Kids told to say "H Day" instead of "Halloween"

---

My Granddaughter's first grade teacher does not let the students say "Halloween".
She actually takes stars away (reward system) of children who say "Halloween" instead of her mandated "H word".

My daughter is upset and wants to talk to the teacher.
She called me for advice and I offered a few points:

* Halloween is suppose to be fun for children.
* Ask the teacher why she is doing this?
* Why is she making the celebration of Halloween a negative experience for the children?
* Is this the school policy?
* Perhaps sit down with the Principal and teacher to get to the bottom of this.

We suspect it is because there is a Jehovah Witness kid in the class which is bullshit if so.
This is a PUBLIC SCHOOL!

Damn...I will know more in a couple of days.

Unbelievable.

---

take that to the bank!

Fundies are the greatest fun-suckers around.

I wish these people could get worked up about something that really matters . . . .

...how should my daughter handle it?

but, be direct and assertive. Tell the teacher in your house the word "Halloween" is just fine. Ask her to keep her personal feelings out of it. Advise the teacher that the child will be using the word "Halloween" anytime he/she feels like it and that the teacher needs to get used to it. I would do some career counseling with the teacher and advise her that if her personal beliefs and feelings get in the way she might consider whether or not she wants to be a teacher.

But that's me. My wife often makes me promise to be nice when we meet with teachers!

It is my job, as a parent, to be my childrens advocate. This school year, I have been talked down to by my sons 4th grade teacher and she shows zero respect for my role as a parent. I am "nice" but I also know that everyone comes to the table with their own agenda. I am hesitant to be confrontational with this woman since my son seems to be doing well in her class - But since my initial meeting with her, I know she thinks I am an idiot. I did not say more than 3 words to her - she came to the room already thinking that I am an unintelligent being. If she ever takes the time to actually engage me in a conversation she may come away with a more flattering impression. How nice can I be when I know for a fact that this teacher has assigned her students parents the appellation of "moron?" I have been thinking about how best to approach the situation - I know the teacher is bff with the principal... (whose judgement has always been in question.) But i'll be damned if I stop advocating in the best interest of my children in an attempt to make the teacher feel all warm and fuzzy. I see no reason to be nasty to a teacher but my priority is always to protect my son and daughter. This teacher is the one to put the parents, she is supposed to be "working with," on the defensive. She elected to speak to me as if I had fallen off a fucking turnip truck- Now I guess she gets to experience the proper and equal reaction when it finally happens.

I have a 9 year old in 4th grade and a 7 year old in 3rd grade - I do what I can to be supportive of the teachers but I can tell you that if a teacher wanted my child to strike a word from the English language which is an accepted word to describe a thing, I would not be happy and would be very vocal about it. It is difficult enough for a little kid to make it through each school day without the added stress of remembering to not use a word her teacher finds "offensive." It is total b.s.

That's my 2 cents worth :)

I would move her to another room. Her twisted attempt to make your grand daughter bend to her will is mean - the little kids really value their reward "stars." The word Halloween is not being stricken from the American lexicon elsewhere - it is wrong to expect a 6 year old to understand why it's okay to say the word at Target but wrong to use it at school. I would also call the principal and level a serious complaint while asking that my kid be moved to a less hostile room - If this teacher is so concerned about your grand daughters soul, she is filtering her b.s. to her students every time she has a chance.

I would only add one thing - at the sit down meeting with the teacher and principle - be sure they both know her next stop will be the local newspaper. I'm sure they would be interested in a teacher who punishes her students for saying the word "Halloween."

get ALL OF THE KIDS to say Halloween....

let her subtract all the points she wants...

I am so glad I grew up when I did...poor kiddies...

He told our class not to say halloween
to say harvest day.

It was highschool so he didn't do anything to us.
He also taught that the world was 6000 years old
(actually he scorned anything that contradicted his idea that the earth was that old)

This guy was a SCIENCE TEACHER

I decided that Christmas was to become
Formally Pagan Winter Solstice Day That Was Highjacked By Christians.


Your Teacher is a Fundie

"All Hallows Eve" is acceptable.

:smoke:

:rofl:

These people are organized beyond what you can imagine and they are out to get a theocracy if they can.
All the more reason WE should be volunteering for positions and running as candidates for school boards etc.

your grand-daughters teacher has no obligation what so ever to acknowlege Halloween in any way.

Public school is to educate, not celebrate commercial, ethnic, or cultural holidays.

Halloween is a no-win holiday. Those who love Halloween are willing to go to war to make sure that their kid's class "celebrates" Halloween. Several branches of the national christian cult are willing to go to war to keep their kids from celebrating holidays their cult considers "evil" at a public school. No matter what a school or teacher does, there are people who will be disgruntled, at the least, and sometimes angry and aggressive.

I think "h day" rule is stupid, myself. I have never celebrated halloween in my classroom, and I've taken a lot of heat from families who expect parties and costumes. I always tell them that halloween is a family holiday that kids celebrate after school.

There are some whole schools, and classrooms, that celebrate anyway, and tell people who don't like it to stay at home that day. Or they send them to the library to get them out of the way. I think that's a clear violation; you don't deny public school students their instructional time because you want to have a party, and you don't engage in activities in a public school that are not inclusive of all.

My school says no parties, no costumes. We're supposed to be teaching. Our pto has a halloween carnival one day after school the last week of October. Funded by parents, run by volunteers. Not during school hours, or funded with school funds. A local farm has a corn maze and pumpkin picking; lots of kids go on field trips to pick pumpkins, visit farm animals, and negotiate the corn maze during october.

With all of the real issues to take a stand on, I think this one is frivolous and a waste of time. The teacher could be handling it better, but it's not exactly a crisis in public education. We've got multiple crises in education that really need family, and community, time and energy to address.

Why not just turn it into a lesson for your daughter and granddaughter in tolerance, and in following directions, and celebrate the freedom to celebrate halloween after school?

No, the teacher is in no way obligated to celebrate any kinds of holidays at all, and, yes, school is for learning. However, Glasser identified "fun" as being one of the five basic needs of learners, and I happen to agree with him.

Have you ever wondered why kids get to high school and HATE school? They loved it, though, ten years ago. The thing I keep coming up with is fun. Not every minute of every day has to be spent in Traditional Education mode; not everything that kids learn in schools has to be about the 3 Rs; we can have a good time and teach school, both at the same time.

That having been said, mostly I agree with you. There are far more important failures in the educational world to be concerned with, and while verboten to speak aloud: too many teachers see days like Halloween as an excuse to take the day off entirely.

Of course, fun is not limited to commercial holidays.

When I taught primary grades, my school solved this dilemma by having a fall festival. We spent one day as a school on the festival, which included reading, writing, math, art, science, music, and dancing. We had a blast, and it was inclusive. No public school student was excluded because their family faith excluded them.

We did the same thing for winter and spring. Seasonal festivals include all.

The school I currently teach at does not allow costumes or Halloween parties. We do have field trips to the local pumpkin ranch, to pick pumpkins and negotiate the corn maze; it's 3 miles down the road. Our PTC does an on-campus halloween carnival after hours, so those that want to do halloween at school can, those that don't don't, and no instructional time is affected.

I hope we don't wait for, or depend on, commercial holidays to have fun while we're learning. Fun comes in many ways.

Last week's fun with my 8th graders:

They were tackling some advanced vocabulary, and groaning about it. I offered to play a game; the whole class against me, and the winner got candy from the loser/s. Whoever could use the words in classroom discussion, in context, most frequently, won.

We had a pretty silly week, trying to see how often we could use those words in the course of regular classroom discussion. I lost. They begged to play again this week, and spent yesterday muttering under their breaths, making sure they could pronounce "insouciant," "spurious," and "soporific" correctly, trying out different possibilities to spring on me.

Yesterday, one boy gravely told the room that their claim that the study of history is soporific was spurious, since it's their own attitude towards learning, and the subject, that determines their attention level. Some of them immediately began to argue with him, while others raced to mark 2 points for his use of vocabulary. He winked at me, and dove in to take on their arguments. Did I mention that his favorite class is his debate elective? ;)

Do I need to point out that, by the time they were done arguing with him, those two words had been used enough to ensure that the whole room was comfortable with them?

and move up the chain of command until you are satisfied. The last step is the school board.

If she's doing this with Halloween, she might be off the wall with other things as well. No little kids should have to have a whacked out teacher, especially during this young years where they don't have the skills to deal with an unstable/mean/abusive teacher.

My Third grade teacher was physically and verbally abusive towards the students and we didn't have the skills to challenge or explain to our parents what was going on, granted that was more years ago then I'm willing to admit.

Look at it in that sense; Christmas is another example where it is a word which may not be uttered because of religious connotations. Funny thing is, I heard someone say in my hometown that the schools there allow every holiday except Christmas!

Forget about the Halloween thing for a moment...

The first rule of positive reinforcement (stars or stickers or tickets or whatever) is that you can't take away rewards for positive behavior. Ever. Period. If a kid has earned 9 stars, then the kid earned 9 stars. That's incredibly poor classroom management, worse teaching, and goes against fifty years of scientific research. This is what you should be concerned about more than anything else.

I just saw one on Friday in my hometown. It was a public school and that is the tradition.