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To protect kids, don’t send report cards home on Fridays

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Re: To protect kids, don’t send report cards home on Fridays

#171
post #3

I don't think the actual study[1] takes the kind of correlation=causation approach this snippet does. That said ... > In addition to distributing report cards earlier in the week, schools could consider including messaging to help prevent corporal punishment that crosses the line into abuse. But that’s a sticky issue in Florida, where some counties still allow corporal punishment in public schools. (Florida’s not alo…

Corporal != Abuse. I was a teacher. Kids were not turning in homework. I gave out about 15 minutes worth of it because independant practice is important. Most kids would just not do it. So I instituted a 5 push up policy. You did 5 push ups for every day in a row you did not turn it homework. So your third day would have been 15 push ups. It worked great. Only three or so kids per class would skip homework, and few k…

Hmm, I'm not sure this is as good of an example as you think it is. If the only way to get kids to do their homework was to essentially threaten them with physical "labor" (obviously 5 push-ups isn't much) it definitely feels like there may be larger issues at play.

Re: To protect kids, don’t send report cards home on Fridays

#172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, yes, for two reasons. Firstly, because you'll be beaten on (say) wednesday night, rather then friday night and potentially also saturday morning, saturday night, sunday morning and sunday night. Secondly, because you'll be beaten less severely, for fear that there might be a teacher who cares enough to notice if you show up thursday with bruises and a limp.

Bruses and limps don't vansish afet Sundays service. Anything requring a doctor to look at is going to last days. I don't think there is any evidence that changing the day will change the outcome. In fact. If you randomized the day schools sent this info then you will probably keep this stat hidden. Seems like the solution is to hold parents who abuse their children accountable.

You said abso-fucking-lutely nothing, douchebag.

Is what I would have said.

Re: To protect kids, don’t send report cards home on Fridays

#173
post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Corporal != Abuse. I was a teacher. Kids were not turning in homework. I gave out about 15 minutes worth of it because independant practice is important. Most kids would just not do it. So I instituted a 5 push up policy. You did 5 push ups for every day in a row you did not turn it homework. So your third day would have been 15 push ups. It worked great. Only three or so kids per class would skip homework, and few k…

Hmm, I'm not sure this is as good of an example as you think it is. If the only way to get kids to do their homework was to essentially threaten them with physical "labor" (obviously 5 push-ups isn't much) it definitely feels like there may be larger issues at play.

Oh, for sure. The larger issues are all the issues that come with being in a poor, inner-city school where there are no real examples of how doing well in school could actually help one's life. Where gangs, violence, and going to prison or jail is assumed to be normal. I had students confused by the idea I've never been arrested and where all the adults in their family (including grandparents) are members of gangs. At this particular school, 4% would go onto any post secondary education. Less than 1% would attain a four year degree. The (majority of) students and their families had zero buy in for school meaning much of anything.

Re: To protect kids, don’t send report cards home on Fridays

#174
post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tangential but reading this thread I feel many words have apparently changed meaning. Parent mentions that receiving the notifications are 'agonizing'. Another post in this thread calls it 'horrible' According to the Cambridge dictionary agonizing means: 'causing extreme physical or mental pain' or 'causing extreme worry'. Horrible means 'very bad unpleasant or disgusting'. These are very strong words, when I hear ag…

Cambridge English dicctionary has “causing extreme worry” as the 2nd definition of “agonizing”: https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/agonizin... An example they give for this definition of the word is: “She went through an agonizing few weeks waiting for the test results.” — which is how the GP used it.

You are not wrong, but I think the 'test results' in the example refer to medical testing for a serious disease, and not a school test.

Re: To protect kids, don’t send report cards home on Fridays

#175
It’s rather simple. Abusers are conscious of what they’re doing. They think if they abuse their child during the week they’re more likely to get caught because the effects of the abuse (physical and emotional) are still fresh the next day. If they do the abusing on Friday night, by Monday they think they have much less likelihood of getting caught.

This may actually work a few times. But eventually they go too far.

Re: To protect kids, don’t send report cards home on Fridays

#176

Somewhat related, there was another article this week that mentioned kids (and parents) now get notifications sent over the phone of their grades: https://www.vox.com/first-person/2019/1/10/18174263/anxiety-... “As the retreat group started to tell me more about why they felt such a collective sense of stress and pressure, a few major themes emerged. All of them said they voluntarily get their grades pushed to their…

Yeah, I'm in high school right now and they have this system. They also had the same in middle school. There's no way this instant feedback system is mentally healthy. Also, a lot of times, teachers push a 0 as a placeholder grade and parents aren't in the classroom, so they see that and flip out. Also, with the notification system, both parents and students see each assignment grade in a bubble, so it affects them a…

Which SIS are you using?

Re: To protect kids, don’t send report cards home on Fridays

#177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it is a shame to give a student a D or F in some building-block subject, then pass them on to the next level. There should be two grades: "ready for the next step" and "not ready". If a student struggles identifying nouns and verbs, it's probably not useful to push them on to prepositions or all the forms of participles. If you haven't memorized times tables up to 5x5, moving on to 12x12 might not be wise. On…

It is expensive but not doing it seems expensive as well, just not in the education budget. One of the promises of IT in the classroom was to help with these sort of problems but it doesn't seem to have delivered.

That's because IT isn't "properly trained in the nuance of teaching."

There's so much dissonant crap in teaching that nobody really knows exactly what the days pedagogy is. And AB testing is right out. So what do you do? You do the minimum effort to make sure the state or feds don't cut your funding.

Its an ugly spiral, and the students suffer.

Re: To protect kids, don’t send report cards home on Fridays

#178

Somewhat related, there was another article this week that mentioned kids (and parents) now get notifications sent over the phone of their grades: https://www.vox.com/first-person/2019/1/10/18174263/anxiety-... “As the retreat group started to tell me more about why they felt such a collective sense of stress and pressure, a few major themes emerged. All of them said they voluntarily get their grades pushed to their…

Yeah, I'm in high school right now and they have this system. They also had the same in middle school. There's no way this instant feedback system is mentally healthy. Also, a lot of times, teachers push a 0 as a placeholder grade and parents aren't in the classroom, so they see that and flip out. Also, with the notification system, both parents and students see each assignment grade in a bubble, so it affects them a…

But why send the grades (real or invented, it doesn’t matter) to students’ and parents’ phones? Who does that help? Does it help the students? Apparently not, because it looks like it makes them more anxious. Does it help the parents? It probably only helps those “tiger” moms and dads who are toxic anyway, I honestely think a parent shouldn’t care about the intrinsic details of his kids grades and day-to-day activity at school, it only causes more anxiety for said kids as it makes them even more nervous and risk-averse.

And on a more general note, how did we manage to screw this up? (I’m talking about people in my generation, late-20s, 30s, early 40s). Why are our kids anxious? Why do they kill themselves? Why do I hear of a close friend’s niece cutting herself when she’s only 12? We weren’t like that, at least not at this magnitude/level, so the screw-up is on us.

Re: To protect kids, don’t send report cards home on Fridays

#179
post #71
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All punishment results in emotional injury. That's what punishment means...

Of course. And punishment tends to produce damaged people, who hate themselves because they're bad. Because, you know, they must be bad, because they've been punished. And because they're bad, and hate themselves, they take it out on others, whenever they can get away with it. So it's a recursive cycle of punishment.

"In a review of research on emotions and moral development, the psychologist Nancy Eisenberg suggests that shame emerges when parents express anger, withdraw their love, or try to assert their power through threats of punishment: Children may begin to believe that they are bad people. Fearing this effect, some parents fail to exercise discipline at all, which can hinder the development of strong moral standards."

Here is a very good read: Raising a Moral Child. https://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/12/opinion/sunday/raising-a-...

Re: To protect kids, don’t send report cards home on Fridays

#180

what is it report card? when i was young we had books with grades we were taking home every day, so parents could follow progress and see our grades every day, nowadays grades are published online do parents can check them whenever they want is this another case of some archaic american technology?

American schools do that as well to varying degrees. In addition to that, they send out cumulative grades every semester or half semester. In theory, these grades should not be a surprise, but parents don't always follow the daily grades their child gets; particularly those parents which might be abusive.
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