Bed time

Hey you know those people who write blogs and how they’re always super pretentious?  They tell you what’s wrong with the world and sort of imply that it’s everybody’s fault, but their own.  They know what is wrong and who is to blame, and they may get a little bit of increased readership if they blame you and your write hate mail back.  The blog makes a lot of sense and basically falls under the umbrella of ‘common sense.’  The writer might get away with it too because ‘common sense’ isn’t common, but they have this irritating way of making it seem like you are the problem.  You and everyone else, but them. 

So I’m a teacher, as you may have already known and I’ve taught at a lot of schools because I used to be a sub and substitutes get a bird’s eye view.  They see it all, but just little glimpses and they can’t get to know the kids too well.  And I got that; I taught a whole bunch of kids for a day or a couple of days or a couple of weeks.  Then this year I taught one set of about a hundred kids every day.  I learned their names I got to know their quirks and talents.  So now I’ve got a bird’s eye and I’m right up in the stuff; I can use a sniper rifle and a knife.  And I’ve got one huge overarching diagnosis for why kids, schools, and test scores are going to the crapper.  Maybe I’ll get around to some of the other reasons and we as a society of individuals can start working on those.  Stay tuned.  For right now I’ve got one big one that is going to make things a lot better. 

Bedtime.

That’s right you, yes you, need to give your kids an earlier bedtime.  A kid who is in elementary is age 6-12ish, needs to go to bed and be in bed for 10 hours.  ‘What if they don’t need that much sleep?’ They do.  Stop letting them stay up for another episode.  Stop reading one more story to them.  If they wake up early, send them back to bed.  ‘What if they wake up early ten days in a row?’ take a walk with them every night before bed.  ‘A walk isn’t enough.’ How about a jog?  How about a run?  How about some basketball?  Stop letting them eat sugar after 6:00.  Stop letting them drink energy drinks after 4:00.  ‘But I want my kid to be independent.’

Your kid cannot be independent if they are sleepy.  Your child is making up their minds based on a burnt out system.  They cannot pay attention in class, even if they aren’t going to sleep because they might be able to stay up and NOT be able to act calm and cool without eyes drooping.  They cannot give attention to their teacher, their sleep imbalance is begging them to act up.   

A student who is in middle school is tricky because they’re older and more independent.  They’ve got more extracurricular activities and homework so they need…10 hours.  They need sleep.  Your teachers are spending time dealing with their attitudes and behavior when they could, believe it or not, teach them.  You cannot let them stay up on Instachat or Snapgrams (patent pending).  I know these apps are called Instagram and Snapchat, I think it’s funny to say them wrong and it also allows me to minimize their value to others in speech. You cannot let them have a TV in their room for them to watch Netflix until 1 a.m.  You cannot let them play video games until their borderline psychotic because Call of Duty 27 just came out or they’ve been saving their money for Grand Theft Auto Guatemala for like three weeks.  Even if it’s something valuable like reading a book, doing a project, or practicing their violin.  School is more important than that.  School needs a consistent ethic of mental and emotional wellness that can be greatly improved by solid sleep.  Let them have Saturday to do those other things, if you must.  Although.  If you like this meandering article/blog then you might stick around and find out how I feel about some of those other pastimes.  

‘Is it possible that a kid needs nine hours instead of 10? After all, my 8^th grader is 14 and has a mustache.’  Yes.  ‘Well what about 8?’  I guess that’s possible.  Take a second and guestimate how many kids at your local middle school get even 8?  Now divide that by 2.  That’s probably more like the right number.  My insanely accurate unscientific guess is that fewer than 40% get seven hours or more.  How many kids do you think need 8, 9, or 10 hours?  Most people would sensibly say that more kids need 10 than 9 and more kids need 9 than 8.  Once again, and I’m correct, 10% need about 8 hours. 20% need about 8.5 hours of sleep.  30% of children under the age of fifteen need 9 hours. 20% need 9.5 and 20% need 10 hours of sleep every night.  Where does your kid fit?  Why does your student need less than others?  You see the question isn’t how much they need when it comes to sleep.  It’s how much they can take.

And when your kid is in high school they need…8-10 hours of sleep.  Think of the way schools would be if every student went to sleep at ten and woke up at six.  Think of how are schools would be if every parent could enforce that on each high school student.

This blog/article wasn’t written by a parent with all the answers.  It was written by the spouse of a parent with all the answers.  When I married my wife I felt her bed time was early.  I still do.  I think my bedtime when I was her kid’s age was an hour later.  But he performs better in school.  He is nicer and more polite than I was.  He still gets to be a little snotty if he doesn’t get his normal amount of sleep.  His friends in school; honors, band, orchestra; a lot have early bedtimes.  The kids that I know at my school who have bed times, they are all high achievers.  Admittedly some students do not have bed times and achieve well.  My argument to that, is that they may achieve better if they were well rested.  I’m not a parent with all the answers.  I’m a teacher searching for all the right answers.  If you think this is or isn’t one of them would you leave a response and say why or why not? 

Sadly, the clientele that read blogs/online articles give their children bedtimes.  It is the parents who have the children who need bedtimes the most who are least likely to read this.  Please don’t take that statement as racial, ethnocentric, or socioeconomic.  I am saying that the group of people in society that is seeking out suggestions on how to better raise children are self-selective of the type of people who already give their children bed times.  So if you could do me a favor; ask someone who you know who has kids when their kids’ bedtimes is/are.  We need this question to be part of the vernacular.  The more we ask the more people think there is a right answer.  The friends you ask you can ask why.  The friends you ask, if they don’t know or don’t really have a set time, or want their children to be independent; send them the link to this article. 

Open Letter to Parents Considering Homechool

Open letter to the imaginary parents I know considering home school,

            You know I teach at a public school right?  How could you even consider taking important funds away from society’s schools and taking your child out of an environment that makes presidents and patriots?   Hahahahahaha.

            The truth is that now that I’ve seen the system on the inside I can say without reservation the following:  All parents should strongly consider doing some home schooling.  All parents who have faith in God or conservative values aren’t being served in public education.  There are very few good Godly examples of how to live life in schools.  There aren’t many other students who children can look up to or will look up to even if they are some.  There are very few teachers that I think are so laudable that I would request their morals and honor as my students teacher.  The vapid nature of student talk and student behavior in secondary schools is worse than any foul mouthed movie you’ve ever seen.  Sailors talk much nicer than 7^th graders. 

I once remarked that I heard the ‘N-word’ more in one week at Connally High School than I had in my entire life previously.  I was including all the gangster movies I had ever seen.  Mind, this wasn’t said by students to inflame each other.  The word, from each race to all others, was without power.  The only people it humiliated and disgusted were the adults.   The language is ubiquitous.  There are no sensitivities in your child’s ears.  It isn’t clever or martial; it is word vomit.  It is mania. 

The disrespect and behavior are terrible as well.  All students lie and cheat.  I caught two dozen cheaters this year.  I may have caught more but some don’t have anyone to copy off of because my assessments are so easy; dumbed down, weak tea.  I may have caught more, but some do not care enough to cheat.  There is fighting.  There is gossip.  There is a level of depravity that I assure you is worse than anything I saw while I was in my school and it is NOT seeing with rose-colored glasses.  

And the values you share, they do not.  It is just nigh-impossible to out-number all their negative influences by being good parents and taking them to church.  And their teachers very rarely, share your values either.  I was surprised.  I mean this is a state so Red with republicanism that we voted against the Barbie doll for Governor and voted for Trump for President.  I thought teachers would have some conservatism here.  Wouldn’t teachers be a good cross-section of our state’s make up?  No.  75% claim Christianity in the state, is it that high in the school?  No.  They do not share your faith or your values.  Some might.  More do not.    

So do I, a teacher who makes my living teaching in public schools, think anyone close to me ought to seriously consider other options like co-ops or private schools or home school with curriculum online?  Yes.  Do I think you have to do it a while for it to make sense?  Yes.  Does it have to be K-8, or 6-8, or K-5?  No.

But…

Reasons you might not want to do this:  If your child is being bullied.  Look, I know it hurts to see your baby get bullied, but if you take your kid out of school it is telling them that if they aren’t enjoying something then they can change it.  That isn’t always true.  That can be one of the worst lessons to teach subconsciously to our children.  If they don’t like a teacher or a class or a club or a sport it might be the best opportunity to teach that, ‘those who endure get a crown’ rather than, ‘if we don’t like it we can always quit.’

Maybe you shouldn’t quit because a public school can offer you something you can’t otherwise achieve like sports, fine arts, or clubs.  I know some homeschools have sports and band and orchestra and whatever else but clubs in a school are a special thing that aren’t well reproduced all the time.  I’ve been a part of a homeschool co-op drama and it didn’t make the transition well.  I’ve also been a part of playoff football team and a nationally recognized men’s choir.

Maybe your kid is wild about God and needs to be challenged to see the school as his/her mission field.  Look, I didn’t.  There is a level of maturity that I don’t think God demands from 15 and 16 year olds.  But now, I pray every day to let me be a good man and let students get a little God out of me.  I need to do better at it, but there’s always next year.  If you can take a student who is special in a way, I admit, I was not and make them focus their zeal for Christ Jesus into their public education then God be praised.  If this can be their Catechesis, then the Gates of Hell shall not prevail.

But…

If you decide to take the plunge:  Don’t go halfway.  Don’t say this is a measure that only needs to last a year until a growth spurt comes in or until his peers grow out of bullying.  Don’t pay it lip service.  Look up project-based-learning.  Have the student design the curriculum.  Always be expecting more than the school did, and more than you did last week.  Homeschool should be an opportunity to trounce the public education system.  Homeschool should look the public school in the face and laugh at its edifices.  Education costs a library card; they’ve got computers, and books on tape, Audible.com, Youtube.com, projectGuttenberg.com, Think through Math, IXL, Bill and Melinda Gates foundation, the DBQ project, Project Based Learning, blogs, heck Netlfix and Amazon Prime (documentaries, brain games, How Things are Made, Dirty Jobs, and Mythbusters) encyclopedias, Wikipedia (watch Jeopardy, get the clue, pause it, look it up online and answer it before unpausing, then afterwards watch it at full speed and see how many they remember), History.com, the Biography Channel, History.gov the list could go on for days.  A person who is incentivized to become an autodidact hasn’t even needed a teacher for the last 20 years.  Scratch that, probably didn’t need one before the internet when we had libraries.

If you decide to take the plunge:  Get weird.  Do a ton of field trips to actual educational places.  Have them write in different styles and Genres.  Have them read and write book reports in different styles and genres.  Have them take some instrument lessons in several different instruments and then have them practice like an hour a day if you ears can stand it.  Have them learn to whistle, to juggle, to skateboard, to dance, fence, sing, speak some vocab in like ten languages.  Have them learn the Korean alphabet.  Have them learn to identify art but only up to the Impressionists.  Have them listen to symphonies and operas and arias and Hank Williams and Elvis and Bach and Brahms and New Kids on the Block and Fats Domino and Motown and Italian Rap and Russian Folk.  Have them sow and macramé and wash dishes and write poetry and learn first aid.

If you decide to take the plunge:  Do not let them do it without you.  There is a cheap way to do it and that is to give them a book and ask them to read it and write a report.  Total time for you 10 minutes.  Total time for them 15 hours.  No.  Have them read something to you.  Discuss it afterwards.  You know Cliff’s Notes?  Those actually have challenge questions at the end of each chapter summary to help spur discussion.  Look up a lecturer on Youtube who can talk about the themes.  After they write the report don’t just mark it for spelling and grammar.  You should really teach them about introducing an essay.  If I get another essay starting, “Let me tell you about…”  Really challenge them that 5-7 paragraphs, 5-7 sentences is only barely good enough.  Beg friends to read it and offer notes.  Have the student represent the book in multimedia:  A picture, a poster, a board game, a 3-D element, outfits for a play, etc.  Have the student blog about it.  Have the student read their essay and share it with former students.  Engage with everything they do.  You must invest in this yourself.  It is no small task to be a good teacher.  (Side Note:  I’m not saying that a parent can’t leave their kid home alone and work Tuesday and Thursday if the parent needs to work part time.  Though the state might have a problem with this.  Kids just need guidance all the time even when they don’t, in my opinion need supervision.

So long story short:  Do it, or not if you can’t or don’t want to, all the way in or all the way out, make it worth it, be weird, go with your student, and bring God with you.  It isn’t a question with a right answer just a right for you answer.