letting them choose

When my coparent's son was in third grade, we used every writing program known to mom. Believing that he would be more invested, and work harder (and complain less) if he had chosen the curricular materials, I let him veto the first, second and third thing we tried. After a year of this, it occurred to me that we had done no writing at all, just six sets of first-week lessons. My budget was frustrated, so I was forced to make him use one of the programs we had. After a few more weeks, he began to develop some competence in writing. He hated it less. That was when I had one of the epiphanies that separates the noobs from the seasoned: competence creates contentment and progress causes investment. Also, sometimes a kid just hates writing, not the writing program. I'm not saying a kid might be consciously manipulating you to get out of writing lessons until the new book hits the mailbox, but a kid can definitely innocently confuse his distaste for the subject with a distaste for the method of instruction. Students need teachers for the same reason children need parents. In figuring out how to best approach any given learning task, twenty years more experience, that much more judgement and reasoning skill, can secure the student's success.