The week ended with a twist... we have been weeding out moms that aren't sure of the project and those who aren't ready to teach or support the school financially. I have been put in the spot to be the "bad guy" and I am ok with that. I have been detached so I can easily see where the issues are. There were a few moms just not ready for Waldorf and I am glad to know it now rather than months down the road. So that was a little tense but we got through it.
I am excited that there will be a gr2 teacher starting tomorrow. She's been helping as an assistant in a charter school gr1 class. I will start training her tomorrow since she didn't come to our day long training. In the meantime I will continue with the gr2's. There are two more starting later in the week. That will give the class 3 students total and that will be good to start with, it will be great for the 2nd grader that is already here as I feel like he falls through the cracks easily being alone. He'll enjoy class mates.
I probably said this before but I should say it again... it is wildly apparent to me that all the hype about Waldorf being behind in the early years is crap... there, I said it... crap. These kids are brilliant and some come from charters... schools that are supposed to be "better" than their counter parts and NONE of the children gr2 through 10 are where they would be on the Waldorf spectrum... what does that mean? It means that with "No Child Left Behind" these children haven't learned any mapping skills, botany, proper math (9th graders that don't know their times tables through) - so much - they are BRIGHT, BRILLIANT children!! I am enjoying them a ton. We will get them up to speed.
This week the kids 6th grade and up will start with botany (we were going to start with Norse but the book store won't have the books in for two weeks.) They will use the section from our grade 5 book entitled "The Wisdom of Plants" - we will be covering it more quickly since they are older and trying to get through it. Since they have a good deal of catching up to do, they will also being doing some hybrid stuff on Egypt. I thought I would have their teacher take them to the library and see if they need to catch up on library skills and also look up some stuff on Egypt and direct a bit of their own study in that department - and then each do some sort of report about what they learned. Our museum is hosting this so it is my hope they'll go there and do some learning and we'll take our form drawing to Egyptian writing. **They all enjoyed form drawing and after practicing using chalk boards, they all decided that they wanted to make their own books with them so we'll likely tackle that next week sometime too.
Well that works for now... I want to post some family stuff in the next post and also get to work on the next update for gr6... we are close to sending it to print... any time - Erik is doing more edits. We really want this to be the flagship for where we are planning to take all the books in revision. We are going to begin including a lot more pictures and lesson pages as well as DVDs clips to help along the way.
Have a blessed day!!
Sunday, September 14, 2008
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2 comments:
I remember being the "bad guy" when I was a supervisor was the hardest thing. Probably because I wasn't detached from the situation.
I think the "Waldorf early years are behind" thing is directly related to reading. Mainstream schools are so hyper-focused on reading early! And so the kids don't learn much else. How can ninth graders not know their times table? I had to learn that in 3rd grade!
It's funny (though really not very funny) to me that schools are spending so much energy on early reading and NCLB and testing, and yet they're not even really succeeding with the basics. You would think that they would try something different!
The crazy thing though about the reading... get this... these kids that are in 6th grade and up are having trouble with Children of Odin! Harry read that in 4th grade! So while the PS system might get them reading, then they leave them to the wolves - and look at what they let them read! It is one thing to inspire a child with reading difficulties to read through comics, I've been down that road, but then you have to begin requiring of them too... if children do not know our expectations then how can they ever rise to them.
I am really the bad guy today... my name is mud to one mom... that is a whole long post that I am mulling over. I think the old saying "don't go into business with family or friends" should apply to schools too! Don't start a school with a group of friends... they are struggling right now and the ones who suffer are the kids that are loving this material.
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