........without being reminded. Now normally I don't allow things to bother me and of course I think children should be following the rules but let's face it at that age they are going to break some rules.......a little back story. You probably noticed that yesterday I didn't have time to post. Yesterday my middle child had a play day at the school. Really what this is the parent volunteer and spend all day watching the kids outside while the teachers have a meeting. Well our class had 4 parents for 19 children(never type in anger or you have to correct.lol) so we were well monitored and having an amazing time! Suddenly the P.E. teacher comes over and starts screaming at the children like I have never heard an adult scream at children. The children were at a play station with 3 LARGE buckets of water, probably 20 gallons worth in each bucket, some balls that hold water like you would play with in the pool and some nets. Well they had been squeezing the water out over their heads and the heads of their friends. Every now and then a child would get in the bucket and of course we would tell them to get out. Well apparently they were not even allowed to squeeze the water out of these balls. Mind you the children used only about 5 gallons of water between all the buckets they didn't drain the buckets and there was more then enough left for all the other groups. While she continues to yell at them she makes them sit out of part of their next activity as well! Finally enough was enough and myself and the other parents stop the situation and tell the kids to go play. She starts arguing with us and the principal walks over. He doesn't even want to listen to what the parents have to say and didn't care how upset 4 parents were she walked away and he tells me that at their age they should have remembered the rules she said in PE the day before and should have followed them! That the parent's shouldn't have had to know the rules!! Now come on that is ridiculous! This guy reminds me more and more why I hate public school! I wish I would have had a tape recorder neither one of them would have a job. So if you are still with me lol do you think the kids should have remembered the rules from the day before and followed them regardless?? If not what age do you think it would be acceptable to expect that??
Nope..! Unreal! Plus, the principle never should of allowed 4 parents for 19 teachers!What is so scary is how they speak to the children and the parents! Same issues here in Wisconsin! Once in qrtly. conference about my son - the teacher asked "Is everything okay at home?" I said "I'm so glad you brought that up....I was going to ask you the same thing!" "I hope you are NOT bringing your family issues into the glass room!" You should of seen the look on her face! She then informed me that she is a professional and would never do that. :)
ReplyDeleteIt was 4 parents for 19 kids :O) so the number was ok just the behavior. Teachers are unreal these days!
DeleteThat is just ridiculous! First of all, the PE teacher should not even be screaming at the kids to begin with! But they seriously can't expect them to remember every single rule!
ReplyDeleteKids are kids, They shouldn't have been yelled at like that. It was inappropriate and unprofessional and If I were a parent, I would go above the teacher and principal and discuss my concerns with the superintendent.
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately this issue goes district wide :O( We have had previous issues and I couldn't even get a reply to them. You are right no child should be treated that way.
DeleteWhile there was no need to yell, kids do need to follow the rules. However, whoever sets up the activity should explain the rules each time they play. And the volunteers should know the rules, so they can enforce them.
ReplyDeleteWhile I do believe the kids should know and follow the rules, the way the situation was dealt with seems a bit out of hand. Kids will be kids, there are plenty of other ways to go about discipline rather than screaming, especially when it's not even your child!
ReplyDeleteThat was uncalled for and out of hand. I don't understand why any volunteer and or adult needs to do that with children. Yes, children should follow rules, but face the facts, did you as a child always follow rules? I sure didn't. I learned however, but you don't learn when someone is yelling at you. shouldn't have been handled that way. It was also just water, again yes I know it was a rule, but pick your battles and pick what to get more upset about, was there danger involved? Was someone getting hurt? No, so frankly a simply telling them it's not allowed and a warning if it happens again could have worked.
ReplyDeleteYou need to find a different school system that will work better Mellissa, there are to many things wrong with this one.
Oh I know it Mel :/ the longer we are here the worse it gets! As I make friends within the school I find out more and more about the inner workings even and well it is a disaster! However last week I did learn I can drive about 2 miles from the house and the next school district over will come get the kids! I'm going to be looking into that one. There is a major restructuring going on right now in the district I really hope it helps.
DeleteI would be looking into that fast. Finish this year out and switch over the summer, hopefully it's worth it
DeleteI hope so to!
DeleteI am going to make my post anonymously because my warning may sound bizarre to some and I just don't want to get caught up in defending my position.
ReplyDeleteI went back to school in my forties, got my degree, and then entered a double masters program. As a grad student I was allowed to work on campus in a paid position. I worked for the head of the Education Dept as a researcher collecting and analyzing statistics (performance of teachers and students, progress reports, etc) for the local school district of about 50 schools in total in the district and I also graded students work and performance in their coursework.
I got an insiders view of not only the horrific way the district functioned but also the caliber of the persons enrolled in this Education program. These students were all on the teacher-certification track. The program (masters level) was known on campus as the one to go into if you couldn't cut it anywhere else. I would go so far as to say many of the students in this program didn't have basic writing and reading literacy.
There was ZERO standard of excellence. The program was a joke. Grades were handed to students ...no real work required, a standing joke that they really weren't capable of producing the work anyway and were in large part 'affirmative action' admissions to keep the university's numbers in accordance with federal requirements. Bottom line: These 'wanna-be teachers' were stupid. Their papers shocked me. My kids, at the time in middle school, wrote much better than these college kids did. Psychological problems in many of them. No idea how to handle a child. Yet these were to be the future teachers of our children.
I shuddered to think what a child would learn from people like this.
The head of the department? Pure Marxist and very proud of his political ideology. Freedom? Pride in America? No. he had a communist flag and pictures of Che Guevera in his office. His personal emails, which he printed out for me to file by sender, scared the hell out of me. Correspondence to other department heads around the country, all heavily political in tone, spoke of indoctrination, 'we're one year farther along to changing this country', 'another group ready for brain-washing' ....yes, those are verbatim quotes from his emails.
The final straw for me was when I was instructed to "adjust" a bunch of student performance evals. These would have negatively impacted his salary as he was charged with 'improving the district'. It's all a scam.
If I knew when my kids were in school what I know now my kids would not have attended public schools. EVER.
All of this, of course, is hidden at whatever cost from the general public, and yes, they talk about that also. There is an "agenda", most definitely. It is about socializing children a certain way, about the 'collective' as opposed to individualism, it is about bringing the achievers down to the level of the underachievers. It is frightening. Marxist principals are being implemented. Read about Paolo Frierre. His books and writings are widely used as instructional materials in university Departments of Education.
There is a magazine published in the NW (Seattle, I believe) called 'Rethinking Our Schools'. If you are at all interested in the ideological and political direction in which American schools are moving, find that publication and do some digging.
I know I've strayed off-track from your concerns, but know that the caliber of people who are teaching your children should be suspect AT ALL TIMES. If I sound alarmist to you, dig up the federal statistics on teacher/child sexual abuse and learn some of the facts for yourself. You see it in the news constantly. These schools, yes in general, are cesspools. I wouldn't allow most of these 'teachers' into my home.