Friday, September 17, 2010

I found a flaw....... The Fast Forward Program

I'm feeling pretty good about the fact that I've in this day and age, I've managed to raise a child that would rather do pretty much anything but play a video game.   But her aversion became something of a problem when she started the Fast Forward Program.  Participation in this program is mandatory for students coming out of traditional public schools.  The Fast Forward Program is a series of video games designed to build cognitive skills of memory, attention, processing rate and sequencing.  It's also is supposed to advance reading skills, vocabulary and comprehension, but what it really seemed to do is bore Mayzi into a zombie like state, that screwed up the rest of our school day, lol  She started this program in first grade and by the end of the year we were struggling to get her to participate.  There wasn't even much I could say except that "it's there, so you have to do it". This program is gruelling for all of us (it's painful to even observe) the games are dull and uninteresting and move waaaay to slow, it's like the mental equivalent of watching a grocery checker continuously scan the same item again and again and again, for a half an hour.  When she saw it on her planner this year I could tell she was disappointed, but she didn't complain, she did it because it was there and didn't make a fuss about it, which means she's got way more sophisticated coping skills than I do because there was just no way I was gonna sit through another year of watching a sad little girl sit in that hot mess and not try to do something about it, lol   So I made a call to her teacher and they fixed it!  overnight! she still has to do the Fast Forward Program, but after politely ;) explaining our issues with it, and reviewing her records,they bumped her ahead a grade level  in the program:)  This change in the variety of games with a more challenging curriculum was all that she needed :)  She's happy, so I'm happy:)

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