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Mini Me Mod


jinyu
Age. 37
Gender. Female
Ethnicity.
Location Denver, CO
School. Other
» More info.
Sprocket's Training Milestones
Came home (Aug 2, 2014)
Asked to go outside (Aug 5, 2014)
Slept 4 hours straight (night) (Aug 5-6, 2014)
Crane Count
7/3/13 - 8
7/4/13 - 30
7/5/13 - 36
7/10/13 - 54
7/11/13 - 57
7/18/13 - 67
2/17/14 - 83
(cumulative)
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Moon Mod!
CURRENT MOON
To Read:
- Carrie
- Dream of the Red Chamber
- Time to Kill
- Scent of the Missing
- Stiff
Nano mod!
Sprocket - Learning fast and slow
Thursday. 8.28.14 10:11 am
Sprocket is a very good guesser. He is always guessing what I want. Sometimes, he guesses a bit long, sometimes not. The thing I've noticed about Sprocket, though, is while Sprocket is curious, wants to learn, and tries new things, Sprocket will not necessarily learn all he needs to know in a day. In fact, it might take even the fourth or fifth training session. I was teaching him "play dead" for the past few days. Play dead is hard, because it's not really that different from "down", and the hand signal is all funny. Crazy thing is, once he finally got "play dead", "roll over" was easy.

Teaching Sprocket has made me think a bit more about education. Of course everyone has an opinion on education, and I know I'm not the only one saying what I am going to say. The thing about mass education is that spending the necessary time with each student is next to impossible. So what do you do? Hire more teachers? But how do we pay them all? How do we give them all classrooms and offices? Honestly, most people are born with their best private tutor: their parents. But with the economy the way it is and the expense of raising children growing, many of those parents just aren't there, which means that the after school education that used to be directed by parents is being transformed into more group environments like school in the form of daycares and after school programs. As we already discussed, while group environments are wonderful for many things, the task of identifying the individual learning needs of a child (whether behavioral, emotional, academic, physical or spiritual) is not, can not, be adequately performed.

I think this is especially important when it comes to foundational skills. Sprocket needed to know "play dead" before he "magically" learned "roll over". Sprocket needs to learn how to "stay" before we can play "hide and seek". Sprocket needs to learn "drop it" before "fetch" is really a fun game to play... well... for both of us. Sprocket needed to love people before he learns how to behave nicely around them. Similarly, a child needs to know how to read phonemes before they can start to sound out unfamiliar words. A child needs to learn how to use numbers before he can play cards. A child needs to learn to be comfortable with people before he learns to play with them. A child needs to learn how to play nicely.

So, how do we expect children to learn, when they haven't learned to sit in their chairs and listen? It's crazy, because these problems ARE cropping up in classrooms. But then, do we expect teachers to stop learning for all the other children just so one child can catch up? No, that is a parent's job, but do we expect parents to give up the job that helps them put food on the table, just so that they can teach their children to behave? Can we hire a parent for every child? Not likely. So then what?

As for me, I am going to selfishly continue to raise a dog and put off child raising for another day. I plan on equipping my dog with the behaviors and manners that will make him welcome in as many places as possible. It's going to take for-freaking-ever.
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