Wednesday, December 17, 2014

It's like Willy Wonka's teacher is the one teaching K.

I swear, this year has been a pain in ALL of our sides.  For the record, I'm being nice right now.  Boy, it has just not been pleasant.

Remember the teacher from Willy Wonka?  He was talking to the kids about test schedules changing and about how now the test would be on Monday on the material before they learned it?  :hand raised high:  We are in the School of Willy Wonka Learning.

There are no fun chocolates or Umpa Loompas to craft the chocolate.

K had a math test today.  She was told about it YESTERDAY.  Her teacher had originally planned for Thursday, but since he'd be out he decided he'd do it today.

They hadn't covered all of the chapter and it was dividing major numbers into decimals and estimating hundredths and whatnot.

Plainly and politely, the chapter sucked without this challenge.

Needless to say, K didn't do super swell on it.  She was bummed, but we explained to her that regardless to the fact that her grade was not stellar, she did as we asked.  She did the very best she could do.  She said that she used 5 pieces of scrap paper to work the problems out.  (It's on computer.)

Since we know that not all of the material had been covered and that apparently that was a bit of a verbal altercation between him and another one of the 5th grade teachers about it, I will be asking for a copy of this computer test.  He hasn't been able to generate one for me in the past, but I'm certain that someone on the school grounds will be able to.  We need to see if she was tested on the materials that were not covered.

When we met with him last Thursday for the parent-teacher conference we were kind, polite and understanding.  After all, that's what Christians do.  He went over the MAP test scores and told us that K moved up an entire grade in reading just from the September to December test.  "However," he said, "she did move down a point in math."  "Mr. H, it is no secret that my child sucks in math.  I consider it a great feat that she only lost one point."  Math has ALWAYS been a challenge for her.  That's okay.  I'm not so hot at it myself.  He mentioned something about how he is dyslexic and can't spell.

That explains more than I can possibly tell you.

If he doesn't understand something, he still assigns it as homework but they don't get any instruction with it.  :tipped head:  He has NEVER taught anything at all with Health.  He just hands them a new set of worksheets to have done for the next Thursday.

"Work in groups" is the theme of the 5th grade.  I hate that, too.  They'll hand stuff out and tell the kids to work in groups.  They won't explain it. They'll just hand it out.

We're already flailing as it is.  Two of the three 5th grade teachers are retiring in early spring.  If the right hand doesn't know what the left hand is doing WITH full time teachers on staff, will super subs be able to pick up the slack where the others were only punching the clock?  If Mr. H is meant to lead the sub team, all is going to hell in a hand basket.

The city wide science and math celebration is coming up as a Science Fair in January.  He asked his students about a month or more ago if anyone was interested.  K was and so were a few others.  He dropped it and never mentioned it again.  I asked at open house.  "Well, I asked again and no one seemed interested, so I dropped it."  "Well, K and at least I know of C who did want to do it."  He scrounged for the paperwork & sent a copy home with K.  It is about an inch thick and made for 5th-12th graders to use.  :rolling eyes at the public school for their lack on that one:  She called me, "Mom, I have to have my science fair project picked out by tomorrow."  "Tomorrow?"  Yes, it was "tomorrow" because he found that the deadline was 12/16 for the children to participate.  He registered them online, which was kind of him.  Since we didn't have any parameters with which to work, we weren't able to craft an idea that was beyond K experimenting with beans, growing medium and manipulating light.  She would have loved to research, but she wasn't given the opportunity.

The science fair kids are to stay behind on Tuesdays and Thursdays after school for a half hour to work on their projects.  K called her grandmother to tell her to get her a half hour late.  I decided to double check with him yesterday morning just to be sure.  "No.  We aren't meeting.  I have a staff meeting that I forgot about."  "Um, I'm glad I asked.  I didn't have transportation arrangements for K until 3.  You may want to tell the other kids."  He tipped his head in confusion.

5 more months.

It's not going to kill us, is it?