Worksheet: Fill & Download for Free

My son Adam was in first grade. The assignment was a worksheet that explained the stages of development from tadpole to frog. Adam’s anxiety began to increase as he noticed what looked like errors in the drawing. The school copier must have been low on ink and this added to Adam’s tadpole and frog looking “anatomically incorrect” to him. He decided the worksheet was a lie. The teacher admitted the worksheet had errors, but told my son she couldn’t change it and he’d have to do the worksheet anyway.Adam decided he wanted no part of it. He announced to the other students that the worksheet was a lie and if they don’t like being lied to they shouldn’t do it either. He was sent to the principal and told he would not be allowed to go to recess until he colored the worksheet.Next, Adam raised his hand several times to ask Mrs. Fisher what can cause a frog to die, besides being run over by a big truck, or stepped on by a mean person with big shoes. He asked if they can get sick with flu and strep throat? Mrs. Fisher told him she did not know and that he was disrupting the class. He said, “It’s not my fault that you don’t know anything about frogs. You probably don’t even care about them.” This resulted in another trip to the principal.After all attempts to get Adam to apologize to Mrs. Fisher and color the worksheet failed I was called to come take him home. The principal said this was the first time in her 28 year career a student had asked to speak to her supervisor. When she said she was the supervisor of the school my son asked, “So who is your boss? Is it the President?” She asked him why he wanted to talk to her supervisor. Adam said, “Everybody is mad at me. I’m just a kid. The frog worksheet is a lie. I want to ask the person at the top if I have to do it. It’s not my fault you hired someone to teach us about frogs that doesn’t know anything about them. I’m just a concerned citizen.”I was encouraged to take my son home and persuade him to finish the worksheet. I explained to Adam that we would save trees by using worksheets even when they have mistakes. Trees are important because they give us oxygen. Then we looked at diseases frogs can get. He finally agreed to do the worksheet.The following week Adam would refuse to do a worksheet with clock-face diagrams that taught him about telling time. Apparently, Mrs. Fisher wasn’t prepared to answer Adam’s questions about who invented time. He told the principal that all he knew was that every time someone started looking at the clock they got mad at him.The week after that I was called to get him for peeing in the bushes near the playground. He told the principal it was his religion. She asked me if this was true. It took a little longer to figure out where Adam got this idea. One Friday his father was on the way to the mosque and didn’t want to be late. Adam needed to pee so he pulled over and told Adam to quickly go behind a bush. Since they were on their way to pray Adam associated peeing in bushes with his religious rights.Every time I was called to school I never knew what to expect. I often felt they failed to recognize how bright and gifted he was to be able to challenge them in such unique ways.

“We don’t write our fours like that here.”First grade. We had a substitute teacher since our teacher was sick that day. Our teacher had left addition worksheets for the sub to hand out.We were happily doing our addition worksheets that afternoon. After we’d finished the worksheet, we were supposed to take it to the sub and she would check it.I finished the worksheet first. I had double checked all my answers and was pretty sure that I hadn’t made any mistakes.The sub glanced over my worksheet.“You got the wrong answer for this one. Three plus one isn’t seven.”I looked at my worksheet. I had written a four.“That’s a four, not a seven.”“No, that’s a seven.”My mom was educated in India, where the four was usually written like this:It was what she had taught me. It was also the 4 I had written on my sheet.“It’s a seven!” the sub insisted.I calmly told her that my usual teacher had accepted my style of four. It was clearly different from a seven.“No. I won’t accept it.”And she made me do the same worksheet over again. She wouldn’t let me leave the classroom for dismissal until I wrote all the fours her way.Naturally, after that day, I began to write my 4s in the American way.I learned a lesson about standardization in American public schools that day.

Last year my daughter came home from preschool upset. Her friend had made fun of her for coloring a multicolored apple on their worksheet that day. She colors everything like a rainbow, and her little spirit was crushed.Until I pulled up the Apple logo.Let kids color however they want. There's plenty of time to grow up later if they want to.