My Worst Parent's Night So Far

Since this seems to have turned into a count-counterpoint thing, I'm going to go through and change the color of Ginger's responses to purple for distinction.

Thursday night was parent's night at the school. A chance for parents to come in to the school and have the kids show them the work they do. First up was Quinn in his class. Catherine was hanging out with us while we watched Quinn use an abacus to do some complicated multiplication problem. Unfortunately he was getting some of the values wrong when he was multiplying single digit numbers and he got really upset with me when I pointed this out. He kept trying to insist that 6 x 6 was 30 even though I kept telling him it was 36. He was using his multiplication book that he had filled out himself and when he wrote the answer to 6 x 6 the 6 in the 36 looked a bit like a 0 (guess he needs to work on his handwriting some too, but he probably gets the chicken scratch writing from me since I recall always getting low marks in handwriting myself in school). But even though I was telling him the answer was 36 he was sure he was right and even started yelling at me about how I was wrong. And then he stomped over to the beads and brought out the 6 set and came back put down six of them and counted them out for me to "prove" he was right. And once he start into the 30s and ended up at thirty six he gave me this sheepish grin, but had the gall to still insist that he was doing it the right way. Then I suspect because he was so far off the process at this point he started adding to the abacus in the wrong spot and ended up with the wrong information there. And then when the teacher pointed out that he had the wrong values he decided it was all too much and just gave up and put away the abacus. Ginger got on my case explaining to me about how it's more about the process at this point and not so much about getting the right answer. I tend to disagree with that and think both parts (process and answer) are equally important. I'm fairly certain that if I continually provide the wrong answer at work that they're not going to care whether I'm following the process and I'll be soon be looking for another job.

Added by Ginger: It will not surprise many of you to know that James' view of the evening activities is negative, where mine was much more positive. While Quinn did indeed mis-read his multiplication book his ability to actually multiply numbers at his age is marvelous. (He takes after his Dad in his ease with math.) When this math "error" occurred (I will use James' negative view) Quinn was multiplying a number in the hundred thousands by 56. This is quite impressive for a child his age. Add to that the long division problem he did - fourteen divided into a number in the hundred thousands and he showed us impressive work. I certainly walked away impressed with not only the process of doing the work (Montessori has exacting processes) but how excited he was to actually do long division and multiplication.

Later when it was time for Catherine's class to start up Ginger was still watching Quinn finish up some long division exercise. I tried to get Catherine to go with me to her class so she could show me stuff, but she would have none of that. She even threw a little tantrum and insisted she was going to stay with Ginger until she finished watching Quinn. At this point I really wanted to just leave and go home because I wasn't really feeling like they wanted me there. Things did get a little better once we actually got into Catherine's class (about ten minutes later). Catherine seems to be doing really well with her work. Of course, I have nothing really to compare her against, so I don't know what she should know at this point, but if I were to compare her against where Quinn was at that age I think she's a little behind on the math but way ahead on reading.

Added by Ginger: As for Catherine, she showed us her new work subtraction to most everyone but Montessorians (take away there). The amount of math work she has done this year is amazing since before November she really was struggling with even counting past twenty. She is truly doing an excellent job this year in school, and with the start of reading and doing more math work truly loves school for the first time ever.

And comparing! For shame!!! At Montessori you are not supposed to compare, the whole premise is that children work at their own pace. I walked away Thursday night glad that the children showed us work that their parents could be proud of.

As a last word (maybe) let me say it's not that I'm unimpressed with the work they're doing. What I had an issue with was their attitude. Such as Quinn yelling at me when I tried to point out a mistake, or just quitting doing the work when he gets told he's doing a couple things wrong and Catherine not even wanting to go into the classroom with just me.