Friday, February 13, 2015

A social media reminder. Not everyone wants their children posted on the internet.

"You know, there are pictures of your daughter on the internet."

"There shouldn't be."

I was flipping through a few of the blogs that I read regularly.  One of them has an Instagram account block on the side.  I clicked it out of curiosity.  There was a picture of all of the children on the basketball team.

Were the parents asked permission to place the children who DON'T belong to them on the internet?  I wonder.

I've been asked.  I appreciate it.  I've also declined.

I've gone into this in a few different posts in the past.  Every now and then, I think that people need to be reminded that if the photo is not of their child, they shouldn't post without permission.

I had an individual debating my internet choices for K.  "You know, if you are on the sidewalk here during the school walkathon, that is public property and I can place a picture of your child on the internet."

"No, you may not."

"It's public property."  :add sarcastic head bobble:

"My child is not on the internet for a reason.  It is not up to you to place a photo of her on there."

Our internet opinion is that K's internet story is for her to write.  It is not for me to write for her.  I do not post her face on here because of several reasons up to and including that 1. it is my right and 2. she is adopted and we chose not to.  The internet legacy lasts forever.  That follows them to every school they go to.  That follows them to every job interview they attend.  Again, it is not for me to write what will follow K all of the days of her life.

We have to issue reminders every now and then to people at school that our children might be children of a custody dispute . . . and that we simply can't post photos unless there is a written permission to print form on file.  The school has their own and the PTA has its own.

Does my child play sports?  Yes.

Have there been team photos?  Yes.

Should people print those all over?  No.

Can they?  Sure.

Should they?  No.

Don't assume a group photo is okay.  You may have known the parents for years, but do you absolutely know what their stance is?

Not everyone is using social media.

Not everyone wants to.

Let's stop to think about respecting those who don't.

Stepping off of my soapbox now.

Wednesday, February 11, 2015

Sheets of ice and piles of Common Core.

Do you know how the runs look for Olympic bobsled?  That's the side streets to my house right now. The road is covered in thick ice, which has thinned in some places.  I have determined that people must drive down the road in a drunken fashion because you get caught in the ruts, can't get out and you shimmy back and forth until you reach the next intersection.

Nice.

I'm convinced that Common Core is going to kill us all.  I'm just saying.  It seems that the right hand doesn't know what the left hand is doing and the kids are caught up in the middle.  I fully understand that I sound like a broken record here.  (Let it be a record and not vinyl.  I hear that those things can cause injury when broken.)

You see, K had some assignments last night.  She may or may not have a math test today.  Friday, she was told it would be Tuesday.  Monday she was told it would be Wednesday or Thursday.  Last night she was told that he didn't quite know yet.

Excuse me?

So, is the test today or tomorrow?  M prepared her in the best way he could but she was also sent home with this insane plotting homework that had NOTHING TO DO WITH THE TASK ASSIGNMENT AND STUDYING FOR THE TEST!  It was busywork.  Why in the name of Jesus and all of his men would her teacher do that to her?

M took the math book assignment and the test studying.  I double checked the plotting assignment.

I had to walk away a few times.  The stupid assignment had at least 100 plotting points.  Rrrr.

It took me about an hour to check it.  After I checked it and admit that I fixed some errors, then she had to color it.  Rrrr x 2.

Wouldn't you want your students to be allowed the time to STUDY?

After winter break, the kids had 90 more days of school left.  Of those 90 days, 45 of them are testing days.  The remaining 45?  Those are probably freakin' test prep days.

OST.

PARCC.

MAP.

DAP.

The State of Ohio and the city that I live in needs to STOP testing the hell out of my kid and every other kid out there.  My daughter has learned NOTHING this year.  They were doing spelling up until the middle of the year.  Now that they are teaching to test, they don't have time to do spelling so they dumped it.  There have been no projects.  There have been no reports.  There has been no consistency with anything even in the land of general teaching.

5th grade will go on the books as my daughter having attended it.  She has had a small section on science in the fall, though it has a section on the OST.  The reading finally started near the end of the first grading period and that has been so swell that I can't even begin to express my anger with that.  I'll just say that gone are the days that the child has spelling, vocabulary, and constant digging into a story during the week for prep for the test at the end.  Nosiree!  Reading has boiled down to a semi-coherent multi-paragraph cold read with some insane questions at the end.  Social studies, when done, is generally just sent home as worksheets.  Health has only been worksheets and no in-class instruction whatsoever. Language used to be spelling and an occasional paper.  There is no book, so it's not like she is learning the parts of speech or anything.  Frankly, I don't know what the hell they are learning with that.  Then there is math.  The math review for the test at the end of the chapter gave a lot of things to review and very little of it was actually covered within the chapter or the text in general.

5th grade is one hot mess and it makes me mad that my child is caught in the middle.  I understand the premise of Common Core, but wished that they put more thought into place before putting it into action.

At this point, it is making our children dumber.  They aren't teaching anything of quality.  They are teaching spots of this and spots of that, but none of it actually coincides with each other making the teaching that they are doing moot.

Please go back to teaching my child.  Whatever you are doing now is not it.