Education Uncensored

The Hot Author Report is your place for what is happening in the virtual world of online book tours, promotion, marketing and more. Jaime is a self-confessed sushi addict who spends most of her time as an online publicist for Pump Up Your Book Promotion when she’s not roaming around Australia. When she’s not working, she is reviewing books and cafés around Australia on Down Under Views, obsessing about writing and finishing her novel on InkyBlots, and reflecting on the life as a US expat in Australia on The New Australian.

Yea, she is that good!

School, education, learning, understanding…it’s all very difficult.  I am one of the most open and honest bloggers out there.  I know, most everyone thinks or says that about themselves.  But the truth is, I’ve took a stand.  I’m not going to homeschool my children because that is not in the best interest of my family.  However, I am not going to sit by the wayside and accept everything that the public school system is trying to sell me. 

I’ve done my research, I know what I know and I am and always will be honest about it.  I don’t believe that homework is necessary.  If I tell you something, I mean it.  And what I say here on this website is what I mean.  And what I say to people face to face, I mean. 

I created a site for the first grade class where my son is a student.  I even made sure that I said “I am doing this site strictly verbatim as the information comes home, I have other sites where I can and will express my opinion, but I will keep this site strictly facts.”   And, I’ve done that. 

I have not interjected my opinion once on that (PhD in First Grade) site.  That’s what this site is for.  This site (Education Uncensored) is for me and the people who agree, disagree, public school teachers, homeschooling parents and anyone in between.  What you will read here is my opinion.  What you will read on the other site is facts. 

Now, with that said, let me clear up a bit of information that isn’t quite clear in the post on Sara Bennett’s site that I wrote and I am so proud to have on her site.

As I spoke to the administrator tonight, she brought a couple of points to my attention and because my respect for authority is as it is, I respect her and our conversation tonight was nothing but professional and I have more respect for her now than I ever have. 

Please let me clarify some of my statements:

“I started PhD in First Grade to help parents and children keep track of the “massive amount of homework given to the first graders.”

I’ve already covered this above, but indeed, I created the site to help parents and children keep track of the (and these are my words) “massive amount” of homework.  It is my opinion that it is too much.  But I never make that statement on the “facts” site or in front of my son.  Period.  I can separate the facts and let’s just hope that this is the case for everyone involved.

and the principal quickly asked me to serve as a Parent/Teacher Liaison.

This needs to be clarified for many reasons.  I am not there to fight anyone’s battles.  I am not there to protect anyone.  I am there only and I mean to clarify, only to help when I can help. 

“it’s not my role to get into the privacy of students, parents and teacher’s conversations”

I have enough drama in my own life, in my own house and with my own children.  But, if someone needs me, I want them to continue to feel free to ask me to help them in any way.  But, it is also important for everyone involved to know that if there is an issue which is specific to their child, they need to go through the proper channels and speak to the teacher, the administrator, etc.  I feel I am there to help on a broad scale, not for individuals or in any way to intervene when I really have no reason to stick my nose in where it doesn’t belong. 

“helping everyone learn to use the monitoring system that our schools use via the computer”

This is/was and will be my number one goal.  Period.

“I also used this as an opportunity to ask parents their opinions on the “H” issue.”

Trust me when I tell you it wasn’t difficult.  Many parents feel the way I do and many parents before have not said anything for fear of the backlash that their own children might face.

With that, let me make this clear, I don’t have any fears that any teacher in my son’s school would mistreat my child or anyone else’s child because of something their parent has done.  And, that is important. 

I would not be so willing to speak up if I felt that my child was going to suffer.  And, anyone that knows anything about me knows that my children are my life.  But, as an educator, I believe in the people even if I don’t believe in the system.

“open to reading the statistics regarding the “H” word.”

Unfortunately, I can’t convince anyone just yet that these statistics are real.  The only statistics that are being looked at come from the other side.  But that’s ok, I don’t mind that part.  I’ll keep digging in my research and one day……….

“several teachers that I approached regarding the “H” word said to me, “I don’t give it unless it is absolutely necessary. The board (school board) is not real fond of that technique but that’s how I like to handle my class.”

Obviously, I’m not naming these teachers because while I trust that teachers aren’t going to mistreat my son, I’m not so sure that a teacher’s job would be safe (even if they had been teaching for many years), if their views were openly discussed. 

“And, therein lies the problem. The “H” issue rolls downhill and it all starts with the State Department of Education pushing “higher learning” and “better test scores” without knowing that the “H” word is not the way to accomplish this. It trickles down until teachers are actually evaluated by the way they handled the “H” word.”

Please, let this ring in everyone’s ears for a minute.  Please, I know the process, I know the political correctness of it all and I know the fear of losing your job simply because you disagree.  And, with that, teachers are venues of communication and they do what respected administrator and publishers (of books) tell them is best.  I want to help people see that those people don’t always know what is best nor do they have the child’s best interest at heart.  Publishers of text books need to maintain their popularity and keep their business a business. 

“If you live in Alabama and you are fortunate enough to have found Sara and the book she co-authored, by all means, contact me. Let’s make this a state wide campaign, we can be much more successful that way.”

I mean this, there is a fight to be fought, a way to fight it and even if it means that I have to speak up first and gather my information then I need the help of anyone involved!!!!!!!!!!!!

Notice I didn’t say read to me but I said Read Me!  Here’s a post I wrote and Sara Bennett from The Case Against Homework was kind enough to post it on her site Stop Homework.

Please, go read, One Mother and Her Army,  join forces with me and let me know how you feel about the issue of the “H” word and let Sara know how much we appreciate her spark of this fight….

And, while I’m here, let me tell you about winning…

I have several contests starting to day.  The contests will start as soon as they are up and will end on the 25th at midnight unless otherwise stated in the individual contest.

And, so with that, I give a contest for:

Halo Sleep Sack

Celine Rivenbark’s Book, You Can’t Drink All Day if You Don’t Start in the Morning

The Children’s Book – The Hungary Caterpillar

And, I want to tell you about a feature writer on Blogalogues. 

Brick is our newest author on Blogalogues.  He finished up his first 2 weeks with 2 of the top five blogs in the project.  So, give a round of applause for Encourage Health and Tech Gadget.   Thanks to everyone for such a pleasant welcome to Brick.

There you go, that’s one heck of a post, eh?

Brick is our newest author on Blogalogues.  He finished up his first 2 weeks with 2 of the top five blogs in the project.  So, give a round of applause for Encourage Health and Tech Gadget.   Thanks to everyone for such a pleasant welcome to Brick.

Mrs. Miller has been keynote or featured speaker at a variety of regional conferences including the AL Reading Association Conference and the NW Shoals Community College Annual Preschool Conference.

If you were one of the confused ones who went to the post that was titled, Let’s Talk about Fundraising… which is now titled Let’s Talk About Fundraising …No wait, let’s talk about something else first then here’s the post you thought you were getting way back then. 

As I joined forces with the PTO, that means I’ve made myself part of the people in the school who are responsible for running around 95% of the time asking for money.  Not that this is necessarily a bad thing but I do admit, it has always been quite annoying when the children are busting your door down every 2 or 3 weeks selling something else.  Wrapping paper, cookie dough, bbq plates, you name it, it’s been sold. 

So, in my quest to find out what’s going on, I was reminded that teachers received no supply money this year.  So, you can see where on my own, I started seeking companies that could help out.  Office Max has gone above and beyond the call in many cases to help teachers with supplies. 

Their program known as A Day Made Better is an effort to prevent teachers from spending their own money to fund supplies in their classroom.  The only way you could possible not know that this is an issue is if you had your head in a hole somewhere.  Teachers routinely buy supplies for their classroom with their own money and let’s face it, they aren’t the highest paid people out there. 

So, I was fortunate enough to join in a tweet-up, conference type project with Peter Walsh and Office Max.  And now?  Now Office Max has helped direct me to a place where my teachers can get help without having to dig into their own pockets.

My son’s school will end their first fundraiser this week.  We’ve been selling Premier Jewelry and if you are fan of their jewelry and would like to help me out, send me your order and you can use paypal to pay and I will ship it to you asap.  If that’s not your thing, coming up in October we are selling from a company known as Innisbrook and of course that means it’s the time of the year for a Fall Festival.  Add in the fact that the little kiddo’s (and their parents) are going to sell plates to a restaurant in February and another fundraiser selling the frozen Little Caesars Kits.  And, finally ending with a fundraiser in May called aptly…May Day. 

So, I am challenging those of you who have a child in public school, pick one fundraiser at your school this year and make that your focus.  If you try to do them all, people are going to start running from you.  But pick one, contact your school and let them know that you are not selling stuff year round but that you plan to participate heavily in one particular fundraiser and let them know to keep you abreast all the information for that fundraiser.  If your child’s school is even as small as the one where my son goes, less than 400 kids in Headstart through eighth grade, if each parent would pick a fundraiser and work it hard, the teacher and school would benefit so much more than spreading yourself thin all year round. 

So, that’s my thoughts on fundraisers….as I’ve been one of those hiding every time the local kids come a’ calling for the last…oh 15 years or so…. 

Since I have volunteered to be the Head Room Representative in my son’s classroom, I’ll be dipping in each of these fundraisers but the fact of the matter is, I know many more people through the internet than I do in real life so I’ll mostly be working to support others because really, who can afford many of luxuries these days. 

Here are a few of the only photos you can find online for Premier Jewelry but if you are familiar with their products, you probably know someone with a catalog…shoot me your order…….

This is Part Two of a post that I started yesterday.  Here’s how this unfolded.  One of the parents that I spoke with was a classmate of mine.  She was interested in learning to use the home monitoring system because she said her fourth grade daughter was scatter brained and irresponsible.  We traded war stories of course and it was as if the 20 years had never intervened. 

She emailed me that night after she had a chance to look through her daughters records on line and said that the information she was seeing online and what her daughter was telling her was conflicting.  And, she reminded me again that because of her daughters attitude, she suspected that the information on her file was correct but she wanted to be sure.  Shea asked me if I had an email address for her daughters teacher.

And, I did have the teachers school email which is open to anyone but I also knew that this teacher used a personal account instead.  (I’ve never understood how people feel threatened because someone sends them alot of emails and can’t simply just hit delete and forget about it, but apparently it’s a fairly prevalent attitude because most of the teachers don’t use their school email).  I did know though that I couldn’t give out the teachers personal email because I had it under the privilege of the newsletters. 

I took the opportunity to give my friend the teachers school address but told her that the teacher might not check it until the next day.  She then emailed me back and asked me to give her email address to the teacher the next day (she already knew I was going to be at the school the next day).  Her logic and mine too for that matter was that she was being considerate of this teacher by not wasting any of the precious time that this teacher had during her 30 minutes of planning time.  This parent was offering this teacher the opportunity to contact her at the teacher’s convenience.  My friend works from home so she knew she would be online and so the teacher could instigate the conversation when it was convenient for her.

Now, so far, does that not sound like a good thing?  Doesn’t it sound like a parent knowing that she needed more information but that it wasn’t an emergency?  Doesn’t it make sense that by giving the teacher her email and asking her to email her at her convenience, this parent was being respectful of the teachers time?

Well to me, that’s exactly what I think. 

Moving right along…..

Morning arrives, I’ve written down my friend’s email address so I can quickly hand it off to the teacher with a brief introduction to why I was giving it to her.  Now, this parent did tell me the exacts of what she wanted and so when I gave the email address to the teacher, I said, she wants to discuss her daughters grade in x subject.  That’s it.  That’s all I said.  And, again, I told her that to tell her that the parent knew it wasn’t an emergency so if she could just email her when it was convenient that would be great.

No less than 20 minutes later I am paged to the office where the head administrator informs me that I have violated the child’s privacy and that the school could get in a lot of trouble for what I had done.  I was completely shocked.  I explained that this was a friend, a friend that was simply venting about her child’s behavior and that I knew I shouldn’t give the personal email out.  I explained that the parent asked me to pass her email on and to tell the teacher it wasn’t an emergency and that I merely added the subject matter without thinking. 

I was again warned that I had to be careful because this was a violation of privacy laws.  Now, how does this really work?  I mean, this could have easily happened last year when I was sitting back complaining instead of trying to help.  Anyone could have sent me an email venting and everyone knows I take my son to school and pick him up so anyone of my friends could have asked me to pass on a message. 

Honestly, would it have been a better idea for the parent to wait, call the teacher during her brief 30 minute planning period over something that wasn’t even an emergency.  Or come to the school and most likely taken up her entire 30 minutes of planning time discussing this?  This particular child had already proven herself to be irresponsible and would probably not deliver a note to the teacher even if the parent had asked. 

So, if you were that parent, what would you have done?

If you were me, would you have felt comfortable handing over the email address under that circumstance?

If you were me, would you feel like the teacher and admin were over-reacting? 

Let me know because this is really bothering me.  And, as you can see, it goes back to people not wanting to come to the school because they are made to feel so uncomfortable about even being there, never mind coming when they had something really menial to discuss? 

Let me have it, what do you think?  And if you answer is “Homeschool Jerri Ann and be done with it”, I can accept that but for now, that’s not an option for me so, help me think this through. 

Thanks ahead of time for your input.

As you all know, I’ve been pouring my soul into my son’s school.  I’ve gone over and beyond what I think is really necessary to help.  Not just help the administrators and teachers because to be perfectly honest, as long as I can keep from adding more to their current tasks by helping educate parents on policies, procedures, how to use the monitoring computer software that the school uses, etc, then I feel really good about the fact that we have great teachers and they do a great job.  They just do not need anymore administrative tasks on their plates.

I’ve basically taken care of all school newsletters and PTO newsletters that happen via email, I’ve worked in classrooms, made copies, run errands for teachers and I’ve spent hours with parents discussing what I can do to help them, what I can relay to the teachers and administrators that would help them and more.  The biggest complaint which came from everyone that I spoke to was that they never feel welcome when they are visiting the school. 

I’ve mentioned this to you before I know, those of you who followed me from the other blog anyway.  I’ve even experienced it since school started this year.  So, obviously when one of the teachers asked me last spring to get involved with an email campaign, I was thrilled.  Then, two days before school started we had a plan in action and she got a job at another school.

I decided that even though the PTO members were pretty standoffish last year, I was going to force my way into their circle.  When I owned the daycare, all my employee’s had kids in this school and the general consensus was that it was a great school but the parents, teachers and admins were very clique’ish.  I was going to burst through that and I wasn’t letting a little click stand in my way.

I’ve done it, I’ve broken through, although the word PTO implies that they are a network for the parents and the teachers, the truth is, they have basically formed another group of people who are standoffish and cliquey too.  So, when the principal asked me to help support the parents and teachers as well as the admin, I agreed.  But even then I wondered if that wasn’t suppose to be the goal of the PTO. 

After carefully examining the on-goings of the PTO, joining them, doing a presentation at the first PTO meeting for the parents, introducing myself to any and every one I saw and explaining that I wanted to help.  I want to be their voice and I feel good about being able to do that.  So many are afraid to speak up for fear that their own children will be punished or mistreated because they have expressed opinions contrary to the admin, teachers and even the PTO.

I make sure that people know that I am a product of a teacher in this school system and that I attended school in this system.  I make sure they know that I taught in the system and now my child is a student there.  I honestly believe that I can be objective and see this from many sides.  And thus far, it’s been a great success. 

So, if you had met with a number of people and they had expressed concerns and you were able to show them in the policies and procedures (which we all know is a joke anyway) how to handle the situations they are concerned with or you can simply show them how to get into their child’s account to check homework and grades, etc, but every single person mentioned that they never felt welcome in the school, wouldn’t you feel obligated to make that information known to the people involved?

Well, I did.  And, I was met with a bit of resistance because obviously no one likes to think that they are a snob, cliquey and unapproachable.  But, the fact is, that’s exactly the situation.  I did mention that I liked to go eat lunch with my son one day a week and most of the parents said they would never do that because they felt like they weren’t welcome inside the school.

So, right now that’s top priority in my mind.  Break down these barriers.  The PTO people tell me they don’t understand why more people don’t join the PTO, the school personnel say they don’t know what I’m talking about.  So, for the most part, all I know to do is keep talking about it until I start to tear down the wall.  I’m fortunate that many of the parents are former classmates of mine, many of the teachers are former teachers of mine or colleagues but man, is there a lot of work to be done.

Part Two contains an exact scenario and I want your opinion.

Here’s the details…

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So, I’ve taken my “if you can’t beat them, join them” attitude and thus far I’ve been extremely happy with the results.  I’ve learned alot about alot of people.  Some might call it gossip, I prefer to call it “understanding”.  Many people expressed some of the same concerns that I have expressed to you in the past. But, a little nosing around and I learned a great deal. 

I along with many others do not feel welcome in our kids school.  I know you’ve only heard me say that about 400 times.  And, I’ve heard it numerous times in the last few days.  And, so, I asked questions, I asked a lot of questions.  And, what I come to learn is something I already knew..personalities are deceiving. 

I have to be honest, the idea that no parents were allowed in school buildings after Columbine and after 9/11 is terrifying to me.  And, to think that many people were ok with sending their kids into the building and being met at the door and rejected.  I do still have the feeling that if someone in authority doesn’t want me around, then there’s something going on that they don’t want me to know about.  And, that’s not the kind of place I am going to willingly send my children.

So, as I spent almost 4 full days in the school building, watching how the “guts” of the operation are handled, I learned a few things.  One of those is that the main administrator is a serious multi-tasker.  And, as you all know, once you add that last piece to the plate of even the best mult-tasking person, you are going to get that look of mania.

Now, I can’t speak for the way things were last year but the only major change has been the assistant principle and he seems to have a real low key calmness about him that I think can and will be good to balance out the mania.  And, I use the word mania here in a positive manner.  I am a mult-tasker myself and I often find myself in that maniac state. 

That said, I felt very good when I explained some of the issues to parents and they trusted me that my assessment of the “behind closed door” unit were good.  I have considered moving my child to another school.  It’s a bigger school but the principal was a high school classmate (my prom date for that matter) and his father was the prinicpal at that school.  And, I honestly didn’t start him there or move him because of the distance form home. 

That said, it’s a pretty dreary sight from the inside but after spending some time on the inside, I feel much better about telling other parents “It’s a good school, it’s a good staff and your child is in good hands.” 

And, that………..that feels so much better than the way I felt last year ………