What's school like?

I've always wondered about those people who have a clear idea of what they want to do from an early age.  Like, how do they do that?  How do they settle on any one thing?  I would tell myself it's because they just embraced the thing that they got the most positive feedback for.  "I am really good at sums, but can't spell.  I will be an accountant!"  Or, "I have a good imagination for storytelling, but I don't know how to find X or why I would want to.  I will be a writer!"

But, then, what if you are able to do everything that was ever thrown at you?  How do you choose if your choices aren't limited by your capacity and you are interested in everything?

My answer was to just keep going to school 'til I achieved a terminal degree and then kind of floundered around.  But there must be a better way!  Surely there is a "best fit" career out there for me, and I just haven't found it yet.  Or maybe I'm just destined to make embossed tortilla presses in my workshop and sell them online. 

I feel the same way. I do know I'm not great at math, so anything math related isn't my thing. But other than that I got nothing...

I'm struggling in deciding 'what I want to be when I grow up.' You can't be hired to do 'happy'. You have to pick something...

I hated maths! Just never got it, still don't get it now haha! Glad my school days are over. Seems like the young ones now have it tough with changes to GCSE's and exams.

I can add a few things:
In my experience, classes don't change from year to year which can be a problem if your kid doesn't have friends in that group.  Even worse is when your kid is bullied, it can last for 7 years. 

I think there is a common criticism of UK schools that they start teaching reading and spelling very early, far earlier than other European countries. 

Over the entire school experience, I have been struck by how obsessed teachers are with estimating progress and then judging wether the kids have reached that estimate.  Parent teacher conferences are like reading a spreadsheet: "last year it was estimated that Johnny would reach 5c, this year he has reached 6d" with no explanation of wether that is good or not.  Frankly, I don't care what someone has predicted for the future, I care about where my kid is now. 

Also with schools overall, the grading systems are baffling and changing constantly.  Last year, they kept the scale (A to F for example) but changed the meaning of each grade.  All of a sudden, Fs were good!    Parents universally freaked out when their kids brought home report cards showing backwards progress. 

Now that I am ranting, there is also this bizarre attitude that no one is supposed to get a perfect grade.  In America, it's common to get %100 on a test if you have mastered the subject.  Here, 16 out of 20 is seen as excellent.  Sounds like a crappy result to me, but apparently there is a cultural thing where no one can get a perfect score.  I don't know if they put questions that weren't covered in class, or what they do. 

It must be really hard for my kids because they are constantly coming up to me and proudly announcing they got 12 out of 20 on some test, or achieved 3G when they were expected to achieve 54 and I can't be excited because none of it makes any sense.

We were told all year our daughter excelled and was doing hers two work when she was year one, the her end of report came out and they marked her as like average across the board?

I know she has had a tough year at home and it probably impacted school some but how can they say she's excelling then mark her as averagish?

Also, they taught her to read. She's picked it up and is fluently reading on her own then at the end of the school year they went back and did phonics. Why?? Shouldn't that be before you learn to read? They made comment like Lilly did so well in phonics, she got 40/40.. well no duh the child's reading chapter books why does she need to be tested in phonics?




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I've always wondered about those people who have a clear idea of what they want to do from an early age.  Like, how do they do that?  How do they settle on any one thing?  I would tell myself it's because they just embraced the thing that they got the most positive feedback for.  "I am really good at sums, but can't spell.  I will be an accountant!"  Or, "I have a good imagination for storytelling, but I don't know how to find X or why I would want to.  I will be a writer!"

But, then, what if you are able to do everything that was ever thrown at you?  How do you choose if your choices aren't limited by your capacity and you are interested in everything?

My answer was to just keep going to school 'til I achieved a terminal degree and then kind of floundered around.  But there must be a better way!  Surely there is a "best fit" career out there for me, and I just haven't found it yet.  Or maybe I'm just destined to make embossed tortilla presses in my workshop and sell them online. 

I'm a little late in finding this post (sorry!) but want to add my two cents. In the USA the chance of someone actually having the same type of employment for their entire lives appears to be dwindling.  All the studies I've seen (please don't ask which ones, I'd have to do a major lit search to find them again) seem to indicate people are going to have at least a few careers....

I did the same thing with the terminal degree chase, eventually, after having to quit a lucrative career due to family considerations. If there would have been a way to do it, I'd probably have remained a Uni student perpetually, actually. I was in my element.

Anyway, that said, I've been almost useless in advising my daughter, and the  "advising staff" at the high school she was in were idiots who could only parrot the party line.  I've told her that I think she should study what actually interests her, on the thought that it's more likely she'll do well - if that matters in the long run - on the degree course, and she might find something to do for a living in conjunction with the degree along the way. 

Or she may not. But in either case, I've advised her to not borrow heavily to finance her higher education, because student loans will follow her perpetually....

Given how parts of the workforce/work environment are changing massively, how on earth can a young person know what they'll want to do to earn a living more than a few years in advance? There's no constant other than "change." I do worry about kids who say they want to "be" a such-and-such too early in their lives. The Daughter has one friend who wanted to be a doctor for years.  Said Friend focused on this, borrowed heavily, is finishing up the last of the necessary hoops to jump to be fully accredited in the profession, and is suicidal because they realized a few years ago they hated it but think they have no "out" due to the crushing debt....

A long and wandering post, sorry, but I do worry about young people and the bizarre expectations loaded onto them. They are asked to make choices that will impact their lives well before they are cognitively really capable of understanding the impacts and then have to live with that. It's sad. 

Scottish schools are different than English schools and there has been a pretty radical shift now to changes in how and what kids study and how much they get to choose and what they get to choose to study.   

There's been a ton of changes for including employability skills and getting school credit for leadership, like Duke of Edinburgh.   The Curriculum for Excellence seems good in theory, but so far Scotland is dropping in world rankings. So something isn't working too well.

 

My kids (twins) are in Year 3 of primary (started in the UK in Reception year) and my step-son is in Year 8 (secondary school). From what I understand, last year was the last year of the compulsory Year 2 SATS test and they will only have it in Year 7 now before Secondary. Although I think some schools will still give the Year 2 SATS if they want? I know that when I got my kids' scores back they didn't make any sense at all, and it doesn't seem to matter, so I just went with it.  My kids get homework on Friday and it is due the following Wednesday. If they don't do it, they have "homework club" (sounds fun!) at lunch recess on Thursday to finish it. Generally it is 1 page of math problems, 1 page of English and some spelling words. They also have a reading journal and they are supposed to complete one task once a week - the tasks are like, describe your favorite character, design a new title for the book, write an acrostic poem, etc... Homework normally takes them 30 minutes MAX if they get to task and do it and don't complain. It's nice to do over the weekend when they aren't already tired from school. This is vastly different from my US friends' kids who have loads of homework every night.

It must be really hard for my kids because they are constantly coming up to me and proudly announcing they got 12 out of 20 on some test, or achieved 3G when they were expected to achieve 54 and I can't be excited because none of it makes any sense.

Totally this. This is why I didn't pay attention to the SATS scores. My step-son brought home his end of year report for Year 7 and even my husband didn't have a clue.

I think you need to know your path in life at about nine here. It seems to come from the aforementioned 11 plus tests where it was either grammar school and thus a civil service/banking career, or down the pit.

Again, my step-son had to take some aptitude test in school in Year 7 and came home announcing he was told he'd be an excellent video games programmer. Great. Maybe you should learn to code then and not spend all day watching YouTube vids?

As far as switching classes, my kids are deliberately in the one school in the area with more than one class per grade - there are 3 classes for every grade, so they get switched up every year, which is nice. They know all of the kids in their grade (probably 75-85 kids total) and this year neither of them got stuck with the one major trouble maker in their grade and they are SO HAPPY. Also, since I have twins, the school never puts them in the same class, which I prefer because they are so competitive, but also would not pay attention AT ALL if they were in the same class. They sit together at lunch and play outside together. However, before we were in the catchment area, we had to petition to get them into this school (it was the middle of the year and the school was "full" and outside our area, but the head teacher was holding places for them because my step-son was already in the school), which took 2 months for a decision.

I do think Primary in the UK is better than Elementary in the US because there is more focus on individual learning - each kid works to their own targets, not a class target. The teachers seem very involved and there are fewer kids per class, at least where we are, than we would have had in the US, with 2 teaching assistants per class who rotate through the classrooms (so 6 per year).

What I don't like is we don't have any way to contact the teachers (email/phone/etc) other than sending a note or calling the general school number to leave a message. They have an app, Marvelous Me, where the teachers can send through feedback about what your child has done, but there's no response option.

My kids (twins) are in Year 3 of primary (started in the UK in Reception year) and my step-son is in Year 8 (secondary school). From what I understand, last year was the last year of the compulsory Year 2 SATS test and they will only have it in Year 7 now before Secondary. Although I think some schools will still give the Year 2 SATS if they want? I know that when I got my kids' scores back they didn't make any sense at all, and it doesn't seem to matter, so I just went with it.  My kids get homework on Friday and it is due the following Wednesday. If they don't do it, they have "homework club" (sounds fun!) at lunch recess on Thursday to finish it. Generally it is 1 page of math problems, 1 page of English and some spelling words. They also have a reading journal and they are supposed to complete one task once a week - the tasks are like, describe your favorite character, design a new title for the book, write an acrostic poem, etc... Homework normally takes them 30 minutes MAX if they get to task and do it and don't complain. It's nice to do over the weekend when they aren't already tired from school. This is vastly different from my US friends' kids who have loads of homework every night.
Totally this. This is why I didn't pay attention to the SATS scores. My step-son brought home his end of year report for Year 7 and even my husband didn't have a clue.
Again, my step-son had to take some aptitude test in school in Year 7 and came home announcing he was told he'd be an excellent video games programmer. Great. Maybe you should learn to code then and not spend all day watching YouTube vids?

As far as switching classes, my kids are deliberately in the one school in the area with more than one class per grade - there are 3 classes for every grade, so they get switched up every year, which is nice. They know all of the kids in their grade (probably 75-85 kids total) and this year neither of them got stuck with the one major trouble maker in their grade and they are SO HAPPY. Also, since I have twins, the school never puts them in the same class, which I prefer because they are so competitive, but also would not pay attention AT ALL if they were in the same class. They sit together at lunch and play outside together. However, before we were in the catchment area, we had to petition to get them into this school (it was the middle of the year and the school was "full" and outside our area, but the head teacher was holding places for them because my step-son was already in the school), which took 2 months for a decision.

I do think Primary in the UK is better than Elementary in the US because there is more focus on individual learning - each kid works to their own targets, not a class target. The teachers seem very involved and there are fewer kids per class, at least where we are, than we would have had in the US, with 2 teaching assistants per class who rotate through the classrooms (so 6 per year).

What I don't like is we don't have any way to contact the teachers (email/phone/etc) other than sending a note or calling the general school number to leave a message. They have an app, Marvelous Me, where the teachers can send through feedback about what your child has done, but there's no response option.

Ours is in year two and has the tests this year. I don't quite understand it all..

Great. Maybe you should learn to code then and not spend all day watching YouTube vids?

You must have met my kid!  Totally talks like he’s interested in programming, and has convinced me to buy him a Raspberry Pi and a Sphero but won’t actually do anything other than watch other people play Minecraft on You Tube.  I think his new thing is watching vids of people who are watching other people play.   

Don’t get me started on those stupid voices! 

Those of you without kids will be shocked to learn that no one under 12 can play a video game in silence.  Thanks to You Tube and JF Kimberly, every game requires a running commentary of babble in a silly voice.

heh heh heh heh heh. Never give a kid a toy that requires batteries or that makes noise on it's own.

You must have met my kid!  Totally talks like he’s interested in programming, and has convinced me to buy him a Raspberry Pi and a Sphero but won’t actually do anything other than watch other people play Minecraft on You Tube.  I think his new thing is watching vids of people who are watching other people play.   

I told my twins they could have their own YouTube channel when they turn 12. It is now their only goal in life.

They’ll get over it quick when they see how much trouble it is to actually make content. 

They’ll get over it quick when they see how much trouble it is to actually make content.

They think they're going to be the next EvanTubeHD or DanTDM.

I believe its code.com which is a free coding site for kids to start at, I used it when I worked at a literacy program back home. It stars pretty basic but builds up to harder stuff.

KidsRuby is pretty fun too, and there's an organization called CoderDojo that's basically kids teaching each other to code with the guidance of adults, and there are groups all over the place. There are tons of interactive coding sites now, so depending on age they could probably try the beginner courses at places like codecademy.com too


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Both of my kids were taught Scratch at school, it’s a coding language where you drag and drop bits into a script.  Comes with the raspberry pi .  Our next project is to make a button that works with the I/O bits of the raspberry pi and make it interact with a game in scratch.