Wednesday, June 24, 2009

summer school

Sterling is into math right now. Addition. So he asks to play math games and to do math problems. A few minutes ago, I wrote out 12 simple addition problems and gave the paper to him, and he checked the first few answers with me and then finished it independently. Except to call me over to look at the "nearly perfect" six that he'd written (and it was nearly perfect).

While he was working, he was talking, "Now I have to do work like all the other kids. I'm going to tell A (a friend in the neighborhood) that we have to do summer school and regular school every day. Tomorrow I'm going to do even more math. Well, maybe not more math, but the same amount. And I'm finished. Can you look at it, Mom? I bet I got an A!"

My boys have never been to school. Those who unschool or are on the more relaxed end of the spectrum can understand why the entire dialogue was kind of random...

Then Langston said, "I'll check it!" And he did and called Sterling over and said, "Your answers were fine, but your penmanship needs work." Langston has no room to talk about anyone's penmanship. He gave Sterling a Z, which I changed to an A and, at Sterling's request, added a +, since everything was correct.

Sterling hung it on the refrigerator for his father to see. And his father, being a teacher, will be appropriately impressed.


The kids and Vince on Father's Day.

Wednesday, June 17, 2009

Catching up.



At the park, back in March...




Sterling, with his baked oatmeal, that he lives on during the summer --------------------->


which leads us to...















Swim. It's that time again.
Remember?? I do. And I love it, but I am so not a morning person.


Neither is Adria.
Sterling is, but even 5 am on Saturdays is early for him. But he's trying hard...
And he gave up, for a few minutes.
Adria's waking up...

Attempting to draw a barracuda on Sterling's leg, through his giggling.



The only pictures I have of Langston are pool-side. Because at 5 am, he was ready to go. He hit the meet wide awake and disappeared with his friends. He showed up every once in a while to grab an oatmeal bar and to plead his case for pie, which supposedly they had at the concession stand, before running off again. Darn unsocialized child.

Thursday, June 11, 2009

It was terrorism, not just murder.

And it's about time that we start acknowledging that terrorists can look just like us.

For all who were hurt and angered and stunned by yesterday's events, this is a beautiful piece...

http://www.pollster.com/blogs/this_is_personal.php

Tuesday, June 02, 2009

Addressing The Case Against Homeschooling

Every few weeks, an op-ed piece or blog post spouting anti-homeschooling rhetoric gets the attention of homeschool groups across the country and, predictably, we jam up email lists and send out letters to the editor and descend in large numbers on blogs.

And every once in a while, I'll stick a small comment about it on my blog, but I seldom do my own spouting about it just because by the time I can sit down and spout, whatever I would say has been said.

But Jesse Scaccia's The Case Against Homeschooling had enough ignorance and arrogance crammed into one small blog post that I'm going to go ahead and spout. Possibly at length.

First, though, I want to address some of the ignorance that homeschoolers at the other end of the homeschooling spectrum chose to leave in their comments on Jesse's blog. Because I hate it when other homeschoolers perpetuate the stereotypes that lead to mindless diatribes like Jesse's.

There were several comments that caught my attention, but the exerpt below pretty much sums them up...


"And, gee, we know public schools have no problems at all with racism or intolerance or, for that matter, anti-Christian attitudes, liberalism, socialism, communism, homosexuality, “free love”, drug use, anti-Americanism, reverse racism, affirmative action, waste, fraud, low standards, stupidity, and ignorance, right?"

Seriously, homeschooling person, did you have to go there? Couldn't you just have addressed Jesse's points or at least his pitiful grammar without sinking to his level and seeming to confirm that, yes, homeschoolers are, in fact, intolerant paranoid bigots?

Next time, if you want to advocate for homeschoolers? Don't. Please.

Now, since most of the homeschoolers I know are not sterotypes, I'm moving on. To Jesse.

Jesse, are you really a teacher? Because I was. For years. My husband still is. And most teachers I know don't sit around sharing Deep Thoughts about homeschooling. They don't sit around the teachers' lounge trashing homeschoolers. They have other things to worry about. If they did have Deep Thoughts about homeschooling and for some reason felt like sharing, most of the teachers I know would learn something about it before making a very public statement seeped in ignorance. Because it's damned embarrassing to get publically humiliated. Which you have been.

At least spend fifteen minutes of your time googling homeschool blogs before making dumbass assumptions.

On to your points (some edited for space):

10. “You were totally home schooled” is an insult college kids use when mocking the geeky kid in the dorm (whether or not the offender was home schooled or not).

Um, yeah. So...? That says a lot more about the kids using the insult than the geek.

9. Call me old-fashioned, but a students’ classroom shouldn’t also be where they eat Fruit Loops and meat loaf (not at the same time I hope). It also shouldn’t be where the family gathers to watch American Idol or to play Wii. Students–from little ones to teens–deserve a learning-focused place to study. In modern society, we call them schools.

You're old-fashioned. Okay. Not really. You are, however, narrow-minded. My kids don't eat Fruit Loops, but they do eat in the same room where they learn. They play wii in the same room where they learn. They sleep in the same room where they learn. Because they learn everywhere. Sometimes we sit at the table and do what you probably view as work. Sometimes we even use a textbook. Sometimes they cover the living room floor with cardboard and tape and marbles, because that's learning, too. Sometimes they spend hours curled up on their beds, or my bed, reading. Sometimes we learn in the woods by the river and sometimes we learn in DC. Or at the beach. Or in the van. You remember how schools used to take field trips? We get to do that. A lot.

8. Homeschooling is selfish.

My first responsibility is to my children. I'm not sacrificing them to a system that is not working. I can work on reform on the outside while my husband works on it on the inside, but, in the meantime, I guess I'll be a little selfish. For my kids. But, to be clear, we're not even close to wealthy. We barely hit middle class.

7. God hates homeschooling. The study, done by the National Center for Education Statistics, notes that the most common reason parents gave as the most important was a desire to provide religious or moral instruction. To the homeschooling Believers out there, didn’t God say “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations”? Didn’t he command, “Ye shall be witnesses unto me”? From my side, to take your faithful children out of schools is to miss an opportunity to spread the grace, power and beauty of the Lord to the common people.

We're secular homeschoolers, as are most families we know. So your argument in that regard is a FAIL. From the viewpoint of a Christian homeschooler, I would bet that your argument would fare no better because the Bible also instructs you to pluck out your eye if it causes you to sin.

6. Homeschooling parent/teachers are arrogant to the point of lunacy. For real!

Given the arrogance in your entire post, I think I'll just leave this alone. Your own lunacy (as well as bad grammar, especially in the part I did not quote--are you really an English teacher? With a degree in English?) speaks for itself.

5. As a teacher, homeschooling kind of pisses me off. (That’s good enough for #5.)

Just for the purpose of clarity, being a teacher does not automatically mean that homeschooling is going to piss you off. That's your own personal issue.

4. Homeschooling could breed intolerance, and maybe even racism. Unless the student is being homeschooled at the MTV Real World house, there’s probably only one race/sexuality/background in the room. How can a young person learn to appreciate other cultures if he or she doesn’t live among them?

Homeschooling could breed intolerance and maybe even racism. It could. I've seen it. But the worst intolerance and racism we've witnessed has been in public school. The racism my daughter and the handful of other black students in her class faced in second grade from their teacher, unchecked by the school, is a large part of why we finally decided to homeschool. Our homeschool group is more diverse than her school was. Homeschooling alone doesn't lead to racism and intolerance. People do. And if parents are going to teach their children bigotry, they're going to do it regardless of where their child is educated.

3. And don’t give me this “they still participate in activities with public school kids” garbage. Socialization in our grand multi-cultural experiment we call America is a process that takes more than an hour a day, a few times a week. Homeschooling, undoubtedly, leaves the child unprepared socially.

This shows an astounding ignorance. You need to learn more about homeschool communities and the opportunties we have available to us. My kids are disturbingly well-socialized.

2. Homeschooling parents are arrogant, Part 2. According to Henry Cate, who runs the Why Homeschool blog, many highly educated, high-income parents are “probably people who are a little bit more comfortable in taking risks” in choosing a college or line of work. “The attributes that facilitate that might also facilitate them being more comfortable with home-schooling.”
More comfortable taking risks with their child’s education? Gamble on, I don’t know, the Superbowl, not your child’s future.


Hmm. Risks and actual learning vs. a curriculum shaped around a poorly designed standardized test.

1. And finally… have you met someone homeschooled? Not to hate, but they do tend to be pretty geeky***.

Really? That's an argument against homeschooling? Because what? Geeks don't exist in public school? And uh...you haven't met my kids.

Thursday, May 28, 2009

In the end, it's all about potatoes

Thanks to everyone for their recent comments; it's been a rough couple of weeks.

Sterling just started trialing potatoes in the last few weeks and it's gone well. He's had potato flour, roasted potatoes and mashed potatoes (dairy-free mashed potatoes made with chicken broth and olive oil). It's a big deal. We've never had a successful trial of any food (potato is one of the few foods that has tested low enough for us to consider trialing) and this is huge to Sterling.

He announced to one of his friends in the neighborhood (a little 7-year-old child with as yet undetermined special needs) that he got to eat potatoes, and the little boy was appropriately impressed, "Wow! Cool!" and Sterling said, "I know! Right? I got to have roast potatoes and baked potatoes..." and the other little boy had moved on. But that's okay. I came home with a giant bag of red potatoes from Costco, and Adria said, "Hey, Sterling! Look at this giant bag of potatoes!" And Sterling said, "Potatoes? Look at that giant bag of heaven!" Sterling is a cornball. He carries it well.

He was making plans today: "Hey, Mom! This is my plan for what we can do with potatoes. My first plan is that we can make french fries out of regular potatoes and make sweet potato fries, and mixed up mashed potatoes out of red potatoes and regular potatoes. I do think it would be really good--two kinds of potatoes mixed up."

The kids started swim practice yesterday. We're at the pool from 5 pm until 8 pm, so I try to pack dinner for the boys so they can come home and crash. Last night, I cooked extra roasted potatoes for Sterling for tonight. A lot of potatoes. They were gone by 2 pm. He ate them cold.

Tuesday, May 19, 2009

The wait is over.

I'm sorry. This is really not what I had intended to be blogging about this week.

Sunday, May 17, 2009

Some things are fun to wait for. It's fun, or within the realm of fun, to wait those 40 weeks, for the birth of a baby. It's kind of even fun to wait for the end of the nausea, because even while you know the end is coming, you also know that nausea is supposed to be a good thing. That tolerating it is a small thing for such a huge blessing.

It's not fun to wait to miscarry. It's not fun to wait for the nausea to subside, knowing that it's probably no longer for a good reason. It's not fun to wait until you're sure before you tell your little boys that the baby you waited to tell them about in the first place is probably not coming after all, and still try to temper their excitement without telling them that it's over because you don't even know for sure yet. Because you have to wait...