On the way home from school on friday Des said, "Mom, I want to try homeschooling again. I just want to see what it would be like. We never really tried." I thought, oh god what's going on now?
It turns out that he starts serving on JC this month.
There was a philosophy discussion for parents today. Such lively discourse and quite civil. Unfortunately, Finn started really acting up when they started talking about parental involvement which was the topic I was most interested in. Drat!
Amelia is going to be Snow White and Des is going to be The Prince in a Sudbury production of Snow White. It's still in the theoretical stage.
Saturday, March 29, 2008
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
off topic-parades, circuses and other public forms of entertainment
Whenever my sister and I go out together we have a great time. We're both loquacious and we both bore easily so if things are kind of dry we like to make our own fun. We took our kids to a St. Patrick's day parade and were the loudest people in our area, which isn't saying much because everyone else was just standing there. This was something that we had noticed the last time we went to the circus. Nobody really clapped or cheered, except us of course. I mean there was this troupe from Ghana and they managed to do this reverse human pyramid with 8 or 9 guys balanced on top of one big guy. It was really cool and yet nobody around us really applauded or cheered, it was bizarre.
I think the problem is that people are totally jaded by TV and Movies. We're too used to sitting and staring at the most fantastic spectacles on screen that real life amusements like a marching band or acrobats are too tame. Or maybe because we don't view things in real time or real life we forget that the entertainers might like a little feedback.
So my PSA for today is to encourage you to cheer, clap, wave, sing along or get involved, where and when appropriate, the next time you attend a public amusement. It is much more fun. Trust me.
I think the problem is that people are totally jaded by TV and Movies. We're too used to sitting and staring at the most fantastic spectacles on screen that real life amusements like a marching band or acrobats are too tame. Or maybe because we don't view things in real time or real life we forget that the entertainers might like a little feedback.
So my PSA for today is to encourage you to cheer, clap, wave, sing along or get involved, where and when appropriate, the next time you attend a public amusement. It is much more fun. Trust me.
Saturday, March 22, 2008
Self -esteem
The kids are off from school this week so I haven't had much time to post. Did you miss me?
A small newspaper held a contest in our local high school to encourage kids to write letters to the editor. It was open to all of the students and the paper said it would print every letter it received. Some of the letters were great, the students had some interesting opinions and all in all I think it was a teriffic idea. A few of the letters had some grammatical errors and a few were truly unreadable. I felt sorry for these kids who seemed to be completely incapable of expressing a thought coherently on paper.
The following week there was an editorial about how embarrassingly bad some of the letters were. It also questioned the merit of financing a proposed expansion/renovation of the high school when they clearly can't teach basic skills.
This week there was a letter from an English teacher at the high school blasting the paper for ridiculing the students and only addressing the style of the letters and not the content. He felt that the important thing was that they speak out in a public forum and also said "It is true that spell check is the most revision some students are willing to do, but this was not an essay contest."
First of all, I think the paper could have shown some kindness to the students with the most egregious problems and asked them to revise their letters before they printed them. I don't think it was right to use them to make a point about the crap job the school was doing. However, the english teachers at that school should have insisted on at least looking at the letters before they were sent out as well as explaining to the students that it isn't just what you say that is important, it's how you say it that matters too. I totally reject the teacher's assertion that a letter to the editor should not be as well written as an entry in an essay contest. These letters were going to be read by a fair portion of the community and like it or not, judged by the community so I think it is actually more important than an essay contest. I also got a sense from the tone of his letter that he was saying "Let's not hurt their precious feelings, they're doing the best they can" because self-esteem is sooooo important.
These were mostly juniors and seniors in high school. If they can't write a simple letter and express a thought concisely in one to two paragraphs, what is going to happen to them in college or when they are expected to write something for a job. Nobody is going to worry about their feelings then. I find the whole goal of raising self esteem laughable. How you feel about yourself is often a by product of reflecting on your accomplishments. If you fail at something it's ok to feel bad, that can be a motivator. I don't think you should feel good about yourself no matter what, sometimes we need to change.
A small newspaper held a contest in our local high school to encourage kids to write letters to the editor. It was open to all of the students and the paper said it would print every letter it received. Some of the letters were great, the students had some interesting opinions and all in all I think it was a teriffic idea. A few of the letters had some grammatical errors and a few were truly unreadable. I felt sorry for these kids who seemed to be completely incapable of expressing a thought coherently on paper.
The following week there was an editorial about how embarrassingly bad some of the letters were. It also questioned the merit of financing a proposed expansion/renovation of the high school when they clearly can't teach basic skills.
This week there was a letter from an English teacher at the high school blasting the paper for ridiculing the students and only addressing the style of the letters and not the content. He felt that the important thing was that they speak out in a public forum and also said "It is true that spell check is the most revision some students are willing to do, but this was not an essay contest."
First of all, I think the paper could have shown some kindness to the students with the most egregious problems and asked them to revise their letters before they printed them. I don't think it was right to use them to make a point about the crap job the school was doing. However, the english teachers at that school should have insisted on at least looking at the letters before they were sent out as well as explaining to the students that it isn't just what you say that is important, it's how you say it that matters too. I totally reject the teacher's assertion that a letter to the editor should not be as well written as an entry in an essay contest. These letters were going to be read by a fair portion of the community and like it or not, judged by the community so I think it is actually more important than an essay contest. I also got a sense from the tone of his letter that he was saying "Let's not hurt their precious feelings, they're doing the best they can" because self-esteem is sooooo important.
These were mostly juniors and seniors in high school. If they can't write a simple letter and express a thought concisely in one to two paragraphs, what is going to happen to them in college or when they are expected to write something for a job. Nobody is going to worry about their feelings then. I find the whole goal of raising self esteem laughable. How you feel about yourself is often a by product of reflecting on your accomplishments. If you fail at something it's ok to feel bad, that can be a motivator. I don't think you should feel good about yourself no matter what, sometimes we need to change.
Sunday, March 16, 2008
Start your own school
I read Starting A Sudbury School and the first thing I came away with is just how hard it is to start a school of any kind but its really hard to start a sudbury school because the whole concept is so out there that you have to spend a bunch of time just explaining it to people. I have so much respect for the founders of HVSS because not only did they get a school started but then went on to purchase land and build their own facility. These days I can barely put together a birthday party so I don't know how they did it but I am grateful.
Now for the criticism. Not of our school but the book. There was a chapter about where to find students and a founder of a school said something like "The homeschool community is not the best place to recruit from because homeschooling parents are often unwilling to give up being custodians of their children's development." To which I respond "Hey genius, that's our job!" This is the major failing of all schools, even Sudbury schools,they think they will do a better job of raising kids than anyone else. It is simply unnatural to remove children from their natural place in the community so that they can learn how to be useful participants in that community. At least Sudbury schools actually model the real world and give kids some practical ethical and decision making experiences but they still spend most of their day almost entirely with other kids. I've been agitating to have more adults coming into the school, not necessarily to teach but to just provide a richer experience for the kids.
I've been kicking around ideas of what my ideal situation would be. Basically variations of a learning community where adults could come in and study with children. Sort of like letting adults come in and be students at sudbury. The problem with that would be that adults are more sophisticated and would probably take over the school meeting or just be more skilled at pushing their agenda through and I think it would be easy for the kids to just cede the decision making to the grown ups. So that wouldn't work. Then I thought about how if the school was open for fewer hours rather than more, it would force the kids and the parents to have them out in the world more. The problem here is that state regs insist on a minimum amount of time in school and during the winter months my kids would probably just spend a lot of time watching tv.
Homeschooling is the ideal for me but with regular schools from kindergarten up operating like little tiny universities where kids could go part time if they wanted or just do sports. The schools should be resource centers for parents instead of parents being a resource for schools by providing the raw material of kids who the schools then manufacture into students.
Now for the criticism. Not of our school but the book. There was a chapter about where to find students and a founder of a school said something like "The homeschool community is not the best place to recruit from because homeschooling parents are often unwilling to give up being custodians of their children's development." To which I respond "Hey genius, that's our job!" This is the major failing of all schools, even Sudbury schools,they think they will do a better job of raising kids than anyone else. It is simply unnatural to remove children from their natural place in the community so that they can learn how to be useful participants in that community. At least Sudbury schools actually model the real world and give kids some practical ethical and decision making experiences but they still spend most of their day almost entirely with other kids. I've been agitating to have more adults coming into the school, not necessarily to teach but to just provide a richer experience for the kids.
I've been kicking around ideas of what my ideal situation would be. Basically variations of a learning community where adults could come in and study with children. Sort of like letting adults come in and be students at sudbury. The problem with that would be that adults are more sophisticated and would probably take over the school meeting or just be more skilled at pushing their agenda through and I think it would be easy for the kids to just cede the decision making to the grown ups. So that wouldn't work. Then I thought about how if the school was open for fewer hours rather than more, it would force the kids and the parents to have them out in the world more. The problem here is that state regs insist on a minimum amount of time in school and during the winter months my kids would probably just spend a lot of time watching tv.
Homeschooling is the ideal for me but with regular schools from kindergarten up operating like little tiny universities where kids could go part time if they wanted or just do sports. The schools should be resource centers for parents instead of parents being a resource for schools by providing the raw material of kids who the schools then manufacture into students.
Tuesday, March 11, 2008
Exposed!
Twice a month HVSS holds information sessions for prospective students and their parents. I like to go because the questions and responses kind of reaffirm why I'm sending my kids tot his school in the first place and I think its good to get a parent perspective and I'll do anything to get out of my house.
At the last session I went to a dad brought up what I think of as the exposure question: How do you guarantee that they will be exposed to a wide variety of topics (his examples were the reformation or Latin)? The honest answer is that there is no guarantee. Just as there is no guarantee that when you expose your kids to something that you think is important they will develop an interest in it. There is a certain randomness, a certain luck to what we happen upon that piques our interest and when you assign a hierarchical (is that a real word?) importance to sets of facts or bodies of knowledge you are going to start excluding other sets of facts and bodies of knowledge because there just isn't room for everything. I think the exposure question is really the how do you know they are learning question in disguise because it presupposes that the inherent value of a topic should generate a correlating level of interest.
What parents should worry about is can they handle all the inappropriate stuff that their kids definitely will be exposed to? Trust me, if you send a little kid to a Sudbury school you better be ready to have some conversations that you are not ready for. Like drugs and alcohol. Like profanity. Be ready to explain childish teen sexual innuendos. I don't want to scare anyone away but when little kids are around teenagers they listen and repeat what they hear. It can be very uncomfortable but at least you are having the conversation when they still trust your opinion.
At the last session I went to a dad brought up what I think of as the exposure question: How do you guarantee that they will be exposed to a wide variety of topics (his examples were the reformation or Latin)? The honest answer is that there is no guarantee. Just as there is no guarantee that when you expose your kids to something that you think is important they will develop an interest in it. There is a certain randomness, a certain luck to what we happen upon that piques our interest and when you assign a hierarchical (is that a real word?) importance to sets of facts or bodies of knowledge you are going to start excluding other sets of facts and bodies of knowledge because there just isn't room for everything. I think the exposure question is really the how do you know they are learning question in disguise because it presupposes that the inherent value of a topic should generate a correlating level of interest.
What parents should worry about is can they handle all the inappropriate stuff that their kids definitely will be exposed to? Trust me, if you send a little kid to a Sudbury school you better be ready to have some conversations that you are not ready for. Like drugs and alcohol. Like profanity. Be ready to explain childish teen sexual innuendos. I don't want to scare anyone away but when little kids are around teenagers they listen and repeat what they hear. It can be very uncomfortable but at least you are having the conversation when they still trust your opinion.
Sunday, March 9, 2008
Hands off!
My oh my has it been a week already? We have been busy here.
Two small incidents reminded me how easy it is for grown ups to get in the way.
We stayed a little late on tuesday and were fooling around in the library. A little boy kept asking me to help him set up the game "Mousetrap". I tried but I had to keep Finn out of trouble and my major contribution was "Is the board to the game anywhere because I think that would help?" Des came over and joined him and a little while later I found the board. "Hey guys here's the board." I said,"Now you can see how it's supposed to be." They didn't answer me and an older student said "They're kind of doing their own thing now and that's OK." I was a bit chagrined because she was right. I thought about it later and I'm not beating myself up because he had asked for my help but it is so easy to get hung up on playing the "right" way. Coloring in the lines, building the legos so it looks like the box. In short, letting others set the parameters.
Yesterday was Ray's birthday and because we are so disorganzied right now he got this half assed cake that was supposed to look like a roller skate and the kids each made a little piece of art out of sculptey. Des made a rocket ship and had a tough time. I was helping him work the clay and showing him the different ways to shape it. He kept describing this piece that was supposed to go on the bottom and I disagreed. He looked dejected and said "Fine. I won't make it." I said "Des, it's your work you can put it on if you want. I just don't think it's going to look right." (I know, I'm cringing as I type this.) He said "Well I do but you say it isn't going to look good so I won't do it." I said "No no no Des, It's your gift let's give it a try." So we did and he was right! But even if it had looked like crap I would have left it because it was his project!
Our power over our kids is more than we realize sometimes. I hate to admit this because I have read a couple of essays by Dan Greenberg, the founder of SVS where he makes just this point and I totally disagreed with him and I have been quite vocal about it(except on this blog because I can talk faster than I can type). I still disagree about what the role of parents should be but I will say now that you have to be hyper vigilant about not getting in a kid's way.
Two small incidents reminded me how easy it is for grown ups to get in the way.
We stayed a little late on tuesday and were fooling around in the library. A little boy kept asking me to help him set up the game "Mousetrap". I tried but I had to keep Finn out of trouble and my major contribution was "Is the board to the game anywhere because I think that would help?" Des came over and joined him and a little while later I found the board. "Hey guys here's the board." I said,"Now you can see how it's supposed to be." They didn't answer me and an older student said "They're kind of doing their own thing now and that's OK." I was a bit chagrined because she was right. I thought about it later and I'm not beating myself up because he had asked for my help but it is so easy to get hung up on playing the "right" way. Coloring in the lines, building the legos so it looks like the box. In short, letting others set the parameters.
Yesterday was Ray's birthday and because we are so disorganzied right now he got this half assed cake that was supposed to look like a roller skate and the kids each made a little piece of art out of sculptey. Des made a rocket ship and had a tough time. I was helping him work the clay and showing him the different ways to shape it. He kept describing this piece that was supposed to go on the bottom and I disagreed. He looked dejected and said "Fine. I won't make it." I said "Des, it's your work you can put it on if you want. I just don't think it's going to look right." (I know, I'm cringing as I type this.) He said "Well I do but you say it isn't going to look good so I won't do it." I said "No no no Des, It's your gift let's give it a try." So we did and he was right! But even if it had looked like crap I would have left it because it was his project!
Our power over our kids is more than we realize sometimes. I hate to admit this because I have read a couple of essays by Dan Greenberg, the founder of SVS where he makes just this point and I totally disagreed with him and I have been quite vocal about it(except on this blog because I can talk faster than I can type). I still disagree about what the role of parents should be but I will say now that you have to be hyper vigilant about not getting in a kid's way.
Saturday, March 1, 2008
off topic- Batman, Bullwinkle and Get Smart
Batman was hands down my favorite show as a kid. Now my kids watch it and it still rocks!
On today's episode our heroes were climbing up the side of a building when Robin wondered if they were caught in the act of switching the jewels in the safe with fakes couldn't they be mistaken for crooks? This exchange followed:
Batman "Well, that's a chance we'll have to take. You see, Robin, in our well-ordered society protection of private property is essential."
Robin "Golly you're right Batman, it's the keystone of law and order."
Then they went and got into a pow zam fight with The Penguin and his henchman.
Shows like Batman and Get Smart and Bullwinkle hold up because the characters were doing things that were interesting to kids but saying things that there were funny to adults. Alot of children's entertainment has gotten this formula backwards-the characters behave like adults but talk like kids and nobody is happy. The Simpsons, of course, gets it right.
On today's episode our heroes were climbing up the side of a building when Robin wondered if they were caught in the act of switching the jewels in the safe with fakes couldn't they be mistaken for crooks? This exchange followed:
Batman "Well, that's a chance we'll have to take. You see, Robin, in our well-ordered society protection of private property is essential."
Robin "Golly you're right Batman, it's the keystone of law and order."
Then they went and got into a pow zam fight with The Penguin and his henchman.
Shows like Batman and Get Smart and Bullwinkle hold up because the characters were doing things that were interesting to kids but saying things that there were funny to adults. Alot of children's entertainment has gotten this formula backwards-the characters behave like adults but talk like kids and nobody is happy. The Simpsons, of course, gets it right.
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