Jared, our 6th grader, has finished Saxon 6/5 today. This is big. This is HUGE! This is wonderful! It means that he will begin Saxon 7/6 tomorrow. I’m sure he’ll be able to test out of the first few lessons of the book. His goal is to be done with 7/6 by the time he begins 7th grade. That means he’d be right on TRACK.
As a 3rd grader Jared and I made a mistake. He pulled the wool over my eyes and I was not conscientious to check his work. We’ve been working together to deal with the consequences of that lost year of math for the past three years. In 4th grade I insisted he do 3rd grade math….and we’ve been slowly plodding away, making up a few units each year until FINALLY he’s within months of being “caught up”. Please understand that I was gracious and merciful and accepted my share of the fault for the lost year…but we felt he needed to learn that we wouldn’t bail him out when he cheated. This is a LIFE lesson.
Biggest lessons we learned from this bout of reality discipline: I learned – Check their work every day (or at least weekly). I also learned to teach and re-teach and re-teach until they “get it” – use different methods if needed – but don’t simply give up. Jared learned “if you cheat, you won’t learn what you need to and it will be harder for you”. Life lessons we learned…Don’t look for short cuts, perseverance pays off, sometimes you have to allow a bit of pain into a child’s life for them to grow, be CONSISTENT with grading! The funny thing is that through this whole 3 year trip – Jared and I have been drawn together as each of us realized the part we played in his mess.
We’re going to pull out the CELEBRATE plate tonight for sure! BUT I’m not letting him burn the Saxon text book.
4 comments:
DeEtta,
I'm not quite understanding what happened with your son's math. But I must say people sometimes look at me cross-eyed when I say that I correct all five children's work each night. Now granted two of them are quite easy - I correct it as they do it sitting with me.
But I have always felt that they need to have me correct their daily math work before they go onto the next lesson.
He cheated. I was looking at "totals" and not looking at work and he plain out cheated.
I refused to let him do a "different publisher math and move on to grade 4". I made him do grade 3 over and do it right...so he's been a year behind but he learned a HUGE lessons and is not deceitful any longer. Painfully honest in fact. {G} He got 100% on the first two tests in his new book so I'm betting he'll shortly be right in the middle of the 6th grade book and finally caught up...he has a solid math foundation and more importantly....I didn't bail him out when he made a bad life choice.
I understand now... yes our children sometimes think they can get away with things... glad he got caught before he got so far behind that he was really really really lost in math....
now I know why I've always been so neurotic about doing most all the correcting of schoolwork each and every night
sometimes neurosis is a good thing? {g}
I still don't grade every day - but we do talk grades every day and I do grade "randomly" every week. In other words - he never knows when I WILL decide to check.
However - this is a lesson he learned so well and applies in many ways. It's not uncommon to hear him telling others "don't try to find an easy way out - just do your work wholeheartedly". LOL
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