Anonymous wrote:Tiger mom here. Music lessons take 45 minutes a week and maybe an hour of practice - kids choose the instruments. The ballet, which they love, takes an hour. Same for Sun school. We're a bilingual family with immigrant roots, but not a fully bi-literate family. So we take the kids to weekend heritage language lessons, mainly they can learn to read and write the "foreign" language we all speak decently. Their teachers rock.

I'm not remotely impressed with the DCPS humanities curriculum, particularly for social studies. Math, science and fine arts are decent, but not humanities, at least compared to my paraochial schools in the 70s and 80s. Mine hardly learn a thing about world cultures or US history at their school, other than about the Civil Rights Movement during Black History Month. So, yea, we take them to museums and teach them some geography, including flag identification when the Olympics is on TV.

Horrors!

Anonymous wrote:Identify all the goals you want. The fact remains that DCPS teaches to the test, and focuses on bringing up the bottom. Your kid, however bright and motivated, is on a conveyor belt, even in JKLM, at Oyster, Brent etc.

That's why outside enrichment is key.

Anonymous wrote:Individualized learning goals?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If you don't think that children doing work outside of school is necessary, then you are almost certainly very wealthy / privileged or very poor.

The rest of us do variations of what the woman you've labelled a tiger mom does -- music lessons, drama / dance, sports, religious instruction and perhaps a foreign language.

Maybe not all of those things every year or every month -- some activities are summer things for us -- but none strike me as outside the realm of normal, middle class stuff.

There’s nothing odd about any of the activities. What’s ‘tiger’ is doing 6+ hours of outside instruction each week, particularly when that doesn’t include sports games, instrument practice, or the humanities enrichment activities. Her child must have little downtime, weekdays or weekend.

And why do you care?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If you don't think that children doing work outside of school is necessary, then you are almost certainly very wealthy / privileged or very poor.

The rest of us do variations of what the woman you've labelled a tiger mom does -- music lessons, drama / dance, sports, religious instruction and perhaps a foreign language.

Maybe not all of those things every year or every month -- some activities are summer things for us -- but none strike me as outside the realm of normal, middle class stuff.

There’s nothing odd about any of the activities. What’s ‘tiger’ is doing 6+ hours of outside instruction each week, particularly when that doesn’t include sports games, instrument practice, or the humanities enrichment activities. Her child must have little downtime, weekdays or weekend.

Anonymous wrote:If you don't think that children doing work outside of school is necessary, then you are almost certainly very wealthy / privileged or very poor.

The rest of us do variations of what the woman you've labelled a tiger mom does -- music lessons, drama / dance, sports, religious instruction and perhaps a foreign language.

Maybe not all of those things every year or every month -- some activities are summer things for us -- but none strike me as outside the realm of normal, middle class stuff.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It is still early in the year with a new 2nd grade teacher but, I am starting to wonder if my kid is just blending in with the crowd. He doesn't get in trouble, gets good- but non specific- reports. There have been some discipline problems in the class room - but my child has not been involved.

By when should a teacher know the kids well enough to set individualized learning goals for them?

Public schools are like this almost everywhere. This helps explain why we send our children to a good Sunday school, weekend language immersion classes supported by an excellent teaching team, guitar lessons with a great teacher, ballet lessons with a wonderful teacher etc. We also set our own individualized learning goals for them in the sense that we supplement extensively outside the weak DCPS social studies curriculum by taking the kids to events geared at teaching American history Mt. Vernon, national parks, the American History Smithsonian museum and so forth.

I see my kids' DCPS classroom experiences as less than half the learning puzzle (and they attend an overwhelmingly high SES DCPS). More seems unrealistic.

A tiger has escaped from the zoo.

This is not Tiger Momming! This is just normal IMO. Come on - taking them to museums? Ballet? Tiger would be...hours of extra math tutoring outside of school on weekdays, when the kid is already advanced, or something.

That sounds exactly like what this mom is doing - filling up all available time with classes and "educational" activities.

taking kid to museum once a month = normal
"supplement extensively outside the weak DCPS" curriculum, sunday school, weekend language school, music lessons, AND dance lessons = tiger

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It is still early in the year with a new 2nd grade teacher but, I am starting to wonder if my kid is just blending in with the crowd. He doesn't get in trouble, gets good- but non specific- reports. There have been some discipline problems in the class room - but my child has not been involved.

By when should a teacher know the kids well enough to set individualized learning goals for them?

Public schools are like this almost everywhere. This helps explain why we send our children to a good Sunday school, weekend language immersion classes supported by an excellent teaching team, guitar lessons with a great teacher, ballet lessons with a wonderful teacher etc. We also set our own individualized learning goals for them in the sense that we supplement extensively outside the weak DCPS social studies curriculum by taking the kids to events geared at teaching American history Mt. Vernon, national parks, the American History Smithsonian museum and so forth.

I see my kids' DCPS classroom experiences as less than half the learning puzzle (and they attend an overwhelmingly high SES DCPS). More seems unrealistic.

A tiger has escaped from the zoo.

This is not Tiger Momming! This is just normal IMO. Come on - taking them to museums? Ballet? Tiger would be...hours of extra math tutoring outside of school on weekdays, when the kid is already advanced, or something.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It is still early in the year with a new 2nd grade teacher but, I am starting to wonder if my kid is just blending in with the crowd. He doesn't get in trouble, gets good- but non specific- reports. There have been some discipline problems in the class room - but my child has not been involved.

By when should a teacher know the kids well enough to set individualized learning goals for them?

Public schools are like this almost everywhere. This helps explain why we send our children to a good Sunday school, weekend language immersion classes supported by an excellent teaching team, guitar lessons with a great teacher, ballet lessons with a wonderful teacher etc. We also set our own individualized learning goals for them in the sense that we supplement extensively outside the weak DCPS social studies curriculum by taking the kids to events geared at teaching American history Mt. Vernon, national parks, the American History Smithsonian museum and so forth.

I see my kids' DCPS classroom experiences as less than half the learning puzzle (and they attend an overwhelmingly high SES DCPS). More seems unrealistic.

A tiger has escaped from the zoo.