The Cellar - View Single Post

monster · 05-11-2010, 08:41 PM

Oh I forgot to mention, the other teacher in the classroom -who is also awesome- is a 30yo female who used to be his student. There's no way she wouldn't say something if he was going over the top.

But we are a very different school. It's all on a first name basis, it's a small school, everybody knows everybody from kindergarten thru eighth grade through teachers through involved parents. So it's much friendlier that your average school, more like family -and harder for outsiders to break in without us intending it to be. Also, everyone is treated as an equal, so to outsiders, the kids appear bolshie, overconfident and noisy. But they are NOT afraid to speak out if they think a teacher is out of line. Or a parent. Or each other.

District policy is no touch. But I have never seen that enforced and nobody expects it to be. It's not an easy school to get in to (it's entry by lottery but there are a lot of applications) and you have to do an induction, classroom visits and observations. You know what's coming, what it's like. But I suspect -now I think about it- that the rules may have been relaxed a little to allow this family in, resulting in them not knowing exactly what to expect. The day before I knew about this, I happened to meet this mom for the first time and observe her being a moderator as the kids did cooking demonstrations to small groups of classmates. She was like the newb in the cellar who starts a zillion topics in txt sp33k and wants us to stop calling each other cunts. She didn't butt in when she should've and did when they were sorting it out nicely by themselves.

Stuff it, I'm going to give more details, I googled it, there's no way they could be identified from this -it's a large foster/adoption family scenario, with several special needs kids. The sort who might be deemed to have an emergent need to get into a school where special needs kids are more easily able to remain within the mainstream and so allowed to skip the waiting list/ waive all the classroom visits, especially for the 6-8 grade kids who might get trampled entering the other huge middle schools at such a tough time in their lives.

One of the things we say is that Open Schooling works for pretty much every kid. But not every parent.

05-11-2010, 08:41 PM	#15
monster I hear them call the tide Join Date: Dec 2005 Location: Perpetual Chaos Posts: 30,852	Oh I forgot to mention, the other teacher in the classroom -who is also awesome- is a 30yo female who used to be his student. There's no way she wouldn't say something if he was going over the top. But we are a very different school. It's all on a first name basis, it's a small school, everybody knows everybody from kindergarten thru eighth grade through teachers through involved parents. So it's much friendlier that your average school, more like family -and harder for outsiders to break in without us intending it to be. Also, everyone is treated as an equal, so to outsiders, the kids appear bolshie, overconfident and noisy. But they are NOT afraid to speak out if they think a teacher is out of line. Or a parent. Or each other. District policy is no touch. But I have never seen that enforced and nobody expects it to be. It's not an easy school to get in to (it's entry by lottery but there are a lot of applications) and you have to do an induction, classroom visits and observations. You know what's coming, what it's like. But I suspect -now I think about it- that the rules may have been relaxed a little to allow this family in, resulting in them not knowing exactly what to expect. The day before I knew about this, I happened to meet this mom for the first time and observe her being a moderator as the kids did cooking demonstrations to small groups of classmates. She was like the newb in the cellar who starts a zillion topics in txt sp33k and wants us to stop calling each other cunts. She didn't butt in when she should've and did when they were sorting it out nicely by themselves. Stuff it, I'm going to give more details, I googled it, there's no way they could be identified from this -it's a large foster/adoption family scenario, with several special needs kids. The sort who might be deemed to have an emergent need to get into a school where special needs kids are more easily able to remain within the mainstream and so allowed to skip the waiting list/ waive all the classroom visits, especially for the 6-8 grade kids who might get trampled entering the other huge middle schools at such a tough time in their lives. One of the things we say is that Open Schooling works for pretty much every kid. But not every parent. __________________ The most difficult thing is the decision to act, the rest is merely tenacity Amelia Earhart