Yes, on the handwriting. I work in an architecture firm. When I started out in the ‘80’s everyone was expected to have stellar “architectural” handwriting skills. My first job made me practice by tracing over my bosses stellar architectural style lettering before I was allowed to letter on a drawing sheet. New grads in our office their handwriting is Cro-Magnon at best. It’s painful for me.
Echoing some other comments... You gotta take it slow with the driving Ed. Empty car, no other cars around, flat empty parking lots. If they have no experience with driving anything, they need this a ton. If you have back country roads where the driving us slow, go there and practice. And yeah the time with the permit, is when we start at my house. And lots and lots of repetition. It worked for the first kid. Fingers crossed for the second.
In addition to driving - I was not expecting it to be so hard to teach my teenager how to use a credit card 😂. It's a struggle!! They don't understand what the little machine is asking and then it'll ask for a PIN or your zip code and they will freak and just leave without buying anything.
I loved this conversation and it’s something I’ve thought about A LOT. My mom taught high school math for almost 30 years and I went to public schools and while I think there have been some wonderful advances since then, I do feel like we’ve lost the plot a bit. Our suburban Atlanta school district does well enough for my two older kids who are very high-achieving and in all advanced classes. Not great, my kids are generally pretty bored bc parents can put kids into those advanced classes against teacher recs so there are always kids who shouldn’t and don’t want to be there. But they’re OK. Some good teachers, some great, some not so much.
But our school failed my youngest (neurodiverse special needs) kid miserably. Now, I fully recognize that they can’t be everything to everyone and my girl does have a very unique set of circumstances (she’s literally one in a billion). But when we first went through the spec ed eval in 3rd grade I cried in that meeting bc they told us the eval showed that she needed specialized services to support her learning but that she didn’t qualify bc they couldn’t fit her into any of their qualification buckets. With a letter from her doctor, I was able to get her into special ed and got our first IEP. It was just a terrible experience. Every meeting felt like a battle as I had to ask for more and more. Her teachers were fine but her case manager had no business being a special ed teacher. He was literally doing that job so he could coach football at a local high school and not have to do lesson plans or grade papers. After a year and a half of pushing and being ignored, we finally moved her to a specialized private school and she’s doing amazing.
My point is - we absolutely ask schools and teachers to do too much, there’s too much reliance on standardized tests when humans aren’t standardized, and I’m not exactly sure who schools are working for but it’s not my family.
I laughed so much at the outside of politics discussion on teaching kids to drive. We have three kids and they are all about two years apart. That means we have been teaching kids to drive for three years and will be for another year at least. It's the worst. But also, haven't you heard of practicing in empty school parking lots for a while before graduating on to driving around the block in your neighborhood? We spent a lot of time doing that before we took our new drivers on main roads. Also, let the least anxious parent help with driving :-)
We’re a few weeks away from my oldest getting her license and it’s wild. When we lived in rural NJ, with straight, flat roads, wide shoulders and nothing around but cornfields and vineyards, teaching them to drive would’ve been a joint effort. Then we moved to NW Georgia where all the roads are hilly and windy and there’s no shoulders anywhere and bananas traffic. Literally on our house-hunting trip I told my husband I was out for teaching them to drive!
He spent a few hours with her in a parking lot and progressed slowly from there. Last weekend, she needed a chunk of hours before taking the road test so they did a day trip to Nashville and she drove almost the whole way! Start slow, baby steps and they’ll be fine. But it is absolutely terrifying!
Teens and Driving:Maneuvering a car is the first step; learning the roads is a different skill.
Go back to the parking lots! I think kids need HOURS in the parking lot before you ask them to navigate real time decision making. Find a community college or business park on the weekend and drive those EMPTY roads. Practice maneuvering with zero DECISIONS.
And while you do that on the weekends, put them in the front seat with their phone off while you drive them to all the places and talk about what you’re doing. They haven’t been paying attention as passengers.
As a parent, former teacher and now paraprofessional in my child's preschool classroom, I really am connecting with this episode. My greatest challenge however has been the parenting component. I am not experiencing a lot of parents who are engaged relating to school behavior. Behaviors are out of control in a lot of classrooms at our school. My 7 year old dropped his pants in both kindergarten and 1st grade. Neither teacher told me, he did and I had to email and ask if it was true and follow up about it. The 1st grade teacher seemed surprised and told me usually parents don't want to know about their kids behavior. I said, well I do. My child is AuDHD. A group of boys keep teaching him things at school and he comes home with new alarming stuff daily (which thankfully he tells us so we can support him). He parrots their behavior but I know for a fact we are the only ones aware of this and the only ones acting on it. After school, there are different activities the kids can participate in. My child was in soccer and the group he was in was extremely disrespectful to the coaches. I would watch the practices but it was optional to be there as a parent. Every week, I would watch parents come mid practice to find their kids dogpiled on top of each other, scaling the soccer goal posts, wrestling eachother and talking back to the coaches. I would observe no intervention by the parents. They would be conversing with whoever was on the sidelines and letting it continue. It shocked me. I don't know if I am alone in this struggle but that's what I experience. Whenever their are gatherings of kids, I usually am the only one actively watching the kids.
I’m trying to balance my kids’ needs with school, and my belief in public education, every day. I think public education is so fundamental to our society… and it’s so hard to see your kids not being served well. (I’m in education professionally, so I don’t say that as a criticism) I both desperately want an alternative that would be better for my kids, and recoil at the idea of making my kids an exception to the public education offerings.
I listened to this episode with my soon to be 8th grader and it was a GREAT conversation starter. We paused and I asked questions about how they use tech, what she finds engaging, which classes encourage curiosity, etc. Testing is not overly emphasized in our district in Kansas. I see many similarities to my education in Kansas 30+ years ago. I will say the gifted program is much improved and she gets the most out of that class (year long elective that satisfies her IEP).
An organization in our county (GA near Atlanta) puts on a Teen Vehicle Operations Course similar to what police officers take and it was AMAZING!! You take your kids once they do know how to drive but they actually got to feel what it feels like to have the tires spin out (in a special car), then they had them practice SLAMMING on breaks so they could see how much pressure it took along with other maneuvers. If there is this opportunity near where you live, I highly recommend. I was so glad we did it and I even learned something. It is terrifying teaching your kids to drive. I have a 19 year old and 17 year old and one more to go in a few years.
I had to take one of these courses when I lived in Georgia! This one was in Walton county (maybe? I got a speeding ticket there while I was in college, and because I was under 21 - by less than six months - I had to do this WHOLE THING to keep my license. I feel like the punishment may have been excessive and exploitative, especially since I got a ticket in one of those places where the speed limit goes from 60mph to 30mph, but I digress.) I have some grace for the program because it seems like lots of college students were dying on their roads driving between Atlanta and Athens. Anyway, I was "court ordered" to take this driving course and it was SO helpful. They showed us how to get out of hydroplaning, we had to drive through these tricky cones, there was a slam on your breaks thing, they explained that you should never ever ever hang something cool from your rearview mirror. It was SO helpful, and it's definitely on my list of things where "I would not have wished this on myself, but ultimately I'm glad it happened." -Maggie
Yes!! My son got a ticket at a tricky red light on a RR crossing- it changes red really fast after flashing yellow and he opted to not get stuck on the track (cop was waiting). Anyway, I wasn’t even mad at him because it was tricky but his options were- 1. pay ticket and get 2 points on his license (3 means you use your license if under 18 or 21), 2. Attempt to go to court to get it over turned, 3. Surrender license for 30 days, take traffic school, and then no points. We found this out at his mandatory appointment at the juvenile justice center where I had to take him out of school to attend this appointment. (We thought this was a “court date” but it was just a conversation to review the options.) Anyway- it felt like an irritating waste of time but I guess good that they take it seriously? We ended up surrendering his license because that seemed like the safest option…
Would love to hear from people in other states also, wondering if people feel as frustrated as in Kentucky?! I live in DC and have been so happy with the education my kids are getting! Also, thinking back to the US Report Card, there was one state that was doing so much better than the others in education….GA, maybe? What do folks there think about the public school education?
I am confused about the driving comments…isn’t the permit the time to teach the kids how to drive? Why are we passing that step? Teach, then get them on the road…I spent so many hours in a parking lot before actually driving on the road. I have heard that narrating to kids as you drive helps a lot, I do that with my kid who has a permit- living in DC - she is finding the aggressive roads to be too much. When we are in calmer spaces of the city or out of town she will drive and otherwise I am often telling her why I am in a particular lane or why I turned when I did, etc.
This is so interesting to me. Because I listened to the episode before they aired it (and I live in Florida and my sister and mom and aunt and cousin and several in-laws and friends all teach in Geogia) and there is SO MUCH Ed Tech and testing.
My kids do iReady reading every. single. day. Lexia. Prodigy. IXL. It's all supposed to be "challenging them at their level" but my kids keep getting to material they haven't learned and they 'sort of' figure it out, but like...no one taught my 6th grader HOW to do long division. I am invested in the school, in the community, in the long game of this, but I feel like I spend my summers filling in gaps.
Amusing anecdote. When they switched to all computer based testing in Florida there was this HUGE issue (maybe this was a county is, but I believe it was statewide in Florida) where they had kindergarteners doing these touch screen diagnostic tests and the kids did not get what was happening, they just thought it was dumb and clicked through all the screens to get it over with and they all failed and there was this huge panic about "we're failing the kids" and like...we were, but not because they couldn't read. -Maggie
Yes in KS and I don’t see a lot of what they are seeing regarding ed tech and testing. Neither are emphasized here. We have issues though, just diff ones
I totally get how overwhelming all the tasks of parenting are in the moment but it has an endpoint which is helpful to remember!!!! It was a privilege to teach my four kids how to drive and it’s a skill they will use everyday for the entirety of their active lives- and I got to teach them! Plus it’s fun to break down the skills and make it clear point by point. You get to think about all the decisions you make and how you process it all. So it’s a great mental exercise for us!!! Which is good for us as well. Gosh, good luck
Re: driving. I taught my middle child to drive. Yes to parking lots and neighborhoods, but also make sure they’re driving all the family cars in ALL WEATHER CONDITIONS, DAY AND NIGHT. Before they get their permit, talk about the signs on the road and have them navigate without a GPS. They should be able to get around their town/suburb without a GPS as it can be a big distraction. Get them on the interstate, especially if you live in an area where you’re going to be on it a lot. Also, our permitted drivers were driving constantly.
I also had a get back on the horse mentality. When she took the turn onto our driveway going too fast and went off the road—we took a few minutes to calm down, talk about what went wrong,and then I made her drive back out and do it again just to prove to her that she could.
Also just a reminder that people with lots of experience make mistakes driving every day and most of the time, it turns out ok. (Just a caveat that I’m aware this is harder if you’ve had a traumatic experience while in a car.) Part of driving is trusting the people in the cars around you to pay attention and follow the rules, to be good defensive drivers—this protects them and you.
Please remember that neurodivergence will inform your driving. My oldest was in this category, and her difficulty processing visual information meant signs were very confusing. Driving is a lot of predicting the behavior of people around you, noticing who isn’t paying attention or driving in an odd manner—as someone on the spectrum, that was hard for her. She bumps into things/people a lot in her body, so when she was surrounded by a thousand pounds of metal and plastic, she still struggled to keep the car in the right lane, at the right speed, etc. She eventually did learn to drive but it was a much longer process for her than her sister.
Also I second getting someone a bit removed to help. I’m a stepmom, so I’m a bit less effected by their feelings than their parents while being just as concerned for their safety, making me a bit more comfortable I think to push them a little harder when I thought they could do something.
My youngest is 10 and I’ll be almost 60 when I teach her to drive. I’m curious to see how different it goes with her. 😬
I’ve spent a couple of days processing this episode, and I have more thoughts than a comment can capture well. I’m the superintendent of our local school district, and I just wrapped up my 34th year in education. I’ve served as a teacher, instructional coach, high school principal, assistant superintendent, and superintendent. I’ve worked in three different districts, one urban, one suburban, and one small town/rural, in two different states. Many of Beth and Sarah’s comments resonated with me. In my district, we are actively working to limit screen time and choose the applications we do invest time and resources in wisely. Since I joined the district as superintendent, my primary goal has been to improve classroom instruction by increasing our academic expectations and strengthening our teaching methods to improve student engagement. The vast majority of kids respond well when given interesting and challenging material to dig into and explore. We’re doing the opposite of lowering standards.
My now-adult children graduated from the suburban district where I spent the bulk of my career. They all had opportunities that challenged them academically and prepared them well for college. But even more so, they got to explore vastly different offerings that made their experiences uniquely suited to their interests. One played cello in the orchestra, ran cross country and track, and went to China on an exchange trip. Another was a cheerleader and a leader in the Family and Consumer Sciences program; the third studied filmmaking and completed the AP Capstone program. The breadth of these offerings was simply unmatched by our local private school options. My experiences with public schools as a student, parent, and educator, have been very different from what Beth and Sarah shared about their children’s experiences.
That said, I agree that all is not well with public education. I often tell people that our schools are a reflection of our communities, and by extension, our nation. Since I started teaching in 1991, the biggest change I’ve seen is the undermining of respect for the work our schools do and the expertise of those who have invested in becoming education professionals. Parents, community members, and state and federal officials all question our motivations and our ability to do our jobs effectively. Schooling has become much more politicized, and I’m amazed at what people are willing to believe about public schools (porn in libraries! litter boxes in bathrooms!)
Ultimately, I believe the purpose of our public schools is to educate all of our population so that they can be effective citizens. Much of the content we teach will eventually become obsolete, but the ability to read well, think critically, and write effectively will serve students long after they leave our schools. I’d love to see this conversation continued, this time with the voices of education professionals included.
I would like to move to your district. I was soooo hopeful about the direction our county schools were going in and then (I'm not proud of this, but my county is one of the birth places of the Moms for Liberty, so maybe it would have been better for the world if Tina Descovich had kept her seat on our school board and our district had banned masking during the pandemic. It is a question I occasionally sit up thinking about at night.) Ever since the M4L members won the most recent elections, they have abruptly altered course, and it's been really sad to see how many hard-won improvements for the kids in our district have slipped away in favor of...other priorities.
I am absolutely with you about the purpose of public schools and I believe in my soul that it's my job, as a citizen, to support and participate in the public schools, and it's my job as a parent to help my kids reach their full potential regardless of what is happening in their classroom.
Like you said, in our district, even with it's problems (so many problems) they still have so many opportunities that they wouldn't have if I was homeschooling them or going to one of our local private schools - whether through clubs, music and arts programs, sports, AP programs, dual enrollment, and more. And I think there's so much value in the awkward social things like riding the bus, dealing with kids who don't do what they're supposed to do in class, having a pretty terrible teacher here and there (the best bad one was the teacher who maybe/probably got arrested for assaulting a police officer and public intoxication...awkward to explain that one to kindergarteners), and living with outgrowing your own awkwardness. I think every single piece of it gives my kids a lot to learn from. And also...I wish more people were on board with supporting the schools.
You're 100% correct on the politicization. In the polling work I've done around education, people in general trust and support public schools and teachers, but the biggest divides in opinion are along political lines.
Thank you for your comment! I agree that the schools are a reflection of communities. The impact of politicization of all things education is much greater than folks often realize.
There was a horrible accident in my community this week, and a dad died teacher his daughter to drive in a parking lot. They went through a fence and over a cliff and crashed onto PCH 😩
Yes, on the handwriting. I work in an architecture firm. When I started out in the ‘80’s everyone was expected to have stellar “architectural” handwriting skills. My first job made me practice by tracing over my bosses stellar architectural style lettering before I was allowed to letter on a drawing sheet. New grads in our office their handwriting is Cro-Magnon at best. It’s painful for me.
What was the book Sarah mentioned about paying for college? Was that in this episode?
Echoing some other comments... You gotta take it slow with the driving Ed. Empty car, no other cars around, flat empty parking lots. If they have no experience with driving anything, they need this a ton. If you have back country roads where the driving us slow, go there and practice. And yeah the time with the permit, is when we start at my house. And lots and lots of repetition. It worked for the first kid. Fingers crossed for the second.
In addition to driving - I was not expecting it to be so hard to teach my teenager how to use a credit card 😂. It's a struggle!! They don't understand what the little machine is asking and then it'll ask for a PIN or your zip code and they will freak and just leave without buying anything.
I loved this conversation and it’s something I’ve thought about A LOT. My mom taught high school math for almost 30 years and I went to public schools and while I think there have been some wonderful advances since then, I do feel like we’ve lost the plot a bit. Our suburban Atlanta school district does well enough for my two older kids who are very high-achieving and in all advanced classes. Not great, my kids are generally pretty bored bc parents can put kids into those advanced classes against teacher recs so there are always kids who shouldn’t and don’t want to be there. But they’re OK. Some good teachers, some great, some not so much.
But our school failed my youngest (neurodiverse special needs) kid miserably. Now, I fully recognize that they can’t be everything to everyone and my girl does have a very unique set of circumstances (she’s literally one in a billion). But when we first went through the spec ed eval in 3rd grade I cried in that meeting bc they told us the eval showed that she needed specialized services to support her learning but that she didn’t qualify bc they couldn’t fit her into any of their qualification buckets. With a letter from her doctor, I was able to get her into special ed and got our first IEP. It was just a terrible experience. Every meeting felt like a battle as I had to ask for more and more. Her teachers were fine but her case manager had no business being a special ed teacher. He was literally doing that job so he could coach football at a local high school and not have to do lesson plans or grade papers. After a year and a half of pushing and being ignored, we finally moved her to a specialized private school and she’s doing amazing.
My point is - we absolutely ask schools and teachers to do too much, there’s too much reliance on standardized tests when humans aren’t standardized, and I’m not exactly sure who schools are working for but it’s not my family.
I laughed so much at the outside of politics discussion on teaching kids to drive. We have three kids and they are all about two years apart. That means we have been teaching kids to drive for three years and will be for another year at least. It's the worst. But also, haven't you heard of practicing in empty school parking lots for a while before graduating on to driving around the block in your neighborhood? We spent a lot of time doing that before we took our new drivers on main roads. Also, let the least anxious parent help with driving :-)
We’re a few weeks away from my oldest getting her license and it’s wild. When we lived in rural NJ, with straight, flat roads, wide shoulders and nothing around but cornfields and vineyards, teaching them to drive would’ve been a joint effort. Then we moved to NW Georgia where all the roads are hilly and windy and there’s no shoulders anywhere and bananas traffic. Literally on our house-hunting trip I told my husband I was out for teaching them to drive!
He spent a few hours with her in a parking lot and progressed slowly from there. Last weekend, she needed a chunk of hours before taking the road test so they did a day trip to Nashville and she drove almost the whole way! Start slow, baby steps and they’ll be fine. But it is absolutely terrifying!
Oh my word! What is with the southern roads with no shoulders? We live south of Nashville and this is the worst thing here about learning to drive.
Teens and Driving:Maneuvering a car is the first step; learning the roads is a different skill.
Go back to the parking lots! I think kids need HOURS in the parking lot before you ask them to navigate real time decision making. Find a community college or business park on the weekend and drive those EMPTY roads. Practice maneuvering with zero DECISIONS.
And while you do that on the weekends, put them in the front seat with their phone off while you drive them to all the places and talk about what you’re doing. They haven’t been paying attention as passengers.
As a parent, former teacher and now paraprofessional in my child's preschool classroom, I really am connecting with this episode. My greatest challenge however has been the parenting component. I am not experiencing a lot of parents who are engaged relating to school behavior. Behaviors are out of control in a lot of classrooms at our school. My 7 year old dropped his pants in both kindergarten and 1st grade. Neither teacher told me, he did and I had to email and ask if it was true and follow up about it. The 1st grade teacher seemed surprised and told me usually parents don't want to know about their kids behavior. I said, well I do. My child is AuDHD. A group of boys keep teaching him things at school and he comes home with new alarming stuff daily (which thankfully he tells us so we can support him). He parrots their behavior but I know for a fact we are the only ones aware of this and the only ones acting on it. After school, there are different activities the kids can participate in. My child was in soccer and the group he was in was extremely disrespectful to the coaches. I would watch the practices but it was optional to be there as a parent. Every week, I would watch parents come mid practice to find their kids dogpiled on top of each other, scaling the soccer goal posts, wrestling eachother and talking back to the coaches. I would observe no intervention by the parents. They would be conversing with whoever was on the sidelines and letting it continue. It shocked me. I don't know if I am alone in this struggle but that's what I experience. Whenever their are gatherings of kids, I usually am the only one actively watching the kids.
I’m trying to balance my kids’ needs with school, and my belief in public education, every day. I think public education is so fundamental to our society… and it’s so hard to see your kids not being served well. (I’m in education professionally, so I don’t say that as a criticism) I both desperately want an alternative that would be better for my kids, and recoil at the idea of making my kids an exception to the public education offerings.
I listened to this episode with my soon to be 8th grader and it was a GREAT conversation starter. We paused and I asked questions about how they use tech, what she finds engaging, which classes encourage curiosity, etc. Testing is not overly emphasized in our district in Kansas. I see many similarities to my education in Kansas 30+ years ago. I will say the gifted program is much improved and she gets the most out of that class (year long elective that satisfies her IEP).
An organization in our county (GA near Atlanta) puts on a Teen Vehicle Operations Course similar to what police officers take and it was AMAZING!! You take your kids once they do know how to drive but they actually got to feel what it feels like to have the tires spin out (in a special car), then they had them practice SLAMMING on breaks so they could see how much pressure it took along with other maneuvers. If there is this opportunity near where you live, I highly recommend. I was so glad we did it and I even learned something. It is terrifying teaching your kids to drive. I have a 19 year old and 17 year old and one more to go in a few years.
I had to take one of these courses when I lived in Georgia! This one was in Walton county (maybe? I got a speeding ticket there while I was in college, and because I was under 21 - by less than six months - I had to do this WHOLE THING to keep my license. I feel like the punishment may have been excessive and exploitative, especially since I got a ticket in one of those places where the speed limit goes from 60mph to 30mph, but I digress.) I have some grace for the program because it seems like lots of college students were dying on their roads driving between Atlanta and Athens. Anyway, I was "court ordered" to take this driving course and it was SO helpful. They showed us how to get out of hydroplaning, we had to drive through these tricky cones, there was a slam on your breaks thing, they explained that you should never ever ever hang something cool from your rearview mirror. It was SO helpful, and it's definitely on my list of things where "I would not have wished this on myself, but ultimately I'm glad it happened." -Maggie
Yes!! My son got a ticket at a tricky red light on a RR crossing- it changes red really fast after flashing yellow and he opted to not get stuck on the track (cop was waiting). Anyway, I wasn’t even mad at him because it was tricky but his options were- 1. pay ticket and get 2 points on his license (3 means you use your license if under 18 or 21), 2. Attempt to go to court to get it over turned, 3. Surrender license for 30 days, take traffic school, and then no points. We found this out at his mandatory appointment at the juvenile justice center where I had to take him out of school to attend this appointment. (We thought this was a “court date” but it was just a conversation to review the options.) Anyway- it felt like an irritating waste of time but I guess good that they take it seriously? We ended up surrendering his license because that seemed like the safest option…
Would love to hear from people in other states also, wondering if people feel as frustrated as in Kentucky?! I live in DC and have been so happy with the education my kids are getting! Also, thinking back to the US Report Card, there was one state that was doing so much better than the others in education….GA, maybe? What do folks there think about the public school education?
I am confused about the driving comments…isn’t the permit the time to teach the kids how to drive? Why are we passing that step? Teach, then get them on the road…I spent so many hours in a parking lot before actually driving on the road. I have heard that narrating to kids as you drive helps a lot, I do that with my kid who has a permit- living in DC - she is finding the aggressive roads to be too much. When we are in calmer spaces of the city or out of town she will drive and otherwise I am often telling her why I am in a particular lane or why I turned when I did, etc.
This is so interesting to me. Because I listened to the episode before they aired it (and I live in Florida and my sister and mom and aunt and cousin and several in-laws and friends all teach in Geogia) and there is SO MUCH Ed Tech and testing.
My kids do iReady reading every. single. day. Lexia. Prodigy. IXL. It's all supposed to be "challenging them at their level" but my kids keep getting to material they haven't learned and they 'sort of' figure it out, but like...no one taught my 6th grader HOW to do long division. I am invested in the school, in the community, in the long game of this, but I feel like I spend my summers filling in gaps.
Amusing anecdote. When they switched to all computer based testing in Florida there was this HUGE issue (maybe this was a county is, but I believe it was statewide in Florida) where they had kindergarteners doing these touch screen diagnostic tests and the kids did not get what was happening, they just thought it was dumb and clicked through all the screens to get it over with and they all failed and there was this huge panic about "we're failing the kids" and like...we were, but not because they couldn't read. -Maggie
Yes in KS and I don’t see a lot of what they are seeing regarding ed tech and testing. Neither are emphasized here. We have issues though, just diff ones
Jealous. -m
I totally get how overwhelming all the tasks of parenting are in the moment but it has an endpoint which is helpful to remember!!!! It was a privilege to teach my four kids how to drive and it’s a skill they will use everyday for the entirety of their active lives- and I got to teach them! Plus it’s fun to break down the skills and make it clear point by point. You get to think about all the decisions you make and how you process it all. So it’s a great mental exercise for us!!! Which is good for us as well. Gosh, good luck
Re: driving. I taught my middle child to drive. Yes to parking lots and neighborhoods, but also make sure they’re driving all the family cars in ALL WEATHER CONDITIONS, DAY AND NIGHT. Before they get their permit, talk about the signs on the road and have them navigate without a GPS. They should be able to get around their town/suburb without a GPS as it can be a big distraction. Get them on the interstate, especially if you live in an area where you’re going to be on it a lot. Also, our permitted drivers were driving constantly.
I also had a get back on the horse mentality. When she took the turn onto our driveway going too fast and went off the road—we took a few minutes to calm down, talk about what went wrong,and then I made her drive back out and do it again just to prove to her that she could.
Also just a reminder that people with lots of experience make mistakes driving every day and most of the time, it turns out ok. (Just a caveat that I’m aware this is harder if you’ve had a traumatic experience while in a car.) Part of driving is trusting the people in the cars around you to pay attention and follow the rules, to be good defensive drivers—this protects them and you.
Please remember that neurodivergence will inform your driving. My oldest was in this category, and her difficulty processing visual information meant signs were very confusing. Driving is a lot of predicting the behavior of people around you, noticing who isn’t paying attention or driving in an odd manner—as someone on the spectrum, that was hard for her. She bumps into things/people a lot in her body, so when she was surrounded by a thousand pounds of metal and plastic, she still struggled to keep the car in the right lane, at the right speed, etc. She eventually did learn to drive but it was a much longer process for her than her sister.
Also I second getting someone a bit removed to help. I’m a stepmom, so I’m a bit less effected by their feelings than their parents while being just as concerned for their safety, making me a bit more comfortable I think to push them a little harder when I thought they could do something.
My youngest is 10 and I’ll be almost 60 when I teach her to drive. I’m curious to see how different it goes with her. 😬
I’ve spent a couple of days processing this episode, and I have more thoughts than a comment can capture well. I’m the superintendent of our local school district, and I just wrapped up my 34th year in education. I’ve served as a teacher, instructional coach, high school principal, assistant superintendent, and superintendent. I’ve worked in three different districts, one urban, one suburban, and one small town/rural, in two different states. Many of Beth and Sarah’s comments resonated with me. In my district, we are actively working to limit screen time and choose the applications we do invest time and resources in wisely. Since I joined the district as superintendent, my primary goal has been to improve classroom instruction by increasing our academic expectations and strengthening our teaching methods to improve student engagement. The vast majority of kids respond well when given interesting and challenging material to dig into and explore. We’re doing the opposite of lowering standards.
My now-adult children graduated from the suburban district where I spent the bulk of my career. They all had opportunities that challenged them academically and prepared them well for college. But even more so, they got to explore vastly different offerings that made their experiences uniquely suited to their interests. One played cello in the orchestra, ran cross country and track, and went to China on an exchange trip. Another was a cheerleader and a leader in the Family and Consumer Sciences program; the third studied filmmaking and completed the AP Capstone program. The breadth of these offerings was simply unmatched by our local private school options. My experiences with public schools as a student, parent, and educator, have been very different from what Beth and Sarah shared about their children’s experiences.
That said, I agree that all is not well with public education. I often tell people that our schools are a reflection of our communities, and by extension, our nation. Since I started teaching in 1991, the biggest change I’ve seen is the undermining of respect for the work our schools do and the expertise of those who have invested in becoming education professionals. Parents, community members, and state and federal officials all question our motivations and our ability to do our jobs effectively. Schooling has become much more politicized, and I’m amazed at what people are willing to believe about public schools (porn in libraries! litter boxes in bathrooms!)
Ultimately, I believe the purpose of our public schools is to educate all of our population so that they can be effective citizens. Much of the content we teach will eventually become obsolete, but the ability to read well, think critically, and write effectively will serve students long after they leave our schools. I’d love to see this conversation continued, this time with the voices of education professionals included.
I would like to move to your district. I was soooo hopeful about the direction our county schools were going in and then (I'm not proud of this, but my county is one of the birth places of the Moms for Liberty, so maybe it would have been better for the world if Tina Descovich had kept her seat on our school board and our district had banned masking during the pandemic. It is a question I occasionally sit up thinking about at night.) Ever since the M4L members won the most recent elections, they have abruptly altered course, and it's been really sad to see how many hard-won improvements for the kids in our district have slipped away in favor of...other priorities.
I am absolutely with you about the purpose of public schools and I believe in my soul that it's my job, as a citizen, to support and participate in the public schools, and it's my job as a parent to help my kids reach their full potential regardless of what is happening in their classroom.
Like you said, in our district, even with it's problems (so many problems) they still have so many opportunities that they wouldn't have if I was homeschooling them or going to one of our local private schools - whether through clubs, music and arts programs, sports, AP programs, dual enrollment, and more. And I think there's so much value in the awkward social things like riding the bus, dealing with kids who don't do what they're supposed to do in class, having a pretty terrible teacher here and there (the best bad one was the teacher who maybe/probably got arrested for assaulting a police officer and public intoxication...awkward to explain that one to kindergarteners), and living with outgrowing your own awkwardness. I think every single piece of it gives my kids a lot to learn from. And also...I wish more people were on board with supporting the schools.
You're 100% correct on the politicization. In the polling work I've done around education, people in general trust and support public schools and teachers, but the biggest divides in opinion are along political lines.
Thank you for your comment! I agree that the schools are a reflection of communities. The impact of politicization of all things education is much greater than folks often realize.
There was a horrible accident in my community this week, and a dad died teacher his daughter to drive in a parking lot. They went through a fence and over a cliff and crashed onto PCH 😩
Oh no! That's terrible!!!!