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    Joined: Jul 2011
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    Originally Posted by Evemomma
    All or nothing thinking is certainly a mark of perfectionism. Do it right or don't do it at all. As is extreme procrastination. I seem to suffer from a prolonged procrastination phase of this disease since grad school. Which is exactly why I have come to peak back to these boards instead of learning the new billing software program that I must use within the week. Sigh.

    I procrastinate all the time.

    Although at any time a homeless person could wander in off the street asking for representation and I would have to meet with them.

    It just occurred to me that I'm one of the few people to whom homeless people are a source of revenue. I also like when people call directly from the mental hospital. And no, that's not sarcasm.

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    Gotta say, I took one oral geography exam in grade nine, and it raised my marks in all subjects about 20%... My guidance councellor was the senior geo teacher, and gave the exam. He sent a memo to all my teachers ever after about my overthinking.

    Eek, naked baby on way down stairs... Bye


    DS1: Hon, you already finished your homework
    DS2: Quit it with the protesting already!
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    Same thing here evemomma. So is genetic that DS10 puts off what he does not want to do, or learned behavior, asks the Dad that is not doing his work and is being distracted from what he does not want to do. I can still do my work Saturday, sigh.

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    Update.

    Mr. Teacher spoke to my daughter this morning.
    Yes, that choice of words was deliberate. It certainly wasn't that "they talked." A twenty minute phone call, and she said about four complete sentences (and she's a virtual Chatty Cathy doll... LOL).

    I doubt that it is going to do much good, and so does she-- in her opinion (uncoached) he was contradictory and this seemed (to her) to be about writing style, but also about 'right' answers, even though he said that it wasn't. I could watch the expressions on her face-- she was so distressed and confused. She was frantically taking down everything he said to her, but it is clear that much of the time, her thoughts were "what the HELL DOES THAT EVEN MEAN??"

    He didn't really use any active listening skills with her, so he still has no real concept of WHY she is having trouble writing the way he wants her to. This even after he supposedly discussed strategies and motivation with Ms. Barracuda (who I also spoke with yesterday morning, so I know approximately what she was going to say to him, and it involved using a more give-and-take communication model, I'd put money one it).

    DD is so very discouraged. She doesn't want to change her entire writing style to suit one teacher, and particularly since this particular teacher doesn't write all that well himself, but is insisting that he is training her to some "college standard" that he thinks she is not yet meeting.

    I'm just as perplexed as she is about what he actually wants from her, because it doesn't make any kind of rational sense that I can see. I'm tempted to let my DH write an essay for him (with DD's input on content) to see if ANY of the people in our house can hit his target.

    Between the two of us, it's clear that we have a LOT more collegiate writing experience to draw from. He's just plain wrong.

    frown

    Oh-- and before I even talked to him the first time, I had DD rewrite all four essay questions to her most rigorous teacher's standards. Remember, though, that these are theoretically short answer questions at the END of an in-class exam. They aren't formal essays.

    He was going to read them and discuss THOSE with her, I had thought. Apparently not. He went through his original comments on the exam with her. Like she's too stupid to have READ what he wrote to her or something.

    SO frustrating. She tried to tell him "yes, I know-- I read that. You wrote that on my exam," but he kept cutting her off to "tell" her more (of what he'd already said to her, evidently).

    This is why teachers should stick to teaching in their expert subject areas and not worry quite so much about "character" development, because NOW he's convinced that my daughter needs a lesson about conformity. (My suspicions, anyway).

    Well, she doesn't. She's TRYING to conform. But you're not telling her what the RULES of this particular form are.

    It's like he wants a sonnet, but keeps saying "the meter is irregular here," and "you need to watch that your rhyme scheme isn't slipping after the first two lines," and "this isn't long enough."

    Those aren't good instructions for a sonnet if the student hasn't ever SEEN one or been given the basic guidelines of the form. KWIM?

    If anything, I'm more exasperated than I was before. mad


    Schrödinger's cat walks into a bar. And doesn't.
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    We have dealt with teachers like this a couple of times during my kid's high school years. Honestly... my opinion is that there is NO winning this battle during a given school year. Administration typically backs them even when they are awful/inconsisent/even vindictive. Does your kid need to take a whole year from him, or just one semester? Is there another section that she could transfer to at the semester break (that was our final solution last year for D2 in an awful, low-level English class with a teacher who was SURE she was insisting on college prep work when in fact they were actually wading thru molasses.) Making that change was one of the best things we have ever done for her even if it did juggle her schedule in some other less than ideal ways.

    If I were you I would talk to the principal, and possibly write a letter if you have examples of the teacher's behavior that are out of line. For example, subjective grading that he admits he only applies to your child would be something. And requiring them to write to a level for someone who knows NOTHING about the topic would be another.

    We wrote a letter (after meeting with no results) about a math teacher that D1 had problems with; it did not resolve most of the issues she had that year, BUT they let the teacher (who had been with the school 20 years, private, non-union) go about a year later. Thankfully, as I had no intention of letting D2 sit in his classroom, he was gone by the time she got there. Administrators always say you are the only parent complaining, it is your kid's problem, etc. But sometimes if you do have a valid complaint, they remember... even if they won't admit it at the time. And I think they just lie (honestly) about whether others have complained. So you can possibly make things better for someone else in the future.

    That English teacher D2 had trouble with... is still there, but the teacher she transferred to let D2 know this year that they are looking at tracking (creating honors sections) for English next year (none now, a big snooze for GT kids). Again, too late for us, but did something good for those behind us.

    Last edited by intparent; 10/26/12 01:48 PM.
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    See, I guess I still don't see this as a huge ideological battle of some kind.

    We also don't really have another option without my DD needing to dump the honors/AP version of the course-- and it's a graduation requirement.

    I did do that last year with the absolute HARRIDAN of a biology teacher, and I absolutely do NOT regret that. I was also far from the only angry parent with that teacher. On the other hand, I know that I burned a lot of years of administrator capital with that move when I finally went nuclear over it (in December, after putting up with it for three months).

    This teacher is someone who gets along well with some bright students, and isn't particularly difficult to work with in general. He has a reputation as a good teacher, in other words.

    Thus far, my only evidence for unprofessional conduct is in some of his verbal statements to me (re: "work ethic" and "form over substance"), and in his behavior in showing my child's work to another of her current teachers without my (and her) express permission. His commentary being so contradictory is probably a bit of a grey area. All of those things could (if only just) be communication problems or personality issues. He is a military, 'all-business' kind of guy (probably staunchly conservative, given some of his in-class asides), and my DD has the stereotypical PG kid's vision of the world as a theater of the absurd and she's both a socialist, a hard-core pacifist, and a Quaker by nature. Not a good combo, to the say the least. There may be subtle ideological differences which are interfering, but as far as I can tell, he's been reasonably non-judgmental there.


    I do support his ideas of making sure that students are held to high standards, etc. I like him personally.

    The problem is that his communication and teaching style is very very different from my DD's needs as a student, and it is borderline toxic in light of the current situation. He "wants to see how she thinks," but is at the same time telling her that she's WRONG to tell him what she actually thinks. She, being a 13yo, naturally has kind of melted under this onslaught and is now wrestling with the possibility that: a) her writing isn't "college-ready" (Baloney, by the way), and/or that b) the way she thinks is "wrong" and she needs to "fix" it.

    I suspect, in fact, that mostly this is a communication issue. It just doesn't feel as though he thinks it's his responsibility to DO anything about it.

    The other thing that occurred to me this morning after his phone call to DD is that he is making some obvious mistakes on the GT front. He is making assumptions about what she is having difficulty with-- not FINDING OUT. All of my many years of teaching... did NOTHING to teach me to anticpate how a non-NT child/student will interact with curriculum or instructions.

    I'm a good educator. I can anticipate problems for most learners with curriculum in the sciences and mathematics. But not with non-NT students. Never, ever, EVER presume to know what the problem is. It's usually NOT what I would have predicted, sometimes astonishingly/laughingly so.

    So the salient thing is that depending upon your "instincts" and "experience" to know where a student is having a problem... is WRONG, WRONG, WRONG when it comes to a non-NT student. This includes PG students, whose asynchrony makes them profoundly different from bright, NT students in terms of their interaction with curriculum. Active listening isn't a "choice" in those situations-- it's essential if you plan on being any kind of assistance to those students, and if you see that as an obligation as a teacher (most do), then you can't skip it because it isn't your 'style' to do it.

    The other thing that I keep wondering about all of this is... if it were the OPPOSITE problem (that is, a student turned in written answers which WAY outstripped his/her other class work), the teacher would have called the student because of the red flags it would raise.

    Kind of thinking that I have an obligation to pursue both of these aspects of this. frown I somehow doubt that he's going to consider either thing much of an opportunity for professional development. whistle


    Schrödinger's cat walks into a bar. And doesn't.
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    Originally Posted by HowlerKarma
    He "wants to see how she thinks," but is at the same time telling her that she's WRONG to tell him what she actually thinks.

    Have you brought this idea to his attention, in just the way you wrote it here? Maybe he doesn't realize what he's doing.

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    Originally Posted by HowlerKarma
    and my DD has the stereotypical PG kid's vision of the world as a theater of the absurd and she's both a socialist, a hard-core pacifist, and a Quaker by nature. Not a good combo, to the say the least.

    And why exactly isn't that a good combo?

    And what do you mean by Quaker?

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    Well, that it's not a good combo with a libertarian, black-and-white, literalist army-guy, I meant.

    Quaker = SoF Quaker-- the liberal variety. (Her, not us.)



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    Well, JonLaw... a socialist, hard core pacifist and "Quaker by nature" (assume this means similar to the Society of Friends (Quaker religion) that tends toward pacifism is probably NOT going to mix very well with someone who is politically very conservative (as Howler says this teacher is).

    There may not be much for her to do in this situation except keep her head down and shoot for a B, really. Given this is two years in a row, I am curious whether you have any other school options... I say this as a parent who now knows that we stuck it out too long in an independent private school that just was not a good fit for my PG daughter's needs. Wish we had switched a few years ago to a different private in our region.

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