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Comments:
literatewit - 2006-01-19 14:49:58
oh such a big day! my grandmother has a video of me walking to school with my brother on my first day. every step, with me looking backward at them like "why are you doing this to me?" and yes. be a pain in their asses. i love parents who care!
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claudia - 2006-01-19 15:18:29
Yes! Tell them that AJ is fucking brilliant and if they don't pony up with the advanced placement opportunities, you'll be their worst nightmare. Dusty said this morning, "You know, Ann can only count up to 8. I can count to a thousand"(acutally I think she means 100, but same difference). She's very aware of what she knows and others her age don't. Maybe she's in preschool with dolts? Who knows. I doubt it. Our registration is in March - I send the principal a barage (sp?) of questions the other day. He was very quick to reply so...bonus points so far. Time will tell. Hope all went well and they will place AJ in second grade (at least for math class!)!!
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elgan - 2006-01-19 17:56:00
As I recall from kindergarten (both my own and when my kids went), kids can�t read yet, they can�t multiply or do any mathematics really, and what they learn to do is cut out paper for gluing collages, basic safety rules such as not running with scissors, and how to get along in a classroom situation with other children and a person in authority who is not a parent. It is definitely not going to be an academic experience. Honest. Wait for Grade 1 for that.
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Dr. Geek - 2006-01-19 19:28:46
You are not registering AJ for the Waldorf school, I trust. I did a little reading about Waldorf schools and I can't see how they would be a good match. If they are true to Rudolf Steiner's founding philosophy of Anthroposophy, the school will not attempt to teach AJ to read until age 7. Some reports on the web further suggest that some Waldorf schools discourage parents from imposing any kind of structured academics (like reading and arithmetic) on children until that age as well. It's hard to know what the Waldorf school is about though, because accrediting bodies for Waldorf teaching are evidently a little shaky. Some are evidently pretty main stream, if a little crunchy granola, whereas others are rather quasi-religious when it comes to Steiner's ideas. The tone of some of the web sites out there on the subject resembles those I've seen when discussing osteopathy or chiropractics -- one side crying "cult", the other "persecution". I mentioned all this to Mrs. Geek (the schoolteacher) and she brought up that a (former) friend of hers would dearly love to send her kids to a Waldorf school... and that was all she needed to know, because her friend is rather vocal about naturopathy and certain theories connecting mercury and autism.
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Dr. Geek - 2006-01-20 00:28:57
Let me remove my foot from my mouth over a few things. Looking back on my message, I didn't mean to imply that the Waldorf approach necessarily smacks of quackery or cultist behavior. Certainly there are aspects of the approach that I think all educators can learn from, as Mrs. Geek pointed out to me yesterday. The Waldorf school movement has its roots in some very 19th century ideas, however. Some people take these roots very seriously, and that makes the approach controversial. I was quite incorrect to lump osteopathy in with chiropractic, however. While there are evidently some natural medicine osteopaths out there, osteopathy is a licensed, accredited field, taught at schools and hospitals with rigorous classroom and residency requirements. I do know better than to make that kind of connection.
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