Abyss, the darkling beetle

One of the cool things about homeschooling is that you can incorporate your life into your learning… and your learning into your life. This is a case of the first instance. My nine-year-old daughter insisted on picking up a large black beetle when we were hiking at Pogonip and bringing it back with us. She has always enjoyed keeping bugs captive and studying their behavior. This one, however, has worked out more longterm – she’s survived 5 weeks. We’ve all come to have quite an affection for the little creature, who eats oats, does tricks like walking a tightrope (though not on command), and seems to enjoy crawling all over my daughter’s arm.

Following is the “assignment” my daughter completed based on Abyss and research she did. Note that I didn’t have to “assign” this at all – I made a suggestion that she could do something with the research she’d done on Abyss, and this is what she came up with. It was the perfect homeschooling moment.

The Life of Abyss, the Darkling Beetle

Abyss

Hello, my name is Abyss. I am a female darkling beetle. I was born in a grassy, rocky area of California called Pogonip. That was the place that I lived for a very long time, and there my story begins.

I am currently a larva, or wireworm. I hatched from an egg a day or two ago that my mother laid. It took me about 18 days to hatch. It was uncomfortable in the egg—I was all curled up.

I wriggle and squiggle underground where I have burrowed. I know that my time soon will come where I will turn into a pupa, which is my resting stage. I wait a few more weeks underground, and soon I start to transform. It happened suddenly to me one day when I woke up. It was kind of scary and I couldn’t move anymore. I had a hard shell-like thing where my head should be and it was very uncomfortable.

The life cycle of a darkling beetle

I wait like this for a few weeks. One day I feel that I might able to move again. I try. I come out of the awful shell I was in, except I’m not a larva! I’m a darkling beetle. I walk up above ground, and stare at the sun. It seems like a long time ago that I stared at the sun when I first hatched. I’m currently white, and I have wings except when I try to flap them, they’re all fused together. I can’t open them. I try every day of my life to open these wings, but they’ll never open. I guess they’ll just stay fused together.

Some of my friends and some of my brothers and sisters are also out there. They are also white and their wings are also fused together. We play for a while, then we grow bored.

In a couple of days’ time I have turned brown. I start having to forage for my own wild grains, grass, and other things like that. A couple days later I am completely black with a hard shell covering my back. I am about 2 centimeters long.

Hikers at Pogonip pass me and one nearly squashes me. I crawl out of the way just in time. One day, one particular large group of hikers appears. One of them notices me. It picks me up. I am brought back along the trail to a place I have never been before. There are lots of big gigantic metallic looking things, and some of them pull away and move. The person that found me walks over to one of these. So do some of the hikers it is with.

The thing starts moving. After a while it stops. It waits a few minutes. It starts again. After that it stops again except it doesn’t move. The door next to me opens. The person that found me walks out. It takes me into a strange, gigantic room and puts me in a jar. There is nothing to do in the jar. I try to escape but the walls are smooth and they are also clear.

Soon the person that found me returns with some forest bedding. It gives it to me. I find a particularly crunchy piece of forest matter and start working on it. In a few minutes, I am taken out of my jar and put in a new gigantic jar. This one has things to do in it. It’s a whole playground. It’s also got forest matter. I crunch on the forest matter.

A couple of days later I get back into one of those strange metallic things. I go to another strange place. [Editor's note: She went to be shared at our homeschool program.] I have been there for a couple of hours when the top opens. Someone sticks their finger into it. On their finger is a grain. It looks like some of the wild grains that I used to eat when I was at Pogonip. I eat half of it before it is taken back out. I had already finished eating as much as my little teeny tiny tummy could hold, so I wasn’t very mad. Soon I get back into the first strange room. I had taken one of those metallic things again.

Soon I’ve been fed more of that strange, yummy grain. I eat most of it. About a week passed. I was taken out of my playground and put in a container again. Another different container, I’ve never seen this one before.

I try to get out like I did the first time I was put in that jar. It takes about a minute. Then I’m taken out and put back into my nice, cozy playground. They’ve taken out the forest matter. Maybe they’ve realized I’m not a foresty bug. I’ll eat the forest matter but that’s just because I had nothing else to eat. Now, it’s only got oats. They look like the wild oats I used to eat.

I go and play on the seesaw. I go and hang out there a few minutes.

That is the end of my story. That’s where I am right now.

Parents know nothing: When my daughter wanted to buy this "bug playground," I figured it would sit in her closet. She loves it, and so does Abyss.

Posted in Avant Parenting, Homeschooling.

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By Suki – May 12, 2012

Daddy’s little genius

There has been a small rash of these news stories recently: Kid gets extremely high score on IQ test, applies and gets into Mensa. Parents rush to news outlets to make sure Precious Petunia gets her 15 minutes of fame.

I shouldn’t be so mean, but it really makes me feel mean. These aren’t 15-year-old whiz kids who are looking for fame. This is a 4-year-old who likes Barbies and Legos, or a 3-year-old who likes to play with water and test tubes.

There are many aspects of these stories that I have no problem with. I have no problem with parents wanting to get their kids IQ-tested if they feel that they will get meaningful information from the test. A lot of parents choose to IQ test because aspects of their kids’ learning confuse them, or because they suspect that their kids have learning problems that are masked by their ability to compensate in other ways. Other parents get their kids IQ-tested because they don’t really believe that their kid has special learning needs, and they need the number to make it real to them. Other parents get their kids tested because they have to in order to get into programs or to get services.

I also have no problem with parents pursuing opportunities—like Mensa—for their kids. There is a fine line between helping exceptional kids thrive and pushing them to bolster the parents’ egos, but I try to assume the best about parents. Through experience, I’ve learned to give the parents the benefit of the doubt whenever possible. So I do that, and I assume that families choose to apply to Mensa because they think that there will be some genuine benefit to their kids.

However, a few aspects of these stories give me big problems: First of all, entering your preschooler into a media circus just because you like the flashing lights and fun music. No preschooler needs to be the subject of an article in national news. Preschoolers need a sandbox to play in. They need adults who talk to them seriously about things they care about. They need small and fuzzy things (living or not) to love. They need really excellent stories told to them by adults both orally and through books. They need the opportunity to follow their passions and they need to feel safe and cared for. But they do not need to be the focus of adults who do not know them, do not love them, and do not care about what the attention will mean to them as they grow older.

Secondly, families who push their preschoolers into the spotlight totally miss the point about what IQ means. I do not believe, as it is fashionable in some circles these days, that IQ is totally meaningless. Anyone who has spent time with people on different sides of the IQ spectrum know that it is something that makes people different. Saying that IQ is meaningless is like saying that no one notices that one person has dark brown skin and another has light pink skin. Noticing the difference is not the problem; the problem is what you do once you notice. If we agree that all human beings are important, all human beings have potential, and all human beings should have their potential nurtured, then I think we’re all on the right path and there’s nothing wrong with noticing differences and trying to understand them.

What’s important to understand is that IQ is descriptive, not predictive. When you say that someone has a 130 IQ, you are describing the sorts of gymnastics that their brain is able to do. When you say that they have a 160 IQ, you are describing a person able to do very different gymnastics. Gifted education experts point out that someone with an IQ of 130 (very, very smart) differs from someone who has an IQ of 160 (profoundly gifted) as much as someone with an IQ of 100 (average) differs from someone with an IQ of 70 (developmentally disabled). IQ is a handy construction that allows us to quantify the level of gymnastics a brain can do, and the level and quality of stimulation a brain needs and is capable of handling. As a descriptive number, IQ can be helpful in some ways for working with some kids.

IQ, however, is not a prediction. It is not a skill. It is not a gift. And it is definitely not, as all of these articles erroneously say, “genius.” One of the most famous, longterm experiments in IQ and its predictive qualities was done at Stanford by Lewis Terman. Terman wanted to know how having a high IQ affects people in the longterm. So he tested lots of people and accepted only those with the top IQs into his program. He followed these people for many years, and came to a (for him) surprising conclusion: IQ is predictive of nothing. IQ does not predict success, in money or fame. IQ does not predict happiness, marriage stability, health, or longevity. People with the highest IQs are completely normal in all other ways.

So what does this mean about our cute little geniuses? Obviously, it means that the word “genius” is misapplied when it refers simply to IQ. Einstein was a genius, and did have a high IQ. But he was a genius because of what he did. Many others with his IQ lived and died in obscurity. Other geniuses became geniuses without the benefit of a super-high IQ. People call them geniuses because of what they did with their lives.

As a parent, my heart goes out to these little people who are so abused by our press. To be called a “genius” by Huffington Post when you’re 3 is no gift. It’s a curse. How can a child ever live up to such a start in life? When she starts to develop into the flawed and incomplete person she will become, will she suffer from the fear that she’s actually a fraud? How mortified will she be when she finds out she doesn’t know everything, and never will?

Here’s my advice to parents who find out that their preschooler has a “genius” IQ and want to make sure that they help their child reach his or her potential*:

Make sure they have plenty of time to play in the sandbox.
Make them feel safe and loved.
Tell them stories and give them excellent books to read.
Listen to their ideas and take them seriously.
Speak to them like they are people, and allow them to have opinions and make mistakes.
Make sure they have fuzzy things (living or not) to love and cuddle.
Try to open up opportunities so they can explore their passions.
Love them, and make sure they know that you’ll love them no matter whether they become geniuses, billionaires, happy, productive people, or anything else.

I know, this would make a very boring news article that would never get picked up by the Huffington Post. Trust Avant Parenting to give you the advice that’s guaranteed not to make your kid rich or famous…unless they work hard to get there on their own, regardless of the number they drew out of the IQ box.

*By the way, this is my advice to any parent, no matter what the IQ score, if any!

Posted in Avant Parenting, Culture Critic, Psychology.

2 comments

By Suki – May 8, 2012

Family documentation

Recently my son was reminiscing about his imaginary friend. This friend had appeared around when my son was two. I noticed that my son was walking around with his hand raised and his thumb and forefinger together, as if he were carrying something very small. When I asked him what it was, he said it was his friend, Seiterent. This friend—and legions of cohorts—populated our household for years. They lived on an island. They ate sushi.

At that time, I took copious notes. I wrote in my kids’ baby books lots of the funny things they did and said, their interests, their skills. I kept a small notebook in our breakfast room that was called our “family lexicon.” It had all the weird and unusual words and phrases we came up with, years of imagination and mispronunciation.

My son was asking me if I had notes I could share with him, because he wanted to write about his imaginary friends. I do have many notes (if I can find them). Unfortunately, I only have a memory of the family lexicon. Somewhere in the time we had our kitchen remodeled, it went missing and never came back. That’s sad, though some of the words survive into our present family. “Insresting broccoli”—romanesco broccoli pronounced in my son’s own “interesting” way. “Dit,” my daughter’s name for her favorite craft item, tape.

But much of what happened in our lives then lives on only in what I managed to document. Things got very busy. When they were small, I took videos a lot. Sometimes I’d make a compilation of highlights of a whole day to send to their grandma. These days, I hardly make videos except at special occasions. In the past, I would write down every detail like I was sure I’d lose it all if I didn’t. These days, I’m resigned to losing a lot of it.

To a certain extent, I guess I expect them to be doing their own documentation. By the time I was their age I was well into writing in journals (all lost) and writing stories (some surviving). I took photos with my very high-tech Kodak disk camera. I started scrapbooking as a young adult and I have enormous books filled with stubs from concerts, photos of me and friends in exotic locales, and flyers for the band I was in.

But neither of my kids seems terribly interested in documentation. My son does like to write stories, but they are largely fictional, so they only document his imaginative world (which is still going strong). My daughter once fell in love with a cherry red notebook with big, deep pockets and asked me to buy it for her as a journal. She dutifully made one entry that day, two lines about something we did. The next entry is dated about a year later. Since then, I occasionally haul it out, but there has been no further interest on her part.

Besides this blog, which—of course—is edited for public consumption (and thus doesn’t contain any of the most personal or most embarrassing parts of our family life), where my documentation lies these days is in e-mail. I think about writing in my journal, but then I realize that I wrote a detailed account of something to a friend. I keep and archive all my e-mail, as well as all the photos I take, with the zeal which I once applied to scrapbooking. It’s not nearly as interesting to share with a friend on the couch, but much more searchable by date, sender, subject, or keyword.

My mom swears that this is a photo of me, though all of us looked pretty much the same: bald, red-faced, wondering how we got into that cold hospital bassinet...

Sometimes I feel bad about how much I’ve let slide, but then I think back to my own baby book (which had only my name entered by my busy mom, who was pregnant again with twins before I was walking). At some point, I filled in some of the details, trailing behind her as she went about her household duties. “Mom, what time was I born?” “Um, well, it would probably be evening. Or morning. Yes, I think about 2 p.m.” “And how much did I weigh?” “Well, you all weighed just about average, I’d say six pounds or so.” “And why isn’t there a picture of me as a baby?” “Oh, I know I’ve got a beautiful one of you, somewhere…”

My mom and I did finally find that photo… long after I’d had kids of my own (and I am not completely sure it’s really me!). I guess this is one of those cases where I just have to figure my kids will survive my own inadequacies as I survived my mother’s. Perhaps my own instinct for documentation came from being the middle kid of five. My kids lack this instinct because I was doing it for them. But I can imagine them later planning to get together with me to go through all our digital archives, trying to find what we know is there… somewhere.

I just have to hope that the important stuff, whatever it turns out to be, will get through.

Posted in Avant Parenting.

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By Suki – May 3, 2012

A Natural-Born Teacher

When my son and I went to look at Mount Madonna School as a possible school for him to transfer to, we knew there were a lot of reasons that he shouldn’t go there. It was an hour’s bus ride from our house. The tuition would eat into our household budget such that we wouldn’t be able to do some of the things we’d done before. He wouldn’t have much time left in the day for being home, his favorite place to be.

But all of that lost meaning when he walked into the pre-fab building that would be his fifth-grade classroom. There he met Sri-Gyan James McCaughan—better known to his students and everyone else as simply “Sri”—who he knew would be his teacher.

Only two years ago, my son was so young and Sri was so healthy. We are so lucky to have had him in our lives.

Yes, there were superficial reasons for my son to be attracted to Sri’s classroom. Sri, like my son, was simply mad for technology, especially beautiful technology created by Apple. Sri based his entire classroom curriculum on filmmaking. He would meet the kids at the bus on the first day of school with the camera running, and the film they made was presented at the first parent meeting each year. The year my son started in Sri’s class, a couple of the kids took over the class. Sri sounded sheepish when he introduced the film at the parent meeting, but the result was clearly the work of a natural-born teacher. Rather than try to push down the conquering instincts of a few boys who were new to the school that year, he decided to nurture them. His camera hand was steady as he filmed the kids leading the class, sitting in his chair….

…OK, he did in fact stop the kid who tried to say, “And this must be my computer!” and open Sri’s beloved MacBook Pro. But that’s understandable.

The year in Sri’s classroom presented lots of challenges to my son. He ended up the year deciding to try homeschooling. But this was not to spite Sri—in fact, perhaps it was in part because of Sri. For Sri, learning was integrated into life. His classroom wasn’t a place where standards held an honored place. This made some parents very uncomfortable. But Sri seemed to know what kids needed. One day at the bus stop a parent was commiserating with me about all the hard math homework. I nodded my head knowingly.

As my son and I got into the car, I asked, “So, do you get math homework?”

“Sure,” my son answered. “I finish it at lunchtime on Mondays.”

Clearly Sri knew not to pile on busywork when it wasn’t needed. My son was focused on his creative side, and it was just fine with him to do the bare minimum in math at that time.

Sri and my son kept in touch now and then during the last couple of years. There was no question that Sri was on the invitation list for his Bar Mitzvah, and Sri accepted. But a couple of weeks before the event, I got an e-mail saying that he had “a scheduling problem.”

The scheduling problem is one that sometimes arises in the lives of people too young to be taken away from us. Sri had been diagnosed with an inoperable cancer. He was given six months, but he died today, only a few months later.

It’s the optimist’s goal to see good in these sorts of things. The pessimist’s to see the evil of the world. I don’t see either. It’s just part of the confusing nature of things that Sri would go so soon, while others who give so much less to the world linger on.

But what I do see in clear relief is that Sri’s was a life well lived. He left behind so many people who truly mourn the loss of his influence in this world. He was a lovely soul, and I am so thankful that he was part of my son’s life.

Posted in Avant Parenting, Education.

2 comments

By Suki – April 28, 2012

It’s that happy STAR test season again!

It’s that happy season again, STAR testing time, when kids across California sit in a room and fill in bubbles with #2 pencils. The kid think they just have pencils in their hands. But in this era of NCLB, students actually hold the fate of their teachers, schools, and districts in their sweaty little palms. Parents fret that kids think these tests are too important. Teachers fret that their students might not take them seriously enough. District officials fret if the mix of skin colors that show up for the test tilts too far to one side, and hope that the parents from the wealthy side of their school’s neighborhood haven’t decided to keep their kids home “sick.”

I have strong memories from my years of standardized tests. In the third grade, I took a statewide standardized test that informed me that I should become a mathematician. I was crushed. I knew I wanted to be a writer—did this mean I couldn’t do that? I didn’t tell anyone of my fear, but you can bet I made sure not to like math nearly as much as I did before.

As an undergraduate, I wrote a paper about cultural bias in testing. The theme was suggested to me when, as a volunteer at a local school with a high immigrant population, I administered an “English” test to a girl from Venezuela. One question showed a picture of a girl in ice skates standing next to a sign that said, “Danger: Thin ice.” My sweet little student looked puzzled, and asked me, pointing at her eyes, “ice?” Well, yeah. She’d never seen a frozen lake before. Or ice skates.

Did I mention that this test had been developed for Puerto Rican children in New York? That was in the eighties, when cultural bias was just starting to be understood.

I remember when a few years later, my 100% English fluent boyfriend had to take the TOEFL as part of applying to grad school, since he was a non-resident from a non-English speaking country. He said that the recording they listened to was so bad, he couldn’t understand half of it. And his English was so fluent, few people knew he wasn’t born and raised here.

In case you missed this part, the TOEFL is supposed to test how well people understand English, not how extra-sharp their hearing is.

Despite all this, I don’t hate standardized tests and think they should be abolished. They have a job that they do well, when they are designed well to do that job. The job they do well is offer up a number correlating to how many correct answers a person got on a specific day on a subject that can be tested with multiple choice answers. Subjects that can be tested well are basic math skills (though ambiguously worded word problems are always a problem) and subject mastery (details of disciplines like biology). As long as the test-writers don’t try to make the test interesting by including cultural information (my daughter refuses ever to answer a math problem involving football, a game she has never seen played), some basic picture of the student’s knowledge and skills can be created.

The problem is, Americans have jumped on standardized tests like we built the railroad to the West: full steam ahead, don’t worry about how many Chinese laborers you hurt in the process. We have this idea that the tests can tell us something about how well the students think (impossible), how well their teachers teach (ridiculous), and whether their district should be allowed to continue administering their own schools. On the basis of standardized tests, we are told that our government can fire everyone working at a school (Ed. Secretary Arne Duncan’s pet project), as if having kids turn up to learn from strangers will somehow scare their brains into compliance. On the basis of standardized tests, we think that we can decide which teachers need more pay, and which should be fired.

Furthermore, the different parts of our government are making decisions independent of each other, so they end up using testing like a carpenter who uses a screwdriver to hammer in a nail. California’s STAR test is designed to measure students against each other. It’s designed to put 50% of the kids taking it under the line, and 50% over. When they try out new questions on the STAR test, they don’t want to see if it’s a good question based on whether kids get it right. They want to see if it’s a tricky enough question that the right number of kids get it wrong. So when your child is in the 50th percentile of the STAR math portion, for example, that says that half the kids did better, half the kids did worse.

No Child Left Behind, however, stipulates that all schools must get 100% of their students above proficiency. How do you test proficiency? You give kids questions based on what you think they should know, and if 80% of them get it right, you say, Wow, our schools are doing OK. You don’t say, Wait, we need to make that question less clear so that not so many kids get it right. But that’s what the STAR does. If you don’t believe me, download their sample questions and take the test. You’ll find ambiguities and obscure elements all over it. Any thinking kid takes this test and finds that even in sections that should be clear, such as math, there are ambiguities. The test is not trying to figure out what they know: it’s trying to trick them into failing.

We’ll be doing STAR tests this year. Our district is pressuring our little program (which officially doesn’t have to test because we are happily “statistically insignificant”) to get our testing numbers up. They don’t seem to care about our scores. They care about those cute little tushies warming chairs, grasping #2 pencils, and filling in enough bubbles to make it valid. It’s a silly game. We homeschoolers, if we’re doing our jobs well, know what our students’ strengths and weaknesses are. Last year, I laughed when I saw my daughter’s STAR math results – they were exactly what I would have predicted. Luckily, my daughter actually thinks the tests are fun (and looks forward to the popsicles handed out afterwards), and my son has grudgingly agreed to waste time that would be much better spent on his computer, just to humor me.

But we all know what game we’re playing: We’re not testing them to find out what they know. We’re testing them to make a bureaucrat happy. And if my kids’ good scores help their school and district a little bit, well, I’m OK with that. But these tests, I make sure they know, are meaningless in the scope of things.

Even if they get in the 99th percentile in math, as I did in third grade, I’m not going to announce to them that I know what their career path should be. No test can tell me something about my kids that I don’t already know just by talking to them, working with them, and loving them.

Posted in Culture Critic, Education, Homeschooling.

5 comments

By Suki – April 21, 2012

Siblings

Things have been pretty darn quiet around our house the last few days. Our son has been off on a school trip to Yosemite, so our daughter is living the life of an only child.

What a relief!

Don’t get me wrong: I adore both of my kids. I couldn’t imagine life without either of them. I’m glad I have them both.

But the truth is, the only extended period of time in which they got along really well was when she was a baby. And not just a baby but that tiny, sweet baby who didn’t yet know how to make her big brother cry. As soon as she figured that out, well, the merry-go-round started to turn.

This is not to say that they never get along. There are some activities they do really well together: They love to go down into the woods to their “fort” and hang out there… as long as my son doesn’t start criticizing his sister for how she pronounces a word. They like to play Minecraft together… as long as my daughter’s avatar doesn’t decide to beat up my son’s avatar with a pick-axe. They like to exchange weird e-mail… as long as my son doesn’t criticize her use of weird fonts and as long as my daughter doesn’t send him more and more e-mails that just contain the word “poopie” copied and pasted hundreds of times. They like to play games together… until one of them has to win.

So you see how it goes: They know each other’s buttons well. They push those buttons. Then they give the button-pusher the satisfaction of retaliation. And so the merry-go-round goes round.

Gratuitous new puppy photo. The puppy and the big girl played so hard they just had to go to sleep!

I grew up in a large family, and in many ways my kids’ interactions are not that different from ones I remember from childhood. The big difference is that they have only each other. When one of my siblings got sick of another, we had others to play or fight with. Sometimes when we were feeling especially anti-social, we’d move down into the basement with the spiders!

But my kids can’t get away from each other. Even when my son was in school, they seemed intent on butting heads whenever possible.

The reality of it is that at some point, they will have to detach.

My son will learn that he will never, ever make his sister perfect. Or, conversely, he will realize that she is perfect (as much as any human is), so he should just stop trying to change her.

My daughter will learn that when you poke people they react. Her brother is not a stuffed animal, a dartboard, or a tree she can climb. She cannot rule the world through force of will alone.

Both kids will realize what most governments still can’t get a handle on: reacting to injustice with more injustice just ramps it up. The day one child makes the decision to rise above, not to react anymore to the petty hurts that the other inflicts throughout the day, is the day our house will become more peaceful.

That’s the theory, at least!

Of course, this is all talk. Action is much harder. So occasional, enforced vacations like this one are good for us all. My daughter can come to me for companionship, but I’m never going to be as good as the boy who goes into the forest to help her build a fort. My son can come to me seeking justice, but he’s never going to find me in his Mindcraft world, building a structure for him that says “I love you” in actions if not words. Their friends are there for them, of course, but friends come and go.

Siblings are irreplaceable. So get on that merry-go-round, kids, and play nice… or at least as nice as my siblings and I played, when we weren’t slamming each other’s fingers in the door.

Posted in Avant Parenting, Psychology.

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By Suki – April 18, 2012

The questions, the answers

I had a very polite conversation today with an adult who learned that I homeschool my kids. She was curious, but respectful, and though she asked the usual set of questions, they were asked with honest curiosity and interest. Homeschoolers always get these questions, and so here they are, with my answers. If you are a non-homeschooler who finds yourself questioning a homeschooler someday, perhaps you can be as polite and positive as my questioner was today.

1. Do you have a teaching background? aka Are you a licensed teacher? aka How can you know what to teach your kids? aka Do you think you’re better than a school teacher?

Notice that all the questions ask largely the same thing, but I liked her phrasing (the first one) the best. It’s a natural question: I am spending my time “teaching,” so am I a “teacher”?

The short answer, which I gave her, is that I was a college English teacher.

But that had nothing to do with my homeschooling, and actually has nothing to do with my qualifications to homeschool. Lots of homeschoolers were teachers—in fact, it’s notable how many homeschoolers were public school teachers who didn’t want to put their kids through that system. Hm. But the really important answer to this question is actually this: I don’t have to be a teacher. I am teaching my kids to be learners. In this day of information overload, no one can “know” everything you need to know in order to become fully literate in our society. This is a huge change from a century ago, when there was an accepted body of knowledge that one attained in order to become literate, then an accepted body of knowledge one attained in order to become educated, and finally a deeper and narrower body of knowledge to attain in one’s chosen field.

Today, the most important thing kids need to be taught is how to teach themselves what they need to know. Some teachers and schools are getting this. But most aren’t. If you look at what’s being taught and tested for in our schools, it’s certainly not how to find the answer. What’s being taught is how to know the answer, which is a whole different thing. The other thing students need to learn is how to evaluate the reams of conflicting information they will be presented with. Critical thinking skills are mandatory in this world.

Both learning how to learn and critical thinking are fundamental to what homeschooling parents do.

2. You must work hard! aka I could never do that! aka You’re crazy—wouldn’t you rather have a real job? aka What’s the point?

Again, she asked respectfully, but homeschoolers get these variations on this question all the time.

My answer was quite simple: We have a very laid-back lifestyle. This morning, for example, was unusual in that I had to get both kids to different locations because I had an appointment. So yes, I did have to call my son a few times (he’s 13, right?) and then he sat there in his pajamas and talked instead of eating. Finally I had to get dramatic on him and say You Have Ten Minutes Before You Need To Be Dressed And Ready To Leave.

The thing is, this could be seen as a replay of our mornings when he had to catch the bus. But this was taking place at….well….8:50 a.m. Our days of having to get up at the crack of dawn (unless we’re getting up to do something fabulously exciting) are over. We have a laid-back lifestyle, and we love it.

The number that homeschoolers cite is that you only have to “school” for about 2.5 hours per day to match how much schooling kids get in the average public school. All the rest of the school day is organizational stuff, getting from one place to another, waiting, waiting, and waiting. Now, I have to admit, I have never spent 2.5 solid hours making my kids do “school.” But over a day, we probably fit in that much of what might be called “school” stuff, as long as you include electives in what you call “school”!

The fact is, you could do that. You think it’s hard because you see that the job of being a schoolteacher is hard. And it is! I am awed by anyone who can spend a whole day with 30 (or more) kids. By then I’d want to go flush myself down the toilet. But I don’t spend my day trying to teach that many kids. I spend my day interacting with my two favorite kids. And it’s really not that hard.

However, I must also say that this is a “real job.” I’m giving my kids a Cadillac education for the price of a used Chevy Neon. When we do our taxes, I see what I do as “income”—finding a private school to do this would certainly cost many times more than we’re putting out.

3. So…do you have time to do anything else? aka Are you wasting your time staying home with kids? aka Are you losing your edge in the job market?

Each homeschooler is different. I know some who are lower-energy people, have higher-energy kids, or just some random combination of life circumstances who really don’t do much outside of homeschooling. But I and many of my friends do a significant work outside of homeschooling. Now, a lot of what we do is in service of homeschooling, such as the board I’m on and the homeschool program whose Site Council I’m on. But we also do things that are both professions and personal callings. (Obviously,) I’m a writer, and my writing only sometimes intersects with my homeschooling. I also sing, garden, and read voraciously, things I would do whether homeschooling or not.

Yes, we have lives. No, we aren’t giving everything up for our kids. We just happen to be in the situation where we think this is the best choice for us. At this time. In our situation. Things can change.

4. My conversation-mate didn’t imply this, because her child is grown, but probably the most frustrating thing homeschoolers get is other parents implying, or telling us straight to our faces, that by homeschooling, we are implicitly criticizing their choice to send their children to school.

Nope. Sorry. That’s your own insecurity. So don’t put it on me. I made the best choice for my family. If you are concerned that you’re not making the best choice, you’ll have to deal with it. But don’t make it my fault!

Homeschoolers choose homeschooling for their own reasons. When other people get defensive about it, they’re simply speaking about their own insecurities. We aren’t doing it to insult you. In fact, you can pretty much be sure that we didn’t think of you at all when we chose to homeschool!

5. Having met my kids, who were both polite and one of whom showed impressive knowledge in our questioner’s occupation, she didn’t even have to ask this one, but I’ll throw it in just for a laugh: What about socialization?

Hahahahaha! Heck, if my kids didn’t socialize so much, we might actually get something done. Believe me, my kids are doing fine, and thank you for your concern.

So there you have it, my answers to the questions that people ask. Please note that YMMV (your mileage may vary) is the motto of every homeschooler offering advice, so someone else may have different answers. I may have different answers tomorrow. But hopefully today’s answers were enlightening!

Posted in Education, Homeschooling.

9 comments

By Suki – March 29, 2012

The best website for your school

For a number of years I had a specialization I didn’t really seek out: designing websites for educational use. It started when I was consulting for the Small Business Development Center at Cabrillo College and created a career-research website for Cabrillo. Then a Cabrillo teacher hired me to make an interactive website for his class. This was in the late-90′s and as far as I know, distance learning was hardly talked about yet.

From there, I started to help the various schools I was involved with create better websites and more efficient electronic communications. Then I started doing similar work for for-profit educational businesses. Until recently, I still had clients hanging on, but since my life has been going off in a different direction, I am now only keeping my pro bono work for schools we’re involved with.

Over the years, I noticed how really awful most schools’ websites were, and how chaotic and complicated their communication systems were. Whenever I could, I’d help a school try to work this out, though there was almost always a lot of resistance. I won’t tell you how long it took me to get one school to use a single calendar that could be jointly administered.

Since I am now officially free of my paying clients, I thought I’d try to reduce my experience to a few tips that educators can use to make their electronic communications better and more efficient.

Websites:

1) Your website is your face to the world.

Perhaps, when I started doing this in the 90′s, a school could say that their website (if they had one) was superfluous. Now it’s almost always the very first contact parents have with your school or program. And it amazes me how many schools leave this very important entry point to uncommitted parents or incompetent semi-professionals. You need to take your website very, very seriously. It should meet the needs of all your “clients”: current parents, prospective parents, prospective staff, and even alumni. And as a journalist, I can’t emphasize how important it is to have good, well-written information on your website. Journalists who get lost in a maze or find outdated information on your website may just choose to feature another school in their articles.

2) Your website showcases the sort of education you offer.

If your website is boring, your school looks boring. If your website has lots of typos, your school looks ineffectual. If your website has outdated information, your school looks like a place where things only happened in the past.

3) Your website is flexible.

Don’t think of your website as one thing: consider all the ways you can use it to reach your community. The front page should have clear links for the different types of users: parents, students, staff, community.

4) Your website does not have to be fancy.

Have you ever gone to an educational website and faced a 30-second flash extravaganza that you had to sit through? Music that blared out of your computer without warning? Lots of pretty pictures but no information? It’s frustrating and off-putting. Get to the point and get there quickly.

5) Your website is informative.

What do people want to know when they go to the front page? Is that information front and center? It amazes me how many schools don’t have their address and phone number on the front page. And schools that, for example, list an e-mail address that no one is in charge of responding to (true story), or have contact forms that don’t work (this on a website for a Cabrillo College program for kids that I tried to use a few weeks ago).

6) Your website is dynamic.

If you aren’t willing to keep the website up-to-date, don’t put current information on it! But really, you need to make the commitment to make your website dynamic. The public is going to use it, whether you want them to or not.

7) Modern web tools are easy to use.

My last paying client was a school that I’d built a website for years before. We built the website at that time in a way that required knowledge of web design to edit it. Last month, I transitioned them to a Google Site. OK, it’s not nearly as pretty as the original website I designed, and it doesn’t have the cute animations an artist mom made for the original site. But now the staff has direct access to all the information. They aren’t depending on remembering to tell me when something changes — they own the site and they go in and make the change. I really encourage all schools to look into Google Apps for Education — the set-up was quite easy and the maintenance couldn’t be easier.

Communication:

There is no reason why a school needs to communicate via the old-fashioned monthly print newsletter anymore. Electronic tools are free, easy-to-use, and can be adapted for the few “off-line” parents you might have left. Here are some tips:

1) Don’t make an e-mail address optional on your registration form. Declare that you communicate electronically and demand an address. Lots of parents will leave this blank if you give them the option. (Of course, always include a checkbox for “I don’t have access to electronic communication and will need paper copies or access to a school computer.”)

2) Create ways for the school to communicate both formally and informally. A blog or discussion list allows parents and teachers to exchange informal information. In these days of budget cuts, a blog by a teacher about an upcoming project might just tweak a parent’s memory that she’s got the materials you need in her garage. Formal communication needs to be teacher-controlled and trustworthy. If you have an online calendar, it must be correct and show schedule changes on a daily basis.

3) Some staff will be very resistant to change. When you make the transition to electronic communication, it has to be non-optional. Resistant staff eventually come around…. or retire!

4) You can create so much good feeling in a parent community by keeping everyone connected with what’s going on in school. Photos, student projects, descriptions of events… anything you put up there will give them confidence that your school is a vital, exciting place for their kids to be.

5) Online information is free. Nothing you can do about it — free information is here to stay. So rather than fight it, use your website to give away as much information as possible. Don’t make parents come to the office to get a piece of paper they need — make it available online. Recommend web tools. Have your librarian (if you’ve still got one) blog about new books in the library. Draw your community in, and use all these great new tools to build even better education and community for everyone.

Posted in Culture Critic, Education.

1 comment

By Suki – March 22, 2012

What’s up with the science fair?

Regular readers will know that we are big fans of the science fair. Ever since the first time we wandered in, having seen an announcement somewhere, we haven’t found any local event cooler for our kids to take part in. My husband and I marvel at the fact that we didn’t even know about science fairs when we were kids, while our kids enter it every year. [See: A few words about scientists and inventors... Science inspirations... Winning and losing... Science Fair... And I'm sure I've written more but that's what you're getting right now!]

The thing that was particularly interesting about the science fair this year was the lack of high school division projects. We couldn’t find them, and thought perhaps they had split them off due to high demand. No such luck. There were “only about 16 projects (out of an eligible population of about 12,000 high school students)” (from my fellow parent-of-science-fair-kids Kevin, who is also a judge). In other words: we didn’t find the projects done by high schoolers because they were lost in the sea of elementary and middle school projects. Kevin points out that getting 1% of our high school students to do science fair projects seems like a fair goal—and that would mean “about an 8-fold increase over the current situation.”

There are plenty of reasons not to do the science fair. It takes lots of time, parental involvement, teacher leadership and determination on the part of the students. The thing is, I can’t really believe that everyone doesn’t do it—at least at their school science fair. It’s so fun! But apparently I’m a bit out of touch. As far as teens in this county goes, the science fair is nothing special.

A future scientific breakthrough in process?

I think this probably reflects the general trend in our society away from a culture that “does” toward a culture that “watches.” It has shocked me to see how few kids are willing to sing these days—they have gotten the message that if they don’t have a hit song, no one wants to hear them. It’s not like science is as dorky now as it was when I was a kid: With cool science-based shows like Myth Busters, it’s possible that more kids now have a positive view of science than before. It just seems to be a general lack of interest in actually “doing” anything. Kids are content to watch.

It probably also has to do with what’s been happening in our public schools (though I do note that in our county at least, it’s the public schools who send the most kids to the science fair). Since NCLB doesn’t test for science, it sends that general “science isn’t important” message right down the line. Teachers in schools under program improvement in this county have pretty much had to cut science from K-8 curriculum, even though studying science improves the scores in math and language arts tests in an enjoyable way.

And for high school kids, it probably has a huge amount to do with our culture of homework which has so bogged down today’s students. (See Race to Nowhere.) More and more homeschooled kids are turning up at the science fair, and it’s easy to see why. We allow our kids the time to relax into science and really be able to explore it. Without hours of worksheets due every night, a kid has time to dream and create—time that is necessary for real scientific exploration. When kids have hours of homework every night, and then more on weekends, how can they possibly follow through on a high-school level project? That takes not only a deep interest, but deep learning, deep commitment, and most importantly, supportive adults who mentor the student through a difficult process.

Today it was finally raining in the way we expect on the Central Coast—steady wet ranging from drips to downpours all day long. Mid-morning, my daughter said she’d had enough of percents and wanted to go for a rainwalk. I could have insisted that the worksheet was not done and that was her commitment to math today, but instead I said, well, OK. I know she loves rainwalks.

And so we went out and splashed down into the redwood forest, where she sang and wandered and wondered about the things we saw. For all I know, that was the time in which a scientific idea coalesced in her brain. For all I know, by planting my boot in a puddle and getting a soaker, I may have planted the seed for next year’s science fair.

Posted in Education, Santa Cruz.

1 comment

By Suki – March 15, 2012

Crippling self-doubt

I had a conversation recently with someone whom I respect greatly. She’s a great person, a loving mom, and has a successful career. But partway through our conversation, I had a realization: She suffers from crippling self-doubt.

I didn’t mention it to her. Perhaps it’s just me projecting, but I’m somewhat of an expert on crippling self-doubt.

I used to mull over everything anyone said to me, trying to find the hidden insults and innuendo. I used to stop myself from doing things because I’d step outside of myself and think, Who would want *me*, of all people, to do *this*? I used to worry about what “people” would think.

I don’t know who those people are, but they ruled my life.

Some good things happened in my life:

I married someone who supports me. Even if it’s something he has no interest in himself, he will congratulate me and say I did a good job. Even when I start doing my “negative self-talk,” he’ll tell me I’m full of it. When I think something is no big deal, he’ll make a big deal of it. He points out my successes, when I see that I haven’t yet reached my end goal. He tells me he believes in me.

Another good thing that happened is that I ran out of time. Literally: I just simply don’t have enough time to do everything I need, want, and must do. So a few things had to go. Organized closets? Gone. Clean fingernails? Often not the case. Crippling self-doubt? Don’t have time for that today.

Finally, I became a mom, and the first time you hear your kid doing that negative self-talk thing that you do…. that’s when you realize how awful it is.

I guess I’d say I’m still ‘recovering’ from my crippling self-doubt habit. Tonight I am reading — for the first time ever — at In Celebration of the Muse, a huge Santa Cruz event that celebrates the feminine muse. Years ago, I wanted so desperately to read at the Muse, and was devastated that I wasn’t chosen. This year, I saw the call for entries and I popped something in e-mail. Frankly, when I received the invitation to read, I didn’t remember what I’d submitted! So in that way, I am ‘recovered.’

But as I was dressing, I got out my fabulous red dress, the one I bought second-hand one day when I was feeling fabulous, and I thought, Hm. Can I carry this off? Perhaps I should wear sober black.

But In Celebration of My Muse, and In Celebration of Overcoming Crippling Self-Doubt (for tonight, at least), I am typing this now all dressed up in my red dress.

OK, so I cut out the shoulder pads. I wasn’t feeling quite *that* fabulous.

I hope I will see my friend there, and I will give her a hug, and I will pass her some of my anti-CSD love.

From one busy mom to another: Just do it. When are you ever going to get the chance again, to do today what you want to? Tomorrow, you’ll be on to something else. Something else to love, fear, and conquer.

Ganbatte!

Posted in Avant Parenting, Culture Critic, Psychology.

5 comments

By Suki – March 11, 2012