your opinion

If she is willing to go over her mistakes with you and correct them, I’d continue that because it’s working! The goal would be to gradually phase out that help until she is able to check and correct her own work in a few years. Yes, her classwork shows she needs help because she does. The strategies that work at home may give some clues at to what would help her at school— does she need complete quiet, for example, or just more immediate feedback to keep trying? Does she give up at school when she doesn’t “get” something, is she afraid to approach the teacher…. It sounds like being counted “wrong” for incomplete work is not motivating her to complete it. With her language and attention issues, reduced assignments might be appropriate— quality vs. quantity.

Well, it isn’t working. I would meet with her teacher(s) and discuss how to approach this. I notice that my fourth grade son is doing much worse in science this year because the teacher relies entirely on what they do in class. Now I am not going to make a fuss because we are moving ahead in the subjects that matter but clearly some kids need reinforcement at home. And math is foundational, unlike social studies.

I always check over my son’s work and make him redo it if it is wrong. His teacher told me she never grades homework because families have such different ways of approaching it.

Beth

When I grew up, parents were expected to help with homework. They were expected to check their children’s homework. In these modern times, many teachers seem to want parents to make sure the work is done but not to offer any real help. As a teacher who’s also a parent, that makes no sense to me at all.

If a child needs help or wants help, what is wrong with help? Help is the stuff that gets us through life - giving help to others and receiving help from them. Children learn to face the world with greater confidence from the help and support that is given them by their parents with homework and everything else. Why do schools want to deprive children of that which they need most - loving help from parents? And yet at the same schools and their teachers are quick to yell and complain about uninvolved parents!

Clearly what you were doing was working well for your daughter. You were helping your daughter to make connections between her homework and what she had done in school that day. Some children need that particularly children in large classrooms! Teachers do the same thing in school for students when they can but with 30 students in the room that becomes difficult. You are only doing at home what should be done in school for your daughter - helping her to make the connections between the concepts taught and the practice of those concepts.

What’s also interesting these days is that if you hired a ‘homework tutor’ for your child that would likely be ok with the teachers. It’s not independent work they encourage - it’s independence from parents. My school recommends ‘homework tutors’ for struggling children even while discouraging parents from helping!

If a parent is willing to offer a child the benefit of extra instruction in the evening at home, I see that as a wonderful thing for the child. Your child may well feel abandoned in this new ‘hands-off’ model. How long must this go on and when can the experiment be drawn to a close??? Clearly they see that classtime alone (in such a large class!) is not enough for your daughter to master the concepts.

Do they want her to fail??? You need to ask these teachers, kindly and gently, some very hard questions. If they balk at you going back to helping your daughter, tell them you’re going to a hire a ‘homework tutor’ and then become that person yourself.

Please let us know how this turns out.

Your homeschooling seems to be working, but I can understand the private school teachers wanting to know what she does on her own; do your corrections on a separate paper with your name on it. I am not a fan of modified grading; I imagine in private school she doesn’t have an IEP, but that’s where to address the madified grade issues.

As expected daughter went down in all grades! She went from 1 A, 5 B’s, 1C to a discouraging 1B, 2 C’s and 4 D’s. Comments by the teacher are “she feels this report card is really a reflection of daughter’s effort and attitude in school and that she is completely overwhelmed!” Comments by each subject included making good effort, displays cooperative attitude, participates in class; and also poor class assignment quality and difficulty completing assignments on time. She also has marked by each grade that curriculum modifications were made. I haven’t seen any! She is even counted off for having the “s” connected to the word when she is to use the apostrophe s to show possession. (This is cursive writing so she has the apostrophe in the right place but it is attached to the word - with the apostrophe in between.) She is counted off if the paper isn’t headed correctly, or the vocab words aren’t highlighted. She is not given half the work, such as odd only or even only. The only modification I noticed in this week’s work is that she wasn’t counted off for spelling in work that was not the subject spelling.
Needless to say there is a conference scheduled in a couple of weeks and I have requested extended time because I do not want to feel rushed. I am going in with a lot of questions and taking several of her papers to show the difference in quality of work. Thank goodness I saved all work brought home!!
Thank you again for all your comments and opinions. Any other comments or opinions are welcome and looked forward to.
Thanks

The education of children is supposed to be a team effort between the home and school. I think you should resume helping your child. From what you say it seems the it’s the teachers who are having are hard time accessing what your daughter knows and does not know. When you stopped helping her at home it is your daughter who began to suffer. At least when you helped her it showed her that you value education and care about her. The teachers obviously know that she is having a hard time or else they would not have talked to you about it. There are many different ways that the teachers can access your childs abilities.

I can see this from both sides. I am a teacher and a parent. I go over my children’s homework and review items they don’t understand. HOWEVER, I was teaching “regrouping” where there were several 0’s several weeks ago. Many students in the class had problems and we spent several days on this. I had parents who were coming in to talk to me about how confused their child was and explaining to me what they had gone over to help their child!!-in the 3 cases of students who were having the most difficulty, the parents were teaching them to skip steps. I had to explain that skipping steps works when you have mastered a process but not when you are learning it. By showing them to skip, the children were skipping other steps necessary. When these parents stopped helping, I was able to re-teach the concept from the beginning.

The short of this is that sometimes teachers are concerned that a parent could create more confusion for the child. I this case, I would say it is not the situation since she is slipping from lack of help at home. I just wanted to help you to understand the possible viewpoint of the teacher.

You are merely doing what the teachers don’t have the time to do on a day-to-day basis. As a teacher of ADHD/LD/ED/BD students, I see nothing wrong with what you are doing, and in fact praise you for doing it. Naturally your child is not going to do as well on said assignment in a classroom full of other students when she has ADHD as she will working with you one-on-one at home. This does not mean that what you are doing is bad, it only means that she learns more effectively in a less-crowded environment.

I support what you are doing, for what it’s worth. Your only problem now is the ethical dilemma………do you keep doing it in spite of the teacher’s request to not do so? And if so, what do you tell your daughter? Or do you tell her nothing and hope she doesn’t figure out that the teacher does not want you to go over it with you? If you tell your daughter to “keep it a secret”, is that teaching her(abeit inadvertently) to defy authority?

Good luck to you!

My only thought might be is do you really want extended time? Wouldn’t you want this over sooner rather than later?

If the teacher has said that your daughter is ‘completely overwhelmed’ - why would they want a student to be ‘completely overwhelmed’? What good does that serve???

And if all the teachers have said your daughter shows good effort, what does it mean when her teacher says her grades ‘reflect her ‘effort?” That makes no sense. Her effort is good, they say, but her grades are poor. How is that a reflection of her good effort? Would they be even lower?

Good luck with this. I hope you’ll keep us posted.

I’m also a parent and teacher, and I teach ADHD, LD, BD, & MR. I think you are doing what is in your child’s best interest. A child with all the special needs you list, may very well do poorly in a large classroom with limited time for 1:1 instruction. I’ve taught in both parochial and public school systems, and understand the problems in both. If your daughter needs all the re-teaching in the evening to succeed, and she well may need this, you might also consider a specialized public or private education day program. It sounds like she has lots of difficulties. Thirty children in a classroom is a lot for any teacher, and the time for extra help may not be there. As for reduced assignments, if she does not understand the assignment or the problems, just reducing the number will not help. Same with extended test time. First the child must understand the concept. Does she need the written or printed material read to her??? Does she need to have her tests on tape so she can play them and stop to answer the questions??? Does she need to have instruction that is visual more than auditory if she has both receptive and expressive language problems?? Were these problems diagnosed by adequate and appropriate testing, thoroughly documented and presented to her school??? If yes, did the school agree to specific accomodations for her???? Is it in writing??? To my knowledge, only public schools are required to provice for recognized and diagnosed learning problems. None of this has to do with her IQ. How has she gotten to this point in her education?? Has she had special services in the past??? It is very important to find her some help and support (especially your help, support and encouragement) so she continues to have a good attitude. Good luck with your conference. I see no problem with your homework help. I also like some of the ideas already presented. Remember, this is your child and you know her best. Also, parents are the first and most important teachers. If you are teaching her to accept herself, that perfection is mot most important, that getting help is more important than failing on her own, and that asking for help (or an better explanation) is OK, then you are doing a good job of parenting her through education. If the school continues to be very negative to your helping her, would they be more accepting of a specialized LD program for afterschool tutoring should there be one in your area??? Her dropping grades and their written attitudes are of considerable concern.

From a teacher’s point of view, I can understand your concerns. As a teacher, we need to gauge what the child can realistically do on his/her own. Did your child’s teacher suggest to attach a second sheet of paper to the original work that your daughter did? The original paper would show the work your daughter did on her own. The second sheet would show what your daughter did with your prompting. This would help to promote neater papers (less erasing, the chance to redo a problem without the distractions of other mistakes, etc. ) Also it would help the teacher to determine if there is a pattern of errors that could be addressed in the classroom.
I currently have 7 students in a class of 25. This works very well for us and it helps the children (and myself) to see where they are making the same mistakes. I am able to use these mistakes to provide support during future lessons. I hope that this is helpful to you.
Good Luck!

She was trying to skip steps and that was what was confusing her. I had to tell her to back up and do each and every step. Sometimes I think she “thinks to fast” or that some of her thinking skills jump around. I have seen this on many multi step math problems - another being long division. I finally told her she had to do it the long way first to completely understand the problem and how to find the answer. She may have been picking up skipping steps from other children thinking it was a short cut.
I understand completely what you are saying.

As Sara (? ) said, you are working with a different animal in a private school. Unless they are receiving funding or are just plain “wonderful” they are not going to make accommodations for your daughter. The fact that she is overwhelmed and they are doing nothing to “fix” it is beyond me. Maybe they are “one of those schools” who only want a certain type of child and they are trying to anger you to the point of pulling her out.? Just a thought.

I am NOT usually an advocate of helping with homework alot. But there are areas (like TIME and measuring (cm, inches) that really throw her and then I help. What I usually do, however, is write a note to the teacher at the top of the page that says Jami had alot of trouble with this area and it gives the teacher a “heads up” so she can (and DOES) spend some extra class time with her to help. (I KNOW we have a wonderful teacher). .

My daughter, however, is in public school (of which I am a strong advocate) b/c they are the only ones that receive the funding and HAVE to accommodate your child. (And it’s the only way I can afford the private remediation) Of course, you often have to stay on top of it, but it sounds like you are paying AND having to stay on top of it.

My general theory is, “If I am going to be unhappy, it’s going to be for FREE” :0).