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Monday, December 7, 2009

Why am I in education? I can't even get my OWN kid to read!

I love love love Mac. I really do. You know I do. I would lay down my life for the child. But why is it that I have moments where I want to beat knots on him head? Grrrrrrrrrr!!!!!

Remember that Reading Counts program I wrote about? Mac has to do Reading Counts in his school in place of doing book reports. Each semester he needs 40 points worth of books to get a grade, split into 2 deadlines with 20 points per quarter. His deadline for the semester is this coming Friday and so far for this second quarter he has ZERO points. (Edvard Munch had to be depicting a parent whose smart child was driving her insane.)

So he has to read 20 points worth by Friday. At his grade level. Which is college level, or in the Reading Counts lingo a 12+. Which equates to a boring classic with about 3000 pages.

He finally found a few books he thought he could read and I checked the audio versions out of the library so he can read AND listen to it on his iPod so he can be "reading" this book all of the time. And he can listen to the CDs in his car.

Could he read 500-1000 pages between now and Friday without audio aid? Oh yeah. Would he? Uh, no. His argument, which is lame, is that all of the books on the Reading Counts list are boring. I told him that his punishment was that he was going to read a book over Christmas break and have his points ready at the start of the next quarter (second semester), on day one, because we were not doing this 11th hour shit again.

He's smart but he is so bored with this English class and I cannot seem to convince him that the only person he hurts is himself when he does stupid shit like this. Actually, he knows this and feels bad and that's why he's panicking right now. Butthead. And yeah, he knows better. And yeah, I gave him the "when you get to college" lecture.

the thunking sound you hear is me beating my head against this blog,
Maggie

3 comments:

Duchess of Tea said...

Hello darling just stopped by to wish you a lovely week.

Love & Hugs
Duchess

Curley said...

Ok, this tell me I should be asking Hunter Boy if he has his AR points done. I just spent the weekend wondering if he was working on memorizing "Oh Captain, My Captain." Which he thought was stupid. He thought he had it nailed except for one line. His problem with it? It doesn't rhyme with any other line in the poem.

Maggie said...

Thanks Duchess, you too!

Curley- we memorized "Oh captain My captain" this weekend as well and Mac did his recitation today and got a 100%. It's also Whitman so it might not rhyme but I wouldn't say it's stupid, but why bother trying to tell that to any teenager?

And I would ask Hunter Boy how he's doing on his Reading Counts points since this quarter's deadline is Friday!