It is?!?!?! Please tell me more about what education is. I know nothing about this.
Sorry I'm being snarky but I'm getting annoyed. Yet again let me say that I don't mind (in most cases ) if parents pull their kids for trips. I really don't. But this thread is all over the place with people agreeing or disagreeing while talking about very different things.
eta: don't you homeschool? If so, why does any of this matter to you? You've already made the decision that the classroom is irrelevant.
Why does it matter to me? Because unfortunately I have to spend a lot of my time defending my decision to make the classroom irrelevant. Because I have to spend my energy and money to defend my decision to make it irrelevant and the government forces me to jump through all sorts of hoops and waste my time filling out all sorts of paperwork and have my children assessed by their methods in order to prove that it is irrelevant.
I have a differing educational philosophy and I think it's interesting to discuss. I didn't realize you have to have a kid in the public schools or be a teacher in one in order to have an opinion about education. I like the topic and want to discuss it.
And, not to be snarky, but if you do know what education is, then I'm confused why you wouldn't understand how a family vacation could be educational. The traditional schools in which you teach represent only one form of education. There are many ways for kids to learn things that are just as effective as a classroom experience - a family vacation to Disney perhaps being part of one of them.
I do not teach in a public school nor are my children in one.
And where did I say that a family vacation can't be educational? Please show me. Stating that not everything listed is equivalent does not say that one is bad, lol. I hope YOU know that as you educate your children.
eta: Also, FOR ME and my kids, they do not attend a school that is very traditional. We are an experiential based school. So trust me, I get it. So since the poll was specifically about what I will do, the fact that they already have a very experiential education, including trips and hands on activities, is a major factor. I do not want them to miss those things.
Interesting. I don't remember the catchup from the Europe trip being too too onerous, but it was a pain in the ass. It felt like a lot of busy work. The cruise was a special case since it was most of the honor society, so all of my classmates for all of my hard classes were on the trip with me. My AP calc and physics teachers just shut down for a week and then we played catchup all together. I think the physics teacher was one of the chaperones? My school was medium-smallish and while good, not like super competitive or anything.
But my school was so big that the teachers really couldn't structure classes around things.
The band trip was one week, the orchestra trip another, the choir trip another. The volleyball team might have to travel for a tournament. The debate team had the state championships. Blah blah blah. But then, I thought HS was harder than college, so YMMV.
Yeah, in that case my milage for sure varied. High school had it's challenges but college forced me to actually study and do my homework if I wanted to keep up. Not at all the case in high school outside of a couple of chapters worth of physics (fuck you magnetic fields!) and a few other topics here and there.
Like I said, our school wasn't that big. And the honor society trip was a special deal just because it was a fairly large group and it was all the kids taking the AP classes - when two bus loads of the "smart kids" go on a single trip, the 8 student AP physics class is going to be a ghost town. The teacher can't teach kids that aren't there. Whereas the choir trip and the volleyball team etc pulled pretty equally from across the various levels so kids just had to catch up.
But I do get your point. So I guess IRL, my answer would depend on my kid (how would she handle the stress of playing catchup) and her school (just how much catchup would she have to do). In my own circumstances it wouldn't have been a big deal at all. I can see in others it would be a terrible idea.
This was my experience. Missing school for whatever reason resulted in a massive backlog of work that was incredibly stressful and draining. I didn't attend a large school, but my course load tilted heavily toward AP and Honors, and my teachers didn't give me a break when I had to miss for any reason.
I think the fact that I skipped homework whenever I felt like it as long as I was confident it wouldn't dip me below a B is a big part of the reason why I don't remember stressing about this...
LOL.
I was one very high strung high schooler in a school full of smart, high strung people. I cried more than a few tears over some B pluses in math.
Fortunately, I've chilled out some over the years (no, seriously!). I even went to a concert 130 miles away the night before a law school exam! But in HS? LOL NOPE.
We did it last year. Our school will approve as long as the student is in good standing. It is actually in our handbook that a family vacation up to 5 days a year is allowed.
How could I make the Magic Kingdom educational? Serious question.
Well, not the MK, but you could do Epcot :-)
that's why I asked about the MK! Epcot and animal kingdom I can see. MK? I have nothing. But people are contending that any vacation can be made educational. I'd love to know how waiting in line for 45 min for the Winnie the Pooh ride can be made educational.
that's why I asked about the MK! Epcot and animal kingdom I can see. MK? I have nothing. But people are contending that any vacation can be made educational. I'd love to know how waiting in line for 45 min for the Winnie the Pooh ride can be made educational.
make your kids recite their times tables while you wait.
that's why I asked about the MK! Epcot and animal kingdom I can see. MK? I have nothing. But people are contending that any vacation can be made educational. I'd love to know how waiting in line for 45 min for the Winnie the Pooh ride can be made educational.
Maybe math? If we spend 10 hours at MK and wait in line to meet Anna and Elsa for 3 hours and 45 minutes, how many times can we ride It's A Small World if the wait time 60 minutes?
Post by 2curlydogs on Sept 18, 2014 9:12:11 GMT -5
Short answer: Yes.
You can blame my parents. They did it all the time with us kids. Generally maybe a day early for Easter vacation or such so that we could reach our destination by Holy Saturday so we weren't scrambling to find Easter Sunday mass. But if dad had to travel for business (he was chair of a professional association for most of my grade school years), we'd be pulled out and go along with.
Honestly, I found the education I received on such trips better than some of the classroom instruction. Exposure to new places, different cultures, etc - especially when we grew up in white hick bumblefuck nowhere - was incredibly formative to young Curly.
I remember being hella pissed in high school when Dad's annual conference was in Hawaii and they were like "BYYEEEEEEE!"
No. We schedule family vacations in the Summer. I recently went on a big trip this summer with my BFF and her family. We scheduled the trip around the kids' school schedule.
Post by irishbride2 on Sept 18, 2014 9:27:26 GMT -5
Look. Anything can be educational. Going to the DMV can be educational. Walking in on your parents in a compromising situation can be educational, lol. I think we are getting into the semantics part of the debate
I'm fine with pulling C in elementary school; if we ever had the budget to do more regular vacations. Middle and high school? We'll have to see more about making sure he's a strong student and able to keep up. We'll work with teachers, and do our best to add a learning opp to more lighthearted experiences, yada yada yada.
And frankly if high school is so precious, how can districts justify taking student athletes out of class for games/travel time? Society needs to value education more as a whole overall.
I would have said no before I had kids (we did it only once when I was a kid, but it was to Disney, LOL) but now that I have kids I can see why parents do it. We'd love to do Disney (or any vacation really) with my SIL and niece, but her school vacations never line up with ours except for Christmas - which is an important holiday we don't want to vacation during. That leaves the summer, which is so hot as to make the places we want to go miserable. We can be in school until late June thanks to snow days so we're left with July and half of August. I don't like so many restrictions on when I can travel, so although I greatly value having my kids in school I would be willing to pull them out once or twice in their school careers to do something special.
This is actually why I wouldn't do it in middle school or high school.
OMG. Missing 2 days for a band trip was fun but is had SO MUCH work to make up. It was a serious pain. Missing an entire week would have made me lose my mind trying to catch up.
But I also went to a crazy large, competitive HS.
This was my experience. Missing school for whatever reason resulted in a massive backlog of work that was incredibly stressful and draining. I didn't attend a large school, but my course load tilted heavily toward AP and Honors, and my teachers didn't give me a break when I had to miss for any reason.
This is probably where my mindset is. For people who have family overseas, I can definitely see how missing school would make more sense.
But yeah, I remember getting my 8th grade algebra book at the end of 7th grade, and eagerly wanted to get a jump start on it before 8th grade started. My grandpa, who taught high school math and science for a few years, was able to help me some, but my parents--both brilliant in many respects--did not remember algebra. I ended up just waiting until the school year. If you don't keep up in math, you fall way behind. I would have been stressed the f out to miss a week of classes as a student. Also, it seems like it would be a logistical nightmare, particularly if you have multiple kids because there are quizzes and such to work around.
I'm also more in the student mindset right now than the parent...I mean, I planned my fall 3L schedule to be able to go to a friend's wedding in Thailand, so while I place a pretty high priority on travel, I'm not willing to miss school for it. The trip I took to India was during my fashion school spring break. ...I've rarely not been in school.
I don't know. I get why people do it. And I even get how in certain cases travel is more educational. The point eclaires made about them being her kids makes sense as well...maybe my parents never did it b/c they knew I would be stressed. I'm still just surprised that it's sooo much in the one direction.
How could I make the Magic Kingdom educational? Serious question.
As a resident Disney-phile, I'll take it.
You could do the tours where you get to go under the park. Do the kids like art? You could do a study of the progression of art throughout the years. Same goes for the engineering and architecture, even the horticulture. Watching that new roller coaster being built was awesome, and a great opportunity for learning about how things work. Even the lines now have games in them, or are built in a way to keep people engaged...even more ways to learn. There are opportunities to talk about history (Hall of Presidents, Tom Sawyer Island, all of Frontierland). The sheer economics of the park are worth a chat.
I mean, really, you can turn just about anything into a lesson, depending on how old the kids are. When we went last time, our then-3rd grader had an assignment from her art teacher to draw the best things she saw, which made her pay attention to some things she might not have.
And I'll say it again, Disney has a great youth education program that has a TON of topics that are directly related to what goes on in the parks. It's what we do when I take the students on trips, and they are actually educational.
"This prick is asking for someone here to bring him to task Somebody give me some dirt on this vacuous mass so we can at last unmask him I'll pull the trigger on it, someone load the gun and cock it While we were all watching, he got Washington in his pocket."
Post by mominatrix on Sept 18, 2014 10:36:49 GMT -5
I'm firmly in the No camp.
I need my kids to prioritize school, because they're in school so few days per year. If they went year round with two or three weeks off (like a real-people work schedule) then I could see it. But they have all summer, weeks off here and there, half days off here and there, full days off now and again...
Plus, with the diversification of school schedules (more and more starting in August and getting out in May) the "everybody else is travelling at the same time" line just doesn't fly with me.
Kids in the school where I grew up would be pulled for two weeks a year to go to Disney (spring and fall, dontcha know); weeks off to go to see foreign relatives; days/weeks off to exhibit (or even simply go to) the state fair.
I think it's disrespectful. I've committed to going to school, I'm GOING to school. If I don't like the schedule, I don't get to make my own up.
...but I'm still bitter over the fight last year because 1/3 - 1/2 of the city's school kids took the day off for the freaking Seahawks' victory parade, with way way way too much support from the outside.
Is somebody going to try to tell me that was educational, too?
Post by downtoearth on Sept 18, 2014 10:41:07 GMT -5
We try not to, but we do. Our busiest work time for me is summer, so I can't accommodate taking time off as much in the summer as the winter and still get stuff done. So unluckily my career demands are higher when the kids are off school and lower when they are in school.
Doesn't mean I don't value school, just that I already schedule my work life around every holiday they take off and all the extra days they have off over Christmas, so it doesn't pain me to have my kid miss a few days or a week per year to be with the family.
Post by Bad Dingo on Sept 18, 2014 10:54:46 GMT -5
We can't really afford to take vacations right now so this is just a hypothetical, but yes, I'd absolutely take DD out of school for a vacation.
I think that traveling in general can be educational. I grew up with so many people who never left their state, or even their hometown. Traveling to a different area and seeing different people is important.
Post by ohyouknow on Sept 18, 2014 11:47:41 GMT -5
I have never hesitated in taking my kids out of school for even minor vacation trips. My high school superintendent was always very vocal that education happens in more places than a school's walls, and encouraged parents to take advantage of showing kids the rest of the world - even if "the rest of the world" was Disney.
I voted yes but the only way I can see us actually doing this is if it related to family in someway. Because our entire family is in CA we don't see them often. If there was a reunion or a significant birthday/anniversary/etc I would take the kids out of school to go. Because to me developing those family relationship is just as important as a few days of instruction.
Post by aussiecrush on Sept 18, 2014 12:16:11 GMT -5
I genuinely envy those that can manage a family vacation without pulling their child(ren) from school. We don't even get weekends as a family during the school year. It won't happen every year but we'll pull the boys out when needed. My H bids his schedule and vacation a year in advance, based on seniority. The boys will be in high school before he can even get Saturday off. The summer vacation slots are also gone by the time he bids at this point. Family time trumps a few missed days of school, it's the only way the four of us are together for more than two days at a time.
I have no kids, but I would lean to the 'only if was a once in a lifetime opportunity.'
I will share this perspective. What I see now as a college professor are two mindsets from students about missing classes: 1. Students who will miss for vacation/conferences/travel/whatever, and come to me and tell me "I have this opportunity to do X, it means I'll miss Y days, can I turn in my assignment early (or whatever the appropriate schoolwork issue is)?" 2. Student who comes in to my office, informs me that they're going to miss my class because they are going to Mardi Gras, on spring break, to Europe, whatever, and I need to give them the notes and materials, and let them make up the tests/work when they come back.
Whatever you chose to do, please teach your child to be student #1.
Post by lyssbobiss, Command, B613 on Sept 18, 2014 12:45:18 GMT -5
This may start a fight but...it seems like there's almost an air of entitlement about pulling your kids out for a long time for vacations. Like, the rules/calendar/schedule doesn't apply to your kid and too bad if the teacher wastes time having to teach shit twice when your kids get back. A day or two, fine. A week? For Disney? Why?
"This prick is asking for someone here to bring him to task Somebody give me some dirt on this vacuous mass so we can at last unmask him I'll pull the trigger on it, someone load the gun and cock it While we were all watching, he got Washington in his pocket."
This may start a fight but...it seems like there's almost an air of entitlement about pulling your kids out for a long time for vacations. Like, the rules/calendar/schedule doesn't apply to your kid and too bad if the teacher wastes time having to teach shit twice when your kids get back. A day or two, fine. A week? For Disney? Why?
There is a certain level of privilege here - because I'm assuming in my "sure I'd pull my kid out" hypothetical that my kid is like I was when it comes to school work and the teacher wont' have to do a damn thing because she'll catch up on her own. and I know that for most subjects I have the tools to help her catch up if she needs it. And for the subjects where I'm weak (history, foreign languages) I can find the answers or know people who can help.
I wouldn't really expect any special accommodations beyond not sending a truant officer after me. For example - There's no way I'd pull my kid for a vacation when they have a test scheduled. That crosses the line for me.
I think the extant to which this starts to whiff of entitlement probably depends on the specifics of the situation and what the school requires for a voluntary absence like that.
10 personal days?!?! On top of all the other days we get. I think in some cases I get the argument that teachers get so much time off.
We get three personal days, but they are actually "exceptional days." They are for special circumstances that fit certain criteria. Then we have sick days. The expectation is that we do not take off unless we HAVE too since we have so many other breaks.
The race example is interesting. I know one of my colleagues tried to take a day for a race and was told no.
I will say though, on a positive note, that my school is really amazing about profession development (they pay for us to travel to conferences of our choice). So most of us miss at least a week a year for PD. So if we missed that week, plus two weeks of personal days, plus a few sick days, the kids would have subs most of the year! So I get it.
where I work they're thought of as sick days that can be used for personal leave. Two years ago we signed a new contract that took us from 5 to 6 personal days. But we didn't get more days overall. And I can tell you it was a concession due to the general shittiness of our contract. I know very few people who take all their personal days and I'm sure the BOE knew it would be cheaper than paying decent salaries.
One of my dreams is to one day be able to pull our kid(s) out of school for a year and travel around the world, using some sort of a home-school program. We aren't religious and neither of us are teachers. Plus we have no interest in long-term home schooling, so I have no idea what sort of programs are out there for people like us. But I read a book called "A Year Off" in which parents did just that, so I know it's possible.
Our son is just 18-months, though, so we have some time to think about it, as well as to save up.
my friend in high school went on semester at sea with her family. Her dad was a prof at pitt and he took the family with him. It was an amazing opportunity. I was so jealous.
This may start a fight but...it seems like there's almost an air of entitlement about pulling your kids out for a long time for vacations. Like, the rules/calendar/schedule doesn't apply to your kid and too bad if the teacher wastes time having to teach shit twice when your kids get back. A day or two, fine. A week? For Disney? Why?
hmmm. I think you're reading into things a bit too far. Many in the yes camp are teachers and from a lot of the stories here it sounds like teachers don't reteach and that is a reason not to do it. I know I have never retaught anything bc a student went on vacation. In the end it just comes down to individual circumstances. I don't see the problem in it. It's not about being better than everyone else. The rules apply equally to everyone. Either your school allows this or they don't. Most schools do in my experience.