When The Public School Mentality Rears Its Ugly Head

The public school mentality is tough to get rid of after living it for so many years. This is true for me as a teacher, and very true for my step-daughter. Jasmine was in public school from preschool (Headstart)until high school, when we finally were able to bring her home to homeschool. After years of IEPs and LD classrooms, she was FREE! But the chains of slavery are often more than physical. She was out of the building, away from the teachers and all the standardized tests, but she still mentally was living in the same mode with the same expectations and, sadly, the same pressure inside herself.

Jasmine, working hard

She melted down today.

It came out of nowhere and I was stunned.

She had been working on an assignment for Algebra 2. She is using Teaching Textbooks. She used the Geometry last year and loved it! This year, I was hoping for a good year. However, Jasmine doesn't like Algebra as much as she did Geometry. She didn't use Teaching Textbooks for Algebra, so the format and even the way she was taught to work the problems may be a bit different. She has been doing okay... until today. She had two lessons where she did horrible. She didn't tell me that she was doing horrible, and I didn't check her grades last night.

Today, after she scored badly, she began crying. She cried and cried, saying that she was failing. Yes, she had two poor grades. But... as a parent, I deleted those grades. I told her that she was going to redo the assignments... in a day or two. If she didn't get it, I would pull out the applicable lesson in Algebra 1 that would build up to what she is working on, and have her review that. Luckily, her sister is using Teaching Textbooks for Algebra 1 this year, so the disks are handy. Then, if that didn't work, I would look up videos on Khan Academy, call her older sisters that are much more mathematically minded, and get her help.

With homeschooling, we have the added benefit of not having to keep up with anyone, not having to accept low grades just because a concept isn't understood, and not having to approach a concept from one direction. All Jasmine could see was the score, and that comes from years of grades being EVERYTHING!

 GRADES AREN'T EVERYTHING!!!!! Let me repeat... GRADES AREN'T EVERYTHING!!!!

I don't even keep grades any longer until they need to be figured for high school credits. Learning to not give up when you don't first get a concept, that is more important. As I blogged about before, the mind can grow like a muscle. Sometimes the struggle to figure out something is just as important as getting the answer.

I was told it takes awhile for a student to get out of that public school mindset once they leave school.  I would venture to guess that some of the ingrained habits and feelings take a long time to let go, especially if the child struggled with the public school methods and getting "good grades" was made into such importance as to impact the child's feelings of self-worth.  Students with IEPs and Learning Disabilities are often made to feel that there is something wrong with them, that they are inferior somehow to their peers in class because they learn differently. 

My step-daughter admitted that she was so bored during the IQ tests that the school insisted on performing that she just colored in dots randomly.  Over the last couple of years we have discovered that she has a photographic memory for visual images.  Learning this, I have decided to make every subject as visual as I can for her.  Her studies often not include pictures, notebooking, and videos.  Usually if she is able to see something, and then do that something if possible, she will be far more successful that just reading or hearing.

God is a marvelous God.  He wired people to learn differently.  The public schools haven't allowed for this concept because then it would have to admit that the teaching methods they use are inadequate and are failing a large percentage of their students.