Education

I registered Eric for kindergarten again with a vague sense of déjà vu. Some of it was familiar (I still had the same folder with the paperwork from last year), but everything else seemed different. I felt much more relaxed and confident that Eric was going to be ready. And he would be starting kindergarten with an IEP — an Individual Education Program. Basically it meant that Eric had special needs and it was up to the school to meet those needs. He still needed to be reassessed to determine how much extra help he would receive.

I had mixed feelings about him qualifying for help. Of course I wanted him to get help. I just didn’t want him to need help.
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There’s been plenty of concern about video games’ role in the growing obesity rates of America’s youth, but the White House is hoping they can become a force for better health and education.

At a recent game developers’ conference, First Lady Michelle Obama announced a competition called “Apps for Healthy Kids,” which boasts $10,000 top prize. The challenge encourages designers to create socially conscious games that help kids eat right and learn about nutrition.
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I think we can all agree that the expectations we have of kids today is tremendous, but just how dangerous is it to their psychological health? Seeking to answer that question is a new documentary called Race to Nowhere, which looks into the pressures on students to overachieve. Watch the trailer below. Via ParentsAsk.

Race to Nowhere is a new documentary about the dark side of America’s achievement culture. Watch the trailer here.

The administration of Sacred Heart, a Catholic pre-school in Boulder, CO, expelled a student for having gay parents, citing the Catholic churches stern views on homosexuality.

“To allow children in these circumstances to continue in our school would be a cause of confusion for the student in that what they are being taught in school conflicts with what they experience in the home,” said the Archdiocese of Denver, in a formal statement.

Growing up, I went to a private Episcopalian high school. I was not Episcopalian, and many other students were of different denominations and entirely different religions. While I understand that Boulder’s Sacred Heart is there to serve the Catholic community, I think by not accepting students of different backgrounds undoes much of what the Catholic church stands for.

Here’s the story from the Associated Press.

The truth is I was surprised to find out that there was something scientific wrong with Eric. And I was shocked that it had a name.

I had secretly thought that his problems were my fault, and if only I had been making ABC photo books for Eric like I had for Paul, Eric would have been reading already. I had been so proud of myself for not comparing him to Paul. But I thought Paul was a genius, so Eric must just be average. And I was proud of myself for accepting that! But now I had to admit that Paul might be average and Eric was, perhaps, below average.

Had I lowered my expectations too much?
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There are many important considerations when preparing your child for elementary school. After Kindergarten, they will have developed new skills to help prepare them for the next step, first grade, and it’s a big step that you can help them with. Ultimately they must take those steps themselves, but you can support and guide them as much as possible.
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Sure, video games are often seen as a time waster, and in a lot of cases, you wouldn’t be wrong in thinking so. But do they have an upside? James Gee, the Mary Lou Fulton Presidential Chair of Literary Studies at Arizona State University thinks so.

It’s not the content of video games themselves, but the environment they provide for students to interact with. He says, “We tend to teach science, for example, by telling you a lot of stuff and then letting you do science. Games teach the other way. They have you do stuff, and then as you need to know information, they tell it to you.”

The article goes onto make an interesting connection between standardized testing and how performance is assessed in video games.

The idea of video games as an educational tool is becoming an increasingly accepted notion. President Obama and the Macarthur Foundation have started a competition with incentives for technology companies who can develop the best video games for teaching math and science.

The full story at Science Daily. Photo by sean dreilinger.

Now I had a new project: researching Auditory Processing Disorders. I found lots of support and information from well-meaning friends who shared stories of their special needs children. Wait, I have a special needs child? Yes I do.

The disorder is easy to misdiagnose and often confused with other delays and processing disorders.

APD is not like ADD. Eric never had a problem with paying attention. It was not that he was easily distracted. If anything, he paid too much attention to the wrong thing. He simply was not aware that what he was doing was not what he was supposed to be doing.
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Among peers for the first time, Eric settled in quickly at his new preschool. They were all high-energy boys who shared his enthusiasm and his sense of humor.

What a change!

But some things had not. He was still easily frustrated, but at least he was in the right environment with a lot more support and a lot less pressure. His love of books resurfaced and without the academic expectations he was learning more each day.

After a month or two, I was feeling pretty proud of myself. I was back into my daily workout routine and had a great regular group of moms who joined me for regular hikes and coffee breaks.
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I was ambivalent about pulling Eric out of kindergarten. On the one hand, I could see how much he was struggling. But he was struggling with things that I thought were developmental and I felt like he was so ready to learn. There is a big developmental leap between five and six years old, and I believed that Eric would catch up to the other kids soon enough.

Unfortunately his teacher thought Eric’s issues were behavioral. This is an important difference. When he didn’t complete a task, she believed he was not paying attention or following directions. Or she maintained that he was misbehaving.
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