Last night, I did my child's homework.
You have NO IDEA how radical that statement is, coming from this mother. In 23 years of parenting, I have never, not once, even CONSIDERED doing that. My feeling is, they get the work, it's their responsibility. They don't complete the work, they take the consequences. That's life.
I may suggest approaches, I will toss off the odd spelling. I will brainstorm, encourage, ply with snacks and occasionally (though rarely) nag. Mostly I just provide the space, materials, and peace, and leave them to it, expecting them to get on with it. It's their education.
But last night, I was up late creating a presentation, text and visual aids, with the skilled assistance of my son. Adam and I did his sister's homework. Shocking! Unheard of!
How did it come to this?
Timeline:
January: Rebekah tells her teachers that she will be missing two or three weeks of school toward the end of the term in order to travel to France. They nod and smile (or frown, according to their native disposition). Her French teacher is delighted. "Take lots of pictures, and when you come back, you can tell me about them (in French, of course!). That will be your final presentation." Well, good. One down...
February: Rebekah gives her teachers her confirmed flight dates. Now there is some harrumphing about missing the last three weeks of school.
Well, yes. I'd have preferred to send her after school let out, too, but this is when my cousins could take her. Besides, at least two of the last three weeks are generally review. She's not going to miss much course-work, and she'll be back for exams, but she could be missing final assignments, which is why, in...
March: I call the school, leaving a message with the office staff for the teachers to call me. I would like her to receive the final assignments in time for her to complete them before leaving, so she'd need to receive them by mid-April.
April: Having not yet heard from any teacher, I go to the school website to look up the teacher's email addresses. They are not on the website. I phone once again, this time trying to set up a face-to-face meeting, and once again, hear nothing. (Who's dropping the ball here? Office staff or teachers? I have no idea.)
I contemplate storming the school gates... and I probably really should have, but I am soooo bad with face-to-face confrontation. No, I definitely should have. This is my responsibility in this whole debacle, and I accept it. Had I barged on down there and made some noise, refused to leave until we'd resolved this, I probably could have solved it then and there. Or maybe I would have wandered the halls not finding her teachers and feeling stupid.
No. I would have solved it, and that's what I should have done. But as I didn't, the saga continues...
May: We are now three weeks from departure. I send a letter to the principal informing him of my efforts and my concern that Rebekah still has not been given her final assignment, hoping to shake things up here. In an effort to assure him of the trip's Educational Merits, I inform him that Rebekah will be attending school there. (Part-time, but I didn't feel it necessary to tell him that.) I get a letter from him with a list of instructions, among which is "contact her teachers and make necessary arrangements." Oh, thank you.
Two weeks to go: I send in a letter with Rebekah, with instructions that she is to get each teacher to sign upon reading. I give all details, including my contact information (two phone numbers and an email). I get a prompt email from the French teacher, who is the only one who's on the ball, and who has never been a problem. I get a call from the art teacher the next day, who simply informs me that since Rebekah will not be in school when she's scheduled her in-class final exam, she will probably fail the course. We have Words. I'm not sure which of us prevailed.
The day before departure: Rebekah receives her final two assignments, to be completed in France, neither of which have anything to do with her travels.
This whole thing has just astonished me. To me, travel is education. Period. Well, unless your idea of travel is to get hammered on a beach somewhere. But if you're actually getting involved with the people and the culture... that's education. Education is about giving children skills and information that will enable them to grapple with the real world, the world outside the classroom. Education does not begin and end in a classroom.
And it was clear, clear, crystal clear that (apart from the French teacher) none of her teachers saw it that way at all. Hey, Ms. Art Teacher, who scolded her for "going on holiday" during school time. And threatened with her possible failure? The girl is spending time in PARIS! You know, where the LOUVRE is? The Louvre which -- with absolutely no help from you -- she is EXCITED to see? Surely you could see the educational merit in that? Surely you could use this somehow in her assignment???
Hey, Mr.History Teacher, whose curriculum this term covered Canada's involvement in World War Two? She's going to FRANCE! She'll be staying a few miles from DIEPPE! You know, where Canada played a heart-rendingly brave role in an tragically failed offensive? Could you possibly have used that in her final assignment?
I stood on that same beach some years ago. It is lined with cliffs, cliffs where you can still see the bunkers carved out of the rock. It is not a sandy beach. It is a pebble beach. I imagined young men, the age my son is now, trying to run on a river of marbles. I imagined the machine guns pointing at them from the cliffs as they struggled for shelter. I imagined them falling to the stones by the dozen, by the hundred. And I cried.
THAT's history. THAT's education.
But no. She's not going to be warming a chair in a row in a classroom. Therefore, her education is suffering.
I have news for you, hidebound teachers: this trip might be making her schooling suffer. It is YOU who are making her education suffer.
Bah.
And so, when Rebekah emailed me in a panic about her one remaining project. It was to be a Powerpoint presentation, but her computer had died -- she couldn't even turn it on -- the cousins don't have Powerpoint, her info is trapped in her computer, and there's NO WAY she's going to get this done...
Well, by then I'd about had it with hidebound bureaucratic dried sticks masquerading as educators...
"Tell me the assignment. Tell me everything you can remember of your work. Adam and I will do it and email it to you."
And that is why, for the first (and last) time in my parenting life, I did my child's homework last night.
And I do not feel guilty. In the slightest.
Bah.
I couldn't fit this in the post without messing up the flow, but let me say this now: I believe that Rebekah has been unbelievably unlucky to get three such teachers in one year. I would far prefer to believe that teachers are truly interested in education, and that more would be able to see the opportunities in this trip of hers than would see it as a failing.
But this has been our experience this year, and it's been a mind-blower!
Posted by: Ilona | June 12, 2009 at 06:58 AM
Good for you! I'd have done it too. And am APPALLED at these idiots standing in front of her classroom.
I now understand all those years of homeschooling if you have to deal with crap like this.
Posted by: Kimberly | June 12, 2009 at 07:16 AM
They should feel really bad for what they done. It's not like she's a delinquent or anything. They should be more helpful. What blows me away is the time frame. You've been trying to get ahold of them forever and you couldn't. That's bad and the fact their email address weren't on the website, uncalled for. I'm glad you did her homework, I would have too. Tell her to have a good time.
Posted by: Mrs. C | June 12, 2009 at 07:32 AM
Wow. Three teachers blow you off, forget to be responsible to their student, and then try to punish HER for their mistakes? The nerve of them all! They sound jealous - in my experience, both as a student and as a teacher, any time students take extended holidays from school there's always at least one jaded, burnt-out teacher who gets pissed because their summer vacation hasn't started yet. It's too bad Rebekah doesn't have the teachers I had in (public) high school - almost all of whom would have been absolutely excited for a student to travel to France, and all of whom would have come up with reasonable assignments that fit with the travel. The only thing they would have done was make the student visit them when he or she got back to tell them all about it. Here's hoping Rebekah's next teachers are like that!!
Posted by: Kiera | June 12, 2009 at 10:17 AM
The teacher in me is trying to reconcile those negative attitudes. Sad. I like to give kids a journal for their travels, one that helps them incorporate the trip experiences into their writing.
She'll see the Louvre? That's fantastic!
Posted by: Daisy | June 12, 2009 at 10:50 AM
AMEN!!!
Posted by: Katie | June 12, 2009 at 11:12 AM
Hey, sometimes what seems like the wrong thing is definitely the right thing. Good for you.
Posted by: Maureen at IslandRoar | June 12, 2009 at 11:16 AM
Kimberly: After three of my own, and my husband's horde this is the FIRST time I've ever run across anything of this nature. Sure, there has been the odd teacher who was obvious in desperate need of a sabbatical, but this was systemic. Bizarre.
Mrs. C: I was a little stunned not to find email addresses on the website. Every other school I've been involved with has provided them. Given that teachers can't be reached while they're teaching (much of the day), it only makes sense.
Kiera: Jealous, huh? I hadn't considered that, but now that I look at my conversation with her, and the things Rebekah relayed to me throug that lens, I think you may well be right about the art teacher, at any rate. (I think the history teacher's just inert, myself.)
Daisy: As I said in my first comment, I don't believe this is typical of teachers at all, and I can't believe Rebekah's bad luck at landing three in one term!
Katie: Thank you. :)
Maureen: Thanks. According to the letter of the law, it's wrong. But I think the spirit of the law is more forgiving.
Posted by: Ilona | June 12, 2009 at 12:00 PM
I think that kids who are going to miss a significant amount of school (three weeks is pretty significant), especially in high school, do have the responsibility to get the assignments they won't be there for. Clearly, Rebekah made a conscientious effort to do so, and you only stepped in when she wasn't getting anywhere. The way I see it, you only ended up doing this assignment for her (and KUDOS for staying out of your kids' homework for all this time!) because of an unfortunate combination of circumstances. It's not like she created an emergency by leaving it till the last minute and then dropping it on you (and yes, I do know some kids who've done that, why do you ask?).
I think this one falls more on the teachers, and if they couldn't see the educational value of this trip, that's just sad.
Posted by: Florinda | June 12, 2009 at 02:03 PM
Okay, several hours later I'm still laughing (I laugh when I'm ticked off) at your post. Un-freaking-believable! Then I realized, not so much. Way too common in our educational system. My daughter, in 9th grade, was instructed to write a 2 page paper about the Israeli/Palestinian conflict and suggest a resolution. After a two paragraph mention in her textbook. Now I admit, born in the 70s, I don't know much except that it's been ugly and complicated. So a 9th grader is supposed to figure it out and suggest a resolution? I mean, really?! It's that simple? Maybe it is, actually, but with the complexities of international relations tossed in, a box of crayolas and a ream of paper and drawing pictures of our 'good thoughts, fellow diplomats' isn't going to solve it, though maybe it should. (I'm really not, in my ignorance, trying to offend anyone here! Please forgive me if I do -- as a Christian I'm on the Israel side of this but am admiting I don't know the history/background/complexities as the Jewish and Israeli population of the world knows it.) So anyway, this paper is supposed to take 45 minutes. Including research. Ever googled "Israeli/palestinian conflict"? Yeah. Now imagine a child with ADD/OCD trying to wrap her brain around this entire conflict.
Guess who did the research.
And wrote the paper.
Gave her the cliff notes version and called it a day. After letting her teacher know what an assinine assignment it was.
If anyone has a good website for history and TRUTH please let me know!!!
Posted by: Katie | June 12, 2009 at 02:23 PM
I wish I could say I'm surprised, but I'm not. This is EXACTLY what my daughter's education has been like from first grade on. That kid has had the bad luck to have every crappy teacher in the school system. EVERY ONE. Her spanish teacher this year? Worst one ever. I sat in on a class because I was so appalled by what I was hearing from my daughter. In a full year of Spanish, they never got beyond chapter 3 in the book. They should have FINISHED 14 chapters.
The teacher held on to all the tests/quizzes until last week. Every single one my daughter took the full year was in the high 90's gradewise. She obviously earned an A. But she's getting a C-. Why? Because the damn teacher went to Prague for a couple of weeks that coincided with when my kid was sick, left no sub (we don't have subs in high school...really), left assignments that my sick kid didn't ever get that were due when my sick daughter was still sick, and so she passed them in late. Yup. The teacher told me so herself.
So I went to the dept head who never answered one phone call or email. So I went to our worthless, almost out the door thank god, good luck Swampscott, principal who of course ignored me. What am I supposed to do? Take it to the school committee?
And that is why (ducking) I am opposed to tenure. This teacher needs to be fired. She's HORRIBLE. she has no control of her class. The kids are wild and no learning is going on, and yet she's been there for years.
HATE HER.
Posted by: margalit | June 12, 2009 at 08:50 PM
People look at me like I am nuts when they hear that my husband is trying to get a gov't job that would send us oversea's eventually, say 2 to 3 years, and that I think it is the greatest thing since sliced bread. I mean really, is there a better education, give me a break. Don't worry about it, you know as well as I do that there is so much to be learned by traveling, you've made that plain here, we had a little squabble at our school this over a family trip and my kid is just in kindergarten. They threatened to turn me over to the truancy department, ugh.
And, from someone who worked in the public schools system, I can only wonder what in the world these teachers and admins were thinking
Posted by: Jerri Ann | June 15, 2009 at 01:30 PM