Nice People Thread Part 9 - and so it continues

bugslet

I hated the one time they sent me to nursery so much that both parents and teachers thought it better I didn't return aftr the one day. Admittedly I wasn't the most social of children, but I seemed to make up for it in my 20s and after. I did learn to be very independent though, as someone else said, it really depends on the child, which route is the most suitable.

As for pushing a child to tears when learning, that happened to me with maths at which I was particularly slow. My dislike of maths is not purely down to it being a 'furrin' language to me, but because 40 years later I still feel a mild panic when faced with anything more complex than early years maths:o.

Forgot to say earlier, I'm Yorkshire first:p, English with regards to nationality, because as michaels said, british has connotations of BNP. I don't associate English with EDl though, but being oop North, I'm probably behind the times!

lostinrates

bugslet wrote: »

I hated the one time they sent me to nursery so much that both parents and teachers thought it better I didn't return aftr the one day. Admittedly I wasn't the most social of children, but I seemed to make up for it in my 20s and after. I did learn to be very independent though, as someone else said, it really depends on the child, which route is the most suitable.

Bingo.

Absolutely.

And that's why age off learning any milestone in early days seems a bit bizarre in our approach. Few of us are in nappies at twenty, crawling at forty. So why are we so screwed up about the reading and talking ones.....pushing is wrong, not pushing is wrong......

Depends on the kid. nd of course what situation the parents are in, most parents nowadays have less luxury of choice of sah, or Ono to one primary education! A particularly phlegmatic personality might well need a nudge at some point, but why hold so my ones back apart from making sure they are thorough?

I found a photo of me at my 'nursery' school the other day. I was struck in this one that I looked like a blonde pg tips monkey.

silvercar

I remember the english teachers taking drama classes, the french taking german, the maths taking statistics. I'm sure if your primary subject was a minority subject you didn't have to take the main subject, so there were no drama teachers teaching english. With the uptake of part time teaching posts, I would have thought that the need to ask teachers to cover a secondary subject would be lower.

neverdespairgirl

lostinrates wrote: »

I almost always give rag or those waterproof bath books as gifts to babies. New niece got a rag and padded ( pn, it was a a posh alert rag book ) short version of each peach, pear plum last year and so e pram/ push chair books.

I also with littlies like getting them spitting things like letters on road signs, or street signs, and colours they know, and looking for shapes.

There is an important concept in behavioural work 'learning to learn'. I think its probably the learning to learn in early years that is the crucial difference and is so well fostered by situations like traditional Sahp ( so, childminders, nannies, grandparents, small group consistent staffing nursery) where the adult knows the child/ren and can guide and encourage progress on the route of learning to learn.

I think that all makes perfect sense - colours, shapes, coins, all those are useful things, that you just fit into normal life, without making a big deal out of "learning" things. There are some very good young children's programmes, too, on CBeebies. Those aren't a substitute for personal attention, but I think they can help when children are 3 or 4.

Isaac never wanted to learn to read, but he was quick to pick up on, and enjoyed, drawing, counting, colours, all those sorts of things.

The reading thing did puzzle me, with Isaac, because I couldn't work out how to get him to enjoy reading, and want to do it. I could make him, but there's not much point in that, just stress and grief all round. Making someone want to do something is a bit trickier than making him do it!

Isaac's remedial dyslexia lessons have been really, really good so far. He drew a birthday card for my mother last week, and for the first time ever, wrote inside it, the first time he's ever written anything without being ordered / coerced / required / gently encouraged. He just did it, and that felt like a major step forward. The spelling wasn't perfect, but was readable, and he'd chosen to write, "Dear Mum, Happy Birthday, hop you have a reely nice day lots of love from Isaac".

Not exactly War and Peace, but a good move.

chewmylegoff wrote: »

I am a big fan of getting into the great outdooors in cold weather, but only if there is somewhere cozy to go at the end of the day. Like a ski chalet with a log fire and a hot tub.

I'm with you on that one. I regard roofs, heating, duvets, and hot water as wonderful inventions.

LydiaJ wrote: »

Getting Bio & Chem teachers to teach Phys is pretty much universal in state schools now. It's all just science, innit? Up to GCSE, anyway. It's one of the reasons I've chosen to stay in the independent sector. I know I'm not competent to teach Bio (and thankfully have never been asked to) and although I taught a tiny bit of Chem to Y7 & Y8 some 20 years ago, I don't think I did it particularly well, and I don't want to have to do it again.

Although, as I've said, a private girls' school did coerce my mother into taking an O level biology class. She said it was horribly stressful, and she had nightmares of the girls all getting Es in biology, and As and Bs in all other subjects.

LydiaJ

silvercar wrote: »

I remember the english teachers taking drama classes, the french taking german, the maths taking statistics. I'm sure if your primary subject was a minority subject you didn't have to take the main subject, so there were no drama teachers teaching english. With the uptake of part time teaching posts, I would have thought that the need to ask teachers to cover a secondary subject would be lower.

Maths degrees have stats in them, so no problem there, and most languages degrees have you learning two languages, so no problem with that either as long as they don't ask you to pick up another one and teach it before you're ready.

Generali

silvercar wrote: »

I remember the english teachers taking drama classes, the french taking german, the maths taking statistics. I'm sure if your primary subject was a minority subject you didn't have to take the main subject, so there were no drama teachers teaching english. With the uptake of part time teaching posts, I would have thought that the need to ask teachers to cover a secondary subject would be lower.

My VIth form maths teacher was an oboe player who signed on as a music teacher. The day he arrived they told him they'd changed their minds and he'd be teaching A Level maths.

I felt sorry for him: he told us one day he was one chapter ahead of us in the text book. He was flipping useless as a maths teacher though.

LydiaJ

neverdespairgirl wrote: »

Isaac's remedial dyslexia lessons have been really, really good so far. He drew a birthday card for my mother last week, and for the first time ever, wrote inside it, the first time he's ever written anything without being ordered / coerced / required / gently encouraged. He just did it, and that felt like a major step forward. The spelling wasn't perfect, but was readable, and he'd chosen to write, "Dear Mum, Happy Birthday, hop you have a reely nice day lots of love from Isaac".

Not exactly War and Peace, but a good move.

Well done Isaac! :T

neverdespairgirl wrote: »

I'm with you on that one. I regard roofs, heating, duvets, and hot water as wonderful inventions.

Oh yes!

neverdespairgirl wrote: »

Although, as I've said, a private girls' school did coerce my mother into taking an O level biology class. She said it was horribly stressful, and she had nightmares of the girls all getting Es in biology, and As and Bs in all other subjects.

I don't blame her for finding it stressful. I would hate to be put in that position, and if I were a parent of one of those "private girls" I'd be seriously unimpressed. But yes, I do know it does go on in some state schools. Mercifully not in mine, though. There are one or two science teachers who feel confident to do a little KS3 stuff in a science subject other than their own, and those teachers are sometimes asked to do so. In fact, our most recent appointment was for a full time physicist with "ability to teach KS3 chem an advantage" and we've got one who can do that and is doing it. Nobody's ever asked to teach something they don't feel they can do well, though, and even the ones that like it are never asked to do it beyond KS3. We have a couple of people who are fully qualified in both physics and maths, and they are allowed to do both to A-level. Then we have somebody who began life as a physics teacher and then retrained to teach tech, and now teaches both as the timetable demands.

Generali

LydiaJ wrote: »

our most recent appointment was for a full time physicist with "ability to teach KS3 chem an advantage"

It reminds me of the (apocryphal) advert for a village curate, in a cricketing area:

"Curate wanted. Slow left arm around the wicket preferred".

neverdespairgirl

LydiaJ wrote: »

Maths degrees have stats in them, so no problem there, and most languages degrees have you learning two languages, so no problem with that either as long as they don't ask you to pick up another one and teach it before you're ready.

It might well have changed, but when my mother did her teacher training, they had to train to do two subjects. Her main one was geography (geology O level included, if necessary) but she's also qualified to teach German, which she did until A level. She never has taught it, though, and wouldn't want to, much.

lostinrates wrote: »

My father absolutely benefitted from his grammar school. Not only the education, but the aspiration. His parents had none. He still had to leave school 'early' (his father wouldn't pay to feed a 'man' not working at school) but the aspiration and idea that he could achieve was set. That was more vital than the actual education I think, the hope, the promise, the faith in him. He talks of the school siting his home and pleasing with his parents to keep him there and his father refusing, and his headmaster telling my father that he had the skills he needed to educated himself, and he must avail himself of them. That his headmaster had faith in him meant a huge deal.

My Dad was lucky - not only did he get into grammar school, but his parents were quite happy for him to continue his education and to go to university after school, as well.

His own father was intelligent, and interested in things, but had left school as a matter of course at the minimum leaving age, 13 or 14 at the time. During the Second World War, though, he rose through the ranks and ended up as a junior officer, having joined up in 1939 as a private, and was self-educated to a reasonable degree, and was pleased that his younger son could complete more formal education.

lostinrates

neverdespairgirl wrote: »

My Dad was lucky - not only did he get into grammar school, but his parents were quite happy for him to continue his education and to go to university after school, as well.

His own father was intelligent, and interested in things, but had left school as a matter of course at the minimum leaving age, 13 or 14 at the time. During the Second World War, though, he rose through the ranks and ended up as a junior officer, having joined up in 1939 as a private, and was self-educated to a reasonable degree, and was pleased that his younger son could complete more formal education.

My grandparents really weren't that interested at all. My grandmother was a nursing sister then a community nurse, and proud of the 'letters after her name' but always somewhat amazed she had them, certainly didn't believe that any route other than work was for the likes of her or hers.

My father was very lucky as in his first career a close friend, who had done a levels, was put through the work public sector scheme to go to university. He went to Cambridge. My dad visited him a lot, ( they are still close friends and the guy visited and saw my house earlier this year) and met with a friend from his grammar there too. Then his two friends became friends and dragged my father out from London even more. .

That period of his life actually really helped my father later in his career too, because of a confusion that some one recruiting thought he had gone to Cambridge with those two then was surprised when they found out he'd left school so early. He had o levels. The third in the trio died some time ago (not sure how, cancer or pickled liver, one of the two...and the one who came last year had a nasty cancer and is still smoking like a chimney...:()