Monday, March 25, 2013

Student Led Release Day

Tomorrow is an early release day.

Let's ignore the fact that we JUST had spring break, a lot of sick days, they have Friday and Monday off and two more days in April.

Early release days are the most pointless days in the universe. All of the trouble and hassle of a school day but only 3 hours of school? And tomorrow is the worst of the worst--student led conferences after school.

This seems to be the new thing the last few years, and frankly, I'm going to go ahead and call shenanigans and point out this is a way to avoid parent/teacher conferences. I have "student led" conferences every single day after school, they go like this:

Me: How was your day?

Them: Fine.

Me: What happened at school today?

Them: Nothing.

Me: Nothing? You didn't learn anything? Nothing interesting happened at all?

Them: (thinking for a moment) Nope.

Me: Tell me one thing you did today.

Them: Uh...recess?

Then I look at whatever piles of paper they brought home and piece together what's happening.

Student led conferences are a variation of the same process, but I have to go to the school to do it. I'm there a lot anyway.

AND IT DEFEATS THE PURPOSE OF EARLY RELEASE DAY.

They will get off the bus, I will put them in the car and take them back to school, where I will go to the stations I help with weekly, and look at his papers like I do every night, and try to get an assessment of my first grader's education from the 6 year old who only remembers recess by the end of the day. 

When we could be at the beach.

Or they could be at school and I could be at the beach. 

4 comments:

asnell said...

Having had our "student-led" conferences last week...I echo your call of B.S!! We are now on day one of Spring Break and I am already rattled...plus it is snowing unexpectedly. Ugh!

I had to do a bunch of algebra problems at my sons' conferences..hope that doesn't happen to you. I was supposed to be impressed by their new methods when big part of me wanted to shout "I am 43 years old and you will never have to use this after your second year of college!!!" I left feeling really dumb.

Elise said...

Ughh, I am a teacher in GA and thank the Lord we don't do student led conferences. I can see how they might be beneficial for middle or high school students, but not elementary!

shelly said...

Our version of early release day is late start day, once a month. I call BS that the teachers do anything productive during this time, and one teacher has even confirmed that. And, we have one the week after spring break! Add to that the middle school's late start time is different than the elementary one and we have kids all over the place. It's not enough time to do anything fun for us. I'm thinking I'll take them out of school for the next one and go skiing.

Unknown said...

Shelly, late start day would make me NUTS. You really can't do much at all before school and I'm sure everyone's so thrown off schedule they just screw around the rest of the day.

Teachers say early release is pretty worthless too. They work the full day but it's a lot more productive without a disrupted schedule and kids there for half the day.