Thursday 13 March 2008

Thursday 13th March 08

A tough start to the morning... because our boys go to Self Defence/Martial Arts class on a Wednesday, one of them hadn't done his maths homework last night and got it out at 8am this morning. However, the photocopied sheet did not make it clear where the answere had to go... they could have been put in the margin or below the lists of figures to get averages/means/spreads for, or on the back of the sheet, or on a seperate sheet... and this uncertainty resulted in a lot of shouting and verbal abuse, resulting in him getting to school late as he initially refused to go to school. However, after a short cooling off period in his room, he went to school. The other child wasn't feeling well (depression?) and he stayed at home.

Things are not easy in this household right now and the large amounts of homework and the frequency of it does not help... where has their fun childhood gone? Then there was a piece on the telly about some teaching union coming to the same conclusion that kids are set too much homework and it is giving them stress, ill health and putting a strain on families. I totally agree.

The day got better as the bedridden one did his homework and went to school at lunchtime.

I went into town and paid a bill, collected compostables from Martin's, put them on the lottie heap, came home and had lunch and had some time with Gill before she went to school to collect one of the kiddies, and I went to school to attend a Green Thumbs meeting, which was just with Julia and was very nice. We had some wide-ranging discussions about various things and decided that the meeting on Monday night would be enough, and as several people couldn't get to the possible Tuesday 'AGM-type' meeting, we would postpone it til after Easter.

I collected my Dramatic son from Drama, he'd been getting ready for a Drama Festival over the weekend.

A relatively peaceful evening until homework was mentioned and then it all broke down AGAIN! I had to go out to a CRAG-public-meeting planning meeting, we had to decide who did what. I drew the short straw and I'm going to be the pro-offsetting person. However I do have two films to support me, one from CO2Balance and the other about a project in India where kerosene lamps are being replaced with solar panels by the Carbon Neutral Company (I think).

Got back shortly before 9 and the boys were in bed and Gill and I watched a programme on Tibet (a low-carbon way to see the World!)

The rest of the evening was on the computer, emailing and researching offsetting....

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

"some teaching union coming to the same conclusion that kids are set too much homework and it is giving them stress, "

And to the teachers who have to mark it all too!!

(retiring next wednesday! - yippee!!)

Robin

Anonymous said...

Yes! John, Here in USA,its a huge issue too, as kids are overloaded with home work which here goes towards a grade..

The demands at school are too high as the level of the studies increase,resulting on stress,anger and depression kids. The teachers overloaded and stressed too.

This seems to be a concern of a lot of parents world wide! YOu are not alone.
Good luck to all of us!