Vn80.1 Planning for School 9/2/77
Miriam, showing her unprompted concern, began the following
dialogue. I transcribed it from memory (not tape) about 2 hours after the
fact. The content is accurate, though the sequence of points may be a
bit muddled.
| Miriam | What do you think the teacher will say when she finds out I can add? |
| Bob | What do you think? |
| Miriam | I think she’ll be mad at me. |
| Bob | Are you worried about that? |
| Miriam | Yeah. |
| Bob | Don’t worry, sweety. I’m going to have a meeting with your teacher next week. She knows you’ve been working with me at Logo and wants to know what she should try to teach you. |
| Miriam | What do you think? |
| Bob | I don’t know. What do you want me to tell her? |
| Miriam | I guess I should just do the regular stuff. |
| Bob | You mean like 2 plus 3 is 5? |
| Miriam | Yeah. |
| Bob | For a whole year? When you already learned to add big numbers at Logo? |
| Miriam | I didn’t learn that at Logo. You taught me. |
| Bob | Oh. I don’t mean the really big ones. I mean numbers, say, that you use in playing SHOOT. Like 90 plus 90 is a hundred 80. |
| Miriam | I didn’t learn that [I didn’t figure it out]. You told me. |
| Bob | But I don’t have to tell you any more, do I? |
| Miriam | No. . . . When do they usually do numbers like that in school? |
| Bob | At the end of second grade, maybe third grade. |
| Miriam | You mean I can skip a grade? |
| Bob | You can read well and do computations. I guess you could skip a grade if you wanted. Do you want to? |
| Miriam | Do I have to? |
| Bob | No. You said before you wanted to stay with your friends. I think that’s a good idea and you shouldn’t skip a grade. But how will you feel about school? |
| Miriam | Art should be a lot of fun. And so should gym. |
| Bob | I bet they’ll let you read whatever books you want. That should be good. |
| Miriam | Yeah. |
| Bob | About the arithmetic: maybe I should worry about that, make the work for you to do. Maybe I could get some good advice from Dan Watt. How would that be? |
| Miriam | Well, I don’t know. Maybe it would be O.K. |
At this point, Miriam terminated our conversation, drifting out into the
court yard to watch people moving furniture.
Relevance
In this dialogue, Miriam and I discuss what she should do when she
starts school. She expresses fear that her teacher will be mad at her
because she already knows how to add. I inform her of an impending
conference with her teacher and ask her advice.
