| | Sorry. I'm tired. M.E. has a cough (allergies, I think. Or a bug that consists of no fevers or aches- just a cough) that's kept us up the past couple nights. Also, Hot Sauce has a big, big science fair project due tomorrow and of course he didn't get started until this weekend. I promise I'm not doing it for him, but it's his first project like this so I have to give him a lot of direction and advice which is driving me crazy because he already knows everything in the universe so he refuses to listen until things don't work out right and then he's mad and wants my help. I've heard there's a problem nowadays with parents doing their kids homework which I though was funny. I totally understand it now. It would be a lot less work for me to just do this project myself! (btw- he's doing a report on solar cookers and if the one he and his dad made works, we're totally going to use it this summer. We don't have central air and cooking really heats up our house.) On top of all that, I seem to be getting pms every two weeks these past two months. It's no fun. I overreacted about the open house. Sorry about my little tantrum.
It would have been nice to stay for one more session though. Especially since it was about the sorts of classes the school offered. That might have gotten Hot Sauce excited. I read this Spring they're offering a course called Drum Culture. My little drummer boy might really like something like that. But I was probably just as disappointed that it wasn't what I expected. Lots of talk about striving for excellence! and raising the bar high! and 90% of our kids get into college! which turned me off. I know. I know. Those things are all supposed to be what you want in a good school, but all schools say that stuff and what does it even mean? As far as I'm concerned, if you only have 170 students which you pretty much got to handpick from a group of maybe not the best students in Richmond public schools, but at least good students who have never failed a class and who want to be there and those kids most likely all come from parents who have been planning on them going to college since their conception, well then 90% of them going to college isn't such a big deal. I wanted to hear about their cool, hippy-dippy alternative teaching methods and about the community projects in which all their kids seem to participate. I wanted to hear that their kids love being there. I wanted it to be less schooly. This is a very cool school where, unlike other schools, the kids are often out and about and a part of the community. I love that about it. But it seems like it doesn't matter how alternative an education a school might promise, it still smells like a school (and I do mean that literally as well as figuratively). I wanted it to be not like school at all- the way I heard it used to be. I think I just hate school so much that it's hard for me not to go into one without getting tense and defensive. Why am I so mad at my kid (and Bee) for not being more into this idea? Neither of them liked school either. Hot Sauce doesn't remember school as fun or interesting, so why should he think Open High would be any different?
He did like some things. He liked that they have an hour and fifteen minute lunch. He liked that you could walk fairly easily to the classes that aren't at the school (they have some classes at the nearby Y, the public library, the sort of nearby community college city campus) and that it is okay to leave school grounds (I, on the other hand, got a bit nervous when the teachers stressed that kids had to walk in groups of at least four in order to be safe around the city and even within the neighborhood which houses the school! Do I really want my kid running around unsafe neighborhoods? Richmond does have a very high crime and murder rate.)
I have to say that it felt weird listening to them talk about their school getting the kids out to be a part of their community and that large part of their school philosophy is that kids need to be the ones in charge of their own educations. As a homeschooler, I think it's ironic I want to send my son to school to give him those things. We could do that homeschooling. But we couldn't do it with a large group of kids and without his mother hanging around. You know what I mean? I guess the open house didn't really change my mind one way or the other. I still don't know what to do, so I'm going to let Hot Sauce decide.
|
| | Posted 1/17/2007 1:07 PM - 79 Views - 8 eProps - 4 comments
- recommend
  - recs0
- share
- email
 - sent0
|
