No. BUT, I think that they should have 'allowable amount of time' for vacations and things like that. BECAUSE there are families that pull their kids out for vacations several times a year, and that is A LOT of extra work for the teachers!
Now, don't get me wrong. If a child is doing poorly in school, I do NOT believe taking them on vacation is doing them any good. "Hey kid, you're not doing well- so lets reward you by taking you out of class and going on vacation."
I have sisters-in law that are teachers. They've NEVER minded kids in their class missing school for a week or so to go on vacations. In fact, for a lot of kids- they LEARN A LOT while on vacation...AND they learn in different ways than just sitting in a classroom hearing people talk, they gain life experiances.
Where I do have problems is the parents that take their kids on vacation and then they turn around and ACT LIKE IT'S the TEACHERS fault if the kids aren't getting better grades for the time that they are gone! That is unacceptable. If a kid does poorly on his/her assignments over the missed school time, then it's the kids and parents fault. It is NOT the teachers!
One of my SIL's has twins in her classroom- the parents of those twins are HORRIBLE. They'd gone on TWO vacations already before Christmas and missed 8 days one time and 11 days the next time. Both kids are "C" and "B" students. They got a lot of homework sent home to work on and my SIL said if there were any questions, to e-mail her or she would even allow them to visit her durring her regular after school classroom hours to get help with anything from when they were gone.
Both kids turned in most of their homework, a few sheets were missing and some sheets were 1/2 done or done very poorly. She asked them if they could stay after school any night for the next week and she'd help them with the missing sheets AND to finish up the 1/2 done sheets.
One of the kids told her- I'm done with all my home work, grade it as is.
The other said nothing.
She graded the papers as they had handed them in, she gave them each zero's for the papers they didn't hand in. She told them AGAIN that she'd grade the 'Zero's' papers if they handed them in and she'd help them.
About two weeks later, she got a FURIOUS CALL from their mom! This mom YELLED and CUSSED her out for giving her kids Zero's on assignments. My SIL could not get a word in at all and the mom said "You and me will be having a meeting with the principal!" and hung up the phone.
The meeting with the principal had a lot of the same screaming and cussing from the mom- because the teacher said she gave the kids time to work on it, offered her help and told them when she was available (EVERY SINGLE DAY after school for 2 1/2 hours each day)...
That mom still blames my SIL for her kids bad report cards that 1/2 of the year.
AND, my SIL just got another e-mail telling her that her twins would be missing school again for 9 days in March. She sent a nasty letter to the school board saying that her kids should be 'excused from those assignments, because they learn more on vacation than they do in the classroom'...IT DOES NOT WORK LIKE THAT.
My SIL was teacher of the year this year, so we all know that she is a great teacher. Some parents just can't accept the fact that they cannot be dragging their kids out of school SEVERAL times during the year for vacations when the kids did what they did for the first vacations they went on.
It is unacceptable to blame the teacher for poor homework and not turning things in if she offers to help AND the kids/parents refuse to take it.
) . Some children just seem to have a hard time in school by no fault of their own, it just happens sometimes. I don't think they should be punished by not going on vacation if their lucky enough to go. I would take them anyway. It's a good memory,that last's a lifetime.I myself would go to jail to let them experiece different cultures and experiences. I think it's sad that some parent have to do that though.
