You Know What Really Grinds My Gears? Now with 3x more gears...

[bc-chris]

Originally Posted by TrentCrimmIndependent

I failed at least one swimming level. Think I made it to maroon.

If we're passing children regardless of their aptitude just to save their feelings then we're in big trouble. I'd mostly feel bad for the lifeguards who will have to save these kids that believe they're competent swimmers when they could've just bobbed around during lessons.

my wife's a school teacher - don't bring this up unless you want to see her get worked up.
nothing 'pleases' her more than having a kid (or kids) in her class that should not have been bumped up to the next grade - but like she says "it's ridiculous - we're not allowed to fail kids anymore." and to be clear - she's not saying that like it's the goal to fail as many kids as possible, she wants her students to succeed, but there are some that should be forced to repeat a grade and it just doesn't seem to happen anymore.

[you&me]

Originally Posted by sleepingmoose

Back then you actually could 'fail'. Nowadays, no one is checking to see if you actually have the prerequisite for lessons. My kid was in a Swimmer 5 class (probably equivalent to blue or green), and one kid couldn't even swim one length of the pool without needing to be "rescued" by the instructor.

Turns out her parents put her in the class because her sister was in it, and they didn't want to wait around for two different lesson times - she hadn't gone through any of the lower levels. They couldn't send her back down to another level, so all the kids that were actually in the appropriate class spent half the time waiting at the edge of the pool waiting for this kid, and for the instructor to help her.

Weird... I think this must come down to the facility or even the individual instructors.

My kids all took swim lessons this summer and we had to provide their previous 'report cards' to make sure they were in the appropriate class(es).

And FWIW, my daughter did fail a class. We re-registered the next week, she marched in there, passed the level she failed the previous week and even passed the next level.

I know another kid failed at the same time my daughter did and on our way out, could hear the mother, um, urging the instructor to pass them. Kids can fail and learn from it, but they have to be allowed to fail in the first place.

[Wormius]

If a parent can’t be bothered enough to be engaged with their children’s education and training then maybe they shouldn’t have had kids in the first place, rather than complaining about participation awards and stuff.

[CroFlames]

Originally Posted by Wormius

If a parent can’t be bothered enough to be engaged with their children’s education and training then maybe they shouldn’t have had kids in the first place, rather than complaining about participation awards and stuff.

I know, but I can't return them now can I?

[Wormius]

Originally Posted by CroFlames

I know, but I can't return them now can I?

It wouldn’t hurt to try, well maybe just physically a little.

[flamesfever]

Originally Posted by bc-chris

my wife's a school teacher - don't bring this up unless you want to see her get worked up.
nothing 'pleases' her more than having a kid (or kids) in her class that should not have been bumped up to the next grade - but like she says "it's ridiculous - we're not allowed to fail kids anymore." and to be clear - she's not saying that like it's the goal to fail as many kids as possible, she wants her students to succeed, but there are some that should be forced to repeat a grade and it just doesn't seem to happen anymore.

My wife was a teacher also, and in her years of teaching, there were only a couple of her children that she felt she had to fail. In both cases the kids managed to go on and be successful in spite of being held back. My wife used to say the biggest difference was instead of going through school at the bottom of the class, they managed to be somewhere in the middle. I fully agree that kids should be allowed to fail, when it's to their overall benefit.

[FlamesAddiction]

School is a hard one because a big part of it for kids isn't just academic, but social. I imagine for kids that were held back and saw their friends move on, it must have been really hard on them emotionally. I could see it being really damaging long term in that regard.

They get around that a lot of the time these days by having split classes. For example, kids that maybe struggled in grade 2 will "pass", but go into a 2/3 split the following year where they still get an opportunity to catch up on the grade 2 things they need to work on.

[GirlySports]

remember these?

[undercoverbrother]

Originally Posted by GirlySports

remember these?

solid BNL reference

[DoubleF]

Originally Posted by FlamesAddiction

School is a hard one because a big part of it for kids isn't just academic, but social. I imagine for kids that were held back and saw there friends move on, it must have been really hard on them emotionally. I could see it being really damaging long term in that regard.

They get around that a lot of the time these days by having split classes. For example, kids that maybe struggled in grade 2 will "pass", but go into a 2/3 split the following year where they still get an opportunity to catch up on the grade 2 things they need to work on.

Yeah, I've been curious whether doing more split classes long term as a curriculum design would benefit kids overall. So basically 1/2, 3/4, 5/6. It could also help with some of the student shuffles that would allow for better control of classroom sizes. IMO, one of the things that could be done better would be for the school system to also design materials that explains what they're trying to accomplish for children's proficiency and materials that describe other things that parents can work on that would allow the child to bring those skills and learnings to the school system and benefit themselves and others.

I recall we already had worksheets for grades 1/2 and 3/4 back in the day. The difference between being at a 3 or 4 level purely was the mark you received on that worksheet. So a grade 3 would be expected to get around 30-70% on the mad minutes worksheet while a grade 4 would be expected to get around 60-90% on the mad minutes worksheet. Furthermore, I recall many programs that would have older kids read books to younger kids as part of their classes. Recently, I heard of grade 4-6 kids being "group leaders" for preschool-kindergarten aged kids in some summer camps. This seemed younger than when I was a kid. I'm just thinking that more of this would be great in the curriculums, but I'm not unaware of the challenges and the issues that could arise with such a concept.

Students teaching others should also be potentially part of the curriculum much earlier IMO and if you do the 3/4 and 5/6 splits this could be more easily implemented. Students in the upper split could learn the activity earlier and then those exceeding a certain grade would teach the students who got lower grades threshold/lower grade. Intentionally pairing the stronger students with the weaker students is beneficial long term. I've done this many times with summer camp classes in the past and I received quite a bit of good feedback about how the children who were typically considered "weaker" flourished when I did this (typically kids diagnosed with ADD/ADHD). Learning how to address annoyance and exasperation is a good skill to learn socially as well. Watching the "Loop" short on Disney+ and I think that in certain circumstances, it can be considered a life altering skillset in some occasions.

But yes, while I get the complaint that it kinda holds the smarter kid back in that they "waste" time teaching kids what they already know and don't focus on being exposed to more materials and information, I also disagree with that concept. If anything for the smarter kid, it's considered a refresher of the materials so that the child retains the information longer vs exposed to more materials and brain purging it all within a few weeks. It teaches a special type of social skill/training skillset that is exceptionally useful as you get older and enter into the workforce. It also teaches kids to view certain things from different angles which I think is very useful for problem solving skills. I'd argue many adults struggle with this last one as they'd rather surround themselves with people who see things identical to how they do vs understanding how there could be more than one way to see the same thing. IMO this is what many curriculums were trying to address in group projects, but did poorly in executing and ensuring that a single kid couldn't dominate the entire process.

I recall being the only kid who answered certain problem solving questions correctly in my entire class. I was in grade 6 and for the first time, I recall I was near tears due to being terrified of public speaking. Yet in hindsight now, all it was basically just to explain what I had put down as my solution which yielded a correct response. After that first time presenting my response, I realized it was no big deal and I remember how profound of a realization that I had regarding teaching others that I don't believe the teacher was actually trying to distill upon me at the time (she knew I was smart and thought I needed a challenge, but I don't think presenting my response was what she had in mind to allow that facet to bloom). I'm just thinking back to how useful that was and how presenting to a single kid or two would be more beneficial than going from never presenting to presenting to a full class of 20.

This is how I plan to raise my kids personally. I'll teach them stuff and teach them to teach others. I'll also teach the younger one different skill sets and random skillsets and ask her to teach the older brother. Both are absolute sponges and love academia, perhaps more than mindless games and videos on the tablet at times. It just takes a lot of time, effort and energy to do this with the kids, so we haven't done it a lot. However, earlier trial and errors have started to yield a pattern that we think might work. In doing so, we can harbour a system of self learning between the two of them and although it takes more time in the short run, in the longer run, I think we can be more hands off in getting them to do school work and learning new skills etc.

I was telling my wife that I agreed that some longer term extra curricular activities would be great for the kids to develop IQ, BQ and EQ skillsets. I also believe that some short term extracurricular activities would also be great to ensure that they are exposed to a wide breath of skills and ideas. Music for 10 years is one thing and then asking them for a few weekends to spend around 10 hours learning to beat box via Youtube could be another. My kids are too god damn smart. Definitely not geniuses, but holy hell it's starting to get hard to keep up with them. If they shoot up too fast on the academic side, I do want to make sure that they develop themselves socially and are exposed to other pop culture related stuff that keeps them from being "behind". I also want to make sure they aren't stuck in the concept of worrying about perfectionism.

That's one of the issues that I recall noticing with some of the kids that were smart enough to skip grades. Quite a few of them rocketed up to post secondary and then ended up disappearing completely, even though we knew where they lived. They just stopped hanging out with kids their age and we'd sorta find out a few of them ended up as recluses later on in life. Super smart, but sorta socially stunted due to having less of a childhood than other kids. That's not really a path I want my kids to go down if they continue crushing through academia faster than the public programs can handle and that's not really something I consider is a situation that the public program should be rushing up to me to try and solve either. That's for my family and I to evaluate and solve if we deem it needs solving.

My son is age 5 and constantly requesting to do certain activities designed for ages 7-9+. Not in all categories. He has proficiency in almost of the basic requirements of kids his age. In a few categories he also has enough proficiency that he constantly bemoans that being around many kids his age is boring as they don't really know how to do anything. I want my kids to almost always have time to play because they're always caught up with their school work and getting good grades. I don't want them feel like they are only comfortable when they can get high marks and thus it stagnates their intellectual ceiling by staying in the small pond and I don't want them gobbled up by the other big fish by putting them in a pond bigger than they can handle either.

[OutOfTheCube]

Originally Posted by you&me

Weird... I think this must come down to the facility or even the individual instructors.

My kids all took swim lessons this summer and we had to provide their previous 'report cards' to make sure they were in the appropriate class(es).

And FWIW, my daughter did fail a class. We re-registered the next week, she marched in there, passed the level she failed the previous week and even passed the next level.

I know another kid failed at the same time my daughter did and on our way out, could hear the mother, um, urging the instructor to pass them. Kids can fail and learn from it, but they have to be allowed to fail in the first place.

Yep, out in Airdrie they're pretty militant. We're trying to get my oldest to learn and let's say, he's not a natural. He failed the second level twice, then we put him in to a private lesson to complete it which he did pass. Now he doesn't want to do the third level. It's a process.

And yeah, I was fine with them failing him. He's there to learn how to swim, not get an award or something. If your kid hasn't learned yet, why would you be mad about that? People are nuts.

[Locke]

Originally Posted by bc-chris

my wife's a school teacher - don't bring this up unless you want to see her get worked up.
nothing 'pleases' her more than having a kid (or kids) in her class that should not have been bumped up to the next grade - but like she says "it's ridiculous - we're not allowed to fail kids anymore." and to be clear - she's not saying that like it's the goal to fail as many kids as possible, she wants her students to succeed, but there are some that should be forced to repeat a grade and it just doesn't seem to happen anymore.

She can commiserate with my daughter.

Also a teacher, she taught for a year down in Lethbridge at a school that deals with a lot of Immigrants and Refugees.

Now, that presents some fairly unique challenges of its own, obviously, but she was always frustrated because:

"You cant just 'move these kids along' when they lack the basic fundamentals....they cant build on nothing, you're just setting them up to fail."

Of course, as the poster above mentioned, there is a social element as well. I dont know how that translates into other cultures, but its something we have to address.

Because as much as I empathize about not wanting to look bad in front of your friends and peers, I think as far as life skills go, being able to read and do basic math is more important in the long run.

Much like swimming. Being able to actually do it tends to be more important than being able to procure a badge that merely insinuates that you probably should know how to do it.

Do those badges float?

[darockwilder]

Originally Posted by GirlySports

remember these?

Flexed arm hang for life!

[you&me]

Originally Posted by OutOfTheCube

Yep, out in Airdrie they're pretty militant. We're trying to get my oldest to learn and let's say, he's not a natural. He failed the second level twice, then we put him in to a private lesson to complete it which he did pass. Now he doesn't want to do the third level. It's a process.

And yeah, I was fine with them failing him. He's there to learn how to swim, not get an award or something. If your kid hasn't learned yet, why would you be mad about that? People are nuts.

Agreed.
And FWIW, if it's an option, private swim lessons are the greatest thing ever.

[dubc80]

Originally Posted by calumniate

I failed maroon three times as well. I had no body fat at all.. the treading water drills made me look pretty hopeless

Haha. I remember passing Maroon but was too scared to enroll in Survival, because the word Survival made it sound really scary.

So my Michael Phelps potential ended right there.

[Brendone]

Originally Posted by Locke

Do those badges float?

I guess if ‘lil Billy comes home with his maroon badge glued to a life vest, the parents may know he might not be ready for the Olympics quite yet.

[Locke]

Originally Posted by dubc80

Haha. I remember passing Maroon but was too scared to enroll in Survival, because the word Survival made it sound really scary.

So my Michael Phelps potential ended right there.

Presumably alongside not being 'Stupid Huge?'

Originally Posted by Brendone

I guess if ‘lil Billy comes home with his maroon badge glued to a life vest, the parents may know he might not be ready for the Olympics quite yet.

"Whats the prize for getting Maroon?"

- WATER WINGS!

[undercoverbrother]

I bought a Mountain Dew today. First time since I turned 10 I think.

I liked it when I was a kid.

Well #### you 8 yr old UCB, that #### is nasty.

Also, I didn't know Canadian Mountain Dew had caffeine

[calgarygeologist]

Originally Posted by undercoverbrother

I bought a Mountain Dew today. First time since I turned 10 I think.

I liked it when I was a kid.

Well #### you 8 yr old UCB, that #### is nasty.

Also, I didn't know Canadian Mountain Dew had caffeine

It has caffeine now? I wonder when that happened because for the longest time it was caffeine free because of Canadian regulations.

[81MC]

Accepted a position, gave my notice accordingly. Big Whigs call me up, make me an offer to stay. Think about it, graciously accept this counter offer. Was told it was moving rapidly and Big Whigs talking about how proud they are at it moving so quick. Notify the hiring manager that I wouldn’t in fact be able to take the position I had been offered originally due to what was offered in response.

2 ####ing months ago. What I thought was a sure thing that would be in place already has turned into 2 months of talk and every time there’s an update it’s a less and less sure thing. And now, the window has closed on the other position so I can’t even beg to be accept anymore.

I don’t doubt the counter offer was made in good faith and everyone is doing what they can, but fuxk me if I don’t feel like the biggest fool right now. A sinking feeling it’ll be three months when I find out the promotion actually doesn’t come through and I’ve just thrown away other opportunity because my company couldn’t figure out what to do if I left when I had originally indicated. So damn annoyed right now.