I do remember that starting in sixth grade we had a lot more homework that ever before and that my mother was concerned about my habits in that regard. I had several hours of work to do every night but took even longer because I would complete it during the commercial breaks of shows like Family Ties, Growing Pains and Who’s The Boss. During school conferences one teacher told her that as long as I was keeping up this was fine, another said that I was developing habits that would hinder me later in my academic career. In the end I was allowed to keep working this way as long as my grades were good and I was finished before the later shows like Moonlighting and Dallas. Reasonable, right?
Nowadays it’s much harder to judge whether or not we are doing enough to help our kid’s education. Besides however you want to describe the year or so of remote learning there is also the new way of judging progress that makes things difficult. The second quarter of the school year just ended and report cards were e-mailed this week. My daughter averaged a 2.7, meaning that she is on the high end of “Progressing” but not quite at “Proficient.” I’m about 88% sure that I’m reading it correctly, which in the old days would have put me at a solid B+. At my job I think this would qualify as “Meets Expectations” on my yearly review but there’s a chance I don’t understand that evaluation process as well as I should either.
It seems like she is doing OK , well even, and I don’t necessarily want to start comparing her to how her peers might be scoring but I worry that if she wasn’t working as hard as she could be or fulling understanding what she’s being taught we wouldn’t know. It seems weird to me that she has a project she’s been working on for the Girl Scouts but nothing for school.
It’s not a new concern. Eight years ago I was writing about how the oldest didn’t seem to have any homework and was cruising through high school on minimal effort. Instead of just being happy that we don’t have that additional thing to worry about after school I make her read whenever we get a few extra minutes. It’s something she enjoys anyway and it makes me feel better if there is some sort of brain exercise going on. As long as the school thinks that she is doing well and we’re making some sort of effort at home I guess I’ll give myself a “Progressing” grade as well.
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Previously Published on Thirsty Daddy and is republished on Medium.
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Photo credit: iStock
