Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy peer tutoring -- uncomfortable spot

Haha!

Wren, glad you found a solution you're satisfied with. You and your DD were put in an awkward position.

A bit late to this but I would like to add:

My son's teacher is using him as a peer helper in his second-grade class (this is the way she is differentiating for him). She refuses to expose him to any new math concepts past what the rest of the class is working as "he won't have the explanation". She and he differ on what "peer helper" means.

She thinks he should stand by, ready to assist the other student and actively helping them to work through the problem.

He thinks he should explain it and allow them the privacy to work through it and make mistakes. When he moves away from the other student, the teacher thinks he is "losing interest and wandering away."

My son FEELS resentful that he is being asked to help other students while being held back in math himself. He doesn't have a problem helping others and is very social but there is a communication gap between he and his teacher that I bridge.

Just another 0.02. :-)

I think that kids will naturally help one another if they need it and without a lot of adult intervention. I remember playing school with a friend myself and teaching her long division. However I think that type of altruism should be internally motivated and not parent directed or laden with any expectations on the kids part.

For a teacher to task a child with helping other children in lieu of having their own educational needs met is unethical. Minx, your son has every right to feel resentful at this. To me it smacks of slavery (this kid doesn't get to learn, he just has to help the other kids -- and clean the blackboards). I imagine myself in this situation presenting the teacher with a bill for my child's tutoring services (though my imagination is way more snarky than I am in real life). I consider this sort of thing completely unacceptable.

My only fear is the school turning around and suggesting that I should be paying the going rate for full-time tuition at the local teacher's college.

(You can see that my imagination just goes to a more sinister snarky place. Heh.)

Reading that thoughtful and extensive list reminded me of a somewhat similar situation in which a child was invited, then grilled by the inviting parent. One never knows what one's child may be walking into, what they may need to be prepared for. Especially in these days of nanny-cams when one's responses may be recorded.

I agree with the others who said they are trying to get free tutoring. Not cool.
I probably would have done the same thing you did, consent and then rethought and felt wrong about it!

If the other mom wanted you to squeeze her kid in on a Sunday, whee-doggie! That's some chutzpah. It's typically a family day to spend time together.

Are you a Common Core state? Maybe that's why the parent doesn't feel confident in helping her child do the math in 108 specific steps with arrays, line jumps, and graphs.

I think it was right to alert the teacher since it is possible they didn't know how much the child is struggling.

If anything, I'd give her a list of helpful websites that help explain the concept if you have some faves to share. Does her school do Study Island or IXL? Her teacher can assign things via those sites to help get her up to speed.

Really, your child has a pretty full plate with everything else.

Outcome: DD helped her in school a bit yesterday, after she logged onto CTY and did a problem set for herself.

And it seemed to go well and she felt like she was obligated to this session today, so I picked them up and brought them here. The girl had dance at 5:30, so her father picked her up at 5, a little over an hour.

It went OK. I sat nearby reading and interceded at one point when DD was explaining lowest common denominator and gave examples.

I didn't listen closely but at one point, I heard a condescending: "you think 7x3 is 18?".

DD admitted it was harder than she expected to teach someone who has a hard time understanding. There won't be anymore. Luckily the teacher doesn't expect her to do this. I did explain that she had agreed to help and now felt obligated to this one session so I think the teacher helped out at school. DD logs on and does her CTY math during school, never expected to help other kids, just to clarify. It was the other parents that were trying to do this.

I talked with the mother last evening and she thinks they just dropped the ball when it came to math homework. This kid did not learn multiplication tables. At some point you need to memorize them, like learning to read. If you really don't know quickly 6x3 is 18, it is going to be difficult finding lowest common denominators, and so on and so forth. I told DD, after the call, and she actually made a table for the girl to fill in....

If you felt like being especially sweet, you could point out-- the old Schoolhouse Rock videos are all on YouTube at this point, and those do make it more FUN to practice them unto memorization.