Lunatic Goofballs wrote:Little Goofball starts 2nd grade this September and I intend to continue supplementing his and my younger children's educations myself despite the outrageous suggestion by his 1st grade teacher last hear that I not so my son doesn't get too far ahead. Can you believe that shit?!?
Now I don't want to get off on a rant here, but...
Unfortunately, from my experience as both a student who "got too far ahead" and a teacher, it's a very common position for teachers to take.
In my first year of teaching (which just ended... a month ago), I had some enormously talented, brilliant and energetic students that threw me for a loop. Had they all been on that level, it might have been easier, but it's difficult to engage and teach 20 children at the same time when some of them are reading chapbooks and some of them still can't write their names. The school curriculum provides very little help---their "challenge" work is usually about a centimeter above the "normal" work. The whole of the public education system is designed to get the lowest-performing students to a certain level, to the great detriment of students working far beyond their peers.
The answer to this, of course, is not to chide parents for feeding their child's appetite for learning, but to work WITH parents to combine resources and try to keep lessons in the class and at home on the same level. It can be difficult without the help of the child's parents, but with them, it can make things easier and more rewarding for teacher and student. And it keeps accelerated students out of trouble a lot better than "busywork".
The problem is compounded by the fact that teachers (at least in my district) aren't allowed to use textbooks from higher grade levels. One of my kindergartners was doing 2nd grade math at home, so I asked the office for second and third grade math books. I was taken to task for it, told it would make things harder for the kid's future teachers, and instructed to just "use the challenge work provided". I ended up just buying commercial workbooks from higher grades and making up my own problems and projects.
/rant