Jen's Diary

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Thanks, everybody! :)



What a good day!! I got all my steps in. I also stayed on track with my calories. :)

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..... and the Cubs won the World Series!! Go Cubbies!

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Goooo Cubs! My insanely excited husband snuck into bed at 5:30 this morning. He's so pleased!! I will try to add you on fitbit xx
 
Thanks, Hana! If anyone else wants to add me, feel free. The more the merrier. :)


We stayed up really late last night, and I ended up sleeping in really late. Steps are around 5, 000 right now. I did the treadmill earlier. Had soup for lunch. Right now I'm about to pick up the kids from school, and then go visit my mom for a little bit. Not sure what's for dinner yet. We really need to get better at planning. lol!
 
Cool, Cate! I hope you get one soon! It should be fun! :)


I'm all anxious tonight. I dislike how my son's teacher runs things. He's in 4th grade and the whole first marking period he's had one thing of homework....ONE. There's this whole movement right now of "let's not overwhelm kids with lots of homework" - ok - Fine, however, if you're not going to send homework home, you need to send home a weekly newsletter to at least let us know what they're working on at school, because some kids need extra help at home to really figure it out. We get nothing. A few bits and pieces from what he remembers to tell us and the occasional Facebook post to share pictures. For example, he brought home a few quizzes that he did at school the other day. One on punctuation and some science stuff. He failed them. How are we as parents supposed to help our kids practice at home, when we have no idea what they're working on at school? I went over the one sheet with him again, until he understood it, but that doesn't change his grade after he already took the quiz. If I had been able to go over that stuff with him beforehand and helped him practice, he probably would of done fine. Short of emailing the teacher every single week(which she would NOT appreciate) to find out what they're doing, what the heck am I supposed to do to help my kid? We have parent/teacher conferences coming up in a couple weeks and I'm already all anxious about them. It's just irritating and makes me want to eat ton of candy. Grrrrrrr!

/end rant


My steps right now are around 9,500. They should be over 10,000 by the end of the night.
Calories are around 1350
 
I bought one Jen, but it's charging right now & I have to learn how to use it properly. I'll send you a friend request, but it may take me a while to get into it! :blush5: I can't wait though!
Re: your son & school etc. Make notes about what you want to convey to the teacher & read from the notes at parent/teacher conference. I don't think you are being unreasonable. You are being a caring parent. Chill, hon, chill & you will get your point across better. Stay away from the candy Jen xoxoxoxo
 
It's been many years since I've been in school and my kids aren't yet in schools, but do they still pass out a syllabus to give you a rough idea of the topics they're going to cover?

That's really s**tty of them to basically hide what they're going over. Do they keep assignment books like we used to do? We used to have to write our homework assignments or topics covered in them and I think our parents used to have to sign off on the stuff. I dunno if that's a relic of the past or just something we did in our state.
 
Cate- Oh, I will be calm and collected when I talk to her. That's why I'm ranting here, because I won't do it in her face. haha! I'll be fine! I haven't had to do notes in a while, but I think for this meeting it's a probably a good idea. lol!

Mowens- Nope.. nothing. No syllabus. No assignment books. Nothing like that for his grade. We have pretty much nothing to go on. My daughter is in 7th grade and she has a planner that she's supposed to fill out every day, but they don't check it. We don't have to sign it or anything like that. School is so much different from when I went to school. There's very little communication from teachers. What they do communicate is usually short messages through Facebook or phone apps, and that's things like "picture day is tomorrow", not what they're working on. When they hit middle school they do a large amount of their work online using a google account, even our 4th grader has a Gmail account that he uses for school... and the big one... pretty much no homework. Our daughter has had two homework assignments all marking period... and she's in 7th grade! She barely had any last year either. It's very different. I could go on and on. lol!
 
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:scengo: - that must be SO frustrating Jen!
I have sent you a friend request on Fitbit xo
 
At least you are willing and able to take up the issue with the school/teacher, so many parents just don't bother. Just don't let the school try to bully you. I was once banned from entering the grounds of my sons high school after standing up for my eldest son after he was bullied, the acting principle did not like the idea that as a parent I had the right to insist that the school do the right thing and refused to be bullied by him, the excuse in the letter from the school said that I was "intimidating" lol
 
You have every right to request more information - especially if your lad is not achieving in the tests. Their system sounds really flawed :(
 
jen_renee said:
What they do communicate is usually short messages through Facebook or phone apps
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I remember the only form of technology we used in high school was what we called a "Mac Lab". It was about 30 of these thingsView attachment 24051

and everyone was given a single floppy disk to write out English assignments on. I know it'll be way different by the time my kids are in. I've heard family talk about their kids being assigned iPads and all sorts of electronic assignments.

I wonder if the lack of homework has anything to do with the modern ability to just Google the answer to anything. Maybe they see it as a waste of time. But like you said, if the kid isn't understanding the material, obviously you need to be able to step in and help.
 
cate said:
:svengo: - that must be SO frustrating Jen!
I have sent you a friend request on Fitbit xo
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I got it! We're friends on there now! Yay! :)

Trusylver said:
At least you are willing and able to take up the issue with the school/teacher, so many parents just don't bother. Just don't let the school try to bully you. I was once banned from entering the grounds of my sons high school after standing up for my eldest son after he was bullied, the acting principle did not like the idea that as a parent I had the right to insist that the school do the right thing and refused to be bullied by him, the excuse in the letter from the school said that I was "intimidating" lol
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Yeah, I'm not one of those parents that doesn't bother. Not even close. lol! I've known from the first week of school that his teacher probably wasn't going to like me very much. lol! I really don't care though. As a parent, you are your child's most important advocate, and I will stick up for my kid no matter what. :)

Sunflower_ said:
You have every right to request more information - especially if your lad is not achieving in the tests. Their system sounds really flawed :(
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Oh, I will be requesting more information. Don't you worry. lol!

Mowens1984 said:
I remember the only form of technology we used in high school was what we called a "Mac Lab". It was about 30 of these thingsView attachment 24051

But like you said, if the kid isn't understanding the material, obviously you need to be able to step in and help.
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I remember those! lol! ....and that's pretty much my biggest issue. I don't expect his teacher to sit down with him every day one-on-one and explain things to him in the two or three different ways that HE needs until the light bulb goes on over his head. Obviously she has a class full of students, she doesn't have time for that. So I expect that to be our job, and I'm more than willing to do that. I just need to know what to work on! lol!



Thanks, everybody! I think I'll sit down this weekend and start writing out what I want to go over. I'm just stressing out about it, because in just a couple years he'll be heading off to middle school. I want to make sure he's prepared as much as he can be for that, and right now I don't see that happening if things continue down the same path. Mama bear is just worrying as usual. ;)
 
Mowens1984 said:
Your steps don't show up on my app for some reason. I can see Hana and Cate's though. Yours just says "Unranked"
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Hmm... maybe because I hadn't synced it yet? I haven't done a lot today, but I have about 3,000 steps, so there should be something showing. I just checked my privacy settings, and I have my step count set so friends can see it. That's weird.
 
I take it back. I see you on there now. Maybe it was an issue on my end. Sometimes the app doesn't sync between MFP or it takes a while to import my data.
 
Jen you may not know this but I am a superintendent of a school district. It is not unreasonable at all for you to want to keep up with your kids progress. You might ask her to shoot you an email if he does poorly on something or if he needs extra practice on something. She should be glad you are willing to help. Try to make it like you are all on the same team which is how it should be. If she doesn't want to provide you with minimal feedback then she isn't doing her job. The grades where most kids really get behind are 3rd (usually reading issues) and 7th (everything gets harder math, science, writing...) You gotta help them keep up. Both my sons took calculus in high school! Back in my day we stopped with Algebra. There is little room to fall behind. Nicely get that teacher to play ball...or you might have to make a nice "concerned parent" visit to the principal.
 
Thanks, Brawny!! He's always been behind, because of other issues. He has speech apraxia, and with that came a plethora of other problems, but up until this year I was at least ok with how things were being handled. I just don't want him to lose any ground. Especially when it's ground that he's worked his butt off to get. I'm hoping for some good gains before he enters middle school, and I don't want anything screwing that up. I have parent/teacher conferences coming up, and his IEP meeting coming up, so I'll definitely be bringing up my concerns during those! :) On a positive note, he has made some big improvements socially! He started a new school this year, and adjusted to it way better than I ever thought he would, and he's made a few new friends! His confidence seems to be improving. :)


Steps yesterday: 10, 067
Calories yesterday were a little high: 1711


Steps are pretty good so far today. I did some cleaning around the house, did some laundry, and did the treadmill for 30 minutes.
 
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