ADDinfinitum

School Organizer Tip

Do your kids have a crazy amount of papers to keep track of for school and do they lose almost as many of them as they keep track of?

I've battled this for years and have tried everything, including making copies of just about everything that comes home, just in case something gets lost. The problem with that was that not everything made it home - things dropped out of his binder, got stuffed in his locker and who knows where the rest of it got lost.

Our school always makes the kids put each subject in a separate binder. Unfortunately they hand out papers that haven't been hole punched or the kids are just in a rush to get to the next class and don't have much time to put everything in the binder....or they just hate organizing and end up stuffing everything in the binder loose.

I finally got fed up enough to "just say no" to the binders and came up with a way that I knew would work better for us. Since we started using this organizing tool, I don't think my son has lost any papers and generally has his work organized better than he has ever had it! Here's how it works....

I got this at The Container Store but have also seen something similar at Staples and Office Max. The key is that the top needs to be open ended. This way you can open it up without much effort and see everything inside very easily. The ones with a flap over the top are too hard to get in and out of as many times as kids need to in a day. 

Make a file folder for each subject. It has worked well for us to have one designated folder up front for homework. This has helped my son with turning in his homework too, which I think sometimes got overlooked because he simply couldn't find it if he was digging through all the other papers.

Once a 6-week period has ended we file the papers in a portable file box. Sometimes they need them to review for semester or final exams. Mostly, it helps to keep the amount of papers in their everyday file from getting out of control.

No More (or fewer) Lost Papers and Better Organization

• My son goes to every class with everything he needs. He doesn't have to run back to his locker for different binders.
• He brings the file home every night and no longer has the problem of forgetting the one binder that had papers in that he needed for homework. 

How do you help your child manage their paperwork? I'd love to hear what's working for you.

Educating Kids To Live In The 80's

I know that schools in this area are regarded as some of the best in the country, but I often wonder when education, in general is going to catch up with the times and what's taking so long for it to happen. Here's an example...Last night my ninth grader had yet another assignment that involved at least a half an hour of coloring. Yes.....coloring at 15 years of age. Someone please tell me why high school students are still being given assignments that involve coloring when they are all capable of drawing maps and other assignments like this on the computer in about half the time? Not to mention the fact that using the computer is teaching them a much more relevant skill than coloring by hand! 

Now let's talk for a moment about paperwork. Imagine going to work every day without a computer. You would have a computer at work, but you can only use it on special occasions. You take all your notes by hand, get all memos and other documents on paper and cart hundreds of all those documents to every meeting you have, back to your desk to work on them, then take most of them home every night in a backpack. Instructions and other communications from your boss and coworkers would not come to you via email, but all on paper. These are the really important papers, so whatever you do....don't lose them. This is exactly what it's like for our kids in school.

In most private schools kids get a laptop. Their classes are all recorded and available on audio podcasts for students to download if they've missed anything. They study tools that can be downloaded to their ipods. They email back and forth with teachers like the rest of us do in the real world.

In some aspects our public schools still seem to be preparing our kids to go out and live in the 1980s. So when will the education system get an overhaul and catch up with the technology age? I don't even hear this discussed in the media as an issue. Why isn't it? I'm sure I'm not the only one who sees the disconnect. I understand that this isn't an easy fix and it won't be cheap, but isn't that the same thing all businesses must do to be competitive today?

What do you think? 

Prayer Monkey

The Bible tells us to "pray without ceasing" which has always been a challenge for me. My ADHD brain darts around in a million directions if I don't work very hard to keep my mind from wandering. So what's the deal with the monkey you're asking...

This well-worn beanie baby came from a Happy Meal when Josh was about 4 years old. He used to carry it around in his pocket, even through Elementary school. That monkey is only thing either one of my kids have kept around that long without losing it! 

Anyway, Josh has had some tough challenges in school since about 3rd grade. On a particularly rough day, I told Josh that I was going to carry "Monkey" around all day and that any time I felt him in my pocket it would remind me to pray for him while he was at school. Since then, I've carried the "Prayer Monkey" on quite a few occasions and it's been a great reminder for me.

Today was Josh's 8th grade math final and his last day of middle school. The grade on this test could mean summer school for him if he didn't do well and I'd been privately fretting about it for 2 weeks.

After the boys left for school I was picking up piles of laundry from their room and spotted "Monkey" sitting on top of the TV. Remembering other times I had carried "Monkey" around during a school day, I figured today would be a great day to have an extra little prayer reminder with me.

Later this afternoon I held my breath as I checked the "parent viewer" for his math exam grade. I burst into laughter and did a double take on what was recorded there. The kid who barely passed math this year got a 95% on his final exam. I guess he learned something after all and I bet his teacher is just scratching his head over this one.

There are times I worry so much about Josh just getting through another year of school. Any mom of a child with learning differences knows the feeling. My prayers this morning for Josh were that he have clarity in his thoughts, be able to stay focused and get through this test successfully.

Well, my prayers may be scattered, but God does answer.

Homework Hell

Tonight Jonah, my 7th grader, came home with 38 pages of homework.(mostly history, science and Spanish reviews)  That's a crazy amount of homework at any time of the year if you ask me, but here's the kicker. Monday the kids turned in all their text books. Yesterday he turned in his handouts from the last 6 weeks for a "binder check". So here he is less than one week before school is out, with 38 pages of homework to complete before tomorrow morning, with absolutely nothing to reference as he works through this massive pile. Am I the only parent that thinks this is totally insane?

TAKS Anxiety Article

May 2, 2008
I rarely read the paper, but yesterday I picked it up while eating lunch at Subway. The big story in the Metro section was how to relieve your child's anxiety over the TAKS test. I'm still shaking my head over it and will probably write a letter to the editor just to vent. Here's a link to the article to give you some context:

Read Dallas Morning New Article

Could the writer, not to mention our schools, be any more clueless about the real issue here? 

My first realization about how out of control this is was several years ago. When my son was in 4th grade he took the writing TAKS test, which took him over 6 hours to complete. That's longer than most of us took on our SAT's when we were 17 or 18 years old. He was confused about the writing prompt, but couldn't ask any questions, so he agonized over it all day, even asking to stay after school to finish. When he finally came out of the testing room (at 4:30 in the afternoon) he was sobbing.

The writer suggests that parents should teach their children to:
1) Do breathing exercises to calm down
2) Visualize and meditate to lower their blood pressure and stress level
3) Focus on their hard work rather than worrying about the outcome

Blah, blah, blah! Why in the world should any child have this much pressure? And who in their right mind thinks children as early as 3rd grade have the capacity to do breathing and visualization exercises to combat this stress when their little bodies are quite naturally jumping out of their seats after 30 minutes at best! These kind of stress relieving techniques are a stretch even with the maturity of a teenager.

The schools are doing their best to make TAKS testing week calm - soothing music, "Don't Worry Be Happy" themes, quiet hallways, etc. etc. Take a look at all of this through the eyes of our kids. It screams loud and clear that this is a week like no other week of the school year. There has already been so much focus on preparation for these tests all year long that the pressure starts long before pencils are sharpened for the big day.

As a parent, I agonize over this regularly. It's not just the TAKS test, but the amount of pressure we are putting on our kids in school throughout the year. They need time to just be KIDS! If we don't protect that, who will?

I don't know what the answer is, but it has forced me to make choices I'm sure educators would frown upon. When my kids come home with hours of homework, I feel no guilt in coloring maps for them while I send them outside for some much needed fresh air. I'm sure their teachers feel this is an important part of their learning, but at what expense? There are nights that with tutorials after school or just one sporting event they are hard pressed to finish their homework and get to bed by 10pm.

I try to protect my kids from the pressure. This year I coached my 8th grader write the worst paper he's ever written....just finish in a reasonable amount of time and it'll be fine. He was so relaxed about taking his TAKS tests this year. So far, both of the scores that he's gotten back have been commended scores. (Well above the state average)

So, my point is. Let's chill out with all this pressure. Our kids are getting a great education here in Plano and would do better with a little more balance!