Friday, March 8, 2013

Smart as a whip.

Little Man is the smartest kid in the whole 4th grade at Perry Elementary School. This is not an assumption or the statement of a proud mama, this is a fact.

We had his 2nd (and final) scheduled parent-teacher conference last night. He tested not just off the charts, but WAY off the charts in all of the testing areas. The kid is already in advanced classes, but within his classes he is in the top tier groups working on the hardest material. And he is bored to death with it. So much so that his teachers and Bee and I think that he is frustrated because he is bored with it and has no control. Hence, why he crumbles up his homework papers and stashes them in his room so he doesn't have to do them and he lies to us and the teachers saying he did it, but he is not sure where it is.

Do you know how frustrating is as a parent knowing your 4th grader is at an 8th grade level but is getting B's and C's because he doesn't turn in his homework? (Somewhere my mother is laughing an evil, maniacal laugh because her curse came true. I finally have a kid that's just like me) Do you know how scary it is having a child just like you to where you know if this behavior is left unchecked, he will develop habits that are almost impossible to break and that by high school he will be so stuck in his ways that smoking and drinking with his friends, and hitting on the opposite sex is way more important than school and instead of getting full rides to several good schools, he'll end up taking some bullshit job because "Whoa! It pays $10.50 an hour!" only to end up 32 with a family of his own working some mid-level job that you had to slave, beg, borrow, and steal for and just barely making ends meet, kicking yourself in the ASS because you would have made one HELL of a lawyer and by now, you could be making 3 times as much as you make now and feel fulfilled in your job.

Or something like that.

Anyway, his teacher, Bee and I decided to try out something different. She is going to pull him aside and get rid of all the work he has trouble "remembering" to turn in. Spelling notebook, reading logs etc. Instead, she is going to put him on his on personal learning track. She is going to test him to find out what skill set he is really at and give him work on that level. Maybe while the rest of the class is reading and turning in reading logs, he will be reading a book and doing a diorama on it. Or a poster. Or, instead of writing a paragraph on Pocahontas (which they are finishing up today), maybe she will have him talk about the weaponry of the day and how it had an effect on the time period (He LOVES weaponry. He can tell you anything you would ever want to know about any gun, slingshot, bow and arrow etc. Name a time period and he will tell you what type of weapons they used. Hey, what can I say. Like Father, Like Son) I hope this new approach works, because if it doesn't, I'm out of ideas...

Overall, it was a very nice, pleasant conference. It's what I like to hear :D

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