Well I had just forgotten all about this. Because I am busy busy busy. Those boxes of books don't move themselves down perilously narrow stairs, you know.
My blog is just like my diary. Every other entry is an apology for not writing more often. I always wonder who I'm apologizing to in my diary. Scholars studying it for hints of future greatness?
Anyhoo, I'll just quickly fill you in on the past 5 months. Des and Amelia are having a great year. Very few complaints about staff or boredom this year. They have been working on a movie called "Magic Number 7" that has something to do with time travel, and for the sake of continuity, needs a lot snow to film. Amelia became certified to work in the school store. I think she may be the youngest kid certified. Des tried to but it didn't work out. He took it surprisingly well. I guess they are growing up and able to take knocks a bit better. I can't believe they'll be 8 next month.
Cady, who I worried about having a crappy year because she was going to school with a bunch of 2 and 3 year olds has ended up having a wonderful time. Everyday the little kids take a nap and she spends one to two hours with the Paula, her teacher, doing whatever interests her. So now she's reading. That has lit a fire under Amelia's ass. Every time she sees Cady reading with us, she comes trotting by with a book of her own to read. It's really funny. Des seems abashed that Cady and his 5 year old cousin are both reading but it hasn't provided enough of an impetus to get him going. And I'm ok with that too.
Finn. Well, Finn is 3 and all the good and bad that comes along with it. I feel like we are at mile 25 in the marathon of early childhood. He's potty trained. He almost sleeps through the night. Is just about finished nursing. Can mostly dress himself. We are so close!! Then maybe I will get my sanity back.
The store is covering it's bills. which is great. But I can't pay myself yet which is to be expected. I love it though.
Lots of great stuff happening at school which I may or may not get around to talking about. for now though, I'm going to watch the Oscars.
Toodles.
Sunday, March 7, 2010
Monday, October 12, 2009
confidence - humility = arrogance
I'm all about humility lately. Maybe because becoming a small business owner is very very humbling.
I never did get around to finish my philosophy discussion recap. and I've forgotten most of the details to make it meaningful anyway.
I do recall there being a lot of talk about confidence and how kids need to develop it. In the sudbury process not a lot will happen until kids are confident enough to try things. Public or traditional schooling can be confidence sapping because you are constantly being judged. I love when I go to elementary schools and you see all sorts of art projects on the walls and there is a ridiculous sameness to it. why does every snowman have to wear his hat? why can't some of them toss it into the air a la Mary Tyler Moore? I can remember what it was like as a kid to be told that my drawing or coloring was wrong. I remember my first grade teacher used to stamp our work satisfactory or excellent. there may have been a poor stamp too but I never got one. I craved an excellent stamp in the worst way but I would color outside of the lines or miss a spot or whatever, I just never got one. I finally worked my ass off to color a unicorn. I only used blue. I worked on it forever, especially the horn, the tricky narrow horn. When the papers came back I waited for my excellent stamp and was pissed when I only got a satisfactory. I don't actually remember being pissed but I must have been because I was upset enough to ask why I didn't get an excellent. She told me that it was because it was blue and horse are brown or black. I said "But it's a unicorn. It's imaginary!" I kind of wish I would come across her and tell her that I think she was an idiot.
My long winded point is that I still remember it 30 years later. That feeling of wrongness. And it was all about coloring. Really, the wrongness I should be feeling is about how the kids used to tease this kid Christopher because he had wet his pants through most of kindergarten but we were in first grade now and he had gotten it under control. That's what she should have been giving poor and excellent and satisfactory stamps about. right on our snotty little foreheads. Hmm, I've gotten off track here.
Confidence and encouragement are important but I think there has to be a certain amount of humility. It's fine to want to accomplish things on your own but at some point you need to be able to accept help, even if you don't want to. People who are sure that they know everything, that they don't need to listen or won't even entertain the possibility that their thinking might be flawed are arrogant. Arrogance is not only unattractive and off-putting, it can be dangerous. Arrogant people tend to be dismissive and poor listeners. I remember complaining about a creactive writing teacher who was an awful writer. We went to one of his plays and it was soooo bad. I wanted to drop the class and I certainly didn't want to listen to a thing he had to say but someone I knew and respected warned me off from this thinking. She said lack of talent doesn't mean lack of expertise.
I never did get around to finish my philosophy discussion recap. and I've forgotten most of the details to make it meaningful anyway.
I do recall there being a lot of talk about confidence and how kids need to develop it. In the sudbury process not a lot will happen until kids are confident enough to try things. Public or traditional schooling can be confidence sapping because you are constantly being judged. I love when I go to elementary schools and you see all sorts of art projects on the walls and there is a ridiculous sameness to it. why does every snowman have to wear his hat? why can't some of them toss it into the air a la Mary Tyler Moore? I can remember what it was like as a kid to be told that my drawing or coloring was wrong. I remember my first grade teacher used to stamp our work satisfactory or excellent. there may have been a poor stamp too but I never got one. I craved an excellent stamp in the worst way but I would color outside of the lines or miss a spot or whatever, I just never got one. I finally worked my ass off to color a unicorn. I only used blue. I worked on it forever, especially the horn, the tricky narrow horn. When the papers came back I waited for my excellent stamp and was pissed when I only got a satisfactory. I don't actually remember being pissed but I must have been because I was upset enough to ask why I didn't get an excellent. She told me that it was because it was blue and horse are brown or black. I said "But it's a unicorn. It's imaginary!" I kind of wish I would come across her and tell her that I think she was an idiot.
My long winded point is that I still remember it 30 years later. That feeling of wrongness. And it was all about coloring. Really, the wrongness I should be feeling is about how the kids used to tease this kid Christopher because he had wet his pants through most of kindergarten but we were in first grade now and he had gotten it under control. That's what she should have been giving poor and excellent and satisfactory stamps about. right on our snotty little foreheads. Hmm, I've gotten off track here.
Confidence and encouragement are important but I think there has to be a certain amount of humility. It's fine to want to accomplish things on your own but at some point you need to be able to accept help, even if you don't want to. People who are sure that they know everything, that they don't need to listen or won't even entertain the possibility that their thinking might be flawed are arrogant. Arrogance is not only unattractive and off-putting, it can be dangerous. Arrogant people tend to be dismissive and poor listeners. I remember complaining about a creactive writing teacher who was an awful writer. We went to one of his plays and it was soooo bad. I wanted to drop the class and I certainly didn't want to listen to a thing he had to say but someone I knew and respected warned me off from this thinking. She said lack of talent doesn't mean lack of expertise.
Monday, September 28, 2009
Talk Talk
Remember that band? and song? And maybe even album? I would see the video on MTV and that little scrap of info that they gave at the end, in the lower left hand corner, would say nothing but Talk Talk. It was the video with all the animals. This will probably only make sense to people born in the 70's or earlier. I should just end here and count my gray hairs.
Anyhoo, I was thinking of them because we had a great philosophy discussion on saturday and did lots of talk talking.
As I had said in earlier posts I had been having my doubts and Ray, who has never fully been on board with this, was expressing his more vocally. I had conversations with a staff member and other parents and was definitely feeling anxious about the school year. Since the year started there is a different vibe around the school. Hashing things out at the philosophy discussion was starting to seem anticlimactic. I know I've gone before and wanted to talk about something but the staff is so eloquent that I feel silly for ever having worried in the first place so I don't say anything.
That started to happen but then I said to myself no, even if I'm not feeling this way right now I'm going to express the fears that I've had because I know that I'll just go home and the warm fuzzies will fade away and I'll start worrying again. Well, I don't worry that much, but I know I won't feel like I've had my concerns addressed because I never expressed them.
Actually, what I really did was pretend that I was Ray and said what I thought he would be thinking about all of it. He, of course, did not attend, which is probably for the better because there is a good chance he would just give up on the whole thing and want to pull them out. It's much better to have me as a filter.
I felt like the staff was listening to what people had to say, that they were countering respectfully, that they still felt committed to the core aspects of the Sudbury philosophy but acknowledged that the school could use some "tweaks". What it comes down to for them, and hopefully someday for me, is that we can trust the kids to figure it out. That if they have the confidence in themselves they can get themselves to where they need to be. Academically or otherwise. I got there late but I think there was some talk at the beginning about remembering that the goal is to produce an effective adult. If I had been there for that I probably would have phrased some of my comments differently. There was some talk about respecting the changing priorities and not being able to know what any one person's priorities would be from one day to the next and therefore not judging. There was also discussion about having the confidence to say "I don't know" and being ok with that. One of the students was there and he talked about his experience with the process and he was quite eloquent on the topic even if I didn't agree with him. There was another guy there and the two of us did not communicate well but I'll get to him later.
I listened and thought about what people were saying before I spoke. Sometimes I am guilty of looking like I'm listening but I'm really just rehearsing my comments. But this time I was actually listening.
I said that I was afraid of raising confident ignoramuses who were perfectly happy with not knowing anything and with no interest in finding anything out. I said that it was probably good that my kids had the space at Sudbury to freely change their priorities because I had no problem judging them and telling them when I thought they were headed in the wrong direction. I said I would have a huge problem if my kid's priority was to live on the street and do nothing with their life. I recognize the absurdity of my statements but I had to let them out. what else did I say? Oh yeah, that I felt concerned about what kind of place the school would be if everybody was in the doldrums. That I don't think that the Sudbury philosophy fosters a work ethic. That you need to be able to push through when the passion isn't there.
I especially disagreed with the whole "it's ok if you give yourself permission to not finish something, changing priorities argument" because I think finishing what you start is a really important quality. I made it my New Year's Resolution a few years ago. I decided to become a person who would finish what they started. And the first thing I learned to do was not start so much in the first place. But I digress.
What I lost sight of during much of this but remembered afterwards is that this process is not happening in a vacuum. There is still JC and school meeting and my kids are not just zooming around the school by themselves. This discussion was focused on academics, sort of, but I had to remember to look at it all in the context of the school as a whole.
More tomorrow.
Anyhoo, I was thinking of them because we had a great philosophy discussion on saturday and did lots of talk talking.
As I had said in earlier posts I had been having my doubts and Ray, who has never fully been on board with this, was expressing his more vocally. I had conversations with a staff member and other parents and was definitely feeling anxious about the school year. Since the year started there is a different vibe around the school. Hashing things out at the philosophy discussion was starting to seem anticlimactic. I know I've gone before and wanted to talk about something but the staff is so eloquent that I feel silly for ever having worried in the first place so I don't say anything.
That started to happen but then I said to myself no, even if I'm not feeling this way right now I'm going to express the fears that I've had because I know that I'll just go home and the warm fuzzies will fade away and I'll start worrying again. Well, I don't worry that much, but I know I won't feel like I've had my concerns addressed because I never expressed them.
Actually, what I really did was pretend that I was Ray and said what I thought he would be thinking about all of it. He, of course, did not attend, which is probably for the better because there is a good chance he would just give up on the whole thing and want to pull them out. It's much better to have me as a filter.
I felt like the staff was listening to what people had to say, that they were countering respectfully, that they still felt committed to the core aspects of the Sudbury philosophy but acknowledged that the school could use some "tweaks". What it comes down to for them, and hopefully someday for me, is that we can trust the kids to figure it out. That if they have the confidence in themselves they can get themselves to where they need to be. Academically or otherwise. I got there late but I think there was some talk at the beginning about remembering that the goal is to produce an effective adult. If I had been there for that I probably would have phrased some of my comments differently. There was some talk about respecting the changing priorities and not being able to know what any one person's priorities would be from one day to the next and therefore not judging. There was also discussion about having the confidence to say "I don't know" and being ok with that. One of the students was there and he talked about his experience with the process and he was quite eloquent on the topic even if I didn't agree with him. There was another guy there and the two of us did not communicate well but I'll get to him later.
I listened and thought about what people were saying before I spoke. Sometimes I am guilty of looking like I'm listening but I'm really just rehearsing my comments. But this time I was actually listening.
I said that I was afraid of raising confident ignoramuses who were perfectly happy with not knowing anything and with no interest in finding anything out. I said that it was probably good that my kids had the space at Sudbury to freely change their priorities because I had no problem judging them and telling them when I thought they were headed in the wrong direction. I said I would have a huge problem if my kid's priority was to live on the street and do nothing with their life. I recognize the absurdity of my statements but I had to let them out. what else did I say? Oh yeah, that I felt concerned about what kind of place the school would be if everybody was in the doldrums. That I don't think that the Sudbury philosophy fosters a work ethic. That you need to be able to push through when the passion isn't there.
I especially disagreed with the whole "it's ok if you give yourself permission to not finish something, changing priorities argument" because I think finishing what you start is a really important quality. I made it my New Year's Resolution a few years ago. I decided to become a person who would finish what they started. And the first thing I learned to do was not start so much in the first place. But I digress.
What I lost sight of during much of this but remembered afterwards is that this process is not happening in a vacuum. There is still JC and school meeting and my kids are not just zooming around the school by themselves. This discussion was focused on academics, sort of, but I had to remember to look at it all in the context of the school as a whole.
More tomorrow.
Thursday, September 24, 2009
Beverly Cleary solves all problems
Amelia has not been happy with her siblings lately. Des is "ANNOYING" and Cady "does nothing but BE MEAN to me" and Finn "RUINS all my stuff". She's been feeling quite put upon and I can sympathize. I'm the oldest and I know how it feels to have pesky siblings who trash every thing and activity that you have going on in your life. She has been especially hard on Cady. She yells at her, teases her, punishes her if Des shows favoritism. I often intervene. I know some parents don't and maybe it works well for their families but just because there is no violence involved doesn't mean that the behavior isn't damaging.
Then one day Cady turned up at bedtime with Beezus and Ramona by Beverly Cleary. I've never read chapter books with Cady and we started off cautiously. If there is one criticism I have of Mrs. Cleary it's that her chapters are insanely long. So we started off reading a few pages a night. When we were midway through chapter two Amelia asked if she could listen. It was great. We would laugh and shake our heads at how naughty, yet creative, Ramona could be. Amelia would absolutely howl with laughter at times. There were some passages that explored Beezus' feelings about Ramona. How hard it was to have a little sister and how even when Ramona didn't get her way, she still seemed to get her way. I saw Amelia nod in agreement at one point. The last chapter involves the girls' mother and aunt recounting how they didn't get along when they were younger but were now great friends as grownups. We finished the book and talked about our favorite parts and how good we thought it was and then Amelia said "Come on Cady, let's go to bed and you can sleep with me tonight." We looked in on them and they were cuddled together.
Then one day Cady turned up at bedtime with Beezus and Ramona by Beverly Cleary. I've never read chapter books with Cady and we started off cautiously. If there is one criticism I have of Mrs. Cleary it's that her chapters are insanely long. So we started off reading a few pages a night. When we were midway through chapter two Amelia asked if she could listen. It was great. We would laugh and shake our heads at how naughty, yet creative, Ramona could be. Amelia would absolutely howl with laughter at times. There were some passages that explored Beezus' feelings about Ramona. How hard it was to have a little sister and how even when Ramona didn't get her way, she still seemed to get her way. I saw Amelia nod in agreement at one point. The last chapter involves the girls' mother and aunt recounting how they didn't get along when they were younger but were now great friends as grownups. We finished the book and talked about our favorite parts and how good we thought it was and then Amelia said "Come on Cady, let's go to bed and you can sleep with me tonight." We looked in on them and they were cuddled together.
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
Ray is not happy
and I've finally figured out why. He doesn't get the Sudbury timeline. I think he thought they would be achieving the same things that kids in public school do but just arriving at it through a different route. Since second graders know how to read Ray wants to know why Des and Amelia aren't reading. He's concerned that we're raising happy idiots. People with great self esteem and no useful skills.
We're mulling over the idea of sending Cady and Finn to regular skill for kindergarten and maybe first or second grade. It would make him feel better knowing that they are at Sudbury with some skills. I don't want to deal with public school bullshit. Dumb assignments and stuff like that. PTA. Because there is no way that I could send my kids to public school and not get involved with the PTA. And promptly become a thorn in everyone's side.
Am I ok with the Sudbury timeline? I think so. For me it's not just about developing discrete skills. I know I need to step it up and be more involved in what's important to them. It's engagement with the process that concerns me. You don't feel like reading? fine. But I want to see them feel something. Which I do. I definitely do. I can't do these late night blog posts. I just go around in circles.
We're mulling over the idea of sending Cady and Finn to regular skill for kindergarten and maybe first or second grade. It would make him feel better knowing that they are at Sudbury with some skills. I don't want to deal with public school bullshit. Dumb assignments and stuff like that. PTA. Because there is no way that I could send my kids to public school and not get involved with the PTA. And promptly become a thorn in everyone's side.
Am I ok with the Sudbury timeline? I think so. For me it's not just about developing discrete skills. I know I need to step it up and be more involved in what's important to them. It's engagement with the process that concerns me. You don't feel like reading? fine. But I want to see them feel something. Which I do. I definitely do. I can't do these late night blog posts. I just go around in circles.
Sunday, September 20, 2009
My job is so great
And here's why:
These are all the things I talked about and contemplated today-
world religions
medieval literature
copyright law
Catch 22
Byron
Robert Browning
The Velveteen Rabbit
Mark Twain
Philip K. Dick
magic/magick
lovely fall weather
Isabel Allende
Meryl Streep
food writing
dictionaries and the art of translation
Jack London
Edith Wharton
Not a bad gig.
These are all the things I talked about and contemplated today-
world religions
medieval literature
copyright law
Catch 22
Byron
Robert Browning
The Velveteen Rabbit
Mark Twain
Philip K. Dick
magic/magick
lovely fall weather
Isabel Allende
Meryl Streep
food writing
dictionaries and the art of translation
Jack London
Edith Wharton
Not a bad gig.
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
How was your day dear?
Amelia handed me a piece of paper with a list of words with checks next to them and "100%" at the top. On the back she had written a short description of her day. She and her friends have been doing "real learning stuff".
Des spent $8 on soda and then smashed 5 of the cans with his friends to see what would happen.
The day before we had a big blowout here because Amelia had signed up for yet another webkinz type game and when I started to say something she yelled "Des watched the Matrix again!" (Amelia has always been a total tattle tale. I love it!) I don't know why I blew up at that moment. Well I know why, because I had been paying bills at work. Money is really tight since I bought the store and bill paying time always brings that home to me. So I after spending an hour writing check after check, the thought of spending thousands of dollars for them to sit in front of a screen just made me a little nutty.
Des spent $8 on soda and then smashed 5 of the cans with his friends to see what would happen.
The day before we had a big blowout here because Amelia had signed up for yet another webkinz type game and when I started to say something she yelled "Des watched the Matrix again!" (Amelia has always been a total tattle tale. I love it!) I don't know why I blew up at that moment. Well I know why, because I had been paying bills at work. Money is really tight since I bought the store and bill paying time always brings that home to me. So I after spending an hour writing check after check, the thought of spending thousands of dollars for them to sit in front of a screen just made me a little nutty.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)