Spring Broken

It's spring break here.
Saying that, though, I'm not sure if it has any meaning left.

Let's look at it like this:
You have some "typical" corporate job, and it's a drag, and you have vacation time so you decide to use it. You go to your boss and tell the management asshole that you want to use some of your vacation days to take a week off of work. Your boss gives you that "boss" look and says, "Sure, that's fine. You can skip coming into work next week but, while you're at home, I want you to work on a couple of special projects and bring them back to me complete after your vacation."

"But I wasn't going to stay home..."

"Well, you better just plan to take them with you, then. And make sure you do a good job. Your next raise will depend on it."

What do you do, right? All you want is some time off, a vacation, but you're given even more work to do and there's no real way to get out of it even if it's wrong and, if that kind of thing actually happened to someone, probably illegal.

I don't actually know if that kind of thing happens or not, but I do know that the United States has more unused vacation days than any other country in the world. Why? Fear.
People are scared to use their time off because they worry that taking the time off will reflect poorly on them... in some way or other.
Which is not the point of this post.

It's spring break here.
Spring break is like vacation for kids. Or that's the idea, right? They're kids, and they need a break from school every once in a while. A vacation.
I remember when it was like that. When I was a kid, it was like that. School was out, and there was nothing to worry about for a solid week. Unless you were one of those kids who had put off normal school work and had to use spring break to catch up on that work, but, then, that was on you.

I remember the first time I got a significant assignment over break. It was over summer break between middle school and high school, and I was assigned books to read over summer break. Three or four of them. One of the books assigned was a book I already loved, and I never minded reading assignments; still, I remember feeling like it wasn't okay for them to do that. BUT! I excused it because I was going to be going to a different kind of high school... It was one of the first magnet schools in the country, not that you can turn around anymore without bumping into some kind of magnet or charter school, but, at the time, it was still this kind of experiment, and we didn't know the kinds of changes it would bring... like homework during summer breaks.

And, damn, my daughter is on spring break, and she has a shit-ton of homework. Her English teacher assigned a major project which is due on Monday after break. No, this is not one of those things where my daughter put it off and, now, has to do it over spring break (she never does that); the teacher scheduled a test for the Friday before break, then took 20 minutes of their test-taking time to explain their 200 point spring break assignment. That's just bullshit.

And she has a buttload of chemistry homework. Her teacher assigned them, basically, a homework assignment for each day of break, including the two weekends, as if they were still going to be in school. My daughter already spends two to three hours a night doing chemistry homework, so she's going to be spending that same time on chemistry over her vacation, too.

Not mention that she got homework in history and Spanish, also. Including watching a movie for history class that most of the students will have to pay to rent, another thing I don't find to be okay.

Oh! And she has softball practice and a game during spring break, too.

Excuse me, but what the fuck? Seriously, what the fuck?

My daughter already spends basically all of her time being stressed about school and had been looking forward to a little time off from that; now, she gets to spend all of spring break being even more stressed about school. Why? Because we actually planned (months ago) a small trip during break, the first time we've done that in something like four years (and only the second time we've ever done it), and, now, my daughter has to balance the trip against all of the fucking schoolwork she has to do.

And that's just wrong.
Inherently wrong.

Not that I blame the teachers. Not exactly. They're just part of a system that no longer works, as has become abundantly clear in the news in the last couple of weeks (and, yes, it's all related), and doing the best they can, which includes burying their students in homework and waiting to see who can rise above it all.

Perform monkey! Perform!

No, I don't have any ideas on how to fix it.
Yeah, I'm lying, but what does it matter if I have ideas about what's wrong with the education system in our country? I'm sure you have ideas, too, and those ideas are probably not the same ideas.
Mine are just better. 😏
[Oh, look! My first post emoji!]
So, no, I don't have ideas on how to fix it; I'm just pointing out an issue. Bringing it up. Not that I expect anything to come of bringing it up; sometimes, you just want to put it out there.
Of course, this isn't the first time I've brought up the crushing amount of homework my kids get, and it probably won't be the last time, either.

How the System Failed My Son: Part Two -- Confirmation Bias

The real problems began in 2nd grade...

I just want to point out here that no child should be having problems with school in 2nd grade, at least not problems arising from school itself. Or from the teacher. The kids are just kids. I mean, they are really just kids, and the teachers... Well the teachers should be the adults. [Including when dealing with obnoxious kids in 1st grade. You don't dump them out of your class because you don't want to deal with them. (If you missed the first post, go back and read it.)]

This part is actually very difficult for me to write:
1. Because my inclination is to go into all of the details, both about how the school works (it's a charter school, so not a "regular" public school) and about all of the things that happened while my son was in this woman's class (a 2nd/3rd class group, so he was in there for two years), and that would take too long. That would have to be many, many posts.
2. Because the teacher was not just a horrible teacher but a horrible person, and a large part of me wants to delve into how horrible she was.
3. Because this teacher is directly responsible for my son hating school, something he's never gotten over.

For context, though, undermining a teacher's authority is one of the worst things a parent can do when working in their child's classroom. Usually, it's just the teacher's authority with their own kid, but I've seen it where particular parents have undermined entire classes. As such, it's something I'm keenly aware of and take special pains not to do. Because of this, and because it was at the beginning of my son's first year in the class, I didn't say anything when the teacher began teaching about the "original 12 colonies of the United States."

Honestly, the first time she said it, and because I didn't know her yet, I thought it must just be a slip of the tongue, and I figured she'd correct herself. The second time, I was still in the mindset that it must be a slip, because why would anyone say that? Any adult, that is. By the time I'd realized that she was actually teaching the class that there were 12 original colonies, it was much too late for me to say anything. As it turns out, that was probably actually a good thing, because she was one of those "I'm right because I'm the teacher" kind of people, and nothing good would have come from me trying to correct her in the middle of class.

Instead, on the way home, I explained to my kid all of the correct information. Also, I let him know that he should always ask me if he had any question at all about what he was being taught, which, upon occasion, he did.

But none of this was the problem.

The problem was that he was bored. Not bored of being in school, bored of the work. He was bored of the work because he already knew everything they were doing, and he was tired of doing the same old repetitious stuff every day. We had a long conversation about it so that I could be sure that that's what he meant and not the typical "I'd rather be outside playing" that you'd expect from a kid. The truth was that my kid would have rather been inside doing scholastic-type material or reading, but he wanted something interesting and something challenging to do. He hated "busy work," and everything they did felt like that to him.

Before I go on, there are two things you should know:
1. He's a perfectionist, so he's willing to keep working on something until he has it the way he wants it. Nothing is "good enough" just because someone else says it's good enough.
2. Also, he tends to be rather slow and deliberate with the things he does, even eating. He's almost always the last person to be finished. He doesn't believe in speeding through anything just to get it finished.

And did I mention he was bored?
He didn't want to do the work, and getting my son to do anything he doesn't want to do is like trying to stuff a cat into a toilet. He's willing to just sit and stare, lost in his thoughts about things he'd rather be doing, than do busywork or stuff he sees as a waste of time. [We've spent a good portion of the past eight years or so, everyday, trying to stuff him into a toilet.] Everything they were doing in his 2nd grade class, he saw as a waste of time.

One other thing of note that you should remember in relation to what I am about to say:
Whenever the teacher needed someone to read aloud in class, she always relied on my son because he was by far the best reader. By far. He didn't just read the individual words (as did most of the kids in the class); he read the sentences and was able to read with appropriate emotion.

Now, I knew that he was well beyond the material they were working on in class, but I hadn't known, until he told me, that it was an issue for him. After we talked about it, though, I went to the teacher. I didn't go to her with a request for him to be promoted to 3rd grade, though, because that wouldn't have affected any change in his situation. He was already doing 3rd grade math and already in the most advanced reading group in the 2nd/3rd grade class. All I wanted was for him to be given some more challenging work.

Look, I get how difficult it can be to deal with one kid who is different in a class of 20-30 kids. One child with special needs. It can disrupt the entire class dynamic. The problem is that there is no provision for children on the upper end of the spectrum. If it's a child on the lower end of the spectrum, we have provisions for that... when they can be identified, not that that always happens, but the help is there for kids with disabilities or behavioral issues or whatever. I knew I was asking something difficult, asking that my kid be given special consideration.

I also believe that that is the job of the teacher.

I say that as someone who has spent time in the classroom, not someone with some vague idea of what ought to be happening.

But I wasn't prepared for the response I got...

I explained that the work was too easy for him and that he was bored in class and that he needed more challenging work and... well... she stared at me then told me I was wrong. Not only did she tell me that I was wrong, she explained to me as if I was dense or a little on the dumb side that my child was learning disabled. Somewhere in there she dropped the word stupid. She cited how slowly he worked and that he was almost always the last kid finished with his work. I'm sure by the time she was finished I was staring blankly because I was having trouble comprehending that she was telling me the utter shit she was spewing in all seriousness.

Completely ignoring that he was the best reader of the 40+ kids in the 2nd/3rd grade block, completely ignoring that he was already in 3rd grade math, completely ignoring that he never needed help or further instruction on any of his work, completely ignoring that his papers were always 100% correct; she stood there and told me that my kid, because he worked slowly (and she didn't like slow workers), was developmentally disabled.

And that's where the real problems began...

The Reading Dilemma

I had my first book presentation at a public school, last week. Well, a public school that's not the one my kids go to. That one doesn't count. Anyway...
So I get this call to come in and do a presentation at this middle school in the area. They're all very excited and so am I. Not that I wanted to let on that I was excited, but it's hard not to be. I get there just a little early, because I don't really know what they're expecting of me or where I'm going to be or, even, whom I'm presenting to other than that it has to do with the English department. Which is, you know, appropriate. It would have been kind of weird if I'd been called in by the math department. They take me over to the library, which is where I'm going to be (which was also good because I had a copy of The House on the Corner to donate to the library), and there are actually a few kids on their lunch break waiting to meet me. That's not something that I was expecting. Of course, the librarian totally embarrassed one of the kids by telling me how eager to meet me he was. He blushed and tried to play it off as no big deal, but it was fairly obvious he'd been waiting for me to come in. After shaking off his red face, he drifted over to me just about the time his bell rang, and he had to leave. But he was back for one of the presentations, so he did get to ask me a couple of questions.

The first class came in, I introduced myself, and I took a couple of questions. After that, I read the first chapter and, then, jumped ahead to read this bit that happens on Halloween night. I felt it was seasonally appropriate. After I read, I took questions for about 20 minutes or so. There was, of course, the expected, "What inspired you to write this book?" question.

And that's a very good question. Because I wasn't struck by inspiration for The House on the Corner so much as I went out and found it. I'd love to tell the story of that, but that's not what this post is about, so that will have to wait. At any rate, Tolkien and The Hobbit are involved in that story, so I asked the question, "Who's heard of J. R. R. Tolkien?" Blank stares. Seriously. I was met with a room full of blank stares. Not having hands might be expected, because, sometimes, kids don't want to raise their hands in that kind of situation, but you can generally tell who actually knows and is just trying not to raise their hand. But I was met with blank stares. Finally, after several moments, one of the teachers raised her hand and said he wrote The Lord of the Rings. Ah, some recognition and some mumbles about having seen the movies. I went on to explain that The Hobbit is one of the two books I think everyone should read.

When the class was leaving, the English teacher (not the one that had answered the question) came up to me and told me that I had inspired her to go read The Hobbit, because she had never read it. That's a good thing. Of course, I wish I could have inspired her to read my book, but, truthfully, my book is not one of the two books I think everyone should read. The Hobbit is a good start.

So I was distressed by the whole interaction about reading, and I realized that I'd forgotten to open with the question I meant to open with which was "Have any of you ever thought about being a writer when you grow up?" That question followed by an encouraging word about reading and writing like I talk about in this post. I did ask the second group that question and was met with identical blank stares as when I asked about Tolkien.

Before that, though, between groups, I asked the librarian what kind of reading participation they have at the school. Oh, my... I'm still having problems comprehending this. She said they had instituted a program a few years ago where the students earn points for doing reading and can exchange those points for... well, I don't know what, but they can exchange them for some kind of rewards. That sounded like a good idea until she said it had had basically no impact on the students. Then she showed me some of the reading statistics from the school.

They have one class of advanced readers. These are the best readers in the school. A middle school. Hundreds of kids. Out of hundreds of kids, they have two (in the whole school) that read at a high school level. They have two more that read at a middle school level. About half of the class of advanced readers read at a 5th grade level. The rest of the advanced readers are below that. This is the advanced class. The advanced class is full of kids reading below the level of my 8-year-old daughter. I had, and still don't, no idea of how to respond to that. I can't even begin to comprehend the kids in the rest of the school. The ones that aren't advanced. Is it a middle school full of kids who actually just can't read? I do know that California, as a state, had some of the poorest STAR test results in reading ever, last year.

The librarian went on to say that they really don't know what to do about it. They don't know if it's a problem with the school or the parents or both. They do know that none of the tactics they've tried so far have made any significant difference. I would say, though, that from the little I saw, the teachers don't set a good example for reading. Of course, I think the biggest influence for that is going to come from the home, but I'm not sure I would listen to a teacher telling me about how I should read more if the teacher wasn't a reader. And the librarian seemed to be not much of a reader considering how unfamiliar she was with the actual contents of the books in the library. But that's just a guess. Maybe she reads entirely different material. She was lacking in student book recommendations, though.

As a writer, the lack of reading distresses me. And it's not a distress that's about not being able to sell books to people that don't read. I just can't comprehend the lack of reading. Is it because Hollywood is so quick to make movies out of anything that looks remotely profitable? I do have kids asking me on a fairly regular basis about when I'm going to make my book into a movie. Because they don't understand that I can't just decide to do that. After all, I decided to write a book, so I must just be able to decide to make a movie, too. But this whole thing makes me question that. I don't really have a good answer.

Is reading a skill, like riding a horse, that's passing out of common usage? Are we going beyond needing it? To a place where visual media is replacing reading like automobiles replaced the horse? Like calculators (which I was never allowed to use when I was in school) have replaced the need to learn basic mathematics (because they actually have classes in how to use calculators and, not only are they allowed in classes, now, they're often required). Honestly, the whole thing scares me. The idea of a world without reading scares me. But, I'm sure, the idea of a world without horses used to scare some people, too.

The one solace I  have in all of this is that the public school system clings to tradition like no other institution in the United States. Despite all the data supporting changing the way some things are done, the school system clings to its traditions and its "we've always done it this way" mentality. As long as that is maintained, I'm sure reading will stay in the schools even if 50% of people never touch another book after they graduate.