• buying 2 sets of books = buying 2 sets of books, one set via taxes, one set via American Express payments to Amazon.com

• hiring the best tutors = KUMON

• parents buy 2 sets of books

• hiring the best tutors' = KUMON

• spending $300 on a weekend seminar = writing Kitchen Table Math so I can learn math & how to teach it from Carolyn & the resident KTM Math Brains

• buying 2 sets of books = buying 2 sets of books, one set via taxes, one set via American Express payment to Amazon.com

Good thing I live in America.

In place of 'hiring the best tutors' I've put my kid in KUMON; in place of spending $300 on a weekend seminar I'm writing Kitchen Table Math, where I learn math & how to teach math from Carolyn & our KTM regulars. Same difference.

• parents get on waiting lists for the best tutors

• parents buy 2 sets of books

• parents pay $300 to attend 30 hours of weekend training so they can understand changes in math instruction (now there's a potential revenue stream the folks at EVERYDAY MATH haven't thought of)

OK, I know I'm supposed to be typing Steve's algebra lessons into Equation Editor so mere mortals like me can read them, and doing the same for my own Comment for Carolyn's Sticking Points post.

Plus I've probably got a civil servant or two who need bullying this afternoon (where does David Allen say to put 'bully civil servants' on the Master List?)

But all of that can wait!

BECAUSE FIRST I HAVE TO POST MY SINGAPORE PARENT-SLAVE MATERIAL!



don't encourage me

brief pause for Character Analysis

My mom used to always say something funny.

She is stubborn as a mule, and she used to say, 'I can be led, but I can't be pushed.'

That's me to the nth.

I can be led. In fact, I like to be led; I make a good second in command.

But don't push me.

Until last night, I hadn't thought of myself, not consciously, as a person who gets her way by bullying civil servants. Sure, I was willing to raise holy he** if I thought my kid was being hurt. But I hadn't thought of this as bullying civil servants. Given the relative unequalness of the match — me against an entire school district — it seemed more like.....um........

hmm. The only image coming to mind is Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid deciding to shoot it out with the entire Mexican Army.

Sure, you do it. They're out there shooting at you, you're inside your cave bleeding to death, so what the hell? You go down fighting.

I'm joking.

Anyways, now that ktm guest has put it this way I'm thinking......bullying civil servants.

Bullying civil servants to get my way.

yes

I like it!

I want to get my way!

Until last night, I didn't know I was the bully.

I thought I was the helpless parent-victim getting clobbered by fuzzy math & ZERO teaching to mastery.

If I can be the bully and get my way — THAT IS FANTASTIC NEWS!

YAY, ME!

Now all I need is somebody to tell me who I need to bully to get Direct Instruction, Formative Assessment, and Teaching to Mastery established as the formal educational policy for the Irvington Union Free School District.



speaking of getting my way

This is funny.

We're back at tennis lessons, and I ran into the mom I always see there who has a daughter in Mrs. Roth's class, and who's had the same view of her we had (and knew other parents in our boat as well.)

She said, 'You guys must have really done someting. Mrs. Roth is completely different. All the girls who didn't like her love her now.'

That's what Christopher's been hearing, too.

His chums are constantly telling him, 'Mrs. Roth's so much nicer now that you're gone. She's so much happier.'

He's been hearing this every day, poor thing.

I finally told him, 'Mrs. Roth's not nicer because you're gone. Mrs. Roth is nicer because the principal told her to be nicer.' Then I told him not to be saying this to all the other kids. It's time for them to beat each other up about who has a crush on who. Either that, or just resume milling around randomly calling each other names like they used to.

This is my cue to say again how much we like our principal, Scott Fried. I think I mentioned that Ed said, after our meeting about Mrs. Roth, 'He handled the situation perfectly.' I quote that because Ed's been an administrator for so long himself.

After the meeting, Scott made the call the next day.

Christopher has been moved to a teacher — Mrs. Kozak — who is lovely, and who seems to be making a special effort to get him perked up and de-traumatized. It's working. Christopher comes home every day and reads his notes from her class out loud to me! Plus Mrs. Kozak is teaching spelling, grammar, and writing-as-a-process; they write drafts under supervision, get comments on their drafts, then revise. She even told Christopher he has to come in for extra help with his handwriting. Glory Hallelujah.

Another thing: from a distance, it appears that Mr. Fried worked well with Mrs. Roth. The fact that children who were unhappy in her class now have no complaints at all is very impressive.

Seeing as how Irvington teachers & perhaps administrators may be reading this site, I'll say one thing more.

Other parents have been told, by their children, that Mrs. Roth typically chooses one child to pick on.

A child in Mrs. Roth's class has told Christopher that he has become Mrs. Roth's target now that Christopher is gone.

I don't know whether that's true.

But I imagine Mr. Fried is keeping an eye on the situation.



next up

So that was the story at tennis.

Next thing, I heard from my friend J., who called to chat. We hadn't talked since summer. One thing led to another, and she told me Christopher had been called a 'BOCY' at school. She was aghast.

I already knew Christopher had been called a BOCY, and, frankly, I don't care. The kid who called him a BOCY is one of his best friends, and the two of them are going to have to figure it out themselves.

I did mention to Scott that he may want to take a look at how much BOCY-calling is going on, if only because Andrew will be there next year, which means IMS is going to have some INTENSE BOCY BEHAVIOR HAPPENING ON A DAILY BASIS.

Anyways, I already knew about the BOCY busienss, but it turned out J. didn't know that her own son had been called the n-word.

Her son told Christopher about it, which is how I knew, but hadn't told his mom because he figured she'd go ballistic.

He was right.

J. called up the principal, and the conversation went something like this:

J.: My friend Catherine told me so-and-so called my son the n-word.

PRINCIPAL: 'Catherine? Catherine Johnson?'

J.: 'Catherine's a good friend of mine.'

PRINCIPAL: 'Did she call you?'

J.: 'No, I called her because we hadn't talked in a long time. If I hadn't called Catherine, I wouldn't have even known it happened!' [J. is very cool.]

PRINCIPAL: etc.

So the next day the principal called M. into his office to interview him about what had happened:

PRINCIPAL: What happened, exactly?

M.: tells story

PRINCIPAL: Who did you tell?

M.: Chris Berenson

PRINCIPAL: Why did you tell Chris Berenson?

M.: Because he's my friend.

PRINCIPAL: etc.

J. told me, 'You guys must have really shaken things up around there.'

I love it!

We're everywhere!

There's no escaping us!

THERE'S NO ESCAPING US BECAUSE WE LIKE TO GET OUR WAY BY BULLYING CIVIL SERVANTS!



is it still Wednesday? not Friday?

That's hard to believe.

This is the kind of post I write on Fridays, after a week of Maintaining Composure & gobbling up frontal lobe resources.

OK, back to business.

That being:

SINGAPORE SLAVE PARENTS

Carolyn mentioned the subject of parent mentoring, which reminded me of an LA Times article I read about Singapore way back when, before there was Kitchen Table Math.

So if we were to crib from the valedictorian of nations, what would we find? A school system based on two credos: one very American—competition—and one unimaginable in the U.S.—total government control. For students, this means high-pressure exams at the end of grades four, six, 10 and 12 that help determine not only what classes they take but, ultimately, whether they will wind up as doctors or cabdrivers. For schools, the pressure is to attract the best students—who have their pick of campuses.

Then there is:

A national curriculum. In Singapore, there are road maps for instruction at every level, molding tests, tutoring and teacher training. The documents are amazingly concise—eighth-grade math is covered in 10 pages, listing 19 topics within algebra, geometry, etc. (Students, for example, must be able to calculate the "volume and surface area of sphere, pyramid and cone.") By contrast, American eighth-graders race through 30 or more topics, learning them so superficially that they have to be repeated over and over.

Involved parents. Here, that doesn’t mean just showing up for Back to School Night. Parents get on waiting lists for the best tutors, who charge $300 a month. They buy two sets of books to ensure that one is always available for homework. Hundreds pay $300 to attend 30 hours of weekend training so they can understand changes in math instruction. "As parents, we think of always buying the best computers, giving them the best tutors, to play it safe, you know, so they can score high on their examinations," says Siew Yok as she purchased software so her 12-year-old daughter could cram to qualify for prestigious Raffles Girls School.