At what age do you stop taking kids out of school?

[gorkt]

Speaking from years of experience, yes, parents absolutely expect that the teacher go out of their way to gather work together for when they pull their kids out for a vacation. And, if the teacher or school doesn't do this, it is the teacher and the school that are being uncooperative and unreasonable. All you have to do is go back and look through these responses to see that attitude. It never ceases to amaze me that parents expect teachers to take extra time of their own to accommodate their children's absences. You are taking time away from that teacher's family; why isn't that inconsiderate? If you would like to take your kid out of school for two weeks to go to Hawaii, or 10 days to go to WDW, that's fine, but don't expect the school or teacher to do extra work on their part because you are choosing not to participate in the lessons and activities at the time they occur.

I agree that there is a spectrum of parental expectations for teachers, and that the above is completely unreasonable. I would never ask my teachers to do extra work. I inform them as far ahead as I can that we are going on vacation, and list the days we will be out. I then follow their lead on whether they would rather put together a packet or let the kids make it up later.

 

[rznhal]

have happily puttered through life never making much of myself.

2 Raised kids? You sound like a success to me!!!!

My favorite quote from the Hobbit:
"I found it is the small everyday deeds of ordinary folk that keep the darkness at bay"

Power to the putter-ers!!!

 

[2Tiggies]

Our district has done away with teacher work days, shortened the summer vacation and tightened the unexcused absence policy (only three and then there's a conference with the principal, five or more the school can turn you in for truancy).

The flip side is, now there is a week off in September, a whole week off for Thanksgiving in November, two full weeks off in December, a week off in February, spring break in April. School gets out right before Memorial Day and this year the first day of school was August 1.

A lot of parents hate it but I prefer it to random teacher work days that I have to scramble for child care, plus it gives us those weeks that most of the US is still in school for us to go on vacation. I don't know the stats but I believe this schedule has cut back on unexcused absences.

I would definitely take my daughter out of elementary school for a few days for vacation but with that schedule I don't feel the need to.

Sounds like what DD's school is doing. We also had a shorter summer break but I was surprised to see the additional breaks during the school year. And I hear you on the childcare issue!! Those work days used to cost me a lot of money!

They also have a zero tolerance policy for absence. There is no such thing as an 'excused absence' anymore. The student is either in the class or not. 10 absences in a semester and they don't get a credit for that subject. It doesn't matter if the child stayed home to watch TV or was in hospital. Absent is absent.

Up until a few years ago I thought nothing of pulling DD out of school for a week to tag onto a school break so we could get cheaper flights. Now I wouldn't dream of it. |

I don't lean in either direction on taking kids out of school for vacation. Most parents want to do what is best for their children and what's good for one is not necessarily good for the next person.

 

[Magpie]

2 Raised kids? You sound like a success to me!!!!

My favorite quote from the Hobbit:
"I found it is the small everyday deeds of ordinary folk that keep the darkness at bay"

Power to the putter-ers!!!

Aw, thanks!

And you quoted my second favourite book, after the Lord of the Rings!

 

[mi*vida*loca]

Wanted to add that I stopped taking my kids out for a week at a time. I will still pull them for a day or two if we are doing a long weekend trip somewhere. But nothing more than that. Also during Jersey Week my kids have off 3 days that week with two half days. I would pull them out for two half days if we went that week.

 

[Boopuff]

I'm always confused about this "extra time" thing; don't teachers already have a plan of action, so they are just doing what they were going to do, either beforehand or afterwards?

We homeschool so don't have to deal with all of this nonsense, and we were poor so I remember two vacations that we took, ever, and both during summer, BUT I never got the feeling that the teachers were reinventing the wheel each year. They had x on day x, y on day y, etc etc. To give a package to someone just means going into the files and making some copies. Er, Xeroxes. Er, mimeographs, if we go back far enough.

I gleefully (b/c I'm done with school) and sadly (b/c I was tortured by them) announce that I had pretty much all of the "about to burn out" teachers that existed at the time (and one "I'll have a nervous breakdown in front of my 5th grade class, leave school for what the students thought was forever, then come back to teach the SAME group of kids for 6th grade" teacher that we were still shuddering over at our 20th HS reunion), but even THEY could work out how to get a packet of homework to the kids lucky enough to go to Hawaii or Lake Tahoe.

In our district the teachers at one grade level "co-plan" together. They meet as a group and do all the lessons for a set time frame. Also much of the work is in a collaborative setting, no work sheets or other material that can easily be sent along on vacation. So some plan time is also "off the clock" Some teachers try to put together something for the kids to do on a vacation, but most of the hands-on work has to be made up.

 

[KrazeeK120]

I'm always confused about this "extra time" thing; don't teachers already have a plan of action, so they are just doing what they were going to do, either beforehand or afterwards?

A plan of action? Sure. Specific plans more than a week or 2 in advance? Maybe not. My husband taught high school physics for a decade (plus a couple of other science and math classes). For whatever reason, it seemed like some years, the kids progressed faster than others, so some years he'd get through more material. It wasn't a vast difference, but enough that he wouldn't know specifically to the day what he'd be teaching more than a few weeks out, if that.

Plus, yes, it does take time for a teacher to write out all of the lesson information that a student will miss for a week. It's one thing to just collect assignments - most teachers post those online these days anyway and the kid can just go to the teacher's website for specific homework information. But to gather all of the in-class work to give to a student who will miss time takes extra time. They essentially have to give all of the instructions twice - once to the student who will be gone, and then again to the students who are in class. Multiply that by however many Sallys and Johnnys take vacations (and he had over 100 students each year), and yes, it does add up.

 

[MaryLovesPoohBear]

Six.

We did take our son out of kindergarten for half a day to see the Christmas Show at Radio City. But other than that, we've never taken the kids out for any sort of a vacation. We go to WDW over the summer.

And for what it's worth, two consecutive math classes I teach don't get the exact same lesson, much less two consecutive years. How could they? There are different kids with different backgrounds at different levels of understanding with different questions. How could I successfully teach them the exact same way?

My planning for this school year means my own notes are in order. I have no idea which problems I'll do with which classes, because I don't know what they'll need me to emphasize. So, no, I can't give my kids a packet of anything a week ahead of time. I don't know exactly what I'll cover, or how, or what I'll be assigning.

Hats off to you.

Around here, many teachers assign the same homework, the same week, every year. In fact, if you have more than one child going through those classes, you don't even have to ask for make up work. Just go back through your returned homework and tests and you are good to go.

It is pretty sad. I've tutored for the same math class for a couple of years. And even I have copies of the work, based on week.

 

[Aliceacc]

Oh, and I don't "give notes" in the sense that I can hand your child something when he returns from vacation.

Let's say I'm teaching the graphing of a polynomial function. We'll do one together, with me asking questions to prompt them through the process.
Then I write "process:" on the screen. I ask them what we did first in the last problem, and write down what they say.
I ask how we got to the next step, and write down what they say. And so on through the problem.

Each class has different notes because each class explained it in a slightly different way.

So I can't give your child any sort of a handout. My notes are basically a list of topics and a list of practice problems.

 

[DopeyDame]

Oh, and I don't "give notes" in the sense that I can hand your child something when he returns from vacation.

Let's say I'm teaching the graphing of a polynomial function. We'll do one together, with me asking questions to prompt them through the process.
Then I write "process:" on the screen. I ask them what we did first in the last problem, and write down what they say.
I ask how we got to the next step, and write down what they say. And so on through the problem.

Each class has different notes because each class explained it in a slightly different way.

So I can't give your child any sort of a handout. My notes are basically a list of topics and a list of practice problems.

This is sort of off topic, but this is why it drives me absolutely batty that our district doesn't use textbooks in most classes these days! Kids need multiple sources of information - not just the one way their teacher wrote it down based on how the class happened to explain it that day. And if a kid is on vacation when you teach graphing of a polynomial function, you could say "we covered chapter 7, pages 102-108, here's the homework, let me know if you have questions" and it wouldn't matter that you didn't have actual notes to hand out.

Sorry... I know textbooks isn't the issue here, but it's the one thing in my kid's district that makes me really irate.

 

[Aliceacc]

Honestly, in 30+ years in the classroom I haven't met a whole lot of kids who can teach themselves Precalculus-- or any math-- from a textbook.

I can't focus my teaching on a kid who may happen to be on vacation when I teach a topic

I teach those who show up.. More than that I cannot do.

 

[fitzperry]

Plus, yes, it does take time for a teacher to write out all of the lesson information that a student will miss for a week. It's one thing to just collect assignments - most teachers post those online these days anyway and the kid can just go to the teacher's website for specific homework information. But to gather all of the in-class work to give to a student who will miss time takes extra time. They essentially have to give all of the instructions twice - once to the student who will be gone, and then again to the students who are in class. Multiply that by however many Sallys and Johnnys take vacations (and he had over 100 students each year), and yes, it does add up.

"Write out"? Maybe our school district is ahead of the curve in terms of tech use, but my kids' teachers don't seem to write anything out anymore. Their assignments are all posted online, and many of their lectures, etc. are also online. Students are working very independently, and there is little or no extra work involved for a teacher when a student misses a few days.

As to the original question, we've pulled our daughters out of school for Disney trips numerous times. The last time we did that for a weeklong trip they were in 8th and 5th grades. We decided at that point it would be the last because their workloads would increase in high school. But last year (sophomore and 7th grade) my husband earned a fabulous trip to Hawaii through work, and we couldn't resist taking them with us. Despite all that technology and the fact that she was asking nothing of them, a couple of my sophomore's teachers were very difficult about giving her credit for the work she turned in. That was quite different from our earlier experiences with pulling the kids out of school. The school district has always discouraged it (because they have to and because of funding) but in the past their teachers were always very supportive. Most of them were this time as well, but I suppose that's another reason to use caution when doing this with older kids. With so many teachers, you increase the odds that one or more will have a problem with it.

 

[KrazeeK120]

"Write out"? Maybe our school district is ahead of the curve in terms of tech use, but my kids' teachers don't seem to write anything out anymore. Their assignments are all posted online, and many of their lectures, etc. are also online. Students are working very independently, and there is little or no extra work involved for a teacher when a student misses a few days.

OK...type out. Send an email. Whatever. As I said, my husband taught for a decade (he left the profession in 2012). It is extra work for the teacher, on top of all of the extra non-school hours work they already do. And most kids aren't learning physics independently.

 

[Amelia :)]

Not to bring this down to a depressing level, but a few years ago my dad passed away when I was 21. He was a very hard working doctor, we went to Disney and on lots of nice family holidays, but as his work load increased and we got further in our education, the holidays didn't happen so frequently.
I recently had a conversation with my mum, and she told me her one and only regret is that we didn't take more family holidays, and she wished we had been able to go to WDW one last time.
Education is important, learning is important. But having fun is also important for children. And quality family time is absolutely invaluable.

 

[CaterFamily]

The more I read the happier I am that my DW & I homeschool.

 

[fitzperry]

OK...type out. Send an email. Whatever. As I said, my husband taught for a decade (he left the profession in 2012). It is extra work for the teacher, on top of all of the extra non-school hours work they already do. And most kids aren't learning physics independently.

No, there really wasn't any extra work. They didn't have to type anything extra. Or send an email. All they had to do was give her credit for the work she turned in rather than call the assignments late and give her zeros. And a couple of them resisted doing that. These were excused absences, and she turned in the work within the deadline set by school policy. But one teacher didn't want to follow the policy because he didn't think she should have skipped his class for a family vacation, and another kept forgetting to change the grade in the computer system (not sure if he was really forgetting or also didn't want to follow the policy). I don't like it, but I also don't have much control over the situation, so lesson learned.

 

[SillySallySews]

The more I read the happier I am that my DW & I homeschool.

No kidding. Every time this topic pops up I feel so sad for all the people who feel legally obligated to give schools so much say over their family time. And also blessed that my kids have had so many wonderful educators in their lives who understood the importance of what happens outside their classroom.

 

[MaryLovesPoohBear]

The more I read the happier I am that my DW & I homeschool.

No kidding. Every time this topic pops up I feel so sad for all the people who feel legally obligated to give schools so much say over their family time. And also blessed that my kids have had so many wonderful educators in their lives who understood the importance of what happens outside their classroom.

I'm with both of you.

We are through, but I am so glad that we created our own schedule.

 

[hulkfan22]

Would definitely depend on how well your child does in school and how fast they can catch up

 

[clawmachine]

I'm surprised many think that 5 days missed is going to be a huge deal. Heck- with the number of viruses that circulate here every winter and the strict rules about fevers and when you can return to school, it's quite easy for a child to miss 2-3 days just by getting a cold! Then add on the fact that here in the mid-Atlantic we often have chunks of snow days. Teachers generally put all the assignments online, and can adjust dates as necessary. No parent I know would ever expect them to hand out packets ahead of time. The official school rule is that 3 days per year are excused for any reason and beyond that you need a note. I've never heard of an admin not excusing the rest unless it was a delinquency situation. The official school make-up rule is that you have the same number of days to turn in late work as the number of days you were gone. I know way more families that pull their kids out than ones who don't. Our schools rank highest in the nation routinely, so it must not be the tragedy that some think it is.