School Daze

Had an interesting conversation with Todd today about some of the goings on in school. In general, he's one of the better-behaved and more attentive students, but he's still a regular, easily-distracted 5-year-old, and having a teacher who's very soft on discipline doesn't help matters.

The kids' names are listed on the board one by one, and every day they rack up either checkmarks or stars. Stars if they did something well, checkmarks if they misbehaved. I asked Todd if he'd ever gotten checkmarks before, and he said yes, a couple times. Why? Because he kept talking. To his seatmate, Loftur, of course.

I remember seeing their seats together in the classroom the last few times I was there, and was a bit concerned that putting the 2 together wasn't such a good idea. When I suggested this, Todd explained: "Loftur wanted to sit next to me. Mrs. Markos (their teacher) told him he could, as long as he behaved". Knowing that she seldom takes disciplinary action against such misbehavior anyway, this wasn't such a good idea.

Then Todd told me how he didn't do well on spelling tests because Loftur kept disturbing. He kept asking Todd what the answers were. Todd, to his credit, so far has ignored his pleas, but even so, it's distracting enough to break Todd's own concentration. Never mind the fact that it's cheating! I'm sure Loftur just doesn't understand that, but it nevertheless leaves me concerned that their teacher overlooks or outright misses this kind of stuff all the time.

I instructed Todd to tell his teacher the next time Loftur did it again, so she could put a stop to it. They have spelling tests every week... let's see what happens with this next one!