Morning Conversation with my Children

In our household I have the morning shift. This means I get the kids up, ready for school, and dropped off at extended care. For my children, mornings are full of curiosity.

In the short car ride we have to school I’ve put in place a rule. They are not allowed to talk with each other (or touch, hit, poke, etc.), but they can talk with me. This turns conversations into relay points – which I don’t mind – and turns the car ride into funny, often insightful, question and answers channeled in a controlled manner (as opposed to the chaos of smacking each other around).

This year we’ve covered topics like God, ghosts, Putin, gravity, galaxies, puberty, congress, Magna Carta, and chlorophyll. In short, the car rides are too short. I love my kids and I love the questions they ask.

Today the conversation made me sad. First, some context. I have a first grader (learning English), a second grader (good with English, rough with Math), and a third grader (third grade reading guarantee – thank you state of Ohio).

My second grader said, “Diego, have fun in first grade. When you get to second, you get tons of homework and have to start worrying about tests.”

My third grade said, “Kelly, you don’t have to worry about a test yet. You get to worry about it next year.”

Then, turning to me, my third grader asked, “Papi, do I need to keep worrying about tests in 4th, 5th, and 6th grade?

“Yes, sweetheart.”

“Aww. I hate school.”

I want to be clear, my kids don’t shirk from work. School is hard for them (they’re all adopted from Colombia), but they work very, very hard every night (they also have school teachers as parents, so there’s no escaping the academic structure). We’re sweating the legislative mandates and doing what we can. Our core value is not necessarily academic success, but work ethic.

Still, it’s sometimes hard to draw the connection between work ethic, non-stop testing, and genuine curiosity and love of learning. To me, it feels like our systems are out of balance. I suspect it feels the same way to our children.

 

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