[geeks] Education (was: Mainframe on eBay)

[sammy ominsky]

On Sep 21, 2005, at 23:19, William Enestvedt wrote:

> The oldest on started first grade this year, and she's already reached
> most of the goals for the year's curriculum.

That's fantastic.

> However, the school
> provides a second teacher in her classroom to help out the  
> mainstreamed
> kid with a visual handicap...

It sounds like your kid is in the right school then.  My son started  
first grade last year, the youngest in his class, already able to  
read and write in two languages, and doing multiplication and  
division in his head.  I'm not saying that to brag, but as a prelude  
to the point, which is that when I told his teacher that he could do  
those things, and asked if she could try to challenge him a bit, she  
said no.  She said that eventually she'd give him "enrichment sheets"  
to do, but in the meantime she'd rather he did the same work the rest  
of the class was doing.

The enrichment sheets, by the way, were a joke.  Needless to say I  
supplemented what he got in school with some real education, and he's  
certainly challenged now that we've moved to a different country and  
doing second grade in a language he doesn't fully understand.  Now  
he's got different problems, though.  Apparently, being the youngest  
in the class, he's a target for the class bully.  I'm not sure what  
advice to give him or what to do about it.  Thoughts?

(By the way, as a dad, I'm allowed to brag a bit, so I will...  As  
new immigrants, the kids get a few hours a week of intensive language  
study, and he's already moved up to the same level as his 4th-grade  
sister :))

---sambo