Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Relating to our children

There have been more than a few posts around about challenging our children and how school can snuff the enthusiasm right out of them. I only had a few minutes on here as I am restarting my Master's in Education degree so I read some posts and went to do my homework. I immediately realized that I STILL don't like so much of school. My assignment was to read a very factual timeline of laws instituted in one area of education and write a summary. My second assignment is to write a summary of the first chapter of the textbook. This feels like pure busy work to me and I am procrastinating. Where are the assignments that teach us to think about the material and not just regurgitate it? Even something along the lines of "What law do you think had the biggest impact and why?" Or "What were the politics/economics etc. that led to the adoption of one of these laws?" I think going back to school will remind me of what it feels like and be even more understanding with my children. Sigh...can't wait till this class is over.

Wow, that does sound awful!

I realize you're just getting started, but the devil in me has an idea: perhaps you can try a little self-advocacy and discuss your ideas with the instructor - and then you can share your experiences with your children (and, of course, us!), so they too can learn to ask for work that better suits their needs.

Either that, or you can make your point like my kid does: by chatting with the student next to you, poking people, staring out the window, drooling on your textbook....

Umm...if you're looking for a better challenge where you'll need to think in-depth about questions, you might try a field like history or political science. My impression of M.Ed. degrees is that depth isn't their focus.

Val

My experience- teachers make the worst students! There is always a small group sitting in the back, talking, doodling and making faces... I'm usually sitting there ;-)

My teaching credential and administrative ed classes were all focused on getting units and passing time. There was relatively little educational value in the classes. I often brought books to class to read on my own while someone was giving some presentation on who knows what. I once had a prof who hadn't been in a high school classroom in 36 years (he was no less than 80 years old!). He had never taught a class that wasn't segregated, had no idea about mixed genders and thought special students needed institutions. Yeah... I paid for that....

Umm...if you're looking for a better challenge where you'll need to think in-depth about questions, you might try a field like history or political science. My impression of M.Ed. degrees is that depth isn't their focus.

Val [/quote]

Sigh..Yes, I hear you Val but I do have a method to my madness. Since I don't have the time or money to be a professional student in wonderful subjects like poli-sci or comp. lit or religion (something I would dearly love) I have decided to teach and hopefully, relieve other children of my perpetual boredom and inbred laziness. :-)

The other funny thing is that the instructor is a teacher herself in elementary school and guess what kind??? She teaches a gifted and talented classroom! Argh!

Why can I never get the dern quote thingy figured out? :-)

You can just click the quote link.

If you're doing the quote manually, the format is like this:

[.quote=Val]Initial text must touch the bracket.

Later text doesn't have to touch the bracket.

[/quote]


Don't use that period I added and it should work. I added the period to stop the system from formatting the quote (don't know if there's an ignore-format command?).

Result without the period:


Val

You need to make sure you include the cue at both the beginning and the end for the quote to be recognized by the program. Both of these cues are in brackets and include the word "quote" [ quote ] (I intentionally added extra spaces)

My guess is you are accidentally deleting the first cue when you are editing the portion that you intend to quote. I've done it a few times.

I did it!!! Thank you Val and Sittin Pretty!

Oh sure you are just trying to get me in trouble!