Ok, my son has a very cute, very enthusiastic, right out of college teacher for science and social studies this year. She seemed ok. I offered to help her, she was busy and I get that. It’s hard as a new teacher to get into the swing of things.
Then… the last month has been… difficult. She told my son it was ok to do a science fair project on whether you get dumber or not when playing video games. Say what? Really? You think that is a decent project to teach a kid how to do the scientific method? I convinced him to change it. He moved it to a pendulum project. Something that would really teach him about science. Yes, psychology is a science but exactly how is a kid suppose to test intelligence on other kids before and after video games? Reaction times -sure! Intelligence – NOT! And she accepted the video game one before he talked to me. After convincing him to change it, he went back and she said … are you ready for this… “It won’t place 1st in the science fair, are you sure you want to do it.”. Seriously! Shoot me. Then she lost his homework and gave him a check for it. Yes, I have the email to prove she found it… in HER classroom that afternoon. Ugh.
So, they made ‘miniature’ displays and put them out for the teachers to ‘judge’. They selected what they thought was the best to go on to the school science fair. Yaa… even though we didn’t do anything ‘special’ with his display… he got picked. Last weekend, we spent making the bigger display. Again, I convinced him to ‘keep it simple’. Mainly to stop this madness of getting selected to keep going on… Here is the one for judging today:
Part of me wishes it would go further because he worked really really hard on this. But the mom in me that knows how much time and work it will be if it goes further is hoping it stops here!
March 15, 2012
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