School projects...ARRRRGH! (cost, analysis, teachers, money)

[NCyank]

Originally Posted by marylee54

I didn't say you said to drive himself to the store..............this is an example of lack of critical thinking skills the school system provides.

BTW, the desired results of an education do NOT extend to making dioramas, posters, etc. Critical thinking and analytical reading and writing skills are sorely lacking in this society, while our kids are busy cutting up paper pretties.

You certainly suggested that 'backing off' might include not even taking him to the store to buy supplies for the project. Think before you speak.

How can he even get materials unless we go out shopping and buy them? its not like he has a car and can drive.

No, not all of education is about critical thinking, reading and writing skills but neither is all of life. Real life education is far more encompassing and it seems as though your son is failing so far. You are making things easy for a kid who is physically abusive to you....what kind of thinking does that encourage? He walks all over you and you think you are 'helping' by sparing him the mundane tasks involved in completing his school assignments. It seems like he needs a reality check....everything from working for his dinner (chores around the house) to doing his own busy work....maybe he will be so busy that he doesn't have time to give you so much grief. It's time to stop making life so easy for him. There are valuable life lessons he's not learning while you sit around cutting up paper pretties for him.

[marylee54]

Originally Posted by NCyank

You certainly suggested that 'backing off' might include not even taking him to the store to buy supplies for the project. Think before you speak. No, not all of education is about critical thinking, reading and writing skills but neither is all of life. Real life education is far more encompassing and it seems as though your son is failing so far. You are making things easy for a kid who is physically abusive to you....what kind of thinking does that encourage? He walks all over you and you think you are 'helping' by sparing him the mundane tasks involved in completing his school assignments. It seems like he needs a reality check....everything from working for his dinner (chores around the house) to doing his own busy work....maybe he will be so busy that he doesn't have time to give you so much grief. It's time to stop making life so easy for him. There are valuable life lessons he's not learning while you sit around cutting up paper pretties for him.

You don't know the entire situaton here nor all the details involved, so please stop offering "advice' based on incomplete knowledge. I'm sorry I'm not raising my child according to your ideals, even when you don't know what your talking about. A few posts don't make you the expert on our entire life.

Besides, this whole post was about make work projects, not about how I'm raising my child.

[flik_becky]

Originally Posted by FarNorthDallas

My "favorite" school project (not!) was when my son had to trace his family back to when his ancestors came to America. He was in 2nd grade. Geneology in 2nd grade. He couldn't even read or write yet. I worked a long, long time on that project!

This is a stupid school project. Some kids might be first born on American soil. How difficult would their project be and how time would it take to complete? Yet with more hours the people who might have lived here since the mayflower have a much bigger project to make and get the same grade, unless they decide to give out more points based on how many generations of Americans are in your family.

Then we must not forget that there are people who do not know where they came from outside the US let alone how many generations they have been here. And, do Native American students automatically get an A?

[lisdol]

Originally Posted by FarNorthDallas

My "favorite" school project (not!) was when my son had to trace his family back to when his ancestors came to America. He was in 2nd grade. Geneology in 2nd grade. He couldn't even read or write yet. I worked a long, long time on that project!

Oh my goodness. How does one even do that without going to geneaology records? I have one written report my family had done in the 80s for our German line that went back to the 1750s when they came over. But man, that tree can branch a lot. I think the most recent immigrants in my family came over in the mid to late 1800s from Italy. Even with all of the stuff available online its still an arduous task to put together a family tree.

[lisdol]

Originally Posted by flik_becky

Then we must not forget that there are people who do not know where they came from outside the US let alone how many generations they have been here. And, do Native American students automatically get an A?

Ya. No kidding. I did not think of that one. Trace back to when they came across the Bering Land Bridge....

[NCyank]

Marylee, you can say anything you want to make yourself feel better about your situation...I hope it all works out for you.


Regarding busy work and projects....
In the least a 13 yo should be doing their own project busy work so that they can learn to manage and prioritize the different elements and the time it takes to complete them. They need to be able to make a plan and properly execute it so as to get the work turned in on time...including painting and cutting out pretties. These are valuable lessons that will aid them later on in many areas...you know, so you won't be up late typing papers for them in high school. I know you probably won't like my advice but let your kid do the work and learn these lessons on their own. At worst they will get a low grade or be really sleepy (from staying up late to finish) but it is a lesson they NEED to learn. No, I wouldn't do the busy work for my kids and haven't. They've misjudged or poorly planned a few times and paid the price. But now, in high school, they are able to do all of their work independently, as they should. If we always help and rescue them they will always need help and rescuing.

Take it for what it's worth, advice from a parent with a few more years of experience, watching the kids succeed and sometime fail, always learning something from the process. We've been there to support them when they really needed it but allowed them to take some lumps along the way. The lumps are fewer now, the hard lessons learned years ago are benefiting them greatly now. They will both tell you that they are glad we didn't 'help' them more...they see the results of such parenting in some of their peers and don't always like what they see.

[Charles Wallace]

Originally Posted by marylee54

Well, I HATE doing crafts, so there! I managed to get 2 bachelor's and a masters without doing a single craft, unless your major is fine arts, what difference does it make?

My advice to anyone with a school aged child who doesn't know squat about crafts, learn. Take a course, something. Get a supply of scissors, glue, posters, crayons, whatever. Becasue that is what education is about. Forget about knowing your subject, just know how to make pretties. Really, that's all it is. Critical thinking, knowing the subject, that doesn't matter.

All we're graudating is a nation of "crafty" people.

Not surprisingly, this is one of my pet peeves also. I cannot tell you how it offends my sensibilities as a teacher to see an English teacher's "assessment" of (let's say) Romeo and Juliet be any of the following...or their ilk.

1. A poster in which cut-outs of Zac Efron and Vanessa Hudgens stand in for Romeo and Juliet with the word "conflict" spelled out in magazine letters.

2. A rap recounting the plot of Romeo and Juliet.

3. A student-written play in which the author imagines what would've happened if Romeo and Juliet hadn't killed themselves.

I object strongly to these "kre8v" methods of assessment because they are, as the previous poster so wisely put it, all about making pretties. With the possible exception of the rap -- which asks only about the surface-level information of the plot -- none of these assessments really requires students to know any of the following actual bits of information, all (or at least most) of which I consider crucial to even a basic, fundamental understanding of this play:

* Who wrote R&J? When? Where? Why?
*The central plot, setting, and conflict of the story.
* The main characters' personalities and motivations
* The notion of irony
* The role of fate or destiny in the play
* The relationship between parents and children and how those conflicts mirror the larger conflicts between the noble families and the Prince
* The role of Mercutio and the question of why Mercutio must die
* The play's theme or central message
* Iambic pentameter
* Sonnet form
* The use of iambic pentameter to convey meaning
* The motifs of light/dark, sexuality/violence, sacred/profane
* The five-act structure of Shakespearean drama
* The performance history

See, what I think of as "knowledge chunks," or "bytes," if you will, are becoming increasingly rare as teachers search for "alternative assessment" methods -- anything except tests, which might actually measure the students' ability to learn facts and make inferences, or written essays, which might actually measure the students' ability to develop a line of argument about a literary work and support it with evidence.

Bottom line, as a teacher, I have to ask, "Was it worth the time?" Was the time I invested in "making my pretty" worth the effort? How much about Romeo and Juliet did I REALLY LEARN by cutting and pasting a picture of Zac Efron?

Seriously, let's break it down, shall we?

At a minimum, it will take me probably one hour and eight dollars to get the poster-making supplies from an arts and crafts store, and probably a half hour and three more dollars to get a copy of Teen People. At home, it will take me at least an hour to cut out pictures, cut out words, arrange them, glue them, and clean up my mess.

Two and a half hours. Gee. I could have...oh, I don't know...read Romeo and Juliet? Theoretically, since the "traffic of our stage" is only supposed to be two hours, according to the Prologue, I could watch John Leguizamo shoot up Verona Beach and have at least a half hour for popcorn and bathroom break.

How much about something outside myself did I actually learn by writing a scene that Shakespeare obviously felt would violate the purpose of his narrative? Parents will pardon my unfeeling assertion that Shakespeare's writing is most likely superior to the writing of their children, and that perhaps a more effective use of their child's time might be to study the work of someone regarded by at least a few people as the greatest playwright in this language.

In all seriousness, as a parent, I have to ask other parents a question. Actually, I have to plead with you. Please, please, when you see your child making pretties, please call your child's school. Please call your child's teacher. Please ask him or her if there is another way in which their attainment of knowledge can be measured -- such as an essay or a test. Please ask them what specific "bytes" of knowledge a "pretty" is supposed to teach them that they did not know before. Please ask them which state standard this "pretty" fulfills and whether your child can be assessed in another way.

Seriously. Please.

Teachers do this silly nonsense for a few reasons, starting with they don't know any better because they were taught that this is a legitimate form of assessment. They also find it easier to grade than a paper -- after all, we have Zac, we have Vanessa -- it's easy to see this is an "A" poster! Way easier than grading a five-page essay!

Parents, seriously, insist on a fluff-free education for your child. Insist that the teachers teach writing and grade it, at least for your child. Saying, "Mrs. Jones, I would prefer if you would give my son Carlos a five-page essay to write instead of the Zac Efron poster" will do several satisfying things:

1. It will, perhaps, communicate the idea to the teacher that she's teaching fluff.
2. It will be amusing to hear the teacher defend the idea that a poster project assesses knowledge at a deeper and more comprehensive level than an extended argument in words with textual analysis.
3. It will blow their minds.

Seriously. Without YOUR doing something active and outspoken, your students will continue to be taught this way. After all, the teacher's taught them according to their "multiple intelligences," or their "individual learning style." The fact that your child might never have been taught the difference between iambic pentameter and a hole in the ground isn't that important.

Or maybe it is.

Thank you for listening to my diatribe.

[Raven1976]

I teach preschool and we barely do much cutting and gluing to talk about a theme. We do more hands on activities as well. We will only touch upon Native Americans briefly, but we will do things like weaving a dream catcher, painting fabrics by crushing a few different foods to create dyes, try to create teepees from different materials, sings songs, play games, use turquoise colored play dough to make costume jewelry. I think dioramas are a waste of time.

[bigcats]

I'm not in favor of projects that cost families money (though I think that in most circumstances, it's some parents who think they have to go buy the miniature figures for the Mission project, it's not the actual assignment).

I also agree that a project should be one that requires the student know actual bits of information. But I think the right project assignment can certainly do that. I can think of plenty of ways a student could do a project to demonstrate any of the objectives on Charles Wallace's list. And can anyone seriously complain that students don't take enough tests nowadays? If the entire class was graded using projects as the assessment tool, then maybe that'd be objectionable. But the vast majority of assessment being done is paper-pencil tests, and I think there is something to be said for occasionally throwing in a different kind of assessment activity. I don't think the fact that some students do not enjoy crafty projects, or don't feel themselves artistic, is reason to not assign any, ever.

In this state, just about every 4th grader does the Mission project, or the Indian Village project, or something similar. And I have to say that if I were to sit down and research all the information that would go into me being able to construct one of these things, I would learn quite a lot more than I know now. Alas, I did not go to school here myself. Maybe I'll do it sometime one summer myself.

The Indian Villages are trickling in to the library at my school right now for display. I'm fascinated by them and they are a nice change from reading essays posted on the wall (that's nice too, but sometimes you want to look at something different). And no, most of them don't have store-bought accessories (we don't have stores here, and I would sure hope there are no parents driving kids hours out to the nearest craft stores), and they do look like they were made by kids, not parents. I can also see that from looking at them that the kids know some stuff about the tribe they've chosen. I trust that their teacher is grading them on that basis. I'm sure she's using a rubric that she has explained to them, in which their project must demonstrate knowledge of certain things. And if I know her, she's gathered a bunch of supplies of cardboard, toothpicks, woodscraps, etc, that she's offering to her students.

I think if I were a 4th grader, by the time I got to high school I'd be remembering how I constructed my model better than what I wrote in my essay, if I even remember writing the essay.

(I'm not sure how turquoise play dough beads are more valuable than a diorama??!)

As for all these teachers who supposedly hate a mess, eh, no big deal. My classroom is a holy mess more times than not at the end of the day. It's not something I worry about as a teacher. I actually do messy things a lot, knowing that many parents won't/can't have the mess at home. I think the person who decided to carpet the floor of a kindergarten classroom is an idiot, but then I relax and figure that it's their fault, not mine, if there are paint splotches, clay smears, and melted crayon embedded in front of the heater.

[marylee54]

Originally Posted by Raven1976

I teach preschool and we barely do much cutting and gluing to talk about a theme. We do more hands on activities as well. We will only touch upon Native Americans briefly, but we will do things like weaving a dream catcher, painting fabrics by crushing a few different foods to create dyes, try to create teepees from different materials, sings songs, play games, use turquoise colored play dough to make costume jewelry. I think dioramas are a waste of time.

Your activities sound quite nice for pre school, on up to maybe 3rd grade. After all, a child can't express ideas in writing if he can't write yet!

But there does reach a cross over, when its more appropriate to express oneself in writing than drawing!