Downfall of Math in America

I am back in high school and, for once, it’s not my son’s fault. The kids had yesterday off because … the teachers weren’t at school. I don’t know why there wasn’t school yesterday, there just wasn’t. In the case of my son doing his online homeschooling, a teacher holiday shouldn’t make much of a difference. He’s behind on his classes. The powers that be, meaning Hubby, decreed The Boy was permitted to take advantage of the day off and left Thursday night to spend some time with a friend and … I expect him back sometime today so I can help him (nag, nag) get caught up in school. He has a big project that shouldn’t be big, but it is because he didn’t do any of the prep work assigned during the last five lessons that would make this just the last step. No, he has six assignments rolled up into one now.

The Girl, is caught up with her school work. I would love to say that’s the advantage to her being in a regular high school, but it’s just the way she is. To be a responsible little senior, she’s taking online ACT practice tests. Yay! And she keeps having trouble with one type of problem that comes up in math. Oh. Not to be thwarted, she Googled it. That didn’t help. Damn. Okay, fine, time to be the mom.

I sat her down and asked what kind of math problem it was, praying it wasn’t Trigonometry because I doubt I remember that, and trusting it wasn’t Calculus because I don’t remember her taking it and I really don’t remember that. She didn’t want to talk about it.

Um, what?

Why didn’t she want to use me and instead keep trying to figure it out by looking at online resources? It was embarrassing. How the hell is math embarrassing? Yeah, ask that to a teenage girl who introduced me to the Ackles Ass Equation. She didn’t blush then. Fine, pushing that aside, what was embarrassing about this particular math problem? It couldn’t be bad, it was on an ACT practice test.

Sigh.

A while later, it turns out it’s something she should have known for a long time and didn’t master then. Factoring. YAY! I can factor, I remember that! So I sat her down and showed her how to do the problem on her test. Just having a person show her instead of reading it on a website seemed to make the difference. Until Hubby got involved. The problem was find the largest common factor between three numbers. I had her completely factor all three. It’s not difficult, and it doesn’t have to take a long time.  It does the job, and The Girl understood it.

But there are shortcuts. Hubby thought of three in seconds and muddied the waters trying to let her use her time more efficiently. I shooed him away and showed her how to do it again without any shortcuts. (They rely on tricks and having an inherent understanding of math. I love my little girl, but math isn’t her strength. She has to do things the long way and write it all out or there’s little chance she’ll get it right.)

Now I’ve sent her off to take another ACT practice test, because that’s what every overachiever 17-year-old girl wants to do with her Saturday. Then I’ll let her spend the rest of the day watching Adventure Time, if she’s inclined to. I hope so, that way I can guilt her into to taking another practice test tomorrow.

Back To School - Kids vs Cat.

The kids are back in school and even Darth Jingles is smarter than me: she’s staying away from this mess.

I should be thrilled my teenagers are now spending most of every weekday being someone else’s problem. That’s how it should be, not how it is. First, The Girl started her senior year the Wednesday before last. Yay! It’s almost over, just one more year, and she has mostly fun classes so less stress. Dream on. Her schedule was messed up. We fixed it. She discovered all the kids in her Introduction to Statistics class were morons, then discovered the same about the kids in her Wildlife Biology class. Apparently someone had to ask how to spell “gills.” That rant lasted … actually it’s still going on.  I get texts throughout the day as she tells me things she can’t say in class in the interest of polite society/not getting beat in the hall. (She’s a snarky little thing but knows when to rein it in. Usually.)

With The Girl being back in school, we’re faced with her usual last minute catastrophes. I would have thought at some point in the last 17 years, she would have learned the concept of “advance notice.” Alas, this is not the case. We still get her panicked race to our room at 11 pm to tell us she needs something for class and she it needs tomorrow. When did she learn of the requirement? At least two days previously, but we still have to drag that gem out of her. How does this apocalyptic event change our lives? We have to listen to her whine when we refuse to go to Walmart in the middle of the night, praying they have exactly what she needs. No, she can wait until after school and we’ll take her to go get whatever it is. I don’t do Walmart. Ever. Yes, that means she won’t have it for class – as was specifically required. Tell us in advance next time. We fix that problem and three days later repeat the exact same scenario. It’s amazing.

That’s The Girl, her little brother is very different. When The Boy needed something for school, he mumbled it upon walking through the door (that’s his version of telling us) and then never mentioned it again. He could be docked points class after class for having a loose-leaf binder instead of a spiral notebook or something inane like that, but we wouldn’t know until Parent-Teacher Conferences rolled around. Sigh.

The Boy started school last Monday, several days after his sister. A reminder: near the end of third term last year we switched him to an online/home school. I’m his “Learning Coach,” a title I desperately wanted to pass on to Hubby this year. He declined. The good part about this is there’s no more mumbling of things as he walks in the door. I know (generally) what he needs to do and what he needs in order to do it. Unfortunately his teachers don’t always copy me in their emails to him, and there’s no way he’s volunteering information, so there’s still that.

The Boy’s schedule is also messed up and I’m having some trouble getting that sorted. Getting him to go to bed at a reasonable hour, get up in time for his lessons, and give up video games during the day is fine. So far. Getting him to give up his 2 hour mid-afternoon nap is already becoming a problem. Let the battle of wills begin!

That being said, I’ve already been outsmarted by Hubby (he’s not The Boy’s “Learning Coach), and Darth Jingles (she’s refused to come in until this whole “beginning of school” thing gets straightened out and her children calm down), so I’m concerned about this mid-day nap dilemma. Is it sad that I looked over his schedule and penciled in when he can take a nap? I go check to make sure he gets up again to finish his work. That feels like giving in. Now I have to wake him up twice a day when I’m already tired of doing it once. Maybe he’ll ease out of it. (Last night he fell asleep on the rug in front of the refrigerator after going downstairs for a midnight snack. Yeah, he’s going to give up his mid-day naps, sure.)

All right, now that we have that sorted out, the kids finished their first week and survived, the cat came home over the weekend. The little brat usually is very sensitive to the needs of her children. She snuggles with them when they’re sick. She sleeps with them when they’re upset. But she cleared out when they endured their first week of school. In high school – she was there for them in junior high. Brat.

Jingles came home bearing a gift – a dead mouse. This is a little unusual, she doesn’t bring her playmates home with her. Whatever. We gave her big smiles and ‘good kitty’ assurances from afar. The Girl made sure she turned away before adding ‘ewww!’ We gave her tuna so the kids wouldn’t complain about her having ‘mouse breath,’ hopefully that won’t encourage her to keep bringing home dead vermin. Jingles later gave her boy lots of loves, tucked her girl in each night over the weekend before prowling the house. She checked in on her boy throughout the night to make sure he was doing okay with his video games then settled down when he hit his curfew. You know, being cat-like.

 She woke me up at 3am and then Hubby with demands for aggressive petting. Then she finally snuggled down between us and stretched to push us both to the edges of our bed. She’s a smallish cat so that was a remarkable feat.

And Monday morning, she was off to go play like nothing happened. Like she wasn’t MIA for five days straight while the kids were having a rough time in school. Like she didn’t bend the house to her will all weekend (which is as it should be in her mind). Nope, just business as usual. We’ll see if she’s home before the weekend or if the threat of homework will somehow keep the cat at bay.

A Word on Cell Phones in Schools

I used to work for a cell phone provider. I’m not saying which one. A big one. It’s not relevant. The point is: I’m somewhat addicted to smart phones. But that’s not the point of this particular blog. My purpose here is to get as many people as I can to face-palm. If you don’t know what that is, see above. I prefer the Picard version. I’m a die hard Star Trek Next Generation fan. Sorry.

Okay, so the kids prior to this year went to a charter school. The policy on cell phones was simple: No. And it was enforced. For those who aren’t familiar with the bizarre world of charter schools, they’re public schools that act like private schools. You have to apply, they get a little bit of state funds so they have to obey certain rules, but only a few of them. Because of the ‘little bit of state funds’ thing, two things happen: they don’t charge tuition like private schools, and they’re always begging for volunteers and grants. Ours manages not to be broke.

This year, The Boy is still in the charter school, The Girl is in a public high school. We’re being gradually reminded why we put the kids in a charter school to begin with. The public school system is ridiculous.

At the beginning of the school year, I checked the cell phone and electronics policy at The Girl’s high school. It’s a little complex. The school district has a ‘no cell phones’ policy, specifically cell phones with a camera. If you already have a blanket policy on cell phones, why go further to eliminate a specific type? It’s like saying they don’t like dogs, but they really don’t like dogs with four legs.

The school has taken the school district’s policy and acknowledged that they follow all district policies and guidelines. And @xxx is the school’s Twitter feed, please sign up to follow school pride events*. (*Please note that Tweets may be sent at times throughout the day so make sure your phone is on vibrate and only check the feed between classes or during lunch.)

A curious position, but sure. So, The Girl takes her phone to school every day. Thankfully. Her AP History teacher had the class do projects. Everyone taped their papers to the board, then he had the class take out their cell phones and take pictures of each paper so they would have a copy to critique.

Um…aren’t cell phones, and phones with cameras in particular, against district and therefore school policy? The Girl knew this, of course, and shook her head with silent laughter as she obediently went from paper to paper taking pictures. She waited until she got home to rant. (What if someone didn’t have a phone? Or the phone didn’t have a camera? Or if the battery died?)

Is she going to get her assignments via Twitter next? I wouldn’t be surprised. (Face-palm)

Welcome to Hell, I mean High School

My oldest is in tenth grade. Where I grew up, ninth graders were shoved in with the rest of high school, but not here. Here they’re with seventh and eighth graders, which means they start high school before they’re in high school. The powers that be are rethinking that. It’s a new idea here and slow to catch on. I think the resistance is from overprotective parents not wanting to really admit a fourteen-year-old is a teenager and send them off with all the ‘big kids.’ I have a thirteen year old too. He’s a big kid, dump him in the deep end.

It doesn’t matter. What does matter is that my baby girl (AKA "The Girl" to all of you) is genuinely in high school now by anyone’s definition. She’s not impressed. Although I am hearing a different sort of rant from her nowadays.

First there’s the "don't they know to walk on the right?" Actually, her school is brand new, just rebuilt so it can hold the new ninth graders. So . . . no. Almost a third of the kids there don’t know to walk on the right because they don’t drive. But wait, they grew up in – well the majority of the world that drives on the right, so shouldn’t they have clued in to walk on the right by now? No. Apparently not, we'll leave it at that.

Second, remember I went off a while ago about teenage boys being allergic to soap? It’s not limited to thirteen-year-olds, unfortunately. Enough said. 

Third, she’s not impressed with others of her own gender either. I tuned out as she went on (and on and on) questioning why a girl who wants to play violin would get her nails done and have them so long she can’t actually play. Or why another would take swimming but not realize she might need a swimsuit she can actually swim in without the top coming off. Personally I’m amazed they’re allowing two-piece suits in a co-ed swim class, but hey, what do I know?

Also, she doesn't understand how anyone can find Latin hard. Plus now she can take Honors and AP classes and, again, she’s flummoxed why kids are whining about it being difficult or time consuming.

And she was asked out in her first week of school. By text message. I’m not kidding. Her immediate response was to text back and ask if he really just asked her out via text, then to ask if he breaks up via Facebook. He didn’t get it. Bit of a mixed bag on that one. She’s flattered, yet annoyed. And in giggles because Hubby is having a meltdown.

The Girl’s fifteen, we’re not letting her date yet. In truth, she can handle group dates now, she’s mature enough. Boys her age aren’t though and we need to protect them from her snarky attitude and her father’s growing reach-for-a-rifle paranoia. He needs another year to psych himself up for this. Hubby’s just not ready.