The Fifth Grade Blues

By Lucky Tomaszek

Emma came to me last week with yet another form to sign. This one was a re-do slip from her teacher. She held up her spelling practice sheet for me to see. “I spelled ‘radiant’ wrong on my practice sheet. Forgot the ‘t’ on the end. So, I wrote it out ten times here like I’m supposed to and you need to sign this paper.”

As expected, the paper was verification that my daughter had shown me the mistake and the correction. However, the wording was upsetting to me. It said, “My child has shown me both the unacceptable work and the corrections.” Unacceptable? Really? A simple spelling mistake on a practice sheet is now unacceptable? We no longer allow elementary school students to make mistakes?

I make no secret about how much I love my kids’ elementary school. The facilities are well-maintained. The support staff is caring and informed. The art program teaches kids how to utilize as many mediums as possible. The physical education classes are structured to teach skill and emphasize teamwork over competition. There is a definite sense of community that spans from four-year-olds in junior kindergarten up through the fifth graders.

When I hear of children in southeastern Wisconsin going to schools where all of the “specials” have been cut, and even recess time is limited, my heart breaks for them. But with funding down, the economy failing and No Child Left Behind forcing educators to “teach to the test,” this is a reality for a growing number of kids. I can’t imagine not having our school as a choice for my children’s education.

All of that said, there is one place where I feel our school could use some serious revision to the current methods being used in the classroom. The fifth grade teachers, in an effort to prepare the kids for middle school, come down very hard on their 10 and 11 year-old students. In the opinion of many parents of fifth graders (myself included), harder than necessary.

I went through the fifth grade program three years ago with Lena. I remember many, many nights where she sat in front of her homework for two or three hours, diligently working through page after page of assignments. The curriculum in our school calls for approximately 10 minutes per grade of homework each night, meaning second graders should spend about 20 minutes, third graders should spend about 30 minutes, and so on.

When I asked her teacher about the heavy work load (heavy – her back pack regularly weighed more than 20 pounds!), she couldn’t believe the work she was assigning could possibly take that long. I mean, she literally didn’t believe me.

My middle girl, Emma, entered fifth grade this fall. She started our school in first grade and has loved all of her teachers and most of her classmates. She’s a good student – does her homework, raises her hand in class, doesn’t interrupt her teacher. Art is her favorite subject, with music a close second. All in all, Emma is a public school success story.

But she was nervous to move from fourth to fifth grade. For four years, she has been watching the oldest students at her school, as well as their teachers. Yes, she was probably influenced by Lena’s experience a few years ago, but she has been just as influenced by observing the experiences of other kids.

It’s not just the heavy homework load that had Emma worried. It was the widespread perception that the fifth grade teachers don’t really like fourth graders (duh, Mom, everybody knows that!) and that “they’re crabby, like, all the time.” And, as shown above, they are not careful with their language. I don’t mean they swear at the kids, but that the tone is overly harsh.

Not only is it no longer ‘acceptable’ for the students to make mistakes, they are told throughout the year that fifth grade is easy compared to middle school, and if they can’t make it now, they’ll never make it in sixth grade. This tone is such a departure from what these same children heard just the year before from the fourth grade teachers who are so supportive and nurturing. There is an air of neurosis that pervades the fifth grade students as they try to adjust to this new attitude from their instructors and deal with the ever-mounting fear of starting middle school next year.

Before Lena moved from fifth to sixth grade a few years ago, several middle school parents told me that sixth grade was actually easier than fifth. And they were right. The work load was more manageable, the teachers were more involved and there were more supports in place for children who needed the extra help.

I reminded Emma of this just last night. She came to me, worry all over her face, and said, “Mom, the work is really piling up! We have our explorer project, our author project, mini-economy, book-it, all of our regular assignments … and … we haven’t even started our state fair work yet! I don’t know if I can do all of it.”

In truth, for the first time in my kids’ nascent academic careers, I feel powerless. So I promised her I would be on her side, help as much as I could. And I reassured her that fifth grade is just one year – next year will be better. VS