Library Reading Program

I'm not a fan of incentive programs.  Feels way too much like bribery to me.  When I was getting my teaching license, they emphasized that we want kids to have intrinsic motivation.  Get good grades because that's what you want, you're possessed of a nature to do a good job.  That's what we want.  We want our employees to do a good job whether we're hovering over their shoulder or not.  We want our kids to help out in the house because that's what needs to be done, not because we'll pay them for picking up their filthy, nasty socks.  BUT, the library offers some kick butt incentives, and my kids (as K put it) were born to read.  They can't pick up prizes until June 8th, but my three oldest have already finished the entire 1200 minutes of reading.  

 Do you know what 1200 minutes of reading over 60 days looks like?  That's 20 minutes a day.  I don't know where that number comes from, but that's the number schools have been using for years (check out this video).  When G was in 2nd grade and still in public school, he had to fill out his monthly calendar of reading.  20 minutes a night.  I had to sign off on it.  He would read Biscuit Goes to School.  I have nothing against that book, really and truly.  It's reading level is a G (Fountas & Pinnell), which is 1st grade.  Hmm....  Not horrible, but not on the level he was reading normally.  He would seriously ask me every five minutes if his 20 minutes were up.  As soon as they were, he would put that book down and get out Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief (level S, 5th grade).  I was so sick of the way he would read just to fulfill a requirement--just to get the unpleasant task out of the way.  I took to just signing the form without recording minutes.  But the minutes were needed, I was told, so that the precious matrix could be filled out.  So then I just took to lying.  I was not going to follow him around the house surreptitiously recording his time.  Dude, I have better things to do with my time.  All for a stupid freaking matrix.  At the end of the month, those who had read the required amount of time got a free pizza from Pizza Hut.

Have I mentioned I hate incentive programs?  We're all like little trained monkeys trying to get our treats.   But the library incentive program.  We get activities out of that.  We can go to the pool one day free.  Yeah!  The kids get a ticket to the amusement park.  Yeah!  And they all get to add three more books to their own collections.  That's a program I can get behind.  

 And I do recognize the irony of hating incentive programs while planning the party the scouts earned by living all the points of the law.  Stupid incentive programs.....

Bureaucracy

I was all excited when our youngest came home from the park bearing today's mail, because we had letters from the school district.  I was psyched because these should have been our, "we've received your paperwork" letters, but alas, such was not the case.  It was the, "hey, fill out paperwork" letters, which means what I sent them is lost or misplaced.  BUT, my favorite part of this whole thing is the fact that since I have five children, I received five letters.  It is so frustrating that I can't get one letter acknowledging my homeschooling of all my children.  School budgets are cut, people acknowledge the need to reduce our reliance on paper, but here we are, sending out five separate letters, five envelopes, blah blah blah.  I still get the emergency phone calls when a school my child would be attending IF any of them went to public school still, just cuz I'm in the system.  Such inefficiencies.  But I still fill out the surveys on the GT program, cuz I think that one sucks and I still let them know.  Honestly, why do I still receive these things?  Why can't they clump my family together in one envelope?  Why is waste mandated?  And don't say for privacy--all the letters are addressed to Bill and myself.  Grrr....