The average number of visitors to this bloglet has doubled in the past couple of weeks.
Welcome...
Or have I just got better at tagging?
Weird - I've never written to be read. So thanks for your time.
Its hard to take a school report at face value these days.
Where does the idea of 'accentuating the positive' actually come from. I'm sure it hasn't come up from us humble parents??
I do wish they could just tell it like it is.
At our school we have "Oscars" every half term, awarded to various children for particularly good effort, or good reading, or good behaviour or whatever.
Amazingly enough (and I might have said this before) our kids set a school record in Christmas term by ALL having one. Winners in years 5, 2 and R.
Where I have a problem is when you come over time to realize that the Oscars have to be given to every kid in the class. So now the annoying kid in Yr 5 has won the Oscar for 'good attendance'...
And last week someone else got a small 'reward' from the teacher ( just a box of pencils or something) for handing in their homework!
My kids ALWAYS hand in their homework because that is what they are expected to do. It's not something you should get rewards for!
They never, ever get any form of reprimand for NOT handing anything in - so Flo is asking why she should bother.
"Nothing ever happens if you don't do it"
Make syou wonder quite what the point of doing things properly is sometimes.
How can you give one child who's never 'won' anything a Special Mention for 'having nice hair' or something - just so they get a prize?
Mind you, I think I have this opinion about most major award ceremonies!!
Every year now we have to have, for instance, the 'John Peel Award for A Lifetime of Outstanding Contribution to Music'. Very worthy, and perhaps brought in ten years ago when I dunno, say Paul McCartney got the deserved recognition or something.
But now they have to look for someone to give the award to, which undermines the achievement of those that won it on merit.
Like the invention programme for instance I saw on TV a year or so ago. Three private individuals with new inventions presented to an audience who vote for the best by phoning in, the winner getting some investment and maybe a production contract. Great idea.
Week 1 - three excellent ideas (the three that probly inspired the idea), each one getting over 50,000 votes.
Week 6 - three stupid crap ideas not getting 10,000 votes between them. But one still has to win, therefore being judged as better than those that didn't win in Week 1.
So I was a bit sceptical of the brilliant, shining Cut And Paste reports when I went to talk to the three class teachers this evening. Seems that all my kids are 'an absolute joy to teach' and that the only challenge is 'giving them work to do that pushes them'. It seems the teacher shave 'never taught such amazing' children before and wish they had 'a whole class full of [whoever]'. There are all polite, quiet, respectful, well above average, complimentary, helpful etc etc
Like everyone else's kids then.
I don't want them to be special of course, but I just want the staff to be able to be honest. That's more helpful in the long term to everyone.
God forbid we should live in a society where everyone was perfect and encouraged to be happy as themselves...
Imagine a world without Microsoft.
We're bringing the company into land in that unfamilar desert.
Its called Adobe...
I got another CV today, through the post at work.
Done in Word.
Times New Roman.
With double spaces at the beginning of each sentence.
And spell checked by the computer, that doesn't pick up, for instance, when the word 'map' is spelled 'mat'.
For a job in graphics, working with layout and desktop publishing?
Hello?