I have made a horrible mistake. Little did I know that enrolling my son in
the middle school Gifted and Talented Academy was going to bring back horrible
memories of overwhelming school projects, unrealistic guidelines, and feelings
of stress and inadequacy coupled with the paralyzing anxiety driven trait of
procrastination.
And this is for me…. Not the child…. The 11 year old child
who just entered this school, what… 6-7 weeks ago?
Weekly posters and projects. Emails, texts, app reminders
from 8 different teachers with 8 different ways of communicating said projects,
homework assignments, tests, quizzes, etc.
The notifications come within minutes of the start of the
school day:
!st Period text – don’t forget to finish your magneto lab
study guide, and study the rules of the labs which will be a minor quiz
grade. Major grade for rules of the lab
poster due next Thursday!!
2nd period email – students – don’t forget to
bring the zip drive for your notes regarding the essay which you will them turn
into your oral speech presentations – presentations begin Friday
3rd period – (no electronic notification, you are
just supposed to know to go to her weeble blog) – complete worksheet pages 4-7,
due Wednesday
4th period – (no electronic notification, you are
just supposed to know to go to the Edmodo account) Post on Edmodo – Major grade
assignment due next Thursday, see folders for details and rubric……
blah…blah…blah….. on and on… you get the picture.
At this point, I am not really sure who is in school, him or
me. Because I feel like I am doing
everything first, then sitting with my son to help him figure it out on his own
with slight nudges here and there to “guide” him in the right direction.
Week one – I help Max, start to finish, with one project.
Week two – I don’t read the edmodo posts that indicate the due
date of a major project (yes, a major project in week 2) and continue to blow
Max off thinking we have one more day … only to wake up to Max (who woke
himself up at 5:30) sitting at the computer, frantically typing away on a
project due in a few hours. He skips his
bike gang morning ritual to finish the project and I drive him to school with
minutes to spare
Week three – I send Max off on his own to work on the project,
then sit with him later, tear apart the power point, basically make him do it
again entirely, then spend another ½ hr going over it to make him fix spelling,
grammar, formatting issues
Week four – science poster – I ask Max to tell me exactly what
he plans to do and how he plans to execute it.
Pass the project monitoring duties to Daddy and tell him “this one is on
you….” Get home late to see science
poster on table – looking NOTHING like what Max explained earlier, I cannot even figure out what he is trying to
“present”, and there are horrible handwriting and spelling issues. I go to our bedroom and ask Michael – did
you even LOOK at the poster – “He said he did it.” FACEPALM. Next morning I wake Max up early – we re-do
the poster, I drive him to school just in time to hear the 1st bell
of the day
Now to the straw on the camel’s back:
Spanish project – major grade. – due Thursday Oct 2nd.
He has known about it for a week. We started it last week because I was not
going to have another “night before, morning of” drama all over again.. We started the research, we located websites
for him to get information, we talked about writing notes/thoughts as he
researched.
Research what?
Spanish.
No Max – what about Spanish – what is the project?
A timeline
A timeline about WHAT?!?!?!?
S-P-A-N-I-S-H-!-!-!
The conversation has escalated to loud voices and
tears. Take a step back, breathe, settle
down.
Max – what exactly is the timeline supposed to be
about? How the language developed? When
Spanish went from country to country? The timeline of the history of Spain and
its people? What?
YES – ALL OF IT!!
Okay – how long is the timeline? How many dates? Just facts/dates or details info about each
date?
I don’t know – she just said a timeline!!
(HELP ME BEFORE I STRANGLE MY CHILD THEN GO POSTAL AND HEAD
TO THE SCHOOL TO STRANGLE THE TEACHER)
Did she give you instructions anywhere?
Yes, Edmodo
Of course – edmodo.
We go to edmodo to see a folder for this project that
includes 10 .pdfs/power points with non-descript titles. (Oh dear lord I do not have time for this….)
Max – look at these and figure out EXACTLY what you are
supposed to do.
Everyday:
Max – are you working on your Spanish project?
Yes
Max – how you doing on the project?
Good
Max do you have the project done?
Almost … I just have a little to do, it’ll be easy…
I get home tonight at 8:45 after Ben’s football
practice. Max is headed to his backpack
with a printed power point with a beautiful graphic "Spanish" emblazoned on
the front in scripty font. Wow, I think
to myself – all by himself…. Impressive.
Max – May I see it?
Hands it over
I realize it is 3 pages: the cover page, and one page about
Christopher Columbus with dates and one page about conquistadors with no dates,
just info.
Max – this is TWO things – and it is not even in a
timeline?!?!?
She said today we could just write paragraphs!
Okay – but it is only 2 facts and one of them doesn’t even
have any dates!!
It doesn’t have to!!
Max – open edmodo and pull up the instructions – I want to
see EXACTLY what you are supposed to do!!
And here is where my blood pressure shoots through the roof
and I am fairly certain I am having a heart attack.
The project is titled Timeline and Puzzle project:
Use the attached research as well as individual research to
create a time line - 50%
Create a hexagonal tarsi puzzle - 50%
There was a detailed rubric explaining point breakdowns
related to presentation effectiveness/Historical accuracy/mechanics – but
NOTHING specific – no info regarding how long, what to include, nothing. Just – was it colorful, did the graphics
relate, was the info correct, was everything spelled correctly?
There were tools to “help” the students organize their
thoughts –
Example: Main causes of the expansion of Europe: economic causes,
political causes, social causes, religious causes, scientific causes,
Wait – WTF?!?!? Let’s
just take a minute here and remind ourselves of our language classes when we
were young. Perhaps yours was different,
but mine – we learned our numbers, colors, conversational Spanish to help me
get to the bathroom and sang songs about the days of the week and months of the
year. College Spanish was really off the
charts – we watched telenovellas and took quizzes afterwards to see if we
understood who was cheating on who and why.
Political and religious causes of the expansion of the
Spanish culture to Europe and the Americas?!?!?
For 11 year olds?!?!? In a
timeline and hexagonal tarsi puzzle?!?!
WTF is a hexagonal tarsi puzzle?!?!? I had to google it, because the helpful
graphic made me think she had accidentally added an algebra or geometry slide
in the instructions.
Go ahead – google it – it still took me 4 or five images to
figure out what the hell it is.
My head is going to explode.
MAX!!!!!!! When did
you think you were supposed to get all this done?!?!?!??!
I was just about to start that part.
How many questions/answers do you have for the puzzle?
7
(which breaks down to 14 sides of the puzzle – and the
puzzle he is supposed to create (according to helpful graphic) is supposed to
have something ridiculous like 100 corresponding questions/answers… I think… I
really don’t have a fucking clue at this point….Me – an almost 40 year old
college educated woman who, until tonight, believed she was relatively smart –
I have no clue what the hell this woman wants.
One week – my 11 year old, 6th grade student had
one week to figure the above out. My GT
student, who is the classic definition of GT – disorganized, procrastinating, horrific handwriting and spelling, but brilliant mind – was supposed to figure out this project and
execute it in 7 days – along with everything else he has to do for the other 7
classes in his school day.
And oh yeah – he is also supposed to study for a quiz for
tomorrow – Spanish numbers 1-900 – spelling must be accurate – but that is just
a minor quiz grade.
I can’t this time. I
just can’t. I can’t stay up late or fly
through another morning trying to figure this out with Max. He is going to fail this one. He is going to miserably fall flat on his
face and fail this one. He has to. Though I think this project is unrealistic
and unclear and he doesn’t deserve to fall flat on his face for it, he is going
to have to because
I–just-can’t-this-time. I may
have fallen off the deep end and blown this out of proportion, but the teachers
lack of clear instruction and over sharing of helpful tools that are not
helpful at all have pushed me off that ledge.
