Puzzle sunday (11)

I'm busy with my house and I'll keep you busy with city building, enjoy!

Action

My father arrived from France and immediately did an inspection of the house. Today we're going to buy what we need to do the paintings and restaurations necessary. Next three weeks we will be busy. In the meantime, the new school of my daughter called about our project to moove. The paperwork has started, both for schools (filling in forms) and for the house. The old school called too.
Doing stuff.

Puzzle sunday (10)

This time I'm late with puzzle sunday. All because I'm working hard to try and sell my house. And the kids had their theater presentation yesterday.
OK. What is Phi? Well I'm not sure either. It is a greek letter and greek letters are often used in mathematical language. Mathematical language describes reality in a more formal way than does plain, prosaic or poetic language. Or doesn't it?

O, and if anyone of you is looking for a present for a smart boy, check this out! I'm sure I know one little boy that is going to love this!

change the environment

Within a week my son has changed immensely from on the brink of depressed to active, happy, making new friends and doing work at school and cleaning up his room at home. Is the effect of a change of environment that effective? There are some factors that are favorable: (1) more independance in going to school, (2) positive children, (3) school is explicitely creative, every day there is time to do creative play with gardening, building, painting, construction; thinking about what you want to do(4) positive communication directly with the children, (5) every child has their own programm with different levels. He communicates about this directly with the teacher.

school gives space to work

Within one week my son started behaving less well and feeling worse very rapidly at home. I picked up the phone and talked to his teacher. This appeared to be the same at school. My son has been complaining about school for years. We have been talking to schools and trying to fix all problems one at the time. This time I was alarmed and I picked up the phone and called another school. Further away, but the teacher made an appointment for the next day. My son heard it and wanted to come with me. He did and the next day we were looking at the school. The day after my son asked me when he could go there. After the week-end, I agreed with the teacher. Since he is there he feels much better. He started working again. This all happened within one week. It is striking how he is independent in going to school. The teacher says they give space to the children. I experienced this when I was in the building. The children had work lying around in progress everywhere around. I felt at home.

why some schools don't have underachievement

Some of our schools don't only call themselves schools, but are schools. I like that this school doesn't think of children as a standard that they can push to perform in the standard way. They see children that have needs to develop into good citizens. They can see the potential behind the problems.
They don't emphasize problems, but emphasize the processes of change and development.

do you know this process that when you write something, you learn about what you write and what you write seems already perished? That's why it took a long time before I decided I would write. Because I felt that whatever I write, there is always something wrong about the ideas. That I would never write down the final idea, until I realized that writing is not about the final score, but about the process of living, experiencing and learning.

example of a school that handles underachievement
It is important to realize that there are different kinds of underachievement. What works in problems with many social problems may not work in other areas. Schools should resist standard solutions and embrace knowledge, mediation skills, specific problem solving.
example of someone who thought about what really happens

My second book is about underachievement. I'm working on a theory.

why some schools have underachievement

Underachievement. I tried to find an article that had the title: "why some schools have underachievement." (in dutch) but couldn't, because I live too far from real libraries, except for internet. Some articles are cited in other articles and are difficult to get.
Maybe I should have tried harder. I had other things to do. Because now it seems that this school has it.
When turning to the web, I come up with this (incomplete) list:
immigration difficulties
material deprivation and labelling
being a boy
communication skills

hmmm... I'm wondering whether underachieving is influenced by culture. In the Netherlands, the culture of "don't raise your head above the mowing field" is said to be one of the causes of underachievement.