<p>How about the head of the math department that fails to notify the top 3 math students in the school about the state math competition test because they didn’t attend any school math classes. They had finished the entire school math program as juniors and were taking the next class in calculus at the local university. BTW, high scorers on the state math competition test were awarded scholarship dollars.</p>
<p>Hanna’s high school musical problem is the same one we have. When he began high school, he’d already been in over 15 musicals through community theater and college productions, and had always had major roles. Freshman year he was in the chorus. Sophomore year he had a small solo. Junior year he was given the lead. Senior year he didn’t get a part. The director was reported to have said my son was too cocky! And yes, I guess you could say this is true.</p>
<p>High school musicals often seem to bring out the worst in their directors. Daughter played in the pit band for her school musical in sophomore year and the director was incredibly obnoxious and petty, bordering on verbally abusive of everyone involved. This woman would wait for the slightest thing to go wrong so that she could stop rehearsal for five minutes and scream at someone, very often someone who was not even the one responsible for whatever it was that got her started. Never a word of praise or encouragement.</p>
<p>The next year daughter was still in pit band, only for a high school in a neighboring town that treated her like a professional (i.e. they paid her and operated under the general assumption that she knew what she was doing.)</p>
<p>I was involved in high school theater, but I don’t sing or dance. We did four shows a year – three real plays and one musical. The musicals were about ten times more backstage angst and drama than all the other shows combined. There’s just something about the musical personality…</p>
<p>(In fact, WashMom is heavily involved in theater, and not casting “drama queens” or the male equivalent is one of her criteria.)</p>
<p>“It’s called Seniority.”</p>
<p>Really? They called it experience, which is an entirely different thing, and that disconnect was a big reason why I had a problem with it.</p>
<p>“It’s called being a team player.”</p>
<p>Team player? The “team” didn’t need me to be the 77th girl in the chorus. The show would have been much stronger with fewer participants, so it didn’t help the team to pressure everyone to put in four years. (Have you ever seen a group of 80 Pink Ladies singing “Summer Lovin’” on risers? Not pretty.) Furthermore, if you can’t carry a tune, but you accept a lead role because you can, how is that being a team player?</p>
<p>“You boycotted one year; why should they just allow you in the next?”</p>
<p>No, no. As I wrote above, “I boycotted the musical every year,” not just freshman year. And if I’d wanted to join as an upperclassman, I would have been allowed in automatically, because as I also wrote above, “everyone got into the spring musical.” There were no callbacks and no cuts.</p>
<p>“As a student, I had to deal at one point with a vice principal who insisted I not bring my foil to school because it was a weapon. I pointed out that I needed it for fencing, and his response then was that I would have to leave it with the coach as soon as I got to school, and that even my locker wasn’t good enough.”</p>
<p>My daughter’s school will not field a team and won’t let her bring her weapons or equipment onto school grounds. We made the same argument about sticks and bats to no avail. I feel your pain.</p>
<p>Our school district would summarily expel my son if he went to school with his little Gerber multi-tool, which includes a knife blade that is less than two inches long. For robotics, though, he carries in my tool box which includes any number of far-more-dangerous slicing and stabbing implements. I mentioned this to a teacher who suggested that we keep the tool box lid closed.</p>
<p>Fear of Alcohol:</p>
<p>Rule: No bottles of water (or any other beverage) allowed to be open in hallways or classroom. Rationale is that it might contain alcohol.
I realize many schools have this rule.</p>
<p>The kicker: You can leave the school grounds during free periods and at lunch as a junior or senior. You can then drive back to the school. </p>
<p>Summary: You cannot be trusted to drink just water (it could be alcohol) in a classroom, but you can be trusted to get into your car and drive (including on and around school grounds where other students and pedestrians might be standing) after having an unsupervised free hour off school grounds.</p>
<p>Additional kicker: You can open your bottles of water, or softdrink from home, or purchase these at lunch in the school’s
cafeteria (who knows what alcohol can be poured into those bottles). You can also open your beverage that you bring from your home and drink it after school, but before you participate in school ECs.</p>
<p>
Just tell the teachers it’s full of condoms & he should be fine.</p>
<p>Students are not allowed to take ibuprofen etc. without going to the nurse, even as high school seniors. Going to the nurse in our huge h.s. building could cause a student to miss most of a class period. I allowed my son to break the rule and surreptiously carry his own ibuprofen (just the two tablets he needed to take, in a baggie, not a whole bottle) when he needd it for sports injuries, because it only works for inflammation when it is continuously in the body and there was no way he would miss half an hour of class to go to the nurse. </p>
<p>Also, my daughter brought a butter knife to elementary school (very dull, obviously) to spread cream cheese on crackers in her lunch and was told not to ever bring a knife to school again. Obviously, a sharpened pencil would make a much better weapon than a dull butter knife (which is really a spreader, not a knife) but no one at the school seemed to realize that.</p>
<p>Our school spent thousands of dollars on electronic baby dolls for Life Management (a state-mandated class for all high schoolers). The students had to take care of their babies, around the clock, for 48 hours. </p>
<p>These things were such a disruption. The teachers hated them (yes, the kids had to bring them into the classroom, and they’d go off randomly- squalling and crying). The ways to ‘shut up’ the baby were to- rock them, feed them (there was a chip in the mouth/bottle), change the diaper (there was a chip in the diaper and the baby’s bottom), or sometimes it just didn’t stop for hours (we had this happen in our house one morning at about 4 AM). If you picked up the baby wrong, it’s little head would flop back and you’d hear this horrible clicking noise, then the baby would scream for a LONG time. </p>
<p>The students were supposed to have the babies with them at all times- no babysitting. They took them to football practice, orchestra rehearsal, you-name-it. At the end of the 48 hour period, there was a computer record in the doll that the teacher could read, which showed whether the doll had been neglected. I made the mistake of showing my son, during a ‘colic’ period, that you hold the baby, stomach down, and pat his back. It got recorded as though the baby had been abused. :eek: Apparently you can’t turn the baby on its stomach. oops.</p>
<p>The kids figured out really quickly that they could put the extra diaper over the doll’s head, and fake the doll into believing it was being fed. You’d see all these kids carting around babies with diapers over the heads. One teacher got fed up during a test, took the student’s ‘baby’ outside and stuffed it into an empty locker.</p>
<p>Anyone else have these fake babies? If not, count your blessings.</p>
<p>We had them when my daughter took health in middle school, but not my son, who is three years older. It’s a good thing because he probably would have smashed the thing if it woke him up in the middle of the night. I agree, they were a pain in the neck. My daughter took it to her evening art class (private, not in school) and the teacher couldn’t believe it!</p>
<p>I feel old.</p>
<p>When I was in school, we carried around boiled eggs. If the shell cracked, you failed.</p>
<p>Our doll’s name was Chucky.</p>
<p>My egg was named Angela Rene, after my boyfriend’s mom.</p>
<p>Hmmm, I should have seen the warning sign of that failed relationship.</p>
<p>
LOL!!! D 's school gives them out in senior year. Can’t wait.<br>
The girls have funny stories of having to shove the babies in closets because they were frightening the kids or animals in the houses where the girls babysat. One girl’s malfunctioned and cried for five hours & the girl came to school in tears. There is an opt-out: Write a ten page research paper about the consequences of teen pregnancy. I already told D to get her mind set on completing the paper over the summer. I do NOT want the darn thing disrupting our lives. Last year some of her teammates had them on the sidelines at lacrosse games, at orchestra rehersals.</p>
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<p>we’re not really in a high sales tax state; unfortunately even if we were, it wouldn’t matter as anyone who needed to make purchases had easy access to the tax exemption letter distributed to teachers. So even when I did make purchases with a purchase order/check, I still had to show the letter.</p>
<p>Luckily I never had to deal with the baby thing. I had teammates one year who brought them to baseball practice. We were in the gym that day so they hid the babies all over the gym so that they wouldn’t get hit.</p>
<p>Our school only requires it to be overnight. You get it assigned right after school and return it the next day before school starts.</p>
<p>“Students are not allowed to take ibuprofen etc. without going to the nurse, even as high school seniors.”</p>
<p>At our school, you have to have a signed perscription from the doctor stating the exact dosage of ibuprofen. This stays locked up in the office with all medications.</p>
<p>^^UMDAD</p>
<p>The same happened to QuantMechPrime–after CalcBC, QMP moved on to university courses and so didn’t hear about registration for the state math contest, since students were notified about it only in the high school math classes . . . . except for one year, when there was an announcement in the parents’ newsletter . . . which arrived a month after the contest was over. </p>
<p>We caught this between the registration deadline and the contest itself; luckily we were able to call the state director and have a few additional question sheets shipped to the school. QMP coordinated this with the teacher administering the test and gave him the registration fee. He said that he would add QMP to the list of students who were excused from classes to take the test (during school hours).</p>
<p>On the day of the contest, QMP showed up (on time) to take the test. All of the desks in the room were already assigned to other students . . . the teacher just forgot to request an extra. Really, I can understand and overlook that–people are busy. Space was cleared on a side table.</p>
<p>Then a few days later, we received a letter from the principal, stating that QMP had unexcused absences in two classes the day of the contest . . . because the teacher also forgot to notify the attendance office. At this point, I became irritated; QuantMechSpouse turned purple. Part II of the state math contest and the AMC12 went without a hitch. I relaxed my guard. Then QMP qualified for the AIME, took it, and again the teacher in charge (same one? different? I don’t know) forgot to notify the attendance office. For the state Math Field Day, a different teacher forgot to excuse any of the members of the math team. At least, after a while it became predictable. (QMP didn’t have any of these teachers, and so couldn’t have annoyed them previously in class!)</p>
<p>In a way, it’s a relief to hear that the same goes on in other schools–unless, by a horrible coincidence, it’s the same school! </p>
<p>Bottom line: If you have a student who’s advanced in math, don’t assume that the school will look out for the student’s interests. I really believe that my teachers, back in the late Cretaceous, would have done so.</p>