Thanks everyone.
This really helps me to frame things in my mind. I think that while there are a number of
reasons why this practice upsets me, the NATURE of the practice is lazy/incompetent
teacher communication.Teachers shouldn't be resorting to using the two-by-four between the eyes method as a FIRST point of contact when they've not yet made expectations clear, and have no notion at all how something like that will be received by parents or students. KWIM? Practices like that are pretty old-school, and nobody uses brutality in classrooms anymore-- even at the college level.
This is a schooling model that is SUPPOSED to be flexible and it therefore attracts disproportionate numbers of students who are non-NT, are HG, have an elite training schedule that takes up HUGE blocks of time, a family seasonal obligation that requires flexible scheduling, or have serious medical problems that would otherwise keep them from attending school regularly. (Truly, I think that my DD has known only 2 or 3 other kids in all of her years with them who DID NOT have some 'story' about why they are with the school)
I can't really see this being a good way to "communicate" with any of those groups of students-- or their parents. Not without even checking in first.
I've also talked to DD (who admits that the 85% on last exam was quite possibly panic-driven because of the temporary zero) about the need to simply work about a week AHEAD in both math classes so that she can continue to work as she prefers. The only problem with that is that she also needs to keep up with everything ELSE, due to the synchronous instruction (what little there is of it-- she doesn't want to miss ANY of it) in her other classes.
I'll also add that working too far ahead is also FROWNED UPON fairly steeply in the program. While we are told that they are "flexible" and that students can "work at their own pace" what that actually SEEMS to mean is that they can "work on the computer at any time of the day" and "complete each day's work whenever they want to within that 24 hour period." Which is totally not what the official answer to those questions happens to be, by the way...
I'm actually fed up with a LOT of things this year. SO glad it's our last. No WAY would I go to bat for these turkeys with the legislature or state BoE at this point in time. No way.
IMO, they are making it increasingly difficult to justify their program as a viable alternative to kids that have difficulty with B&M settings.
