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field trip
2005-12-13 - 3:45 p.m. Okay, I am adding an entry now.
I was in SF on a field trip (to a very loud noisy but fun museum where children run around and play with cool sciencey stuff), but K got the keys and now we have them. I spoke to him when I got back, though, and it sounded like he was freaking aout about the amount of work we have to do. Hmmm. Not entirely unreasonable. Anyway -- I'm psyched to get started. N. has been staying after school to do homework in the college and career center. This may be the thing that will work for her -- she's a product of cooperative school environments where they work in group, and it's really the way she likes to work best. So that may be good. My lost knitting (a hat for M) has been found. It was funny to observe M's class today. It's really not like N's 8th grade class, which was really a tight group. This class is more like a bunch of clumps. Part of the problem, I think, is that they started taking a whole bunch of kids from this group. It's a good group -- it identifies promising kids in the public schools and gives them scholarships to private schools. (I know that people who are fans of public schools find this evil, but in truth, these particular public schools suck, and while it would be better if they didn't suck, it's certainly better for these particular kids to be out of them.) Anyway, it's a good group, but when a third to a half of the class comes from this group, it kind of changes the dynamics. They spend a huge amount of time together out of school being tutored and "enriched", so what it means is that they are really close and tend to be friends with each other, leaving the other kids with fewer kids to be friends with. N's class of forty had about 8 kids from the program -- maybe 10 -- and that was great. Also, N's class had a bunch of kids from a local public non-sucking elementary school. I don't know why kids from that school are not in M's class, but it's too bad, because I sort of liked them. It's a funny thing -- the parents from M's class are just not as fun, and I think the kids aren't either. Who knows why -- Now I must go. Bye.
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