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homework, iep, individualized education program, kids who don't fit into school, kinesthetic learners, perpich arts high school, public school
Hubby and I have three children, Eldest Son, Daughter and Young Son, identified thus for the purposes of this blog. There is one public middle school and one public high school in our district. Two of our children, Eldest Son and Daughter, have successfully navigated the public school system, doing the requisite mounds of homework and getting high marks.
Young Son, on the other hand, has had difficulty working within the system since he was a wee one. Actually, we knew he was going to have trouble before he even started. He has a personality very much like Hubby’s and Hubby had the same issues with the school system when he was a kid. Both of them need time to fully process information. They can’t simply cram it down and spit it back out for tests and such. They’re slow readers and slow writers, neither of which works well for the system. This is not to say that because they are slow, they are unintelligent. Au contraire! Once they process data and concepts, they can explain things in great detail and use what they’ve learned for complicated arguments and quick-witted comments, among other practical uses.
Because Hubby didn’t fit within the local public school system, he has always felt he’s not particularly smart or talented. I’d venture to guess that both he and Young Son would score high on intelligence tests, but you wouldn’t know that from their middle and high school grades.
What saddens me is that we have a school system that only works for a narrow band of students, the ones who learn the way schools typically teach, the ones who “get” things immediately, the ones who can learn while sitting still, the ones who read and write quickly, the ones who are interested in the precise topics presented, the ones willing to do mountains of homework after spending all day in school.
Like my eldest two children, I did well in school, but why couldn’t there be a system that works for people like Hubby and Young Son? Why can’t every student have an IEP?
An IEP is an Individualized Education Program, which is a set of instructions and needed services worked out between teachers and parents in order to meet the learning abilities of students with special needs. While IEPs are reserved for those with some sort of disability, there would be value in evaluating each student’s learning style and figuring out how best to accommodate it. (If we can identify a kinesthetic learner, why haven’t we built a mode of teaching for kinesthetic learners into our system yet?)
Of course, the argument will be made that providing each student an IEP would cost too much and be impractical to implement. We gotta herd those kids through and pack the required data into their heads, whether it sticks or not. We’ve just got to pretend the system works for everyone, rather than truly making it work for everyone.
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Note: We did not learn ’til after Eldest Son left the local public high school and attended the Perpich Arts High School for his senior year that he felt he didn’t fit into the local school system either. He didn’t feel challenged, but because he got good grades, he was certainly considered a success in the eyes of the system.
That’s so true. The ability to grasp and understand varies from person to person. I’ve seen a lot of my friends who cram up stuff from the text and ‘vomit’ them into their answer sheets. Thats the easiest way to get good grades!
And for people (like me) who cannot just stuff things into their brains, but have this need to understand every little detail, before things can successfully register, its a little hard.
For the latter set of people, the main set back is the time they take to understand everything. But like you say, once they understand it completely, their ability to apply the same in real world situations is much better when compared to the former set of people.
However, i feel this does not end just at the level of education; sometimes, it extends into a major part of their life where they are shunned as under-achievers which is really a sad state.
Having said that, its always people like those who create breakthroughs in every field.
The schools now-a-days are more like factories. Most kids fit the mold closely enough, and they’re churned out in great numbers. There’re a few that don’t fit at all, and they’re kind of tossed aside, labeled “irregular”, and not given any further consideration, and it’s really kind of sad.
Mary, we were just having this conversation this morning (and we have it all the time). My eldest is a square peg in a round hole, made all the more frustrating by his high IQ scores – no one can figure him out and he has struggled all the way through (in fourth grade now). No two kids are alike, but it seems school systems are narrowing their band width more and more, making it harder for kids to not only succeed but to simply feel comfortable in their learning environment. And shouldn’t we be putting more into nurturing those different intelligences so that we, as a nation, get more in the long run? Isn’t that really investing in our future?
Our son is on an IEP. He learned more from a summer of individual one on one (one hour per week) with a good friend of ours than he learned all year in their specialized program consisting of two hours per week. We have spent thousands on private services outside the system to shore him up. And all I ever wanted was for my child to enjoy school and learning.
Ahh well. Part of a parent’s duty I suppose. Why should we expect school to supply an education?
Martha (reluctantly getting off her soapbox now).
Quite simply when done correctly there is enough time to do IEP in public schools or at least the why current systems work. Once they are written they must be monitored at least every 3 wks. Portfolio based assessments are a good way of getting an accurate measurement of what students can do. Unfortunately, our current test based system doesn’t allow for that.
TK is not considered a handicapping condition that allows students to qualify for IEP. TK is a learning style. Most teachers are either audio or visual learners. So, TK learners tend to go against the system and teachers.
Oh the school system! I really wish there was a way to nurture each and every kid through it. We’re going to be homeschooling our little guy. Partly because of his personality (intense and intensely sensitive already!), partly because of my lack of faith in the school system and finally of his severe food allergies (although we had decided about the homeschooling before we knew about the allergies). You might want to read two books by John Holt . How children Learn. How Children Fail. Quite fascinating.
This is a tremendously good question and one that I’ve been thinking about quite a bit as of late. By not having a more adaptible system, we are effectively throwing away the creative talents of many of our students. It’s impossible to say who will create the cure for cancer, or cause us to see the world in entirely new ways.
A student who worked in my lab who is a good example of someone who didn’t really fit in the system. He was creative, insightful, and persistent: perhaps the three most essential qualities of a successful scientist. This kid could run his own experiments and write his own papers. He actually had ideas and thoughts about his research, and was motivated enough to pursue them. I can’t tell you how rare that is!
He was also a terrible student. Not just merely bad, mind, but absolutely terrible. In most of his classes, he had a hard time keeping up with the material. He didn’t perform well on tests, and his grades were a special kind of awful. I tried to do what I could, but ultimately I wasn’t able to provide much help.
Despite his talent and promise, this kid will never make it to engineering graduate school (where he would thrive) because I don’t think he can get through an undergraduate education. In the year and a half that I knew him, I watched him all but stop attending class because of how much he hated the book learning so prevalent in higher education. He eventually decided to drop out of the university and I haven’t heard from him in six months.
I can only imagine how many brilliant and talented kids end up the same way. They don’t really adapt to the educational establishment, so it crushes them. It’s really, really sad and utterly unnecessary.
I know I already commented on Facebook but your mention of being slow at reading reminded me of a conversation I had with one of Benjamin’s teachers in middle school. I told her during conferences that he read slow (he has an eye condition that causes some part of his eyes to tire quickly so he’s the only one in the family who isn’t a book worm) as an explanation for why he was doing poorly in her class and she gave me a very blank look and replied…”Oh, this isn’t reading class!” I looked at my son’s mile thick world history book and said… yes, I realize that.
Apparently, in her universe slow readers are only effected in reading class…. I thought Hubby and Young Son would be relieved to know that:)
On the subject of Ben, there is also the discussion of individual motivation. Ben was always the creative, artist, hands on guy. He hated book learning then, still does. I took him to Sylan Learning Center from the time he was very young and for all my efforts I had little to no impact. Ben will always prefer going to work over going to school…which is a shame because he’s remarkably talented. T
Some children have difficulty learning in school because they are introverts, who make up only 25% of any population. The brains of introverts process information differently than those of the majority extroverts, for whom the normal school is better designed, it being a product of our extrovert culture.
Of course, many introverted children do just fine in school. But remember, there are degrees of introversion.
I suggest that a very introverted child can expect to have great difficulty in the normal school environment.
Many of the points made are reasons why there are a lot of former teachers like me. I got tired of being told that all students with IEPs had to make at least an 80 no matter what. The result many teachers make very simple and unrealistic IEPs. I had a “supervisor” tell me that I could only teach the 4 goals on the IEP but somehow the students were supposed to catch up. The supervisor even said my students were learning but because I wasn’t teaching just the 4 goals I was dismissed. One of the problems is that schools try to make child fit the program. However the law IDEA (and it predecessor Education for All Handicapped Children) said the program must fit the child. When legislators and others would all good teachers teach and not worry test scores then test scores will improve.
Hi, Everyone – You’ve all added greatly to my post and confirmed what I’ve noticed about school systems in general. They don’t work for every student. In fact, it sounds like they don’t work for most students.
It also sounds like IEPs are good in theory in that they are supposed to be tailored to the individual student’s needs, but there are issues with putting them into practice. My sister-in-law works with students who have IEPs and she finds that schools don’t typically have enough money to hire the one-on-one aides many students with IEPs need. She also recognizes that certain students who don’t have IEPs could really use them.
I’m also thinking that school administrators are making decisions about how to run schools that are based more on funding, governmental rules, and test scores than on what works best for students, teachers, and parents. Any ideas on how to fix this? Jody mentioned online schools on my FB link to this post. Joanne mentioned homeschooling. Do you think there is any way to fix the public school system itself, or is it better to scrap it for an alternative?
For starters allow educators to have more say in how the schools are actually run. Also, focus more on actually mastery rather than teaching to tests. More parental support of teachers and working together as a team.
well, i was enrolled at an online school and the curriculum is quite great ”