Ok, went to "back to school night" yesterday. Met all the teachers. Tons of new ones, not only new to the school but new grads as well. This can go boh ways,I know. Lots of them love outdoors, that's why they came to Utah. Science teacher is from Hartford, Conn. But I immediately started worrying about English. Teacher is a young female, fairly new grad (has been subbing at this school before), this is her first official teaching job however. Seemed to be very soft, very undecided, kind of "please love me" person. Told us that daily homework will consist mainly of reading something short and writing a response paragraph (or more)relating to the text (the text can be a novel you are reading, paper, graphic novel - whatever). This immediately rings a buzzer in my head - Busy Work !!! I can see DS one month down the road flipping frantically through a paper at 11:30 at night because he did not happen to read anything today but needs to complete an assignment. I believe in writing, actually encourage my two kids to write daily in their journals, but that is different as they write knowing nobody will be reading and grading it. What do you guys think?
But back to the real problem. When asked about the novels they are going to read, she gave me three titles, two of which DS read when he was in 3 or 4 grade. I know that he is a very good and voracious reader, I know that if you read a book when you are older you are seeing different things in it, however I think, based on mine conversation with her yesterday, that she won't be able to keep kids on subject and will allow any kind of "stupid" discussion. She looks very, very soft - -did I write that already :-) But here is a good site - she looks like she will let me ask for accomodations and will actually listen and try her best.
What should I do? Sit back and wait to see how it unfolds? Demand much more advanced course of study, individualized, for Ghost? Anybody has any experience with self studying middle school English? Novel suggestions???
Ania
