<p>PackMom - We’re in NC, too, so I know all about the @^@$#& senior project. Our county and school have required it of all seniors for quite some time now, but I believe that it’s now a statewide requirement. </p>
<p>At our school, the entire project (research paper, physical produce and oral presentation) is done as part of the senior English class. We’re on a 4/4 block schedule, so that means it’s all crammed into one semester. The most annoying part of it for my kids was all of the busy work that went into putting together the portfolio, including hard-to-follow and frequently changed instructions about such things as how to number the pages. The teachers at our school resent having to teach senior English because it means teaching senior project, and some of them take it out on the kids and are grumpy all semester. My H and I have both judged the projects in years when our kids aren’t involved, and we’ve been led to believe that our opinions don’t matter that much in terms of affecting the students’ grades in the course, unless the presentation is really, really awful.</p>
<p>It may be statewide now,IDK. It’s just ridiculous. When S1 did it It was done over the course of the whole senior year but we changed to the 4/4 last year so S2 did the paper in his Jr. year and Presentation in Sr. yr. </p>
<p>Also S2 did not have an English teacher for 7 weeks of the first qtr. ( and had to do presentation the first week of Dec). When he finally got one she was pulled from teaching a French class and knew very little about the Senior project so would come in every day with some new or different tidbit of info. she had gotten from other teachers…ugh </p>
<p>S2 felt very good about his presentation and was shocked when he got an 83 which will count as a large percentage of his final exam grade (to be taken next week). The grading was on a 1-8 scale. Nobody in his honors class got an 8 and there were only a few 7’s which equated to a 94. A 6 got you an 89 and a 5 an 83 and so on. No “in between” grades. We are so glad it’s over.</p>
<p>Actually, the most ridiculous thing we ever faced was in son’s second grade. The entire school had a “free reading period” 30 minutes a day, when every student was supposed to sit and read any book of their choice. Son was a natural reader and reading way above grade level, so he was reading a Michael Crichton book. His teacher took the book away and told him he was not allowed to read anything above grade level in front of other students, because it was demoralizing to them. She demanded he read only from the 2nd grade in-class reading list, despite the fact that it was <em>free reading</em> and specifically every student could read <em>anything</em>. </p>
<p>I called up the principal and was like, WHAT? and she “worked it out” with the teacher. Son came home and said the teacher said he could read anything he wanted, but that he better not “lord it over the other students”. The kicker was him asking me what she meant by that, because he was sweet-natured and would never think of making anyone feel bad about something like it.</p>
<p>Trin, my D had a second grade teacher who would not allow her to read books unless D knew the definition of every word. The teacher would thumb through the book, find tough words (out of context, mind you), test D, then say no to the book. If I had to know every word in the books I read, I sure would have missed some incredible books!!</p>
<p>Those second-grade absurdities can pop up even in college. When I was a freshman, I got a zero on my first psychology lab report. I went to the assistant for guidance, and she said I had failed because we were supposed to use graph paper and pencil to illustrate our results, and I had printed the report on a computer. (This was 1995.) I asked why that rule was enforced so tightly, and she said, “During first semester, we ask you to draw them by hand, because if you use a computer, we can’t be sure you know what the X and Y axis are.”</p>
<p>I said, “Why do you let us use calculators? How do you know we can add?” She said she didn’t make the rules, which I’m sure was true, but sheesh. This was my intended major, too.</p>
<p>reminds me of daughter being asked to create her own spelling list in 3rd grade (she was in a multi-age class with 3,4,5th graders) because the spelling lists they were using were too easy for her. It was a very methodical process for her, and she enjoyed the challenge. She was to present her list to her teacher, who would then a week later, test her on her words.</p>
<p>One week, I was in the classroom helping out, and daughter’s teacher showed me D’s list for the week (literally, D would go through the dictionary and pick her words, and do all the usual exercises with them), and as soon as I saw one of the words, I figured out by looking at the roots that it was some sort of venereal disease. Of course, D didn’t know what VD was, just knew the word was medically related. Teacher told me her husband had seen her students’ spelling lists laying around at home (he was a med student), and explained to her what it was, and asked what it was doing on a 3rd grader’s spelling list. Teacher and I both had a good laugh, and I can’t remember how we eventually explained to D that some words were just not likely to be used in the average elementary school kid’s vocabulary, and that from then on, she might want to get her spelling list approved before moving on to complete all the other exercises so that she was choosing words that she might actually see or use somewhere.</p>
<p>College, not high school. I was very active in Model UN in high school, and had taken a 2-year Honors series in political science, history, and international relations. In a freshman political science course I used a half-dozen or more sources for a little four or five page paper. Unfortunately, none of those sources were assigned for the course. To his credit, the professor didn’t mark me down, but I did get a stern warning that in survey courses I should stick to the required reading.</p>
<p>My son’s chemistry class in high school had a lab in which a statistical equation was to be used to analyze the results. He realized that the equation provided by the teacher on the lab handout was wrong and that using that formula gave totally meaningless results. He looked up the correct formula and explanation on the Internet and brought it to the teacher. The teacher refused to listen to my son or look at the Internet information - he just said, “I want it done MY way!” Three years later, my daughter had the same chem teacher and he was still using the same lab handout with the incorrect statistical equation.</p>
<p>Our ridiculous thing is a revolving door of teachers, although it’s not all the school’s fault. </p>
<p>Last year DS was taking Intro to Calculus. He was cruising along with A’s. In January, his teacher died suddenly of a heart attack. When the dept head came into the class to figure out where they were in the curriculum, she discovered that the teacher hadn’t been teaching Intro to Calc - he was teaching the Algebra III curriculum that everyone in the class had taken the year before. No wonder DS was cruising along with A’s. It took about 6 weeks to find and hire a certified math teacher. So DS started his Intro to Calc curriculum in March instead of Sept.</p>
<p>D’s assigned Spanish teacher became seriously ill very shortly before school started this fall. So they started the year with a sub who knew nothing about Spanish while they hunted down a “certified” long-term Spanish sub. They found one in 2 weeks, but D has no idea how this woman was certified. She spoke less Spanish than D (who is NO Spanish genius herself) and with a worse accent. If she was speaking a sentence and she didn’t know the Spanish word, she’d say it in English, so her sentences were half-Spanish and half-English. To the school’s credit it didn’t take them long to figure out she was a disaster, but it did take a while to find a replacement. D’s new - competent - Spanish teacher started the beginning of 2nd marking period. 1/4 of the year down the drain.</p>
<p>Lafalum, those are not just absurd, but serious issues. We also had a couple of teachers who did not teach. We had one who read the newspaper (had tenure), another who could be side tracked into talking about anything but the class he was to teach, and one who did not read student essays and kids just tested out that theory over and over again (another one with tenure). Oh, and then there was one with no control over student behavior, but I won’t even go into that. Oh, this is in an excellent school district too!</p>
<p>our school sent out an anonymous survey to the parents!!! Well, after talking to several parents, I wish I were a fly on the wall during the reading of the surveys!!! FINALLY, a way to unload to the school!!!</p>
<p>in 6th grade, my class read a book called The Cay. we had to borrow it from the teacher and if we destroyed it, then we had to pay for it.</p>
<p>end of the year rolls around and i go to turn in my book, which had a slight crease in the bottom right corner, and my teacher glared at me and said i had to pay for the book. “fine” i said “can i have it back then?” assuming that if i had to pay for it, then at least i could keep it.</p>
<p>“no” she said “i’m going to use it next year too”
"then if it’s not wrecked, why do i have to pay for it?’
“because of the crease in the corner”</p>
<p>i was kind of shy and intimidated by this teacher so i started crying and explained the whole thing to my mom later that day.</p>
<p>she wrote a check for $4.95 to the principal of the school with a note telling the principal to talk to the teacher about the purpose of the check and to call her if there are any problems.</p>
<p>the check was cancelled by the principal and this rule is no longer in place.</p>
<p>seriously people? making a 12 year old pay for damages done to the cover of a paperback book? time to get a life.</p>
<p>So, at son’s pesky school, they had a big annual school wide “Presentation of Learning” that involved, among other things, a competition among everyone in the whole school on things they’d learned. They had to write questions to later be quizzed on. At some point, the winner of the school-wide competition came down to answering the question, “What’s the value of Avagadro’s number?” a constant used in Chemistry. </p>
<p>It was only at that point, in front of all the parents and teachers, district officials, state representatives, and local media, that it was determined the teacher had been teaching his students THE WRONG VALUE for Avagadro’s number. He’d written it on the board incorrectly, he’d given it out on handouts incorrectly. So the student who gave the correct value got it wrong until they went and looked it up and determined what had happened.</p>
<p>Well WashDad, my neurons store things like all the words to the theme songs of “Gilligan’s Island” and “The Beverly Hillbillies”. I’d take Avagadro’s number…or remembering the location of my car keys.</p>
<p>Just sit right back and you’ll hear a tale,
A tale of a fateful trip.
That started from this tropic port aboard this tiny ship…</p>
<p>Like that?</p>
<p>I can also sing most of the theme to “Green Acres.” Pity me.</p>
<p>I hear you on the car keys thing. If it wasn’t for the white basket next to the front door, I’d never be able to find them. I think as we get older we substitute rules and habits for memory.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Forced my kid to retake class that kid already took somewhere and did very good.</p></li>
<li><p>Allow kids to manipulate the system to gain class rank. For example, kids with foreign background take language classes outside of school to satisfy language requirement and bump the class rank up.</p></li>
<li><p>Discourage kids to take classes beyond AP level in colleges. Want kids to take all the meaningless available AP classes in school. Give 5 on school AP class, 4 on college class beyon AP level.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>Avagadro’s number… we used that constantly when I took honors Chemistry way back in the day. Oddly, when DS took Honors Chemistry at our hs 3 years ago, the teacher NEVER ONCE even MENTIONED Avagadro’s number.</p>
<p>I don’t remember that much chemistry, but it seems to me that Avagadro’s number was a pretty basic concept. BTW, when DS’s son took a standardized test in chemistry, he had never heard of half of the terms they used. But he got a B in Honors Chemistry from a tenured teacher.</p>
<p>No wonder that with the new mandatory testing for graduation, our hs has decided that the science test they will administer to the kids will be BIOLOGY. (The hs has a choice - bio, chem or an engineering-type class.)</p>