Wednesday, January 20, 2010

To push or not to push...My teaching dilema

Avery had her 2nd face to face meeting with her/my learning coach today. Basically, I'm her day to day teacher, but I have someone in authority over me who makes sure I'm actually teaching Avery. I had to provide learning samples(work she's done previously) from every subject. Avery was also asked several questions and had to explain some of her samples to Grace, our learning coach. Needless to say, Grace was extremely impressed. She kept going on and on about Avery's handwriting and her artwork, saying both were so good and well beyond 1st grade level. I explained to her that Avery is doing well in every subject and continually gets 100% on every test she takes. However, I'm noticing she doesn't always understand or can explain the theory behind some things, Math and English, mostly. But, she knows the right answers. I don't know whether to slow down and make sure she "gets it" or keep plowing thru until we find an area where she actually misses a question, then start from there. Grace encouraged Avery to take the tests to finish the 1st grade curriculum and go on to 2nd grade. Thus, my dilema.
Part of me just wants her to coast thru 1st grade. Enjoy being home and not having to be in school for 7 hours a day. Enjoy having the extra time to play and experience real life, even if that real life is weird right now. Maybe I'm just so overwhelmed with everything that I don't want to push her. That's probably more like it...
Part of me wants her to actually start learning and not just doing worksheets everyday. Sure, we do more than that, and she has fun, but I don't know if she's really learned anything new, yet. I don't want her to be bored. I want to push her to develop her full potential. She is a very smart girl. I don't want to be responsible for any setbacks.
On top of that, I don't know if we'll homeschool her next year or not. It just depends on where we're living. Lord willing not in this apartment, that's for sure.
So, I really don't know what to do...for now, I'm counting my blessings that I get to be Avery's teacher for this period in time. I'm thankful that Avery can be home with us. I'm thankful that my 3 daughters are so close and like playing together. I absolutely love hearing Avery read to her younger sisters.
Any thoughts?

1 comment:

The Troops said...

So I am a big believer in finding the middle ground....so if she seems to be able to get the answer but not explain the theory, maybe teaching her to do that will be a challenge for her. If you focused on that and found it was challenging then you get the best of both worlds - challenge and not pushing her to a whole nother grade level.....just my two cents...
Lissa