5/2007: transcribed from homeschooling board. I can't believe I didn't include it in the blog when it was happening. This will be disjointed.
G has been enjoying her ancillary classes with the school district, but last week she was in the back seat telling me about her day when she asked me if there were really two towers in NY that were knocked down by a plane.
Frankly, I was really pissed off. I have done what I can to somewhat shield the kids from the gory details of all that. I won't shirk from it forever, but dd is SIX YEARS OLD. This is a music class for first graders. The song they were learning was apparently inspired by the events, (*Eagles: There's a Hole in the World Tonight) but I firmly question the necessity of that in first grade.
Now that I have completely calmed down, I want to confront the teacher but I am not sure what to say. I know I will ask her exactly what she taught them about that day, because *I* need to know, but beyond that....
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It gets better!
Music Teacher didn't tell me the name of the song*, I heard G singing it, and it's one of my favorite songs.
Apparently there was an assembly yesterday at 2.15 where she was supposed to sing it with her class and the 4th grade class. Of course, no one told me that when I picked her up from PE at 2.10. I only found out there was an assembly at all because when I dropped her for music (she has music + pe on Thursday) the teacher was in the gym, not the music room, "working on seating for the assembly. G, you can sit over there."
So..... if G was supposed to be in an assembly, someone should have damn told me. I asked then "should I leave her? is there going to be a music class today?" and the teacher kind of tersely said "yes there will be a music class" so I left G there. But after PE, G came right out the same door where some parents had gathered for the assembly. I took her away, completely clueless as to what she was missing.
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It's not the song that bothers me; it's that Graham a. was taught something politically AGE inappropriate and then B. was prevented from performing something she'd rehearsed and anticipated.
I would not have held her back, but I wasn't able to support her either because I didn't know about it.
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[In a nutshell, some friends online suggested that I was expecting too much from a public school district, and that since I released my child to their care, they would not see anything wrong with any exposure they gave her.]
But you're right about me too, as a homeschooler I wanted to avoid all this horseshit, and here I am dealing with it anyway.
I am going to allow her to go through the December break, and then she's coming back home. I will tell her (truthfully) that's it is the end of the semester and (not so truthfully) that class is all done. Our financial situation has improved again and I can send her to something private or join a homeschool choir that I recently discovered.
This has been a surprising learning experience for me. I find myself agreeing with the (perceived, never stated) attitude of the PSD that she should be in or out altogether. They've never done anything aside from this issue to make us uncomfortable or to make us feel unwelcome, but I feel like she is so conspicuous and I want to make commitments to our own community, like the WashNFL.
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This is the pic my dd drew after the class dh and I were upset about. I have been cleaning my desk off today and I found it.
At least, in her vision, there was a ladder for the people to escape.
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