My Daducation

Posts Tagged ‘teaching’

I can remember when I was a kid my parents had the curious obsession with assigning chores to me and my brother and sister. They tried different processes to dole out chores, starting with a list and working their way to my personal favorite, the “Job Jar.” This was a jar that had slips of paper, each containing a job, all thrown in. You had to reach in and grab a slip and perform that job. I can remember my own little tricks to try to get the best jobs, although I was rarely successful because all the jobs basically sucked.

My oldest son has reached the age where he needs to become responsible for doing his own chores. While certain tasks were always his, such as cleaning his room or putting his clothes in the laundry, he never had to do jobs that were for the household in general. While he is a sweet boy, I would never confuse with him someone that looks out for the needs of the household.

In a effort to make it more interesting, my wife offered to let him create a chart of chores he could do, and as a bonus she allowed him to assign allowances to each chore. If he did the job he got paid.

Shortly after the chart was created and placed on the refrigerator, a curious thing happened……he completely forgot about it.

So, as parents do, whenever an opportunity came for him to perform a chore on his chart we reminded him of it.

“Do I have to?” he would ask.

“Yes,” we would say.

He would proceed to grumble under his breath, a talent learned from his mother, while he did the chore. Of course, saying he did a good job with the chore is like saying Britney Spears did a good job raising her kids. Which leads to the next problem.

“That needs to be done again,” I tell him as he emerges from making his bed.

“Why?” he asks.

“Because ‘making the bed’ means actually making it look like no one slept in it. Yours looks like you wrestled a monkey on it. I’m not paying fifty cents for THAT,” I inform him.

“Fine, but I want a dollar because I did it twice,”  he says.

I explain to him that he doesn’t get paid for a job done poorly. He asks me what Mom takes away when I don’t do what she asks. I tell him to mind his own business.

So the chart continues to sit on the refrigerator, only garnering interest whenever the new Lego catalog arrives each month. Like a junkie, he immediately starts hitting me up for cash. I point to the job chart. He bites his lower lip and begins to try to find an easy job. Reminds me of someone…..

Anyway, we have started working out the kinks in our household version of a “Plan To Create Jobs.” While I know the folks in Washington think they know how to create jobs, they have nothing on me. I’ve got a list of tedious crap a mile long. It’s not that I don’t like doing them and think someone else should……well, maybe it is. It also has to do with that fact that he might actually learn something by doing them. He might gain a new respect for how much good ole Mom and Dad do for the family.

I believe our eight-year-old will come around and realize there is no use fighting it. He knows we want to him to learn responsibility. He knows we want him to learn accountibility. He knows I don’t like changing the litterbox.

On a more positive note, the little brother seems to have an interest in helping with chores. But, man, his prices are high!

When I was a kid I went to Kindergarten pretty much as a blank slate. I knew some letters and numbers, but I certainly wasn’t a speller and I couldn’t write my name. It seems however that I must have graduated to first grade relatively unscathed as I recall. I don’t remember my mother crying about my lack of Kindergarten knowledge. She usually cried about other things, probably having to do with my existence.

Anyway, fast forward to my senior year, where I have apparently passed the public school’s standard to graduate from high school and proceed to college. Not that the public school standard was that high in the first place. By then I could spell my name and do basic math, so I guess I was good to go. They handed me my diploma and asked me never to come back. I can’t say my Kindergarten experience impacted me in any way. Maturity was never my strong suit anyway.

So fast-forward again to my parenting years. As our first-born neared the age required for him to start school, my wife began to go through the enrollment process. She reports her findings pretty quickly.

“He needs to know ALL of his letters and ALL of his numbers,” she says.

“Really? That’s a lot of numbers. He’s only five,” I say.

“No, I mean one through ten, wiseguy,” she says, ” I doubt you even know all your numbers.”

” Hmmm. Does he know them?” I ask.

“He knows his numbers. We will have to go through his letters and see what we need to work on.”

“Uh OK,” I respond.

“He also needs to know how to write his name. And his address. And phone number. And his geometry. And cutting.”

“Ummm. OK. How about Linear Algebra?” I ask. “What exactly are they planning on teaching him when he gets there?”

“I’m still working on that,” she says.

So we put the five-year-old through his pre-Kindergarten paces, making sure he is well versed in the fine art of writing his name, address, phone number and numbers. He is also skilled in the art of naming his shapes (including the parallelogram) and cutting out shapes.  He appears to be ready to go. If anything I now know all that stuff as well. I thank my wife for her help.

So we decide to go to the enrollment open house at the school. It is a madhouse. There are people everywhere. Then I realize we are standing in line for the refreshments.

We make our way to the Kindergarten area, where we get the opportunity to speak with the teachers. We are given a stack of papers we are to fill out. They are in Spanish. We realize we are in the wrong line again.

Finally we get our chance to speak with the teachers. She asks her round of questions. Our answers seem to be correct. I know this because she hasn’t asked me to leave yet. We finally get to ask ours.

“What exactly will they be learning in Kindergarten?” I ask.

“Spanish,” she replies. And she is serious.

She chooses not to elaborate after this. We suddenly have an urge to be in another room at that moment. We thank her for her time and quickly make our escape.

Oh well. Home school, here we come.