure out how to do this on their own. A friend who teaches 6th grade told me that it was better to let him screw up now so he was better prepared for next year when the work won't be so much review, but constant new concepts. He'll be in junior high before I know it and he'll have to remember all of this on his own. The teachers won't care. But how can I let my normally straight A student fail? Does fail just mean screw up or does it actually mean FAIL?
When your first grader comes home with straight A's it isn't really that much of a surprise. After all, there isn't too much to mess up on and the teachers are still so 'helpful'. As the years go by it becomes more of a challenge for the kids and a little more impressive. And then somewhere along the line, without meaning to, you start to EXPECT the A's. So, when they start slipping away it kind of feels like you've failed somehow.
I was never a straight A student. Probably not even in first grade, but I can't remember that far back. I started kindergarten in Wisconsin at 4 where you did not have to be 5 until December back in the dark ages. The state had evaluated me as they did all kids and told mom that I talked like I was in 2nd grade already (is this a surprise, really? I am MJ's daughter!) and so of course I should go ahead and start school. When my brother was evaluated 2 years later and they would ask him questions, he would answer 'You know', wondering why an adult was asking him such an obvious question when he clearly knew the answer. He did a bit of prescribed preschool and was also ready to start at 4 (his bday being Sept. 17th), but we moved to Texas that June and Texas laws being what they were, Matthew was forced to wait a whole year, until he was just shy of turning 6 before starting kindergarten. Since all of our bdays are in the fall, Asheley was also almost 6 a couple of years later when she started school.
I tell you all this because we are all intelligent people and were all good students. And in the early years of school we all did well and there weren't any discernible differences. However, once we got past those early years of elementary school the differences got BIG. You will probably never hear me encourage a parent to let a child skip a grade or start school early because I know how hard it will eventually be. Not in the beginning, but later - YES. And I am not just talking scholastically, emotionally and physically I fell further behind the farther along I got in school. Somewhere around 5th and 6th grade I started to just have to work harder. My parents probably didn't really notice the difference until Matthew got to the same point and didn't have to do as much to get as far or farther, but eventually it was obvious to all of us. I worked my butt off for the few A's, mostly B's and some C's that I received while Matthew coasted through with predominantly A work. Some of this, I know, is also about differences in processing information, memory and personality (my husband also says that Matthew was just about every teacher's pet too, which of course didn't hurt), but there is most assuredly a portion that had to do with our ages. Anyway, school was just harder for me and I always had to work for it. Matthew got his wake up call in college and ended up figuring out he actually DID have to read material and study and now is one of the most prolific readers I know, but it took a while to get there.
The thing to remember in all of this long winded babble today, is that I was 10 in Sixth grade while Tyler is 10 in 5th. And in the 6th grade, I kind of had a fall out on the working hard thing. At some point it started to bother me that Matthew never had homework and I always did. It began to rankle that all the other kids in the neighborhood were out playing kickball and dodgeball and tag while I sat inside doing homework for hours a night. Granted, my mom had a strict rule that homework got done before play time (it was definitely a good rule and I use it myself), which other parents didn't do around us, but I felt like everyone else was playing while I was working and they were all okay in school so I should be too.
So I just stopped. Literally. I just stopped doing homework for a while that spring, or at least most of it. And I paid for it. I'll never forget the day I got that report card. So many D's I didn't know what to think. I was really kind of shocked even though I should have expected it. I got the grades on my way to the gym for the beginning of cheerleader tryouts. There were only about 200 6th grade girls trying out for middle school cheerleader and I was going to be one of them. The only problem was that this was the year that Texas was initiating it's 'No Pass - No Play' program and you had to show your report card to continue with the tryout process. I turned around and went back to class. Then I went home and waited for the hammer to fall.
I don't really remember getting the severe punishment that I expected. I do remember my mom taking a much more active role in monitoring my work for a while, although it wasn't forever. And I also know that even though I was in Band for years, the No Pass-No Play thing never affected me again. I did the work. I screwed up. I occasionally missed an assignment and I certainly failed a test or two, but I don't think I ever failed a class again. And if I did, it wasn't for lack of trying or for slacking off. And it was only one class at one time, not all of them at once. And through it all, I was determined to have at least one report card with straight A's on it so that I could prove at least to myself that I could do it too - not just my brother. I didn't get that kind of grade report until I was in college, and it was the 2nd time I went to college in my late 20's and early 30's, not when I started college at 17. Overall though, after that big screw up in 6th grade, I didn't take it for granted that I was going to just make it by without working for it ever again. And I even pushed myself harder than I had to by enrolling in honors classes that I did well in, but might have kept me from the straight A report cards I really wanted. I learned more for it though!
I spoke with the teacher who gave the D last night at a meeting for something else. I told her I was shocked, but was trying to stay cool and let him figure it out. She assured me that he had turned in the missing project and his grade would improve before report cards, but that for some kids it's important to SEE the low grade to understand how serious the teachers are about turning in the work on time. She said that they don't want to see the kids fail either, but sometimes at the beginning of the year it's a good thing to let them falter a bit and regain the footing on their own. Food for thought.
So last night when Tyler was crying because he had forgotten his spelling list at school and couldn't finish his homework and was going to get the final mark today that would mean his first detention ever, I decided to be firm and not coddling. I told him I was sorry he was getting a detention, but there was nothing I could do about it. I am not at school with him, he has to remember himself and if he can't he has to write it down and then LOOK at what he writes down. His teachers can't remember for him either - they want him to be responsible for himself. If he messes up, he has to pay the price and maybe that will help him to remember in the future. Tears, tears and more tears. He was going to ruin his reputation by getting a detention. 'ITSNOTFAIRITSNOTFAIRITSNOTFAIR.' I tried to explain that it wouldn't go on his permanent record, but he looked at me like I was from another planet.
I was very determined to let him suffer and pay the consequences. And then he remembered that he has two friends in his class that we have phone numbers for. 'Can you call Mrs. T for the list mom?' I glanced at the clock and saw that it was after nine, but I also knew they had been at the same meetings I had been at (and with their child) and they were probably still struggling with homework too. I thought for a long minute and realized that there might just be too many lessons in this first six weeks for THIS particular family to deal with. So, I told Tyler that he had to make the call himself and ask Mrs. T by himself for the list, explaining why he needed it. Now, Mrs. T had actually gotten the list from me for her son who forgot his the last 2 weeks in a row, so she very sweetly read Tyler the list over the phone and he thanked her profusely before handing me the phone. J and I then consoled each other on our irresponsible, but loveable children and compared notes on the teachers for this year so far and how one in particular seems to be very indecisive and unorganized, but the others seem to have it together.
I hope Tyler is learning his lesson. I hope he pulls it together. I can't do it all for him and he needs to know it. He dodged a bullet last night, but he came up with the solution himself and made the call and request himself so maybe I'm not too much of a softie. Hopefully he won't be as bullheaded as his mother and won't need a full report card of D's to see the light and know that he has to pull his own weight. And at the end of the day, I hope we both survive the 5th grade and all the grades to follow without losing our minds, because it's not just 5th grade that isn't fair - it's kind of the rest of his life.
Thanks and God Bless!
No comments:
Post a Comment