Embracing Constructivism

I have decided to convert to the dark side and embrace the obvious superiority of constructivism and "discovery" learning. I started with my 7-8 year old soccer team. Instead of traumatizing the children by teaching them meaningless skills like kicking and dribbling, now I just give them the ball and tell them to discover the game of soccer on their own. I don't even bother explaining the rules because as we all know soccer rules were developed by an elitist white European culture. Instead, I let my kids create their own rules. To protect their self-esteem, each player earns a goal by breathing. One breath = 1 point. To address individual learning differences I have scheduled 17 different practices, because every kid is different. Since games (the sports equivalent of standardized testing) are culturally biased and ran by obviously prejudiced sexist referees, I developed my own measure of success. I rated my kids against kids who learn by a more regimented style, my kids came out on top. For each kid who picked up the ball with his hands thereby demonstrating creative thinking, I awarded that style of learning a point. In depth analysis of my study proved that my style of coaching had a positive effect of 1 million standard deviations. My next step is to write a book...

Originally posted on D-Edreckoning in response to Conceptualize This, also see his post on Chicken Porn.

47 % Nerd, 17% Geek, 26% Dork

The Nerd, Geek, Dork test.

I am "Joe Normal"

For The Record:

A Nerd is someone who is passionate about learning/being smart/academia.
A Geek is someone who is passionate about some particular area or subject, often an obscure or difficult one.
A Dork is someone who has difficulty with common social expectations/interactions.
You scored less than half in all three, earning you the title of: Joe Normal.

This is not to say that you don't have some Nerd, Geek or Dork inside of you--we all do, and you can see the percentages you have right above. This is just to say that none of those qualities stand out so much as to define you. Sure, you enjoy an episode of Star Trek now and again, and yeah, you kinda enjoyed a few classes back in the day. And, once in a while, you stumble while walking down the street even though there was nothing there to cause you to trip. But, for the most part, you look and act fairly typically, and aren't much of an outcast.

I'd say there's a fair chance someone asked you to take this test. In any event, fairly normal.

Congratulations!

Another Friday Off...

Yes... I love my job. There are so many things out there to comment on; unfortunately I am intellectual Jell-O today. Instead, since this blog is about school from a parent’s point of view, let me give you a run down my experiences with the system this week.

On Tuesday, one of my 3rd grades started reading tutoring finally. She makes great grades in class, but has problems with the PACT test. She use to be in reading program when she was in another school district in 1st grade. When she transferred to this school district, they didn't have a reading program available, so she didn't get the extra help she needed in 2nd grade. Luckily we raised enough hell, and her teacher supported us this year. She really enjoyed her first day... her reading teacher is my son's 3rd grade teacher. Hopefully they gave her an initial evaluation, so we can track her progress.

My son started the Talented and Gifted program on Tuesday, and I stopped in to meet the teacher. It was as bad as I feared. His TAG teacher has a degree in Art and when I asked her what her plans were for the glass, she told me she was going to teach using Art. I started asking some hard questions about what exactly they were going to learn, especially in Math, and already know who I was already. It seems the testing coordinator had already warned told her about me. I did manage to get her to verbally commit to providing accelerated math instruction, but it was like pulling teeth. We will see what happens.

Non school related:

Both of my 3rd graders scored goals in their soccer matches... I’m such a proud daddy.

Well, I’m going to surf around and see if I can find anything interesting to say.