Are we doing better? A mom, a daughter, and a small press.

I went to a reading the other night at Bookshop Santa Cruz. It was the most fabulously successful reading I’ve seen there, literally standing room only. But it wasn’t Jonathan Franzen or Suzanne Collins that pulled them in.

It was a mom, a daughter, and a little independent press.

The mom is Dena Taylor, famous in Santa Cruz for her many-year run with the great gathering of women writers, In Celebration of the Muse. (I read at The Muse once. I got to wear my fabulous red dress, a color which I admit that redheads should not wear, but I felt pretty darn fabulous and I got a laugh out of the friendly audience of local women and some of their men, so it was great!)

The daughter is Becky Taylor, also somewhat famous in Santa Cruz for being amongst the first mainstreamed disabled people in our public schools.

The press is Many Names Press, which has been run for years by my friend Kate Hitt. Kate selects poetry and prose by mostly local writers who write from the heart and with a unique (and usually not very marketable) point of view.

Kate introducing Becky and Dena at the reading. I had to crop this photo pretty seriously because of the sea of grey and balding heads that were in the foreground! What a crowd! (And a few were neither grey nor balding!)
Kate introducing Becky and Dena at the reading. I had to crop this photo pretty seriously because of the sea of grey and balding heads that were in the foreground! What a crowd! (And a few were neither grey nor balding!)

Kate has been telling me for months that she’s been so excited about working with Dena and Becky on their memoir, Tell Me the Number Before Infinity. The book is written in alternating chapters by Dena and Becky about their experiences. The first experiences are Dena’s, finding out that her daughter had suffered brain damage at birth and would be disabled, then realizing as her daughter grew that her “differently abled” daughter’s abilities included a very advanced aptitude for math. Then we start to hear from Becky as she learns to navigate a world that assumes that a woman who uses crutches and speaks slowly and with a stutter must be stupid, deaf, or a combination of both.

Dena and Becky’s story was familiar to me. I have written before about the term “twice-exceptional” and the difficulties of raising a child who has both unusual disabilities and unusual gifts. Becky’s differences were at the extreme ends. At a time when Americans were unused to disabled people expecting to be allowed into the mainstream, Becky was unique—and often unwanted. And although our public schools in the 70’s were sadly probably better equipped to handle a brilliant child, she faced the stigmatism and misunderstandings that many gifted children face.

Listening to them talk about their experiences made me wonder: Have we improved at all? Are we doing better at accepting twice-exceptionality?

I think to a certain degree, things have improved. Certainly, the general public is much more likely to have interacted with a disabled person now than 30 years ago. Most people are at least aware that physical disabilities don’t necessarily correlate with intellectual disabilities.

On the other hand, schools are probably doing a worse job at integrating brilliant children of any flavor. Our focus on tests and standardization comes at a price: creative, unusual thinkers are devalued. They are bored at the repetition and emphasis on rote knowledge. And teachers often note that such intellectual brilliance doesn’t always correlate with high test scores, so these kids are often dismissed as unteachable.

I am glad, in any case, that Dena and Becky wrote their book, and that at their first reading they—and Kate’s press—were received so warmly. I hope that this book adds yet another little bit of strength in the resistance to the corporatization, standardization, and dumbing down of our education and our literature.

Related:

8 Essential Homeschooling Ingredients

I am in the process of writing curriculum to go with my chapter book, Hanna, Homeschooler. (If you’d like to be notified when it’s available, please join my email list.) In the process, I got thinking about what made our early homeschooling years work. Here in no particular order are the ingredients that made our homeschooling recipe sweet, spicy, comforting, complex, and zesty!

#1: LARGE Paper

hannagraduationFor younger children, very LARGE sheets of paper are great! I recommend buying a roll of butcher paper like Hanna has. It can be cut in shorter lengths to serve as a large canvas, or longer pieces to create timelines, maps, full body outlines, and anything else you might think of.

#2: A Digital Camera

Digital cameras saved my homeschooling life! My son was born at the end of the film camera era; my daughter was fully of the digital world. I definitely saw the difference once we didn’t have to pay to take photos. As a homeschooling friend said to me, “the digital camera is your friend.” Take pictures of everything you do and notice during the day. It costs nothing, and in a pinch you can use the pictures for projects.

#3: Marker Set

An enormous set of every color of marker. You can buy such things online for quite cheap, and the array of colors can be very inspiring to children. By the way: don’t leave this out where your kids can access it anytime. Save it somewhere not visible so that when it comes out, it’s special.

#4: Notebooks

Notebooks. Our favorites were homemade using a friend’s spiral binder. We made them for specific purposes, such as “Science Notebook,” “Japanese Notebook,” and even “Sierra Notebook” for when we went to the mountains. Unless your child really needs lines, these should have blank paper and should be bound so they can easily be drawn in under any conditions. (A hardcover book-style binding is rather inconvenient in the woods!)

#5: The Internet

IMG_9846.JPGEven if you don’t want your kids to play on computers, start them early learning that it’s a valuable tool. (Our family had a no-screen policy in our house when our kids were little and continued with a limited-screen policy for a few more years.) “I don’t know–let’s look it up” is the most empowering thing a parent can say to a child. These days it doesn’t take a trip to the library (unless that’s where you get your Internet access). Starting very early, make sure to talk to them about how to decide whether to trust Internet sources.

#6: A Library Card

A great as electronic sources are, kids live in the tactile world. A real book that they can pick up anytime is much more important to have in your house than ten e-books on your tablet. Check out lots of books, even ones they didn’t choose. Unschoolers talk about “strewing”—leaving things around for your kids to discover. If you can go to the library without them, get books on subjects you think they’ll be interested in and “strew” them around the house.

#7: Craft Supplies

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These should be separated into two categories. You should always have craft supplies within reach that your children can access at will. If this means a messier house than you’d like, well, just remember that one day your kids will be teens and you will wish they’d be making messes at home more often! The other batch of supplies should be kept out of reach. These are things you should save for those “I’m bored” moments, or times when you are feeling tired, sad, cranky, or any other emotion that makes you a less-than-stellar homeschooler that day.

#8: Friends

When I started homeschooling my daughter, we were in a crisis. We had invested so much in trying to get school to work for her. We didn’t know a single homeschooler. And because of our daughter’s special needs, we didn’t really have school friends with kids her age, either. Our first few months of homeschooling were pretty darn awful. We sat around being angry at each other and lonely for friends. Finally, we joined a homeschool program to meet people. If you’re more outgoing, you might not need a formal group, but introverted me and my unusual daughter needed this. It changed our lives to be part of a group that offered both structured and unstructured time, and through this group we finally made friends.

Approaching formal writing

This post continues the discussion of teaching writing that I started with Healthy Writing Habits for Children. In that post, I discussed how to encourage younger children to write freely and comfortably by not stressing what is wrong with their writing. In this post, I’ll address the topic that parents are so often concerned with: preparing children for formal writing.


The most natural formal writing to approach with kids is letter-writing, both digital and physical.

First off, let’s admit it: Formal writing doesn’t yell out “this is fun” to most kids. In fact, teaching kids formal writing too early is often what makes them hate writing in general. Traditional schools excel at making kids hate writing, and the more they force writing lessons on students, the more students end up hating writing. Then they justify moving formal writing lessons even earlier, because so many students end up poor writers in high school.

One of the things that many people notice about homeschooled kids, though, is that excepting students with a specific disability, homeschoolers often end up being proficient writers with little instruction.

The less instruction the better

Is this really true? Should we stop teaching kids how to write? Certainly, this isn’t what I advocate. But I do believe that formal writing lessons need to be left until formal writing is a reality in students’ lives, not just something that school makes them do. This doesn’t mean that kids shouldn’t be learning to write, but they should be doing it in the developmentally appropriate ways:

  1. Read a lot of great writing
  2. Write a lot about things they are interested in
  3. Value the creation of narrative in any medium—audio, video, illustration, etc.

Don’t jump into formal writing too soon

How do you know a student is ready to approach formal writing? The answer is pretty simple: When the student’s life demands it.

The first formal writing kids do are things like letters to Grandma, Santa, or the Tooth Fairy. This formal writing is perfectly in line with a young child’s life. The next formal writing a child might want to do is start a blog or newsletter about something the child is passionate about. Again, this is formal writing but it draws from a need within the child.

As students progress, they might have to do small amounts of formal writing such as:

  • send an email asking for information about a program
  • send an email to a teacher about a class assignment
  • write a letter to the editor of the local newspaper on an issue they’re passionate about

Parents can encourage students no matter how young to write these communications themselves, with some parental guidance.

Bridging the chasm

But aren’t these simple types of formal writing terribly far from a formal essay? Well, not really. As students mature, they start to see the need to communicate as part of their education and/or work. You don’t have to teach students the execrable 5-paragraph essay format in order for them to understand how to write.

Students go through the analytical process anytime they ask for a raise in their allowance or permission to get a new pet:

  1. break the issue into its basic parts
  2. analyze it
  3. offer supporting information
  4. argue against common objections
  5. present the conclusion
Although the gap between the daily writing that your student does and formal writing may seem wide, kids are learning a lot that you will be able to draw on once they approach formal writing.

A child who is not afraid of writing will start developing formal writing skills as a matter of necessity, as long as the parents and teachers are encouraging and supportive. The first few times my son had to send an email for a formal purpose, I would ask him to send me a draft first. We’d go over it, then he’d rewrite and send. After that, he stopped asking for help with emails.

The first time he had to write something longer than an email for a serious purpose, it was simply second nature to him that he’d write out his ideas, we’d look at it together and discuss it, he’d edit and send it.

Writing assignments encourage the worst writing

The times I’ve had real trouble getting my son to write were the times that I simply assigned something to be written for me, to prove that he could do something. And each time I’ve done that, I’ve regretted it. His formal writing that had real purpose was so much more inspired than anything I ever assigned him.

There comes that day…

Eventually, as students recognize the need for formal writing in their lives, they will be willing to tackle the challenge.

What day is that? When your teen is mature enough to realize the point of formal writing without being told. The other day my son casually said to me, “You never read the essay I wrote for history class, did you?” Then he handed it to me. It was a beautifully written, college-level piece of writing about the history of immigration to the US. Yes, it was assigned writing, but he found a topic of interest to him, broke it apart and found supporting documentation, and presented it to his teacher because it was expected of him in the class he was taking.

The process he went through uses what I see as the three developmental stages in developing formal writing skills:

Developmental stage 1: Write about topics of interest and learn to love communication

Developmental stage 2: Learn to analyze, support, and argue an issue so that you can interact with the world

Developmental stage 3: Learn that formal writing has a real, immediate purpose in your life

Not every student is going to be an inspired, enthusiastic writer. But every student who can learn to communicate effectively can learn to do it in textual form. Our biggest job as homeschooling parents is not to make them hate it before they even start to learn.


My “Teaching Writing” series:

Now available