in case anyone still had any lingering doubts as to whose child Gwen is

[aryanhwy]

I present you with this, which was in Gwen's school bag when I rifled through it last night.



I would bet good money that this came about because she was asked to write her name.

--

There is a lovely story about Joel when he was in grade school, regarding the week's spelling words. They were asked to write sentences containing all of the spelling words. He asked if it were acceptable to have more than one word in the same sentence, and the teacher said Yes.

His sentence? "These are our spelling words for this week: [list]."

His teacher was not amused.

Comments

[madbaker.livejournal.com]

When I was a kid, I routinely got 100% on spelling exams because 1) I read a ton from an early age and had a large vocabulary; 2) mis-spelled words jump out at me. I can't not see them.
So I was really pissed when I got dinged for mis-spelling "grey". My argument to the teacher was "That's how Gandalf spells it!"

[madbaker.livejournal.com]

I probably would have accepted the counter-argument "We are not in Middle Earth", but the teacher wasn't that savvy.

[aryanhwy.livejournal.com]

That is a hilarious and excellent retort.

[(Anonymous)]

This is utterly brilliant.

[aryanhwy.livejournal.com]

I'm fairly certain this homework assignment was meant to be returned to the teacher. Uh, no, not this one, this one I am keeping.

[(Anonymous)]

I don't blame you. *Cackles*

[silme.livejournal.com]

Was Joel not even given an accolade for the appropriate use of a colon? :)

[aryanhwy.livejournal.com]

I suspect the teacher wasn't in a suitable position to appreciate this.

[silme.livejournal.com]

There are teachers and there are teachers. :) My younger nephew had a fantastic third grade teacher who rewarded him for doing something a lesser teacher would have punished him for doing.

He would complete about half of his arithmetic problems. He'd turn in his assignments half done. Finally, the teacher asked him why,

His reply? Well, he responded that since the rest of the problems were pretty similar to the ones he'd already completed accurately (and he had), he'd shown that he understood how to do it.

She was an older, experienced teacher. Instead of punishing him, she signed him up for the school's gifted and talented programme. :)

[aryanhwy.livejournal.com]

I would have introduced him to the concept of mathematical logic and given him the tools to define a notion of problem equivalence and prove that the other problems were equivalent to the ones he'd already done! I bet if you didn't tell a 3rd grader that this was something normally reserved for advanced logic courses at university, they could do it just fine!

[silme.livejournal.com]

His teacher didn't need additional evidence, though. She understood that he was smart, which he was. And he still is. :) (He's in his late thirties now with two daughters.)

A less experienced teacher probably would have needed such proof, though. Of course, it might have gone over his/her head. ;)

And now to bed. It's been too long a day.

[aryanhwy.livejournal.com]

I wasn't recommending this so that the teacher had proof, but because a kid who can make an argument about that would probably enjoy the idea of proving equivalence of problems!