Our school used the "whole child" term several times during our two years (so far) of advacacy for our son. Before I submitted our latest request, I had to be proactive and said something like "I know the importance of a whole child, and being academically challenged is a very important part of it". The good thing was in our son's case, the school was willing to do something out of usual for him even with the whole child concern.
i clearly I haven't faced this level of crazy yet (DS is just 5) but could someone explain how you could be "teaching the whole child" by IGNORING a rather large part of the whole child?
So if our DCs are pie charts - what percentage are they allocating to learning stuff they don't yet know, is it bigger than the "sit at desk" slice? I am still stunned by that - do we grade on how well one sits at desk? The idea of prioritizing sitting, standing, being quiet to the degree that learning is dismissed out of hand, just makes me crazy - and no one has said it to me yet!!!
Although, truthfully I do often think at dinner time as DS slides out of his chair for the 4000000 time, that perhaps a lesson on how to stay in it might be helpful LOL - but this is like saying I shouldn't give him dinner until he learns to do it perfectly!!
I wonder if this is ultimately an effort to deny asynchrony. Basically all kids develop at the same rate but are not equally good so Johnny needs more work on sitting while Jane needs confidence and Sam needs to improve in math. But Johnny is not "ahead" of Sam in math despite being able to do grade levels ahead?
DeHe
