The teacher, Ms. Blowman, sucks.
Half of big government is government schools.
Posted on 05/28/2012 12:21:40 PM PDT by Malacoda
The dog ate it, the computer exploded, I spilt spaghetti bolognaise over it.
School children have been coming up with excuses for failing to hand in their homework since the concept was invented.
Now a frustrated 3rd grade teacher in Tucson, Arizona, has decided to recognise the art of homework dodging by giving out a Catastrophe Award to the student who wriggled out of handing in homework the most.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
If she’s so embarrassed for her daughter, why did she go and spread it all over the news and allow her daughter to be identified and photographed? She’s looking for $.
“... this seems mean spirited”.
I am wondering if a student had done this (created a false award for something negative and handed it to her in front of the other kids)... what would have happened? I have the feeling that the student would have been counseled for bullying. There are better ways, IMHO, to motivate children other than public embarrassment. Perhaps the teacher tried but this shouldn’t have been done. Perhaps NOT getting an award (for best grades, best homework completion etc) could have been a motivator. IMHO.
fail the kid?
That would be humiliating!
Hear, hear! It's obvious the mother isn't helping or making sure her child do her homework and hasn't bothered to look at her report card or what I'm sure were numerous notes from the teacher. The mother shouldn't blame the teacher for her own failings.
Well Liberals demand everyone get an award for something so there ya go.
“She’s looking for $.”
Nailed it!!!
When I was in third grade I did something (I forget what now) that got me hauled up to the front of the class where Mrs. Smithson paddled me with a large, thick wooden paddle. She didn’t do it hard enough and when I sat down the kid next to me grinned and I snickered. Mrs. Smithson was a large German woman and she walked over to me and cracked me across the face 2-3 times. My jaw hurt for a week.
These days she would go to jail. Even then she was pushing it. But she did it out of concern for me and the learning environment in the classroom not out of ego - even in the 3rd grade I could tell the difference. I was a spoiled little monster hippie kid and it was an excellent life lesson.
When half the people on this forum, who call themselves conservative, start whining about some kind being shamed you know we have No Hope.
If the people who love us do not discipline us then life will. Or if life is artificially cushy like in the Western democracies then we will breed communists who demand that the people who are not perpetual screw ups and actually contribute to society give them more. And more.
Reading these responses is depressing. We are calling the four horsemen and will have no one to blame but ourselves.
When I was in third grade I did something (I forget what now) that got me hauled up to the front of the class where Mrs. Smithson paddled me with a large, thick wooden paddle. She didn’t do it hard enough and when I sat down the kid next to me grinned and I snickered. Mrs. Smithson was a large German woman and she walked over to me and cracked me across the face 2-3 times. My jaw hurt for a week.
These days she would go to jail. Even then she was pushing it. But she did it out of concern for me and the learning environment in the classroom not out of ego - even in the 3rd grade I could tell the difference. I was a spoiled little monster hippie kid and it was an excellent life lesson.
When half the people on this forum, who call themselves conservative, start whining about some kind being shamed you know we have No Hope.
If the people who love us do not discipline us then life will. Or if life is artificially cushy like in the Western democracies then we will breed communists who demand that the people who are not perpetual screw ups and actually contribute to society give them more. And more.
Reading these responses is depressing. We are calling the four horsemen and will have no one to blame but ourselves.
Absolutely. There is NO place for sarcasm, belittlement or public criticism for achievement by a teacher in a third grade classroom.
It is BULLYING done by an authority figure...and it is very Alinskyesque. It is exactly how NOT to handle matters of a child's performance. The matter is to be handled PROFESSIONALLY with the child and parents, NOT in a sleezy, ha-ha, pit child against child manner.
Sarcasm or humiliation by a teacher to a child that age is evil and undermining...and is something not fully understood by a small child.
My daughter had a third grade teacher who was this way. She was the exception to all the other teachers at her grade school. Very sarcastic and flippant and public "labeling" of the kids. They were all a basket of nerves, worried when they'd become the next to be on her receiving end.
That year I made it my business to be room mother...and not necessarily to protect or defend my own child. That classroom needed another adult there whenever allowed, to be a stop-gap of her poor treatment of children who were ALL victims of sarcasm and ridicule that she freely flung. I cannot TELL you how happy the whole *class* was to see me on the days that I was in the classroom helping out. It was pitiful. And it wasn't because of me...it was because I was ANY other adult present to keep that teacher from hurling little digs at them. Shame on her. Shame on this Tucson teacher.
This sort of immature and mean teacher behavior point to their lack of proper teaching techniques, and their understanding of fosterment, nourishment, and flourishment of a small child's mind and spirit.
This sort of teacher has NO business teaching GRADE SCHOOL. It's like seeing a parent publicly ridicule and belittle a small child in a public setting. The sight of it simultaniously makes you sick, and keenly aware of how kids can later in life go bad or possess little or no confidence.
Strange, but nowhere in the article did I see anyone denying the validity of the charge. The kid isn’t doing her homework and the teacher is just recognizing that accomplishment.
I teach a pre-core class at the local community college, so this should be a class that students take in their first or second semester of college. This year, I had a student contact me THREE TIMES requesting that his grade be brought up from the F he earned. He did not turn in at least 10 projects / quizzes / assignments over a 16-week semester and failed every test, but he still requested that his grade be raised so he could continue getting financial aid. Oh, and so his mom wouldn’t be mad at him.
Maybe if someone had taken him aside ten years ago when he was in third grade, perhaps he would understand the connection between grades and turning in an assignment.
Even last week, in one of my “professional level” classes, one of the students walked out of the lab without showing me his work. I stopped him before he left the building and he said, “Well, I’ve already taken it off my computer. Can’t you just give me a grade?”
Here in the metroplex, over half of my community college students fail the courses, primarily because they don’t do the homework.
It is a charter school that requires an application for entrance. If the parents don't like it, they can just transfer their kids.
The parent's guide is here -
http://desertspringsacademyblog.files.wordpress.com/2012/02/2012-13parenthandbook.doc
I was a lousy student until I joined the USN.
I needed discipline as well as direction.
I was a good kid but I was a smart ass.
I'm not quite clear on the value of publicly shaming a third grader -- this particular case may be evidence of a poor decision on the teacher's part. My gut feeling is that the teacher was right, but I'm not sure.
But overall, I agree that society is far too cushy. We're too nice, too soft. We have too much "stuff". Our values and our morality are all out the window because we do not insist on self-control, on discipline, on ethical behavior, personal integrity, and on productive, useful work.
We see a teacher not disciplining a class and we are horrified.
We see a teacher disciplining a class and we are horrified.
We are lost. As a society, we seem to have no answers to any of the important questions.
Flunk the kid or hold her back a year. Heck, it's a charter school - kick her butt out for underperformance. These things would just as effectively punish her and her mother. getting other kids in on the act teaches nothing. (Though I suppose it teaches the other kids in the class that it's better to be on the side the shaming mob.)
Flunk the kid or hold her back a year. Heck, it's a charter school - kick her butt out for underperformance. These things would just as effectively punish her and her mother. getting other kids in on the act teaches nothing. (Though I suppose it teaches the other kids in the class that it's better to be on the side the shaming mob.)
The teacher, Ms. Blowman, sucks.
Half of big government is government schools.
While you have a valid point, society works on the notion of conformity (the shaming mob).
There is room in our culture for conformity and Independence.
This kid is demonstrating bad behavior.
Bad for her and bad for society.
Ideally this teacher would find the kids spark and get her to want to do the work, to take pride in her work.
What the teacher did was hardly the end of the world.
Lord only knows what lengths she went to to get this kids attention. I feel for her on a managerial level, as 10% of the people take up 90% of your time.
That’s why I am not a manager. the 10% would drive me crazy.
I agree.
Giving the child a certificate in jest may have made the teacher feel clever - and we know how important it is for our government employees to feel good about themselves! - but it didn't do anything to teach the child either the subject matter or the habit of diligent work.
I agree this would be a perfect opportunity for you or wintertime to take this poor waif under your wings and demonstrate just how well homeschooling works.
And while your at it explain to me how a RESPONSIBLE parent allows a third grader to go to school that often without completed homework, especially at a charter school which required an application and apparently has a waiting list for some of it's grade levels
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