Womze - Cross Cultural Parenting

I could hardly wait for the first teacher conference with my daughter’s new teacher at her new school.  Last school year, discussions with her teacher were uncomfortable because we seemed to be on different pages.  In my estimation, the teacher wanted my child to be average.  I wanted my child to be exceptional.  Two very different goals.  New school, new grade, new teacher, I felt that things were different but I needed to confirm.

As I had hoped, conversation flowed easily with the new teacher.  The teacher had feared that the decision to allow Darling Angel skip kindergarten may turn out to be wrong but thankfully, she was coping incredibly well, both socially and with her school work.  The teacher pointed out the first grade word list we had been given at the beginning of the school year and remarked that since Darling Angel had already mastered all of it, she has upgraded her to the second grade word list.  That’s what I’m talking about!  Keep her challenged.

Then the teacher asked me if there was any area where I thought Darling Angel needed some help.  And I told her, “She needs to learn patience.”

“Exactly”, Teacher chimes.  I’m loving this.  We are so on the same page.  I visualize us holding hands, singing Kumbaya.  We trade stories to illustrate Darling Angel’s lack of patience.  Like when she had the homework to color a brick wall using a pattern of three colors.  She spent ten minutes complaining about how long it would take.  Also she zips through to her homework so quickly, leaving some questions unanswered in the process. 

“How do we fix that?”, I ask.  Teacher tells me that to an extent, it is normal with kids at this age.  But every little effort helps.

Hubby already suggested giving her even more ‘homework’ at home so she can exercise her patient muscles.  Given that homework is often happening while doing dinner, cleaning, getting ready for tomorrow, I haven’t implemented the more homework strategy yet.  She needs to learn to focus on what she is doing instead of worrying about the next task, which is often TV.  Or fractions, which are not in this year’s curriculum. 

I hope she naturally improves over time, but we also plan to enable the improvement.  I just haven’t decided what the plan is.  I’m still basking in relief that we made the right decision in moving her to a new school.  And instead of working at odds with the teacher, we can work together in partnership to bring out the best in my child.  Amen!

My parenting philosophy on education is this - Push the kids as far as they can go! This means stretching them beyond their present limits, introducing them to advanced concepts early to give them a headstart. And of course, providing them with plenty of opportunity to practice their learnings, through homework both assigned by the teacher and additional work given at home. Do I sound like I’m extreme? Fortunately, I’m not. I do believe this philosophy, but I just don’t have the time and energy to practice it after a full day at work. And on weekends, if the million things that have to be done don’t have to be done, then I like to relax. Since I do not have the time to provide my kids with all the stretching opportunities I imagine, I appreciate it greatly when the teacher does it for me.

At the beginning of the school year when Darling Angel started 1st grade, we attended a parent-teacher orientation. I couldn’t contain my grins of joy when the teacher rattled off all the subjects that would be taught, the techniques and the homework - lots of it. Wonderful! Barely two months of school have gone by and I’m now singing a different tune. Enough with all that homework!!!

The homework is not difficult, just reinforcement of what was taught during the day. In fact, by the time I pick Darling Angel up most days, she has already completed most of her homework. But there are the hands-on activities that she’s supposed to do and describe to the teacher the following day. These require adult (i.e. my) supervision or interaction. Activities such as dropping various objects in a tub of water to see which would sink or not. Or quizzing her on a comprehension essay that she has read. Or playing explorer and discussing the objects we discovered.

These are fun and excellent activities for kids and every night, there is no end to Darling Angel’s whining when we do not have time to complete the assigned activity. “But mom, I’m supposed to put stuff in water! Mom, I need to tell my teacher which ones can float!!” “But mom, I need to explore somewhere!!!” While I say, “Shh, go to bed.”

I titled the post, “Homework versus family time”, but in reality, on weekdays we do not even have family time. School ends at 2:45pm but I do not pick Darling Angel up until 5/5:30 because…you guessed it, I work. Then we pick up Baby Brother and head home. It’s dinner time and if hubby is already home, then lucky us because dinner will be done. If not, I’m making the fasted thing I can think of while Baby Brother belts himself into his high chair and chants “eat eat.” While cleaning up, Darling Angel holds up her homework papers in my face. “See mom.” I try to stare at it long enough to figure if she got her sums right and her spellings correct. “Good job”, I giver her a verbal pat on the back while we get ready for bed. As I start shooing the kids into bed, she reminds me of the homework activity that’s not yet done. “There’s no time”, I tell her. She pulls a long face and goes to bed.

The next day when she says, “My teacher said I am supposed to see what things can float”, I feel like an incompetent parent. But there really was no time. And when there is a little time, I am beginning to resent this intrusion of homework into what should be a treasured family time. I love homework, but this I hate.

An article on USAToday advices that “parents approach the teacher in a non-confrontational way, as a collaborator in the education process.” That is what I have to do.

It was science fair at my daughter’s school.  I was jittery with excitement looking forward to the wonders I will lay my eyes on.  My daughter’s in preK so I wasn’t expecting too much from her class.  But images of fourth grade kids operating robots flashed across my mind.

I’ve never been to a science fair.  We didn’t have science fairs where I grew up.  We had science projects and performed experiments.  But we mostly considered them lame.  We suffered from some form of inferiority complex where we believed that everything happening across the ocean was bigger, brighter, better.  Okay, I wasn’t always aware of ‘the outside world’.  But as I grew older, learned about other countries, developed countries, and learned that I was from a third world country (often called undeveloped but it made me feel better to say ‘developing’), the feelings of inadequacy grew.

So it was with great expectations that I walked into the school.  First to Darling Angel’s preK class where they had created a board about germs and how they spread.  They demonstrated how germs spread by coating their hands with cocoa powder and touching various objects.  I figure that’s age appropriate.  So I head to the older grades looking forward to see a smoking volcano, robotic devices, something that did something.  But instead, I see boards with pictures and text of various observatory activities the kids engaged in.  I headed from classroom to classroom hoping to see a device/something that did something.  But more boards.

I felt so disappointed.  These all looked like the same kinds of activities we called science projects in the third world.  I had considered them lame, a result of lack of better resources.  I wanted to see more from the developed world.

I went home and pondered what I had seen.  I pondered some more, then it hit me.  These kids were doing great projects.  I recalled the bright, excited faces as the kids explained what they had observed.  Isn’t that what science is all about? 

As for my unrealistic expectations, I blame it on being labelled “third world” and “undeveloped”.  And of course, the media.  I bet I must have seen some movies (and cartoons) with teeny geniuses creating world changing devices.  Now I understand that fifth grade kids are still observing their world.  They need a little more time to translate those observations into said devices.  I expect said devices to be ready for middle school.  Gee!  I can’t wait to see a middle school science fair.

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We stopped over at a neighbors place who’s starting a home daycare.  Hubby and I have decided to move Baby Brother from his regular daycare to this home daycare and we were there to go over final details.  We talked about naptime, meals, emergencies, lesson plans and a myriad other details.  The new home daycare owner was very excited and animated as she displayed all the learning materials she had purchased for the kids.  Her excitement was contagious. 

As soon as we got home, Darling Angel asked “Can I learn with Baby Brother?”.  She had been listening as we discussed lesson plans and she wanted in. 

“But those are for one year olds”, I told her.  “You already know all that.”

“But I want to learn too”, she whined.

I understood what she meant.  I have been worried that she was bored at school.  I told her teacher that much but she disagreed.  She insisted that my daughter was well behaved, gave her teachers no trouble whatsoever and therefore was not bored.  In this teacher’s estimation, boredom is only diagnosed by outwardly anti-social behavior.  How could I prove to this teacher that my daughter was bored?  And what would the teacher do with this information if she had it.  From our conversation, I figured “nothing”. 

“It doesn’t matter that she’s advanced now.”  Do you even know how advanced she is?  Have you bothered to find out?

“Maturity and the ability to listen to instructions is more important.”  Agreed, but can’t you cultivate those while stretching her limits?

“Our program is already advanced so we don’t have a special track for advanced students.”  And that’s why you have my daughter who’s already reading at the 2nd grade level spend a whole day identifying the letter J!

“We have never had a student skip a grade before.”  Why am I not surprised?  You are unable to or choose not to identify gifted kids.

I still feel a lot of disappointed over that conversation with the teacher.  Obviously, the responses above were not what I said to her.  I mostly smiled and nodded my head and asked the next question.  She smiled too and answered me patiently.  But I was screaming in my head.  “How can you not know that she can read?  How can you not bother to find out what your students know?!”

I do not want to judge.  She’s probably a good teacher.  She’s been doing her job for 20-something years.  She does a great job of keeping the kids in line.  I have never been a teacher to 4 and 5 year olds and I imagine it is not an easy job.  But my daughter remains bored.  I do not mean to imply that she’s not learning anything new.  She is.  And when she does learn something new, she gets animated and talks about it all day.  About two years ago, that excitement was the norm.  Now, it is the exception.

Now, back to present.  She’s saying “Mommy, please please, I want to learn too”.  I realized I have not worked as hard as I should to create exciting learning opportunities at home.  It has been a while (a long while) since my last visit to Holcombs.  Then I remember it is not just about buying stuff at Holcombs.  It is about me dedicating time for her.  Stuff do not make up for time. 

So I tell her, “That place is for babies to learn.  You have many places you can learn.  You can learn at school, you can learn at home..”

She cut in, “I want to learn at home mommy”.

I say, “Why don’t you write all the things you can do to learn at home”.

She ran to get her notebook and started to write painstakingly, asking me for directions and spellings, fretting over the mistakes she made as she made her list: reading books, doing puzzles, riding bicycles, coloring pictures, writing…until it was dinner time.

“I want you to buy me this book.”

“I want you to buy me that book.”

Darling Angel requests for almost every book she sees in the Scholastic catalogs she brings from school.  We now make weekly trips to the library, that way her reading list is not limited to what we buy.  So I told her, “write down all the books you want to read, and we’ll get them from the library”.

Today I gave her a notebook and she immediately grabbed a pencil and started to write.  A (”mommy, how do you spell little?”) LITTLE OLD LADY WHO WAS (”mommy, how do you spell afraid?”) AFRAID OF NOT (mommy, how do you spell nothing?”) THING. 

“Wow!”, I thought.  She wrote that from memory.  She will turn five next month.

Then I remembered, that at age five, I could also write.  And I don’t think it was a big deal that I could.  I remember because at the time, I lived with my grandmother while my mother was abroad getting her Masters degree.  It was right after my 5th birthday and my grandmother told me to write my mom a letter.  I wrote a long letter which was essentially a list of all the toys I wanted her to buy - a list inspired by the pictures on my birthday cards.  I can remember my grandmother’s disapproving eyes as she lectured me about the proper way to write a letter - inquire about her well being, tell her what I’m doing etc.

My point is, the expectations that kids are held to where I grew up (in Nigeria) is totally different from here in the USA.  I appreciate so much about America, and my graduate school experience here was top notch, but I’m disappointed with the school system at the kindergarten stage. 

I feel like my daughter is capable of so much more, if only someone would teach her.  So when I ask her teacher about efforts to take her to the next stage, and her teacher tells me that my daughter (who is in pre-K) is not expected to know how to Read at her age, I feel very extremely disappointed.  I sit down, quietly exploding with conflicting emotions (did we pick the right school?, is the teacher listening to me?, am I doing the right thing as a parent?) as the teacher proudly displays evidence that my daughter can identify colors, her name, the alphabets and numbers 0 to 9.  I agree with the teacher that social development is important, but heck, that can be developed simultaneously with reading, writing, math and all other fun things.

The Nigerian education system is not fantastic.  In fact, I can argue that it’s terrible.  And gets progressively worse as one advances, then maybe improves at the graduate levels. Need a graph?  Its failings are due to lack of supplies, teachers that are not paid, inadequate facilities.  I could go on, but this is not the right forum.  While the system may be worse, high expectations remain, and children succeed.  Now, imagine what children could do in a system that lacked these inadequacies!

People are different, kids are different.  Maybe not every kid will be able to write at 5.  Maybe that kid would be more accomplished in some other area.  But if every kids potential is developed to it’s highest potential (of course, while balancing with social development), I’m sure we’ll find a kid who would publish poetry at the age of 5.

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For the past week, I’ve been trying to write about my Darling Angel starting school but everyday I digress on the topic and end up with an unsatisfactory draft.  I’m looking at the multiple drafts I’ve written, trying to figure out which one to complete but I don’t like any of them.  Monday, 3 days ago was her first day of school.  It was exciting.  I had butterflies in my tummy just like it was MY first day of school, yet I couldn’t write about it.  What’s the matter with me?

I just figured it out.  Or rather, I just admitted it to myself.  I’m disappointed that she’s not starting in kindergarten.  She’ll turn 5 in a few months and I can’t believe how strict the schools are about their August cut-off dates.  So you’re wondering, then what school is she starting?  We found a school with a K-4 (pre kindergarten) class.  We decided that getting her into a formal/structured program now is better than another year of preschool.

You may wonder why we’re in such hurry to get her into kindergarten.  Her preschool teacher thought she kindergarten-ready at the age of three.  She was very excited about learning, she was a sponge absorbing everything she was taught.  We moved to another city.  New school.  Boredom, rapid decline.  We tried to stem the tide, varied learning material, changed schools, a little improvement.  At the age of four, I felt like we were working so hard just to get her back to what she knew a year ago.  We decided that rather than spend so much energy trying to ’save’ her knowledge, we should get her into kindergarten, and do it quickly.

I feel disappointed that we didn’t do it.  I wonder if we tried hard enough.  The obstacle seemed to huge to surmount.  If the issue is the knowledge, then test it.  “Oh yes, she’s very bright, but she doesn’t turn 5 until December.  It’s our rule.  We’re sorry.”  What happens on the day she turns 5?  Does she reach some magical maturity milestone?  I don’t think so.  I believe kids (and adults) of the same age will always exhibit different levels of maturity.  Her preschool teacher thought she was ready and mature enough for kindergarten.  No less mature than the other kids, a few months older who were headed for kindergarten.  But we have to accept the schools’ decisions.  They’re sorry, that’s the rule.

I’m glad we found a good school that has a K-4 program.  She’ll be in a school and hopefully learn more than she would have in preschool/daycare.  Will she learn enough?  And what’s enough?  I don’t know.  But I want her to become excited about learning again.  I hope we made a good decision.  It’s been three days, and I’m watching, listening for signs that she was excited by what she learned in school.  I’m still watching and listening.  And the teacher?  We’ll be having a lot to talk about. 

In the meantime, we really are EXCITED about school.  It’s a whole new experience and Darling Angel is loving it.  Once I work out the disappointment from my system typing fingers, I’ll be able to write more about school and all the fun that goes with it.