It was kinda like this.

I went back to 4th grade today, it was eerie.

My eldest daughter will be starting Kindergarten in August.  We’re trying to get her into a good school.  Good schools are few and far between where we live.  Before we can register her we have to observe 2 hours of classes.  Beth observed a Kindergarten class and I observed a fourth grade and a sixth grade class.    As I said before, it was eerie.  Here are some things I observed(I took a notepad with me to make notes):

• Its so quiet, I expected a madhouse.   I don’t remember school being that quiet.
• This school has high standards.  These kids are assigned a level of responsibility and they are held to it.
• I was there for English and Math.  In English they were learning creative writing skills, some of these kids were good.   One girls’ creative sentence was “John McCain won the majority of our votes”.  Creative.
• Only about 1/2 of the kids were paying attention.  I think they had Attention deficit disorder.  Which leads us to…
• 1/4 of the kids looked like they were on drugs.  Their movements were slow and exaggerated and they could barely open their eyes.   Of course most of them  had colds so maybe they were just hopped up on cold medicine.
• Subtraction of Fractions?  Already?  I don’t remember fractions in 4th grade.  The kids were on top of it though, except for the cold medicine kids who hadn’t even got their papers out yet.

• 29 kids per class

I was only in 6th grade for about 15 minutes but here is what I observed

• So Very Quiet.  I teach this age group at church, they’re not quiet for me.
• Oh, I see, Its silent reading time.
• Silent reading time is not Study time.
• The kids sit very close together.
• Isn’t it weird that we as parents turn the responsibility of teaching our children over to complete strangers without even thinking about it.
• I caught a kid cheating.  I wasn’t sure what to do about it.  I was told not to interact with the students or the teachers.  I didn’t do anything about it.   Here’s what Mr. Sneaky did.  The kids were grading their own papers.  He didn’t put a red mark next to the wrong answers.  The teacher looked at his paper and noted that he didn’t mark the all of the wrong answers.  As she looked away for a second, he reached inside his desk and broke the tip off of his red pencil.  When he looked back, he showed it to her and told her that his pencil broke and he couldn’t mark them wrong.  I don’t think she bought it, I think she’s on to him.
• Heels?  She was constantly on her feet walking around the classroom.  Why would you wear heels to teach sixth graders.  I’m not buying it, I’m on to her.