Family Matters

Posts Tagged ‘school’

When we moved to Australia, I was shocked to discover that many people were sick. At school, it was hard to find a day when all kids were there. At Gal’s work, out of 7 people working in the office, 2 or 3 were missing every day, because they were sick.

At first, I thought Australians were just sick more often than others in the world, but after a short time, I came to the conclusion they were taking a day off when they were tired, sneezed too much, had some errands to run or just needed a day off.

As a parent, that freaked me out. I could take myself one or two years into the future and imagine my own children substitute “Mom, I want some time off” with “Mom, I’m sick”. I believe that if you say you are sick enough times, you will convince your body that you are and then you will actually feel sick. Gal and I put a lot of effort and thinking into raising healthy kids and the thought of them being “sick” every time they needed to rest made me feel sick ;P

I fully understand that people need some a break from time to time and the regular days off on weekends and public holidays are good, but they do not always come at the right time or provide enough relief. It makes sense to me that kids do not plan to need time off exactly on those days, so it is just natural that they want time off on a school day.

The problem with “being sick” is that you cannot really enjoy the day and rejuvenate, which defeats the purpose of taking a day off. Taking these needs into consideration, I came up with a solution that has been working for me for over 12 years.

If you have a school-aged child, even in Prep (or whatever you call the year before First Grade), you probably already know all about Literacy and Numeracy. Education systems seem to be so focused on teaching kids to read, write and work with numbers they cut Music classes, Art teaching positions and other “non-essential” subjects and put enormous pressure on children with standardized literacy and numeracy tests.

In Australia, there is now something called NAPLAN – National Assessment Program for Literacy and Numeracy, officially described like this: “Every year, all students in Years 3, 5, 7 and 9 are assessed on the same days using national tests in Reading, Writing, Language Conventions (Spelling, Grammar and Punctuation) and Numeracy”.

This means that absolutely NOTHING else matters to most of the teachers and parents of students in Years 3, 5, 7 and 9. After having quite a bit of fun in Prep and Years 1 and 2, the poor kids in Year 3 are taught things by the book, tested every week, deprived of play time, music, art, sport and extracurricular activities and subjected to constant pressure to perform. State Education ministers go nuts from it, so Department of Education executives go nuts from it, so principals go nuts from it, so teachers go nuts from it, so students go nuts from it.

The same thing happens all over again 2, 4 and 6 years later.

And that is really bad.

Because learning should be fun and because all that stress actually blocks learning.

From time to time, 10-year-old Noff makes me so proud I just have to write about it. This girl inspires me so much I want other parents and kids to be inspired too. To me, these are the things that make the world a better place. This time, Noff showed how to be a good friend.

Noff’s school has a special unit for children with various disabilities. These kids spend much of their time in “normal” classrooms and go to the special unit for additional support, specific exercise and maybe a little bit to get out of classroom competition.

At the same time, the school includes these special students in every extracurricular activity – choirs, school plays, instrumentals bands and even dance troupes. We are amazed and moved to tears watching the little brave souls get up on stage with walking frames or in electric wheelchairs during concerts and performances and pour their heart out, their faces beaming with joy.

Some time ago, I picked Noff up from school and she said that one of the special education teachers had approached her and a few other girls for a secret mission. She said, “She wanted us to help one of the girls without telling anyone about it. She said the girl needed someone to help her get from the special unit to class and back and someone else to protect her in the playground from bullies”.

“Wow”, I said, “Are you proud she picked you?”

“Yeah!” she beamed at me, “And straight away, I asked her if it was Kelly [not her real name] and she looked surprised, but I know it’s hard for her to walk all the way to the special unit and back with all her stuff and I know some kids are picking on her”.

Today, my son Tsoof had his graduation ceremony and finished Year 12. Wow, it was fast! It did not only feel fast, but it was, because he only celebrated his 16th birthday last month.

In the past three weeks, he has had many awards night, celebrations, final concerts and farewell parties. During those events, Tsoof received many awards for excellence, for leadership, for showmanship, for his contribution to his school, his friends and his community and we felt honored and blessed for his talents, his kindness and his love for what he does.

You seen this in the movies: the parent of the star performing on stage is sits in the crowd, looks around and tells everyone that sits next to them in excitement, “This is my son” Well, this is how we felt at every event. Tsoof is so talented and so famous we introduce ourselves as “Tsoof’s mom/dad/sister” and we were very proud.

At the end-of-year Performing Arts evening, as the winner of the prestigious title “Performing Artist of the Year”, Tsoof opened the night and said, “Good evening. My name is Tsoof. I am a school captain, Vocal Harmony and Wind Symphony captain, a member of the Senior Percussion Ensemble (Mac-cussion), Show Choir and Big Band. Thank you for coming this evening”.

Gal, Eden, Noff and I sat the whole night proud as peacocks for being associated with him.

That was his last performance with all his ensembles, where he said goodbye to those who had contributed greatly to growing his talents, enthusiasm and passion for music – his music teachers. Three of them had been his musical mentors and had taught him for eight years, through both primary and high school.

I want to thank them too.

Singing, as you all know, is fun. We all know those images of people singing in the shower or standing in front of the mirror and having the time of their life singing at the top of their lungs and making faces. Yet, as soon as we include an audience in this image, we freak out and all the happy faces fade.

When people are asked what scares them most, public speaking is at the top of the list for most of them, scarier even than death. I thought the same when I was a kid. Speaking when someone else listened was so scary I would rather die than read my homework in class.

Kids with small panic attack
Many kids are afraid to speak or present while a group of other kids are listening, not to mention in front of a grownup audience. At home, they feel comfortable and confident, but as soon as they get to school – blank! They do not remember what the topic was and you can notice a small panic attack: increased heartbeat, blurred vision, broken voice and heavy breathing.

Unfortunately, these kids are often not taken seriously and their parents do not really understand how come their very smart child, who knew all his/her project perfectly did not get a good grade on his/her presentation. Let me tell you something. Acquiring knowledge and presenting this knowledge are two different skills! When your parents do not understand this fear now, you have to deal with two problems.

1. The fear of other people watching you

2. The fear of what Mom and Dad think about your fear

In the “old days”, the elders had a special role in people’s life. Because knowledge back then was not the highest currency, what the elders could give their community was wisdom. Unlike knowledge, wisdom is applied knowledge, achieved after personal experience, experiments, trials and errors and often summed up as rules of living.

Much of our life today is dedicated to acquiring knowledge. School, where you spend about 13 years of your life, is a place that gives you knowledge. If you study a profession, you spend another 3 to 10 years of your life in a school of knowledge.

As an educator, I find most of this to be a total waste of energy. When I did my degree in Special Education, I took an amazing course named “Who needs school anyway?” You would think that the main idea is to teach us that school is the best thing and that everyone needs school, but our amazing lecturer allowed us to explore this topic from many angles. We all had to go and research what school is all about and in my research, I discovered that School was an institute that provided knowledge, but failed to give kids wisdom. School had forgotten its purpose.

Kids’ schooling is one of the biggest parts of every parent’s bible. Out of their life at home, about 70% is associated with school in some way – homework assignments, report cards, extracurricular activities, meetings with teachers and more.

My schooling was a nightmare for my parents. I was not a good student (to put it mildly) and my parents really suffered for it. I was not very good in my academic studies, I had social problems, I had behavior problems and the whole school experience was very painful for me.

However, after being kicked out of school after 10th grade for failing too many subjects, I became a good student and won a scholarship for excellence. I then realized that my parents could not have made life easier for me, because they had no rules about school to guide them. They wanted me (and my siblings) to go to school because this is what everyone did and because in their mind, not having education pre-destined you to a life of sweeping streets and collecting garbage.

My personal experience contributed much to my parenting bible. As I went through college, the rules and commandments about school and studies became much clearer.
I am particularly proud of my school commandments and of having kids whose schooling is one continuous ecstasy. Yes, their schooling was not a regular one, because they lived in different places around the world, learned in special programs (some of which I ran myself), skipped grades and did other extraordinary things. But this is what schooling is for me and I am happy and proud that my schooling commandments brought my kids to think of their schooling as the best thing that has ever happened to them.

I have over 1,000 rules related to school and studying. I will share 10 commandments with you today and I hope they will give you inspiration.

Compare two kids, one who goes to a beautiful, clean, well-built school that requires excellence and maintains a high level of academic achievement and another who goes to an old, run-down, dirty, crumbling school where students can come and go as they please and learning is not high on the priority list.

Which child has a better chance in life?

Ronit and I are reading a brilliant book called “Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking” by Malcolm Gladwell. In this book, there are many bits of amazing research, which we can all use to avoid trouble and get more goodness out of life.

In one experiment, two groups of black students were given college entry tests. The tests were identical, except for one question. One group was first asked to specify their race.

That group scored 50% lower on average. Fifty percent! When asked why they scored so low, the students said they were apparently not smart enough to be accepted and had no clue what had gone wrong.

In another experiment, two groups of students took a trivia test. Before the test, one group was asked to imagine what it would be like to be a college professor for 5 minutes. The other group was asked to imagine what it would be like to be a soccer hooligan.

The “professor” group scored 23% higher on the test, simply because they had put themselves in a different mindset.

This post is about school uniforms, but it is also about how parents make decisions in life, especially those related to their children.

I recently found out that the parent body (called Parents & Citizens in QLD or P&C, Parents & Friends or P&F in other places and Parent-Teacher Association or PTA in the US) at my daughter’s school has the authority to choose the school uniform. There was a group of parents sitting around our dining room table, having brought Noff’s classmates for a Whacky Hair party, and a few of them were involved in the P&C. When I mentioned my views on the school’s over-emphasis of dressing “properly”, give the fairly restrictive and grossly outdated uniform code, one of them said, “Then come to the P&C meeting and propose to change the uniform”.

“What?!”

“Yeah, the parents can change the uniform if they want to, so if you convince enough people at the meeting to change, go for it”.

So my first lesson was that we parents have a lot more authority and influence over what our kids go through than we realize. Having worked long hours away from home while Eden and Tsoof were in primary school, I had never been close enough to the way schools operated and just assumed…

Inspired by my newly-found power, I immediately started to lobby for a new dress code for the school, something more up-to-date the kids will like to wear. This is when I learned about the many ways in which some people defend their views and how irrational they can be.

In the last bullying post, I wrote 25 tips to help bystanders who are involved in bullying. In the bullying game, there are the bully, the victim and the bystanders. Each of them is very important in eliminating the bullying phenomenon.

The bystanders are the people that watch a bully act and either get themselves involved or not in favor of the bully or the victim. As a reminder, here are the 5 types of bystanders:

* Ring Leaders
* Associates
* Reinforcers
* Outsiders
* Defenders

On average, when another person gets involved to defend a bullying victim, the bullying will stop within 10 seconds. Think about it: 10 seconds are enough for the bully to take a step back and for the situation to improve for everyone. Therefore, I am sure you understand how important it is for us to give power to the defenders (and inspire more of them), because they hold the key to making a big shift in bullying elimination.