To new readers:
Welcome. To make it easy for you to get a sense of the whole story told in this blog, these posts are listed in chronological order. The regular blog (where you can post your comments and read comments made by other readers) can be accessed by clicking on “Blog: Helicopter Mom.” Your comments are always welcome.
Dear President Bush, Mayor Bloomberg and Chancellor Klein,
(January 16, 2007) I know you are doing your best to try and improve the performance of all public school children. I commend you for your efforts. I also know things are not going so well for you. I have some behind-the-scenes information that can help you. What follows in this blog is a first-hand look at the time and effort parents all over the city are expending in order to help their children do well in school, and the toll that it is taking on our personal and professional lives. Many of us feel as if we have re-enrolled in elementary or middle school. My husband, who is an attorney, told a client that he is unable to conduct out-of-town depositions next week because that is when his midterms are scheduled for. When his client looked at him uncomprehendingly, my husband explained that it is our 7th grader who will actually be taking the tests, but that my husband and I will be taking turns studying elbow to elbow with our son, since studying for tests is a skill his elementary school never taught him.
There are many, many skills his public elementary school—deemed one of the top 200 in the city, by the way—never taught him. Among them were: how to subtract, how to divide, what length and width is, and where to put commas in a sentence. As for semi-colons, until recently, my son had two words for them: “What’s that?” But our son sure had fun in elementary school. Instead of teaching him probability (which is something she herself did not understand) my son’s third grade teacher taught the class all the lyrics to “Yellow Submarine” as well as to assorted show tunes. Our son spent the entire last half of 5th grade rehearsing for the 5th grade play. During class time! When his pregnant 5th grade teacher left to have her baby in December of that year and I inquired as to whom would replace her, she replied, “Don’t worry. They don’t learn anything during the second half of 5th grade anyway. It’s all about the play.”
So how did this school become one of the top 200 in the city? It was thanks to the efforts of parents, who had finally caught on to the fact that they needed to either teach their kids math at home, or have them tutored for their state and city tests. (The scores on those tests are the only benchmark used to determine if a school is one of the top 200.) The scores improved so much that the principal was promoted and now teaches other principals how to improve their school’s scores. What a joke. The principal, wrongly, gave full credit for those scores to herself and the work of her teachers. I surveyed parents and found that every single child who did very well on the 4th grade standardized state tests was either tutored, or taught math at home by his or her parents. Children who did not do well had parents who, innocently, believed that the school was teaching the kids what they needed to know or who supplemented incorrectly. (They drilled their kids on math facts as opposed to teaching them concepts that would appear on the 4th grade test.) Their children paid for their innocence since, in New York City, a child’s scores on the 4th grade standardized tests determine which middle school he will be accepted to. Not surprisingly, the kids whose parents taught them the concepts that would be on that test, or who were lucky enough to afford tutors who did that work for them, were accepted into the highest performing middle schools while those whose parents left their child’s education up to the elementary school are now enrolled in the lower performing ones.
Mayor Bloomberg, before you overhaul our school system yet again, I beg you to really look at what makes a difference in how children perform in school. The difference lies in giving each child the individualized help he or she needs, either via parents, tutors, or astute teachers who inform parents of what type of supplemental work needs to be done with the child at home. (Even the very best teachers in New York City generally have at least 27 other kids in a classroom to attend to and are usually unable to give each child the indidivual attention he or she needs.) It will make no difference if you take the “good” teachers from the “good” schools and put them into the “bad” schools, as you plan to do. You are assuming that the low-performing schools have “bad” teachers. You are wrong. Two of the best teachers my kids ever had at their “good” schools were hired away from “bad” ones. My older son’s former kindergarten teacher previously taught kindergarten in a low performing school in Harlem. There were no books in her classroom.. The teacher’s parents bought the books for her classroom with their own money since the parents of the kids she taught couldn’t afford to do so. The kids she taught often didn’t show up at school because of some problem that was happening at home. The parents didn’t show up at parent teacher conferences. There is only so much one single teacher, no matter how outstanding she or he is, can do. To ship this teacher back into a low performing school would not change the real problem, the fact that these kids are not getting the support they need at home. Switching teachers from “good” to “bad” schools will not make a dent in the performance of the “bad” schools.
Last November, The New York Times ran a front page article announcing that U.S. schools were “slow in closing gaps between races.” It stated that in spite of President Bush’s attempt to leave no child behind, little progress has been made towards closing the performance gap between minority and white students. (The article did name two schools where minority students had made large gains. The principal of one of those schools attributed the gains to after-school tutoring by volunteers in black churches, while the other principal said progress resulted from “focused instruction , frequent diagnostic testing and (no surprise now) several tutoring programs.” In schools where children did not receive individual support from either a parent or a tutor, despite what the article called “concerted efforts by educators,” the test-score gaps were so large that, on average, African-American and Hispanic students in high school were reading and doing arithmetic at the same level as whites in junior high.
That is not true of the African- American and Hispanic students at NEST+m, a rigorous K-12 school in New York City with astonishingly high test scores. There, African-American and Hispanic children are on par, or ahead of, their white classmates. It made the front page of The New York Times when the chancellor discovered that NEST+m, was interviewing parents and asking them how much support they were willing to provide their children at home before accepting, or rejecting, their children.
My older son is now a 7th grader at NEST+m. During our admissions interview, we were told that a child’s success in that school hinges on parents being ready, willing and able to academically support the child at home. We were asked if we were willing to commit to providing a large level of support. “Definitely,” I replied. “We’ve been doing that since third grade.” (That’s why his test scores were high enough to earn him an interview at NEST+m, an opportunity very few children were given.) A group of NEST+m parents emailed each other after that Times article appeared. One of them bristled at Joel Klein having a problem with the fact that the school chose students with involved and active parents over non participatory and non active parents. “Does he not know that the success of a child does not lie solely (with) the school but with the family and guardians involved?” the email asked about Klein. “How ignorant is he? If it were not for the combination of parent/guardian AND school/teacher efforts NEST would not have achieved the kind of academic level that it has now.”
That truism applies to children of all races at NEST+m. One of my son’s closest friends at that school is an African-American boy from Harlem. Academically, he outperforms my son. Not surprisingly, his mom is more adamant about, or perhaps is more effective at, being a helicopter mom. Want proof? Last fall this boy came to our country house for the weekend. The kids did hours of homework and studied hard for a social studies exam they were having on Monday. Then, since it was a beautiful, sunny Sunday, we took the kids fishing, something my son’s friend had never done before. The boy marveled at the beauty of the bay we were at and collected a few lovely beach rocks to bring home as a memory of this outing, which was clearly very special to him. My heart filled with joy as I listened to him oooh and ahhh at the beauty of his surroundings. A few minutes later, as my husband was showing the boy how to cast out a fishing line, my husband’s cell phone rang. It was the boy’s mother calling. “I just wanted to make sure he is studying,” she said. “Um, no,” my husband sheepishly replied. “It’s such a beautiful day that we took them fishing.” Silent disapproval came over the line.
Everything you will read in this blog is true. Read it and weep. Then please do something to stop the madness happening within our school system since everyone is losing—both the middle class and the poor. Realize that fuzzy curriculums like TERC and Balanced Literacy appear to be effective because parents at the “good” schools using those curriculums are teaching their kids the crucial fundamentals those curriculums leave out. Once those fundamentals are in place, then those curriculums are able to teach children what they were designed to teach. But without those fundamentals children’s performance sinks like a rock. Savvy parents who are tuned in to the right word-of-mouth parenting network know that. Recent immigrants or members of our city and country’s lower socio-economic strata do not. They trust that our city’s public schools are going to give their kids the fundamentals of a good education. Many of the schools are not doing that.
Mr. Bush, there are lots of problems with No Child Left Behind but at least you are trying to give all children the fundamentals that they need and my hat goes off to you for that. If it was not for mandated city and state testing, I would not have realized how much was being omitted in my older son’s elementary school curriculum and would not have known what to supplement at home. Mr. Bloomberg and Mr. Klein, I am beginning to think that perhaps you honestly do not realize how important fundamentals are. Mr. Klein, you are all for the Whole Language-inspired Balanced Literacy curriculum because of your own personal experience. You became a reader when someone gave you a book on baseball. But you were able to read it because someone else had already taught you phonics. If that rudimentary information had not been drilled into your head when you were a schoolboy, you would have been as lost as many of our city’s children are, now that they are not getting a systematic exposure to phonics. Don’t believe me? Take a look at the massive amount of research that says so. Then look at why Balanced Literacy appears to work in “good” (read “wealthy” schools)—because parents at those “good” schools are teaching their kids phonics at home!
Please realize that until you empower immigrants or parents in our country’s lower socio-economic strata with the same knowledge, time and money that middle and upper class parents have to devote to supporting their children—or tutors who can do it for them— you will never be able to close the achievement gap that exists between rich and poor schools. By pointing out the importance of parents, I am not minimizing the work being done by teachers. My 12-year-old son refers to them as the heroes of America and I agree with him. But teachers have to teach the curriculums they are mandated to teach and they have to teach them to 28 or more kids each day. In the end, it is parents who make the crucial difference. It’s time someone had the courage to stand up and speak that truth. I am that person.
Sincerely,
Helicopter Mom
I never intended to be a helicopter mom
(January 16, 2007) I did not set out to be helicopter mom. (By that I mean a mom who hovers over every single detail involved with helping her children succeed in school.) I always thought of myself as a very well balanced person who had my priorities straight. As a parent, my goal for my children was simple: I wanted them to be happy. In that I have succeeded. I have two healthy wonderful boys—Older Son, age 12, and Younger Son, age 6—both of whom sparkle with joy and vitality and both of whom are a pleasure to be with. When they were preschoolers, I never pressured either one of them academically. Instead of drilling them on the sounds that letters make, I took my kids to the playground or let them play with blocks, or cars, or trains at home. When I hired my younger son’s preschool teacher to be his babysitter, she suggested I buy some educational games for her to play with him. I demurred. “He gets enough academic work at preschool,” I said. “At home I want him to just play with his toys.” (Younger Son, especially, had a real need to build and create things and I wanted him to have the time to engage in that love and need.)
At the time I was a doctoral student in psychology (I still am) and my child-rearing decisions were supported by the academic and psychological experts I came in contact with. For example, when my husband and I toured NEST+m, an academically rigorous K-12 school on the Lower East Side, the principal said the most important thing parents could be doing with their future kindergarteners was taking them to the park or on playdates so that they could learn to get along with other children. As a doctoral psychology student taking courses at Teacher’s College at Columbia University, I heard fellow doctoral students scoffing at a mother who had asked one of them to recommend a person who could “cognitively stimulate” her toddler. “Tell her to let him play with blocks,” said one of the doctoral candidates. “That’s what kids really need.” When I interviewed child development researcher Alison Gopnik, Ph.D., author of Scientist in the Crib, for a Parents magazine article on how to cognitively stimulate your baby, Gopnik told me that parents had totally taken cognitive research out of context. “Normal, middle class homes are full of all the cognitive stimulation a young child will ever need,” she said. She warned that parents had turned cognitive stimulation into a job and were stressing out themselves, and their children.
Not me, I thought. My kids were happy. They were smart without being pressured. They were both curious little people who loved to learn. There were no flashcards in my home. Friends and relatives gave our kids electronic games that beeped the sounds of the letters but I found them totally annoying. They sat unused in the closet. From time to time I did try to introduce the sounds of letters to Younger Son, but he turned away in disinterest. He did the same in preschool when his teachers taught “the letter of the week.” His interest would come in time, I knew. There was no reason to push. Early reading has not been found to be a predictor of later academic success. Early reading was not helpful but pushing, I knew, was detrimental. Kids who were forced to learn to read too early grew up to hate reading.
My older son had never been pushed to read. I was forced to become a helicopter mom to him because his elementary school was not teaching him the basics of what he needed to know—you know, things like math and grammar! But it did teach him how to read. Older Son, like Younger Son, began reading in first grade. Today, Older Son loves reading and he is in the 97th percentile in reading in the country. His reading ability earned him an invitation to participate in the Johns Hopkins talent search, so that he—along with other super-bright kids—could be further groomed academically during the summer. My smart, skate boarding, hockey-playing son proclaimed the kids on the cover of the Johns Hopkins brochure “dorks.” He loudly stated that he didn’t want to go to school in the summer. He was a 6th grader at the time and his every waking moment was taken up with school work, seven days a week. He couldn’t have playdates and couldn’t participate in after school activities. He couldn’t even watch TV or read a book for pleasure. He needed, and deserved, a break. He needed, and deserved, a childhood. We knew that if he continued to be pushed the way his middle school was pushing him, he would lose his love of learning. We threw the Johns Hopkins invitation in the garbage. If there was one thing I knew about myself, it was that I was not a pusher.
That was then. This is now.
Now, I have a 6 year old in a talented and gifted school in uptown Manhattan. Uptown is the key word in that sentence, even more important than “talented and gifted” although that certainly matters too. We live downtown. Downtown preschools do not send home worksheets for homework. Downtown parents do not drill their kids on letter sounds. Uptown parents do. Result: many children in uptown schools start kindergarten knowing how to read. Younger Son did not know how to. He was the only kid in his kindergarten class who did not know all the sounds that consonants make. Fellow kindergarten mothers, women I like and respect and who are now my friends, would sit on the bench in the school playground last year and talk about how they were teaching their kids to read at home. Their kids didn’t like it. Their kids complained. But they were learning how to read.
I was not teaching my child because I thought Younger Son wasn’t ready. Also, I didn’t have the time to teach him. Every spare moment I had was spent helicoptering Older Son—helping him survive his brutal transition to NEST+m. (Not only was NEST brutally demanding, it regularly tossed out kids who could not keep up.) And I was sure Younger Son’s school would teach him how to read. After all, that was one of the reasons we schlepped uptown to bring Younger Son to his wonderful school—to avoid all the teaching I had needed to do when my older son went to our neighborhood elementary school. (That school now has a new principal and things are much better there. For example, kids are now expected to know their multiplication tables (this was actually discouraged when Older Son went there) and rehearsals for the 5th grade play now take place after school.)
Younger Son was in a great school. His kindergarten teacher was doing a stupendous job of teaching Younger Son the sounds that consonants make. I figured his first grade teacher would do an equally stupendous job of teaching him to read when he was good and ready. Turns out, Younger Son was ready in kindergarten, and I didn’t realize it. Turns out, his school’s Whole Language-based Balanced Literacy curriculum was failing him miserably and I didn’t know it. (Whole Language believes kids pick up reading by being surrounded by literature, the way they pick up the spoken language and that the systematic teaching, and drilling, of phonics is unnecessary. Phonics is done, but only in a very limited way. Balanced Literacy is the curriculum Joel Klein has put into almost every public school in the city, God help us.)
In kindergarten, Younger Son would often say things to me like, “How do you really spell that?” and then sigh in frustration when I urged him to sound the word out and use “invented spelling” the way his school advised. (Invented spelling has kids write down the sounds they hear and not worry about spelling the word correctly.) He also frequently said, “In school when we read they tell us to look at the pictures, but that’s not reading. I want to really read but I don’t know how.” I trusted the school would teach him.
Now I know better. Now I know Younger Son, like most kids, needs to learn phonics in order to learn how to read. Now I am pushing phonics. I have turned to the other mothers for help and advice. They have given it freely. Now there are flashcards in my home. And phonics workbooks. And spelling board games like “What’s g-n-u” and “Spelling Bee.” Younger Son and I create Sight Word Bingo cards in the little spare time we have between me supporting Older Son and Younger Son reading books and sight word flash cards and filling out pages in his phonics workbook. I wake up making lists of words that have the short “o” vowel sound in them. I have become a woman obsessed. I walk around phonetically sounding out words on street signs and subway ads, and urging Younger Son to do the same. I want to bring Younger Son to the same place the other parents have brought their children.
Right now he is in a very different place. Now, while the other kids in his FIRST GRADE class are bringing home spelling words like “because,” “there,” “their,” “should,” and “could,” Younger Son is working on “of” and “all.” I talked to Younger Son’s teacher and told her I felt like I was teaching Younger Son to read at home all by myself and that I needed the school’s help. Younger Son is now being pulled out of class for phonics work with the school’s reading specialist. His teacher and I are in constant contact and Younger Son is making great progress. The other day he said, “I’m really good at reading!” He is, but he’s still way behind the other kids.
This morning, I had coffee with The Other Mother. Her son is Younger Son’s reading partner. They are the two worst readers in the class. Not surprisingly, they are the only two kids in the class who were not taught how to read at home. (I have to repeatedly say in this blog that I am not in any way bashing my son’s school. They have to teach to the curve and the parents at my son’s school are raising the curve in a tremendous way. Realizing the Balanced Literacy curriculum is not working for Younger Son, the school is now taking steps to provide him with the phonics work he needs at school too. Every school should be as responsive and warm and nurturing as his.)
I asked The Other Mother if she thought we should talk to our kids’ teacher and ask if she would teach our kids basic phonics skills in the classroom. “She does teach some phonics, but what she teaches is way over our kids’ heads,” she said. (The class is currently working on naming all the possible words that have the “i” sound, in them including my, height, freight. The simple short vowel sounds were never covered in any systematic way.)
“Face it, we missed the boat,” said The Other Mother. “We should have taught them at home and we didn’t. The ship sailed without us and we have to do what we can do to help our kids catch up.”
I am helping as fast as I can. I have visions of a huge ship filled with hordes of tiny children with their noses in chapter books while my blonde, adorable son waves for them to wait from the desert island he has been stranded on.
If I could, I would keep Younger Son home from school for a few months and teach him to read. We would do reading, and reading only. But I can’t do that. I work. And worry. And the ship with all those kids reading way above grade level keeps sailing on.
Welcome to my life.
Haven’t thrown up in a few hours? You’re going to school!
Older Son was out most of the week of January 8th with the stomach flu. That week, he called around to his friends, asked what the homework was, tried to do it but was physically unable to. He was still throwing up at midnight on Thursday night. Friday morning I let him sleep late. When he woke up he didn’t feel queasy anymore and was hungry for the first time in a week. A good sign. He had black circles under his eyes, he could barely walk and his clothes hung on him. But he wasn’t throwing up. That meant one thing. Older Son was going to school.
It broke my heart to send him. If the NYC school system was different, I would have let him stay in bed, watching TV, resting and recovering, the way I would have done when I was a child his age. But, as my best friend often tells her husband, who refuses to get caught up in the madness of supporting their son at his well regarded private school, “It isn’t 1975 anymore. It’s 2006. The world is a lot different than when we were kids.” The world is indeed different, at least for kids who are getting a “good” education.
Older Son is in the world of NYC public schools. That means that admission to middle school is done on a competitive basis and so is admission to high school. The only grades high schools look at when deciding whether to accept, or reject, a child are the ones from 7th grade. As one former middle school teacher told me, “If your kid doesn’t get into one of the screened high schools you may as well move to the suburbs. The unscreened high schools are a disaster.” (And unsafe.) In order to get into a screened high school, Older Son’s grades need to be as high as possible this year. Kids with 90 averages are regularly rejected from the top high schools. At the most recent high school admission fair we were told that admissions are simply based on a child’s grades. We were told the schools do not take into consideration the fact that NEST is much harder than most other middle schools. However, at a tour of one of the screened high schools I was told that they know which middle schools inflate kids’ grades and which ones are tough and they do take that into consideration. In any event, grades matter. In fact, to even to be allowed to continue to NEST’s own high school, Older Son needs to maintain an 85 average, which is like maintaining a 100 average at most other NYC middle schools. So… as long as he can stand up and keep his food down, he has to go to school. Otherwise he risks missing too much.
Needless to say, Older Son was not happy about this. “I hate my school right now,” he said as we sat in his pediatrician’s examining room. “We can never have a break.”
“You can’t, honey,” I empathized. “I’m sorry. The school system in New York is crazy and we just have to do what we can to cope with it.”
The doctor examined him. I explained that we needed a doctor’s note for him to return to school. She began to fill one out saying, “He should be able to go back to school on Monday.” Monday was three days away.
“No!” I cried. “Not Monday. Today. He’s going there right now.”
“Now?” she said. “He was throwing up at midnight. I wouldn’t send him to school today.”
“He has to go to school,” I said. “He’s missed too much already. You know how they are at NEST.”
She nodded in understanding. Her own son had attended NEST high school for a few years. He found it much too demanding and begged to be transferred to another school. He now attends a private school uptown. Against her better judgement, and my own, the pediatrician wrote a note saying Older Son could go back to school that day.
Most of Older Son’s teachers are harsh. Unrelenting. Unbendable in their demands. But they are also unbelievably dedicated. They are available almost around the clock to answer emails from kids asking questions. They meet with the kids all the time to sort out any confusion. They have the remarkably difficult job of taking young brains, many of which have not been previously subjected to anything resembling academic rigor, and turning the owners of those brains into outstanding thinkers. But they are not touchy-feely in the way they go about it.
Didn’t do your homework? No problem. You get a zero and the zero counts towards your grade.
Didn’t show your work on the math test even though the directions clearly said to do so? Half credit off for each instance of not following directions. Result? Instead of the 100 you would have gotten because you got all the answers right, you’re getting an 80. (True story. Happened to Older Son. More than once.)
Kids yell and scream and moan at the unfairness, at the harshness. And then they start rising to the expectations they are being held to. The only other options are to fail or to go to other public middle schools, places where parents complain their kids are hardly learning anything. Places where kids are allowed to take open notebook tests. Where words are spelled wrong on the teacher’s word wall. (I actually saw this at a well regarded uptown middle school.) Where teachers say they understand the children may be too busy to exceed standards and that’s O.K. They can simply meet them. (I heard a middle school teacher say this to a classroom of kids at another well regarded middle school.)
Kids at NEST have taken their gym teacher’s words to heart. Whenever the kids complain that he is pushing them too hard, the gym teacher barks, “You don’t like it? Go home!”
God. I love that school and I hate it at the same time. Read on to see why…
Preparing for midterms. The beginning.
This is the story of how Older Son began preparing for his 7th grade midterms at NEST+m. This is also the story of how the demands of an academically rigorous school affect not just a child, but an entire family. It is the story of how helping Older Son prepare for his midterms drained my husband and me, and how almost every single moment we had together as a family was devoted to that preparation. (Or to teaching our younger son how to read since his school’s Balanced Literacy curriculum was not doing so) And last, but not least, this is the story of the level of support most, if not all, children need to get at home in order to thrive in academically rigorous schools.
A former executive board member of the NEST+m PTA tells the following story: A few years ago, the city thought it would be a good idea to take a few kids from low-performing schools and transfer them to NEST+m so that their problems would be solved by whatever the kids at NEST+m were getting inside their school building. The school had to be doing something right, the city figured, since NEST’s test scores were off the charts. The city figured it had to be because of NEST’s low class size. Or its good teachers. Or its demanding curriculum.
You know what happened to those kids who transferred in to get the benefit of what NEST offered? They flunked.The only thing those kids succeeded in doing was slowing down the rest of the class. Those kids did not return to NEST+m the following year. The school alone was not enough to solve their problems.
Here’s a look at what those kids really needed and what, I’m sure, their working class parents, sadly, were not able to provide:
Six days before midterms begin:
Older Son organized all his class notes to prepare for studying. His social studies teacher (one of the best teacher’s he’s ever had because not only does she teach well but she is drilling study and note taking skills into the kids) made it a requirement that all the kids get an accordion folder for their notes and handouts. (If they didn’t get this folder and bring it to school they would get points taken off their grades. Of course.
They get points taken off their grades for seemingly any and every minor infraction at that school. But, hey, the kids all got accordion folders. Read: their parents made a special trip to Staples and bought the folders for them.) The teacher told the kids to label each section up to chapter 10 and place all their notes and homeworks for the first four chapters in the appropriate sections of the folder.
Older Son made labels, put his social studies notes in the correct sections, then made up study folders for math, science, social studies and Spanish and put the appropriate papers into each folder. He did his homework and then, miraculously, he had time to play, something he rarely gets a chance to do. We ate dinner together as a family. We laughed and talked and enjoyed each other’s company. This was the last time we would do this until midterms are over.
5 days before midterms begin
Husband and I are aware that Older Son needs to start studying.
However, Older Son has homework. He also needs to hand in a revision of a feature article that is due tomorrow on Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck.
His English teacher had returned other kids’ first drafts of their articles last week when Older Son was out sick. Those kids had the whole weekend to work on their revisions and could now turn to studying. Older Son’s teacher returned Older Son’s to him today even though Older Son has been in school since Friday afternoon. He didn’t return it to Older Son on Monday or Tuesday, probably because he was preoccupied with the kids taking their 7th grade ELA exams on those days. Older Son pointed out to his teacher that the other kids had had more time than he did to work on their revisions. The teacher did not care. Older Son asked if he could have an extension of time since he is supposed to be studying for midterms this week. (First time Older Son has ever asked for anything like this.) The teacher said no. Older Son completed his revision.
This led to me reading his revision and going ballistic. Older Son had made only minor changes and had completely ignored the teacher’s major criticisms.
Not following rubrics had been a major issue at the beginning of the year and had resulted in Older Son going from being an honor role student last year to not doing so hot in the first quarter of this year. We talked to his teachers and the Middle School director about this but they assured us that this was normal. They said that lots of kids just plow on to the task at hand without focusing on the teachers’ comments. After realizing there is a direct correlation between following teachers’ directions and grades, Older Son has been very carefully reading rubrics and giving the teachers what they ask for.
Yet, for some reason, he hadn’t addressed his teacher’s criticisms tonight. In my other life as a freelance journalist, I have done many interviews on kids and school performance and have heard that certain kids will tune out to a teacher and a teacher’s demands if the kids feel they are not being respected.
Maybe that’s what was happening here since Older Son clearly felt it was unfair he had been given such a short period of time in which to do this revision.
Doesn’t matter.
If he doesn’t address those comments he will get a lousy grade. If he didn’t have a mother at home who was willing and able to read his essay, he would have handed in what he’d done and would have definitely gotten that lousy grade.
After asking why Older Son didn’t address teachers comments in the first place and receiving only a shrug as an answer, I hand the essay back to Older Son and say, “Read what your teacher said and fix what he said was a problem.” (Teacher’s comments were absolutely on the money, by the way.)
In the meantime, Husband has begun what will end up being a five hour project—reading through all of Older Son’s science notes for the first half of the year and matching them up in chronological order to the rubric given for the test.
Think this is easy? Get a load of the FIVE PAGE typewritten study guide for science—just one of FIVE midterms of the same level of intensity Older Son and his classmates are taking this week. (There is a link to the study guide further down in this post.) Actually the amount of studying that needs to be done for English is significantly lower but to make up for that, the English teacher will assign homework throughout midterm week. Then he will go on to give the kids a ball-busting grammar section on the midterm that even he told his classes was “mean” and “tricky.” So much for imparting a joy of learning and establishing a positive, supportive relationship with your students…
Organizing every single piece of paper in chronological order would have been a dreadful and probably impossible task for Older Son, who is definitely a Big Picture learner (more on that in a later post) and does not naturally focus on details.
Dad DOES focus on details but the project drains even him.
Requires carbs, even though Dad is on a low-carb diet.
Older Son and Husband share a package of Oreos as Older Son begins work on the 51 problems his math teacher has sent home as a review packet for the math midterm, which is on Friday of next week. The kids are to hand in the review packet on the day of the midterm. They will be graded on it. The teacher will not be providing them with the answers to those problems until after the exam. Therefore, the kids will have no idea if they got the answer right or wrong. Therefore, unless they are totally stumped by something, they will not know if they have answered the problem correctly or not.
The ineffectiveness of this “review” is astonishing to Husband and me. I wonder if I should email the teacher about this. Husband says no. Says the teacher will take it the wrong way. Husband says he will do the problems himself tomorrow and then compare his answers to Older Son’s. Otherwise, since Older Son will not be getting the correct answers from his teacher until after the test, he will not know which ones he got wrong. Therefore, he will not know which types of problems he needs to work on.
Next I turn to working with Younger Son on his reading. I listen as he reads to me and then I supervise his work in a phonics workbook. I play knights and army JUST FOR FUN (!!!) with him for 10 minutes. Then I read him a chapter in The Mixed up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler.
I have Younger Son read the sight words he knows on one page of that chapter. Both he and I are pleasantly surprised at how much Younger Son is able to read. I keep Younger Son company as he brushes his teeth and then I tucked him into bed.
Then I review Older Son’s second revision of his essay. It is close to perfect. I am aware of how much son can do when he puts his mind to it. I wonder why he doesn’t just do it the first time.
After kids are in bed I research a book called “Recipe for Reading” online. I had picked up Younger Son at school today and talked to Younger Son’s kindergarten teacher about Younger Son’s upset at being behind the reading curve in his first grade class. I told the kindergarten teacher that I was one of the few mothers who had not done phonics at home with her kid. Teacher was not aware of how much parents had done at home with phonics. She recommended a book called ‘Recipe for Reading,” which spells out the rules of phonics and which she uses when she tutors kids.
Tonight, I find a great website with all sorts of information on how kids learn to read. I spend half-an-hour reading it and note that, according to this website, Younger Son’s reading is totally age appropriate.
But I need to make Younger Son’s level of reading appropriate for HIS school. During open school week I had sat in on Younger Son’s first grade science class. The kids had been studying magnets and that day did an experiment looking at what objects will be picked up by a magnet. They were to record their observations in writing on a sheet the teacher gave them. She also gave them a list of the objects so that they would be able to check off which ones they had investigated. Among the items on the list were: red octagon jewel, stainless steel washer, white plastic spoon. Most of the kids in the class read that list just fine.
I had to read it to Younger Son, who still had not even learned how to read “hop” or “pop.”
After the class, I mentioned to the teacher that not every child in the class could read that list.
“The assistant teacher is here to help them,” she said.
Yes, but no child wants to be singled out for reading help. Not in Younger Son’ school.
My child wants to be able to do what his classmates can do. The moment that I saw what many of his classmates could read—and what my son couldn’t—if the moment that my Helicopter Mom rotor really began spinning.
That was the moment when I knew I had to step up to the plate and do what I could to teach him to read.
After researching reading on the internet, I order Recipe for Reading.
I am done supporting Younger Son for the night. I am available for conversation and other things, if you know what I mean, with Husband. Has been a while since we’ve done other things.
But Husband is busy underlining Older Son’s science notes with a yellow highlighter. I do not interrupt him.
I read ahead in The Mixed up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, the book I had read to Younger Son that night. (I am too tired to find any grown up reading.) The book is about a brother and sister who have run away and are living in the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
I come to a paragraph in which the sister asks her brother why he hadn’t taken art appreciation courses with her.
“The summer before last?” the brother asks.
“Yes. Before school started.”
“Well, the summer before last, I had just finished the second half of first grade…It was all I could do to sound out the name of Dick and Jane’s dog.”
I note that the Mrs. Frankweiler book was published in 1967. If it was a current book, the brother in the book would have been sounding out Harry Potter’s name at the end of first grade, not Spot’s.
I stop reading and mull this over for a minute.
I look at Husband.
His brow is furrowed as he sits at the desk in the bedroom, underlining sentences in Older Son’s science notes with a yellow highlighter. (to get a sense of what Older Son will need to know for his midterm, see the science midterm rubric.
I begin to feel slight anger towards Husband because he is so focused on outlining, and is not making any effort to focus on our relationship, something we have both realized has been sorely neglected since the school year began.
Instantly, I realize I am not being fair to husband. Realize Husband is not highlighting important points in science notes by choice. Husband would rather be watching TV and relaxing or doing other things. Husband and I have not watched TV since the school year began. (Other things are too personal to get into but our batting average on that is not much better.)
I realize that if husband was not doing the outlining, I would be doing it. This makes me feel much better towards husband.
I say, “Is this not insane what we have to do?”
Husband knows I am referring to how much outlining and organizing he is doing at the moment and how much of it I have done at other times.
Last weekend I told husband I was on total overload. That I could no longer carry the bulk of the burden of being Younger Son’s reading teacher and curriculum developer and Older Son’s exam prepper and also earn a living as well as prepare, serve, and clean up after meals, and do all the other assorted things that go into keeping a family of four going.
Last weekend, I asked if he would be willing to shoulder the bulk of midterm prep.
Husband said yes. Husband is a nice guy and a very involved father. Husband also saw that if he did not say yes I was in serious danger of losing my mind.
My readers, I know you are mostly women and I know you are the ones shouldering most of the burden of schoolwork. I recommend that you have your husbands try it for a week.
My Husband has always helped but never to the degree he is helping this week.
Over and over, this week he says, “I can’t believe I went to Germany last year during finals week. I can’t believe you did this all by yourself.”
And midterms are still days away.
And while he was away in Germany during finals week, I also did everything else that needed to be done at home, you know things like noticing that I had a younger child and making sure that child didn’t go to school with a milk mustache.
If I hadn’t been so busy helping Older Son last year maybe I would have also noticed that my younger child was sending out every conceivable signal that he was ready to read and that the curriculum at his school wasn’t teaching him to do so in the way he needed to be taught.
This week I am functioning as the maid and the cook and Younger Son’s sole companion so that Husband and Older Son can focus on schoolwork.
Husband vows that this year he will find out in advance when finals are so that he will schedule his semi-annual business trip to Hamburg around them.
Regarding the outlining he is now doing, Husband says, “If I don’t do this, Older Son will be up until 3 am. If he’s up that late every night he will get sick again and will miss all his midterms.”
He goes back to outlining.
4 days before midterms begin
(Jan. 18, 2007, Thursday). First words Husband says to me in the morning are “I can’t believe how well prepared I am for the science test. If I had known this much when I was a kid I would have gotten into Harvard.”
I laugh. I am glad we are laughing about this. I am glad we have each other. I realize that there are almost no single parents at NEST. I know of only one. And she is able to pay for a tutor.
Does this mean that children of single parents do worse on their standardized tests? This year, I need to pick a topic for my Ph.D. dissertation. I think that investigating the school performance of the parents of single children would make a good study. I remember that the parent of a second grader at Younger Son’s school pointed out that most kids at that school were only children so their parents could devote lots of time to grooming them. I put investigating that possible study topic on my mental to-do list.
Deep inside, I worry that between needing to earn a living and support my kids in school I will never have time to do a dissertation. In worry that in order to ensure that my kids get a good education I will need to put my own dreams on hold.
At least until they are in college.
Or maybe grad school.
Maybe I can do public relations for Younger Son when he becomes an architect. Already, his gift for building and design is apparent to all who see his creations. But he can’t go to architecture school until he learns to read. So I still have my work cut out for me.
Later, Husband shows me front page article in the NY Times. The headline says, “Bloomberg Seeks Further Changes for City Schools.” I laugh again and wonder how Bloomberg would feel if he knew New York City public school parents were laughing at his bumbling attempts to reform the school system. Husband and I wonder why Bloomberg continually keeps on fixing the wrong thing. We wonder how he and Klein can be so woefully out of touch as to what is really wrong with public schools. Klein actually recently had the city pay millions of dollars to put the Balanced Literacy curriculum into the public schools. He did this even though research clearly shows children need phonics in order to learn to read. He did this even though the entire rest of the country has moved away from Whole Language. He did it because Balanced Literacy was working in the “good” schools.
Hello?
Why, oh why, do politicians continually not look at what parents of the children at those “good” schools are doing at home? Why do they not realize fuzzy curriculums like TERC and Whole Language appear to work because the kids at “good” schools are being taught the fundamentals that they need at home?
It’s probably because the politicians’ kids went to private schools and the politicians were able to afford tutors to help their own children. (Somehow I can’t imagine Bloomberg learning the 8 comma rules so that he could teach them to his seventh grader who never learned them in elementary school and isn’t learning them in his high-performing middle school either because the way his 7th grade English teacher teaches grammar is by having the kids in the class read the deadly sheet of rules outloud in class. For example: “Use commas between coordinate adjectives that modify the same noun. Do not separate adjective of unequal importance.” The teacher then does very little to make those rules come alive and sends home absolutely no homework in them. (So I will translate what those sheets say and I will print out worksheets from http://www.edhelper.com/ on commas and quotation marks the night before Older Son’s English midterm but I am getting ahead of myself here…)
No, don’t think Bloomberg ever translated obtuse comma rules for his children. He probably paid someone $125 an hour to do that. We were so desperate for Older Son to learn grammar that we actually paid someone $125 an hour last summer. My husband schlepped Older Son uptown two mornings before work (which is all the way downtown in the financial district) and sat with him while he was tutored by a wonderful English teacher from Dalton. (If you email me I’ll give you her name and number.) We stopped after 2 sessions when we decided we couldn’t afford it. Freelance journalists who are completing their Ph.D.s do not make a lot of money… Politicians make more. Especially those who have started their own radio stations. They had the time to do so since they weren’t at home tutoring their kids.
Unlike most public school parents of successful kids, politicians never had to learn their children’s science or social studies curriculums in order to be able to quiz them for their exams.
Some parents talk openly about helping their kids. Others claim their kids do it all themselves. Don’t believe them. After his class finished taking their first social studies exam this year, Older Son’s social studies teacher said to the class, “How many of your parents know more about the Mayas and Incas than they did before you started studying about them?” Every single child in the class raised his or her hand.
Many parents had openly complained to the teachers about how much micromanaging they needed to do in order to have their children succeed at NEST. A few parents continued to profess that their kids were geniuses and were managing on their own. The teacher probably wanted to get the true story from the kids. She got it.
I say to Husband, “I should contact the mayor and tell him to read my blog so he knows what really makes a difference.”
Some day I will contact the mayor.
Not today. I don’t time to communicate with the mayor. I don’t even have time to communicate with my own husband!
It is still early morning and Husband is already stressed about midterms. Older Son is unfazed. He is not the one who stayed up until 1 in the morning highlighting points that match the rubric in his science notes. Older Son wakes up cheerful and calm and is more concerned about remembering to bring hair gel to school. He and a few friends have planned to gel their hair that morning in the school bathroom. I recently took a course on Adolescence at Teacher’s College at Columbia University. I remember the question my professor had asked at the start of the semester: “How can you tell when a child has entered adolescence?” The answer was, “They preen. They start to really care about their appearance.”
The answer was not: They begin to meticulously organize themselves for their midterms. That is something their parents do for them when the children enter adolescence. That is why research has repeatedly found that their children’s adolescence is much harder on the PARENTS than on the kids. True story. More on that later.
4 days before midterms, continued…
Husband is a name partner in a law firm. That means he does not need to punch a clock and his time is, basically, his own. On the rare occasions that something is wrong with our car, he is able to bring it to the car dealer during the week so that it doesn’t interfere with our time together as a family on the weekends. In the past, he has always brought his work with him to the dealership, happy to have a few hours of undisturbed work time. The guys at the dealership know he does this and they always give him a desk in one of their offices to work at.
This morning Husband brings out car to the dealer but he does not do his own work. (If he does not work he does not earn money, since lawyers are paid by the hour.) Instead of doing his own work, Husband tackles the 51 problems on Older Son’s math midterm review packet. One of the salesmen eyes the calculator and ruler he is using and says, “I thought you were a lawyer. How come, today, you look like an engineer?”
“I am a lawyer,” Husband replies. “I’m just studying for my midterms.”
Husband came home at 2:30. He does not go to office because he still has hours of math to do and he wants to begin checking his answers against the answers Older Son got tonight.
Evening: Older Son spends the whole evening completing his math work sheet. He cannot do it a little bit at a time because he needs to also start studying for his other midterms. Next week we want him to spend each night reviewing only the notes he is being tested on the following day. We don’t want him distracted from Social Studies by math.
Husband spends the whole evening completing his math packet. Neither he, nor Older Son nor I could figure out how to tell the probability of a family having three girls and one boy. We tell Older Son to ask his teacher how to get the answer to that one problem.
Older Son tells us that his math homework for tonight was to complete the first page of the review sheet.
Ah! we think. Reasonableness at last! Homework that is tied to reviewing for the huge midterm. And if it’s homework, that means the teacher is going to check their answers and, hopefully, review them with their kids so that they can actually know if they got something wrong and why they got it wrong.
Husband looks visibly relieved. If the math teacher did that, the burden of doing all of this math would be lifted off of his shoulders. “Is she going to give you the answers and go over what everyone got wrong?” Husband asks.
“No,” says Older Son. “She’s just checking off that we’ve all done it. She’s not looking at our answers.”
Husband goes into kitchen to search for more Oreos.
Older Son continues doing math.
He already has dark circles under his eyes, and midterms are still four days away.
After the kids are in bed: Husband continues working on math.
I write a letter to the reading specialist at Younger Son’s school detailing how bad Explode the Code 1 1/2 is (that is what she wants me to do with him at home) and asking if we can move on to book two of that series. (An excerpt of that letter, which gives a glimpse of how I spent time with Younger Son this evening: “Younger Son HATES Book 1 1/2 even though he enjoyed Book 1 and likes working on Book 2. He finds the pictures in Book 1 ½ really confusing and, frankly, so do I. He argued with me tonight that the man on page 19 didn’t bite his lip even though “lip” is the word the workbook wanted him to write. He kept staring at the picture trying to figure out what the man was doing since it sure didn’t look like he was biting his lip. Picture number 1 on that page also had Younger Son moaning in aggravation.. The guy in the picture looks like he is holding a tray, not a pan even though “pan” is the word the book is looking for. Younger Son kept saying, “This book is terrible!” (I agree! I would love to keep him excited and happy about doing Explode the Code instead of moaning about how the picture in Book 1 ½ don’t make any sense. From what I see he’s really ready for Book 2 (he is really excited and challenged by it) and Book 1 ½ is doing more harm than good.”)
I need to pick a dissertation topic for my Ph.D. and wonder if I can write a case study of how one previously sane woman (that would be me) is being driven insane by the process of getting her children the fundamentals of a good education.
After I finish letter, Husband is still doing math in the bedroom. He marvels at how quickly Older Son completed his math packet. He complains that Older Son still refuses to show his work, a habit he picked up thanks to the TERC math curriculum at his elementary school. (Don’t get me started on that.) He marvels at what a great math student Older Son has become thanks to the math at NEST. (TERC math was why we turned down Older Son’s spot in one of the top District-2 middle schools and chose NEST, which has a different math curriculum.)
I remind Husband of what last year was like for him. Every night, when Husband came home from work Older Son would greet him at the door with questions about his 6th grade math homework. Husband would sit down at the dining room table (sometimes without taking off his coat) and explain the math to Older Son. Many times the math teacher sent home homework on a topic she did not teach the class and then would GRADE the kids on that assignment. Always, as you read about this insanity, and about parents who are doing way too much, remember how important grades are in NYC middle schools. At NEST last year, grades determined whether or not a child would get thrown out of the school. (Smart, hard-working kids were indeed booted out or left voluntarily because the work load was too great.) This year, grades determine what high school a child will be accepted to next year. They also determine whether a child will be accepted to the NEST high school.
Being near husband is so stressful that I go into the living room. Do I read for pleasure? Do I relax? Do I call a friend on the phone? (Do I still have any friends? I haven’t seen my best friend in over a year. We are both too busy teaching our kids.) No, I do not do any of those things.
What do I do? I skim 15 Dick and Jane stories, the same ones that had been mentioned in the Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler book I am reading to Younger Son. I had bought the Dick and Jane books at the recommendation of another first grade mother in Younger Son’s school. The mother said that the school does not like these books but she found them very effective for her child. Her child began going to SCORE at the age of 3 and now reads at a third grade level. (I felt physically ill when she told me this.) She said the repetition in the Dick and Jane books is great and that they really helped her daughter. This was on one of the first days of school in September. I said, “I trust the school knows what it’s doing but don’t you think you should tell the school how effective those books were for your daughter?”
She looked at me like I was an idiot. “Don’t trust the school,” she said. “You can never trust the school and you can’t change them either. Let them do what they do. Then you do what you need to do at home.” (This was in early September and how I wish I had listened to her then. It took me until October to start teaching Younger Son how to read at home.)
While my husband outlines Older Son’s science notes, I methodically examine each Dick and Jane story. I think they are great. Through repetition, they support many of the sight words kids learn in first grade. (Most first grades, anyway. In my son’s school the kids appear to have learned their sight words in utero.) However, in order for Younger Son to be happy with the books, I would need to explain to him why certain words are pronounced the way they are. I would need to explain why “Sally” and “funny” end in the long e sound, instead of a “y” sound and why the “a” in “Jane” is pronounced with a long “a” sound.
I pull out all my Explode the Code books (I have up to level 4) and look through them to see how they handle the “y.” Brilliantly. Instead of getting into a whole long explanation they say if a “y” is at the end of a short word like “my” or “by” it makes the long “i” sound. If the “y” is at the end of a long word it makes the long “e” sound. O.K. Younger Son can handle that. So can I. As for “Jane” I decide to tell him that it’s an example of a rule that exists but that he doesn’t have to know the rule yet. I will tell him that an e at the end of a word changes the sound of the vowel and that in the case of “a” it makes it make a long “a” sound but that, for now, he just has to know that word is “Jane.” That way he will rest assured that there is a reason to pronounce it the way he needs to.
I had asked his former K teacher, his first grade teacher and his reading specialist for recommendations of books Younger Son could read for pleasure that would systematically build on his knowledge of phonics and the sight words he has mastered. Neither one knew of any. The hardest part of teaching your child to read is finding reading materials to support him in his next step. I felt better knowing that for the next few weeks I had a plan for Younger Son that I could implement by rote and that would continue bringing him to the next level.
I go into the bedroom to start getting ready for bed. Husband is still doing math. Husband is stressed and exhausted. He says, “My head is swimming with numbers. I don’t know how Older Son does it.”
With great urgency, he says, “I don’t understand probability and negative exponents. Will you take over on those problems to see if he got them right?”
“Sure,” I say calmly. It’s very easy to be calm if you are not the one shouldering the bulk of the support that is needed. (You know, little stuff. Like what the correct answers are to a 51 problem math review packet that has taken husband over 12 hours to dope out.)
“What were you doing?” Husband asks as if he has just realized I hadn’t been in the room with him. (We used to hang out with each other in the evenings after work. Before school took over our lives.)
“Reading Dick and Jane books.”
Husband nods and raises eyebrows.
Ever since he was in kindergarten, Younger Son has been sending out distress signals, trying to communicate that he needed to be taught phonics. Of course, he didn’t know the word “phonics.” He’d use little boy language to communicate his need to me, saying things like, “In school they tell us to look at the pictures. That’s not really reading. I want to really read Mommy but they aren’t teaching me how.” Until this year I did not realize that what Younger Son was really saying was, “Teach me phonics please, mommy!” Now that I know how imperative a good base in phonics is to a child, I am spending my time doing things like figuring out how to explain why Sally ends with a long e sound and the vowel in Jane is a long “a.” I am a woman with a mission and I want to share my mission with my husband. So I say to Husband: “Dick and Jane books are what Younger Son will read next. He’s ready for them. He can decode blends fine now. I’m sorry I’m telling you all this because I know you’re over loaded with math but it’s what I was doing and I’d like to share it with you. The Dick and Jane books have the words “Sally” and “funny” and “Jane” in them. Younger Son will want me to explain the rules behind why they’re pronounced the way they are.” I detail exactly how I will explain those rules.
Husband looks at me, blinks hard and we both laugh. “God bless you,” he says. “If it wasn’t for you, Younger Son would not be reading.”
I know that what he says is true.
3 days before midterms begin
(Jan. 19, 2007, Friday)
In the morning, both Older Son and Younger Son run around the apartment yelling, ““It’s snowing! It’s snowing!” It was the first snowfall in a very mild winter. “Can we go sledding in Central Park tomorrow?” Younger Son asks, giddy with excitement.
“Yeah!” Older Son’s eyes light up. “Can we go sledding?”
I don’t say a word as I continue to make coffee.
“Oh,” Older Son says. “No. I have to study for midterms.” There was not an ounce of self pity in his voice. He stated it as a simple fact.
As an almost-psychologist, I have studied the impact stress has on people and how to alleviate that negative impact. People cope much better with stress when they know when the stressful event will end. So I said, “It will be over in one week. You have one week of really hard work ahead of you. When it’s over, you can have Alex over for a sleepover. (Alex is one of his best friends.)
“Yeah,” Older Son says. “But then they’ll probably load us down with homework.”
I can’t argue with the kid. The homework keeps coming even now, even though the kids need to study for midterms, even though some of the homework has absolutely nothing to do with the tests the kids would be taking. The math teacher is continuing to teach new concepts that will not be on the midterm and is sending home homework on those concepts.
Husband says he has been so busy completing his copy of Older Son’s math review packet that he hasn’t been paying attention to when his bills are due. I don’t even know if I paid the rent this month. Rent invoice might be in the massive pile of paper clutter that has accumulated on the dining room table. I make a mental note to look for it later.
I think about how if we were rich, I would have tutors homeschool my kids. But not only are we not rich, we are getting poorer by the day. I am spending my work days writing this blog for which, at the moment I receive no income. But I went for a Ph.D. because I am aware of how hard being a mother is in our society. I went for a Ph.D. so that I could help mothers cope. At the moment, this blog is my way of helping other Moms. Doesn’t it help to know you are not alone in what you are experiencing? It helps me when I hear from you. (Please post at the bottom of my posts instead of emailing me. That way other moms can read your comments too.)
I am relieved when Husband says, “It stopped snowing.” Now the kids won’t be missing out on anything. At least not on anything that has to do with snow.
Lunch with best friend
Please note that this entry is not complete. In order to ensure my Best Friend remains my best friend I have asked her to review anything personal I say about her in this post before I post it. I am posting the opening in order to secure it’s correct chronological order before going on and posting other info. Thanks for understanding!
HERE IS THE OPENING:
I have had many blessings in my life. One of them is having a Best Friend for Life. We became best friends in second grade and have been comforting, supporting, and informing each other ever since.
We have celebrated, or consoled each other through the ups and downs of various relationships. We were maids of honor at each other’s weddings. We took turns having babies. First her, then me, then her, then me, then, finally, her. Thanks to her, I knew about the joy and the sleepless nights and foggy days of newborn motherhood before I experienced it myself. Now, we live just 23 blocks away from each other. And we almost never see each other. We hardly ever even talk on the phone. We both have friends who know much more about our day-in-day-out lives simply because those are the people we come in contact with through work, or our kids’ schools. I don’t know the names of her bosses or office colleagues, and she doesn’t know which magazine I’m writing an article for at the moment. I don’t even know how tall her kids are, nor does she know that about mine. But we don’t need to know those things. Our friendship is about her and me. We don’t need to talk often to know that each of us will always be there for the other. Whenever we do talk, we pick up right where we left off. There is never any awkwardness. It is always just the two of us, talking about whatever is most important and closest to our hearts. Guess what we will talk about today?
You are right. From the time we sit down to eat, our entire conversation will be about what each of us is doing to support our kids in school and how that is affecting us. But I am getting ahead of myself…
At the moment, I am waiting for Best Friend in her office lobby. She steps out of the elevator and scans the lobby, looking for me. Best Friend looks beautiful, as always. Her long blonde hair is pulled back in a ponytail, as it often is these days. She rarely has time to wash and blow dry it on workday mornings. Her face lights up when she sees me and I feel some of the tension inside me melt.
We hug.
She tells me I look good.
“Come on,” I say, in that don’t bullshit me voice I can use only with her, my husband and my kids.
She stops bullshitting me. “You’re tired?”
I nod. She says, “You look great to me” and, suddenly, I feel myself beginning to look, and feel, better. “Come on,” she says. “Let’s go.” We head out onto the sidewalks of midtown Manhattan.
We begin walking. “How are you?” we both say at the same time. As always, the one with the most pressing need to talk goes first. Today it is her.
OK. BEST FRIEND IS SCREENING PERSONAL STUFF ABOUT HER. I CAN TELL YOU THE POST ENDS WITH HER ASKING ME QUESTIONS ABOUT THE TERC MATH CURRICULUM AND HOW I WAS ABLE TO TEACH JAMIE “NORMAL” MATH. POST ENDS AS FOLLOWS:
I share my tips, then tell her the good news. The TERC curriculum is being revised as of this fall to do, guess what? Exactly what parents have been begging for, exactly what parents have been supplementing with at home, for years. See the article I co-authored on these revisions at http://www.insideschools.org/nv/NV_terc_math_dec06.php?061219
That article is the edited version. The first draft follows in the next post. When I finish writing about the events of midterm week at NEST (which I have taken a delicious break from this afternoon) I will also post links on TERC math for those of you who have been asking me to explain TERC math. To make you all feel better, it is actually an excellent curriculum when it is combined with the teaching of traditional math facts and formulas. Now that those math facts and formulas will become a part of the curriculum there should be no problem with it. The only problem will be in schools paying for the revised curriculum. As Suzanne Werner, a math specialist for Region 9, noted—this will be “a budget issue” for many schools. If your child’s school uses the TERC curriculum, do everything you can to make sure the school is able to purchase that curriculum this fall!
TERC curriculum is being revised!
In what is being hailed as a victory for parents, many of whom have been openly critical of the TERC Investigations math curriculum used in many District 2 schools, the curriculum has been revised by its publisher to include many of the items parents have been requesting for years. For example, the revised curriculum expects children to master all the basic addition and subtraction math facts, as well as the multiplication tables. Also, traditional algorithms will now be taught, in addition to other more conceptual procedures for solving math problems. In the past, many parents were told by teachers using the TERC Investigations curriculum not to have their children memorize math facts and not to teach them algorithms. Doing so was believed to interfere with the children’s understanding of underlying math concepts.
Parents were given what Daria Rigney, District 2 superintendent, called “a sneak preview” of the revised curriculum by DOE representatives speaking at a Community Education Council District 2 (CECD2) meeting on December 13, 2006. Rigney stressed that the curriculum will not be published until February and that District 2 has not yet implemented any of the changes, despite a public notice released by CECD2 in November announcing that “District 2’s math curriculum is changing.” This public notice caused many parents to think District 2 was switching to a new curriculum.
Michael Propper, president of CECD2, said he “received a lot of heat” for the wording of that announcement and that many people called it “inaccurate and misleading.” He defended his choice of wording by saying he wanted parents to know they were about to get “an affirmation that the curriculum could be better.”
Some parents also thought the changes to the curriculum were initiated by District 2 in response to a report released in September by the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) recommending more of a focus on basic math skills. However, the TERK revisions were not driven by District 2 and were not tied to that report, said Rigney in an interview. “All curriculums are revised from time to time and the publishers decided it was time to issue a new textbook and curriculum,” she said. “But math minds were involved in the NCTM recommendations, as well as in the TERC revisions. They are all taking the same things into consideration.”
The TERC revisions are based on five years of research that included surveys of teachers, administrators and parents. According to Rigney, in addition to asking for knowledge of basic math facts and familiarity with algorithms, parents also asked for more tools to help their children with homework. To that end, the revised curriculum will include a textbook, called the Student Math Handbook, that parents and children can refer to for help.
Although the DOE representatives did not come right out and say teachers had been critical of the TERC curriculum, they did say that the revised curriculum spells out goals more clearly for teachers too. The revised curriculum gives more of a “connection between homework, practice sheets and the day’s lesson,” said Kerry Cunningham, regional instructional specialist in elementary mathematics for Region 9. “What might have been guesswork on the part of the teacher is now more explicit.”
“If our teachers are smart, our kids will get smart,” said Rigney. “If the teachers don’t know it, the kids won’t know it.” (Duh! Sorry, couldn’t help myself…)
After the curriculum is published in February, the Region 9 Mathematics Department will share it with schools and SLT teams. In the spring, math coaches will conduct workshops on the revisions for classroom teachers. Then, “each individual school will decide how and when they are going to roll this out,” said Suzanne Werner, regional instructional specialist in mathematics for Region 9. She said “we are looking towards full implementation by September” but noted that the curriculum “has to be purchased” and that for schools this will be “a budget issue.”
For samples and more information on the revisions see http://investigations.scottforesman.com/index.html.
A picture is worth a thousand words
(Wednesday, January 31, 2007) After lunch with Best Friend, I head to the Barnes & Noble in the Citicorp building. A mother from Younger Son’s school had told me that she’d bought a bunch of workbooks there for her child. “They have a great selection,” she’d noted. The very first thing I see when I enter the children’s section literally knocks the wind out of me. It is an entire shelf of academic workbooks for preschool and elementary school children that is absolutely impossible to miss. The picture below is of just one half of that display.
Clearly, those workbooks are being bought by parents for use at home: What surpises me most about this display, is the abundance of workbooks on sight words. I have a 12-year-old child who learned how to read in school. I had never even heard the term “sight word” until one of the other moms at Younger Son’s school told me that learning sight words really speeded up the process of her own son’s learning how to read. (She should know. She taught him herself.)
Looking at this display, I wonder why there was now such an abundance of information on sight words available to parents. Why had the amount of parental involvement in teaching a child to read increased so much in such a short period of time? And why had I not known about it?
Have I been living under a rock? No. I have simply been living and working downtown. Downtown is different.
I look through these workbooks but decide I prefer “Explode the Code” and the sight word list from www.theschoolbell.com that I use for playing sight word bingo with Younger Son. But I do pick out three Kumon math workbooks for Younger Son. As a TERC veteran, I know I will need to start supplementing Younger Son’s math as soon as he becomes a fluent reader. His math homework for the past 5 weeks has been to play games that are part of the kids’ “attribute study” unit. I can’t tell you what an “attribute” is because a sheet explaining it to the parents was never sent home. I can tell you it has something to do with recognizing shapes because Younger Son had to cut up a bunch of shape cards in order to play the games which had names like “Guess the Missing Piece” “One of These Things is Not Like the Others,” “One Difference Train” and “Two Difference Train.”
Math is Younger Son’s strength. He has a natural affinity for it. From the time he was in preschool, he has always counted everything he saw, on his own with no prompting from me. Last summer, he ASKED ME to buy him math workbooks. (He knows they exist because of all the math workbooks he saw his older brother complete when I was supplementing his TERC math curriculum.) Any time we were on a long car drive, Younger Son would ask me to do pages in the math workbooks with him. FOR FUN! Since I’ve been pushing the reading at home, I haven’t done a speck of math with him, other than the very little, very strange math homework his school sends home. I know that, right now, learning to read is more important for Younger Son than nailing his math facts. Kids can always catch up on math facts. If they miss out on learning to read in the early grades, it will be much, much more of a struggle for them to catch up.
Clutching the Kumon workbooks like the valuable treasures they are, I then head over to the Early Readers section. A very nice salesperson comes up to me and says, “Can I help you?”
“No thanks,” I say. I know what I’m looking for. I’ll know it when I find it. Then I think maybe other parents have been in here with the same questions I have. Maybe she CAN help me. So I say, “Yes, actually. Yes, you can. I do need help. In fact, I am in desperate need of help.”
She smiles. “From `no’ to `desperate’?”
“That about sums it up,” I say. “I didn’t think I’d need help teaching my son how to read. Now I am desperate.” I tell her an abbreviated version of Younger Son’s reading saga. I tell her I am looking for books that will support his sight words and move him forward phonetically. Books with “ck” and “ch” and “sh” in them.
She brings me to a carousel for “Beginning Readers.” Many of them are “I Can Read” books from Harper Trophy. Even their Level 1 (preschool to grade 1) books would be over Younger Son’s head. (At this point I might be having palpitations except I remind myself that Older Son learned to read LATER than Younger Son and Older Son is now in the 97th percentile in reading in this country.) As I skim through the books, I wonder who ranks their ability levels. A book called “Dinosaur Times” for preschoolers and first graders has the words “world,” “different,” “dinosaur” and “everywhere” on one page. Another page has Stegosaurus and then phonetically breaks it down for kids: “steg-uh-saw-russ.” I say I’ll pass on these books.
She then brings me to the Dr. Seuss and Random House’s “Step Into Reading” section. She recommends “Are you my Mother” and “Go Dog Do.” She knows what she is talking about. I tell her those books are great but I already have them. She recommends examining the rest of the selection, looking for the words “Beginner Books” on the binding. “Those sound like what you’re looking for,” she says. Out of the selection available, only one book is right for Younger Son: “The Cat in the Hat: Cooking with the Cat” by Bonnie Worth. I buy it and head even further uptown to pick up my little boy from school.
I know our entire weekend will revolve around Older Son studying. Our entire lives revolve around Older Son studying. Today, like a swimmer who takes a last breath before diving into deep water, I want to savor and enjoy Younger Son in a way I am rarely able to do before diving into a weekend of midterm prep with Older Son. For that reason instead of having him take the school bus home, I am picking up Younger Son after school and we will head over to see the mummies at the Met.
Because Older Son will be home alone studying, I don’t want to spend too much time hanging around after dismissal even though I really love talking to the moms at Younger Son’s school. I figure Younger Son and I will go to the Met, have fun, and then head home. But Younger Son, who is an extremely social child, begs to have pizza with two of his friends before we go to the museum. Realizing he rarely has a chance to do this, I say O.K.
Whenever we take our kids for pizza, the moms and I always sit with the kids. Today, I pull the other moms aside so that I can ask one of them, whose kid is a fluent reader, about—you guessed it. I’m a one-trick pony these days—how she taught her kid phonics and what made her do so. She says she realized she needed to do something with her kid when “reading wasn’t happening and it should have happened in kindergarten.”
She and her child worked with Hooked on Phonics all summer. She tells me the pros and cons of the system. (Workbooks were great. Her kid hated the readers that came with it and wouldn’t read them.) I tell her how shocked I am at how many parents taught their kids phonics at home. She says, “We should share this with the school. We should set up a meeting. It’s too late to help us, but it would help future kindergarten classes so they won’t have to go through what we went through.”
I tell her I will let the school know about it. (More on that in a later post.)
A trip to the Met with Mommy
At the Met, Younger Son has a wonderful time observing his favorite mummy and armor exhibits. I have a wonderful time observing Younger Son. It has been months since I saw him for who he is, as opposed to as a child who needed my help learning how to read. But now I delight in him and there is a lot to delight in. When we enter and the security guards check our knapsacks, Younger Son points to his bag and mischievously says to the guard, “You missed the piece of art I hid in there.”
“You have a Monet or a Van Gogh in there?” asks the security guard.
“Monet,” Younger Son responds.
“That’s OK,” the guard says. “We have a lot of Monets. You can hang on to yours.”
Younger Son grins, and then heads straight for the Egyptian Art exhibit, home of his beloved mummies. We had visited the exhibit last week with two of his friends and Younger Son became fascinated with the false door in one of the tombs. He thinks it opens, somehow, to reveal a false passageway and he wants to find out more about it.
Two security guards are standing near the tomb with the false door. Younger Son asks the guards if the false door has a button that makes it open but they have no idea what he is talking about. They direct him (him, not me) to the information desk. Remember, Younger Son cannot read big words yet and he heads for Membership Services instead. I simply follow. Today I will follow my son wherever he leads me. I am here to enjoy him, not to teach him how to sound out “mem-ber-ship-ser-vi-ces,” something I actually think he could do. The two older women at the desk listen very seriously to Younger Son’s question. One of them says, “Oh, trap doors are scary, aren’t they?”
Younger Son nods. “Can you get out if you ever got stuck in there?”
“I would want to know that too,” the woman says. She points to the information desk by the front doors. “Those people can help you.”
With characteristic determination, Younger Son heads for the desk and stops when he reaches it. I follow. “Yes?” says one of the women sitting behind the desk. She is addressing me. Younger Son is so little, she cannot see him standing in front of me.
“Just a minute,” I say. I bend over, take off Younger Son’s knapsack, place it on the ground and pick him up so that the woman can see him.
“Oh!” she says. “Can I help you?”
“Yes,” Younger Son responds, and asks her his question. She also doesn’t know the answer but writes out the phone number for the Egyptian Art department and hands it to Younger Son, telling him what hours to call so that he can get the information he needs.
I am totally impressed with the people who work in the museum. They, in turn, are totally impressed by Younger Son. They have all smiled in delight at me when he wasn’t looking.
We head for the tomb, and read the signs hanging in front of the false door. Younger Son gets the answers to his question. It’s not a trap door. It’s a pretend door to symbolize the entrance to the other world, and is a place where sacrifices were done. “Let’s get out of here,” Younger Son says, when he learns that. “This is scary.” He heads for Arms and Armor and then asks to visit the Temple of Dendur. “But let’s go to the bathroom first, Mommy. I want to really enjoy this but I have to pee and I can’t enjoy it if I have to pee.” This is a kid who knows what he needs, be it phonics or a toilet.
After a bathroom stop, we learn that the Temple of Dendur was at risk of being completely flooded forever by a new dam that was being built in Egypt. Younger Son is enthralled by the pictures and the words I read him telling the story of how the Temple came to be in the Met. I think about having him sound out some of the words but this is about him and me. For the first time in a long time, this had nothing to do with his learning how to read.
After we’re done, I take my totally impressive 6-year-old to the café across from Arms and Armor for a chocolate chip cookie. “Should we get one for Older Son?” he asks. Instantly, I feel guilty. Younger Son and I are enjoying our time together and Older Son is home alone studying. I call Older Son to see how he is doing. God forgive me, but I am so glad that I am not there with him. I am so happy to be out and about, exploring the world with Younger Son.
“Hi Mom,” Older Son says on the phone. “Have you seen my flashcards for Spanish?” Spanish is the first midterm Older Son will have next week.
“No.” In my quest to turn Older Son into a totally independent learner, I have given him a wooden magazine holder, as well as a designated place on a book shelf to put all of his school papers. He puts them away. Not me. So I have no idea where his flash cards would be. “Is Daddy home?”
“He just called from the subway. He’ll be home in a minute.”
Good. That means I can enjoy my time at the Met with Younger Son without feeling guilty that Older Son is home alone. I must confess I am glad that I am not home looking for Spanish flashcards. I savor Younger Son savoring his chocolate chip cookie. I could do without his chosen topic of conversation, but I stick to my plan of letting him lead me wherever he chooses this afternoon.
A few minutes ago, Younger Son had stopped in horror to stare at a crucifix hanging over one of the doorways in the Met. “Is that Jesus?” he’d asked.
“Yes,” I’d answered.
Now, as he eats his cookie, his questions and comments about the crucifixion keep coming. “Wow, that must have hurt Jesus so badly,” he says. “Why didn’t Jesus fight? How did they get the cross to stay up in the ground? What made Jesus actually die? Was it the blood dripping out? Was it the hot sun and not eating or drinking? How long did he stay on the cross? Why did they nail prisoners to crosses back then? Why were people so mean? Was Jesus sad that he was crucified? Wadda-ya mean no one went to heaven before Jesus was crucified? I thought God was nice. Why would he want his own son killed so that perfect strangers could get into heaven?”
In time, we finish our snack, and our conversation, and head home. I savor these last moments of alone time with Younger Son. He asks if we could please take one of the yellow van taxis home, instead of a car taxi. I say, “There aren’t any.” But he spots one coming down Fifth Avenue. (He is the most enterprising person—not child, but person—I have ever met.) “There’s one mommy!” He runs along the sidewalk until he passes the line up of taxis idling in front of the museum. He raises his hand and flags down the passing cab from the edge of the sidewalk.
The cab stops for him.
This kid could grow up to be president, I think. But first he’s got to become a fluent reader.
As Younger Son steps into the taxi he has flagged down, I wonder what it will take to get him to focus his keen determination on moving ahead in reading. He reads now, but only the daily quota I have set for him. And he never asks about the words he sees in his environment the way he used to do when he was in Kindergarten. In Kindergarten and in the first half of first grade, the Balanced Literacy curriculum failed him. In kindergarten, he had asked me to teach him how to read and I didn’t know how to. Now I know how. Now I, and his school, are doing all we can to repair the damage we’ve done, not to his ability, but to the determination and self-motivation he had a year ago for learning how to read. I only hope we aren’t too late.
Uncle Irving died. So did Older Son’s flashcards
Younger Son and I arrive home to learn that two tragedies have occurred. Husband’s uncle has died and Older Son’s huge stack of Spanish flash cards (which he needs to study for Monday’s midterm) is gone forever as well.
Older Son rolls his eyes at me. This means Husband has been yelling at him, probably quite loudly, about the nowhere-to-be-found flashcards while I was blissfully enjoying the taxi ride home with Younger Son.
Husband is on phone with his cousin, son of the deceased uncle. Uncle had been 92. He had been very ill and we had known his death was imminent. But any death, even an expected one, hits hard. Husband is consoling cousin, who is very upset. Husband is a very empathetic person. Husband was not close with deceased uncle, who had lived in Atlanta for decades, but I know he is literally feeling his cousin’s pain. Also, Uncle’s death must be bringing up Husband’s pain over losing his own father just a few years ago. Whatever he is feeling cannot be easy and I want to fully support him.
Husband hangs up and tells me the details of his uncle’s death and how his cousin is doing. Uncle’s body will be brought to New York for burial. Funeral will be on Sunday. We briefly talk about how sad it is. Then Husband’s gaze falls on Older Son. Husband takes a deep breath and fury comes over his face. “HE LOST HIS FLASHCARDS!!!” yells my normally calm, loving and supportive Husband. “How the hell could he have lost his flashcards? Do you know how long I worked on making those flashcards?”
Spanish is the only subject, so far, that Older Son now handles completely independently. At this point in the school year we have no idea what he is learning in Spanish, or how he is learning it. His teacher is doing a superb job. Older Son is getting great grades and he can now hold a conversation with Spanish speaking people he runs into. But he began studying Spanish at the end of the first marking period, after giving French a try. He realized Spanish was spoken everywhere in New York and that he had made a mistake choosing to study a language he would never really need.
Luckily, the middle school director and the Spanish teacher allowed him to switch to Spanish even though the year was well under way. We promised we would do all we could to help Older Son get up to speed on what he had missed. To live up to that promise, Husband made a tremendous stack of flash cards of all of the Spanish words in the first few chapters of the textbook. This was no easy task because, even though the textbook had the Spanish words, it did not have the English definitions of those words! There were hundreds of them and Husband looked up the definitions for all of them.
Now those words would need to be reviewed for the midterm.
Now those flashcards are gone.
Husband is having such a fit about it that I, who a minute ago, was full of love and a wish to support him, now wish he would just shut up. But I let him rant. I have ranted plenty of times, myself. I have said things to Older Son like, “Your school is ruining my life! I can’t take it anymore!
So husband rants about flashcards, then rants about the funeral. “How the hell are we going to go to the funeral?” Husband says. “Do you have any idea how much material Older Son still has to study? There’s no way he can go to the funeral.”
“Older Son will go to the funeral,” I say. Last year, one of Older Son’s classmates did not go to his GRANDMOTHER’S funeral because he needed to complete a social studies project. The boy was not doing well and rather than talking about how to support him, the school was talking about throwing him out. (That principal is no longer at the school and things like that no longer happen, thank God.) But good grades still matter because it is good grades that will allow our children admission to a “good” high school in which children will need to work equally hard in order to gain admission to a “good” college. Where, based on a recent New York Times article, they will be totally bored and unchallenged because they have already learned everything kids used to learn in college in high school.
Does that make sense to anybody?
Let’s talk about that after midterms.
At the moment, husband is tearing apartment apart looking for the flashcards even though he has already looked in every conceivable place they could be. The contents of Older Son’s tremendous bookbag—so heavy that it is on wheels—have been dumped onto the floor. Contents of drawers have been emptied and replaced. The cards are nowhere to be found. Husband rants louder. Finally, I say, “I can’t listen to this anymore. Younger Son and I are going out to dinner.”
Older Son pipes up. “Hey! What about me?”
“You can come too,” I say.
Husband looks at me, hurt.
Oh God. What am I doing? Who am I becoming? What is the stress of Older Son’s schoolwork doing to us as a family?
“I’m sorry,” I say to Husband. “I know this is killing you. I know how hard it is. But I can’t take it anymore.” That is true. That is why poor Husband is carrying the entire burden of midterm week. I have been teaching Older Son skills and subjects his schools did not teach him since third grade. Now, besides answering any questions Older Son may have about school work, I am also devoting myself practically full time to figuring out how to help Younger Son to read. I am at the total end of my rope. I tried to do something to help Older Son last night and I couldn’t. I looked at the math problems and they swam in front of my eyes. I told Older Son to ask his math teacher about the probability problems I had promised Husband I would handle. I tried to read a page in Older Son’s grammar book and the words just would not go in. Older Son will need to do English on his own. For all other subjects, Husband has stepped up to the plate.
As I am