Review: Getting gifted homeschoolers (almost) right

The Miscalculations of Lightning Girl
by Stacy McAnulty
Random House, 2018

As a teacher of gifted learners, I am always interested in how they are portrayed in kids’ books. Generations of smart kids had to see themselves portrayed as clueless, clumsy, antisocial idiot savants. The Great Brain aside, it was definitely not cool to be smart.

And then there’s what mainstream writers do to homeschoolers. They’re weirdo Christian separatists who have never learned how to behave in polite society. At least sometimes they get to be vampires, too.

Stereotypes don’t come from nowhere—there’s almost always a kernel of truth. But it’s a writer’s job to go beyond the stereotype and find the real person.

Stacy McAnulty does just that in The Miscalculations of Lightning Girl.

This middle grade novel presents us with a familiar gifted homeschooler: Lucy is very weird. Struck by lightning when she was younger, she’s now a middle schooler who’s never been to school, whose OCD makes her stick out in any crowd, and who is immediately the target of Maddie, the alpha dog bully of her grade. Lucy is in school because her grandmother, who’s her guardian, believes she needs to be socialized. Yet another homeschooler/gifted kid stereotype.

But that’s where the stereotypes end, and the real child emerges.

First of all, Lucy does not buy her grandmother’s arguments for a minute. She knows that she’s not the problem—other kids and adults are the problem. Her grandmother (a wonderful character despite her stereotypical belief in the fallacy of socialization) has raised her well. She’s a self-possessed, thoughtful kid who makes the thoroughly believable choice not to let anyone know just how smart she is.

As she tells the girl who becomes her best friend, Windy, her OCD already makes it clear she’s weird. She doesn’t need any other baggage.

Charmingly, Lucy thinks her way through the problem and calculates how to get through this mandatory year of socialization. Just the fact that she’s able to do this disproves her grandmother’s opinion that she needs to be socialized—she gets what the other kids and the teachers need, and she sets about giving it to them.

She purposely becomes an A student, good enough to get into the college she wants to attend—but not a perfect A student. She calculates how to do just well enough not to gain too much attention.

She knows she’s not going to be acceptable to most of the other kids, so she doesn’t try. She presses on fulfilling her own needs for order (she has to sit and stand three times before sitting down in class) and cleanliness (the kids call her “the cleaning lady” because she wipes down every surface she comes into contact with using disposable wipes she carries in her backpack). But she’s thoughtful and kind to the other students, and soon at least two of them notice and accept her.

The miscalculation in the title does not refer to her attempt to deceive the others—she fits in well enough that the kids and teachers don’t guess just how smart she is until various circumstances lead to her unmasking. Her miscalculation is that she’ll be able to ride out this year without forming real friendships, experiencing real growth, and actually learning something (though not necessarily what her teachers think she’s learning).

I loved how realistic Lucy is, how all the characters (even the bully) are well-drawn and sympathetic, and how the book gets past almost all of the usual stereotypes and gifted homeschooler tropes.

I finished with only one question: Why does it take a strike of lightning to make Lucy smart? Why can’t she just be a generic smart kid, born that way? I know that the lightning offered a fun opportunity for characterization. But it’s a bit like writing a story about a white kid who wakes up Black and has to face racism. Why not just write about a Black kid?

Gifted kids are real. They come in all shapes and sizes. Some of them do have disabilities (called twice-exceptionalities in the gifted world). Some of them are socially awkward.

But they’re all people, and they deserve to be integrated into our schools—and our literature—as fully human and deserving of the same care and respect as everyone else. The fact that the author chose to make Lucy homeschooled gets at an ugly truth: Our society can be very, very nasty to kids who don’t fit in. Teachers largely don’t like being corrected. (Lucy actually keeps her mouth shut when her math teacher makes a mistake on a problem, for good reason.) Kids don’t like being bested, especially when it’s so easy for the gifted kid to do it. (Lucy is careful not to be the best at anything.)

But gifted kids are not an accident, not a strike of lightning. They’re just one side of the wonderful rainbow of human variability. Let’s just accept them and move on.

So yes, this is a great book for your gifted kid, but when they ask why they are the way they are, make sure they know that they are no accident. They are exactly the way they’re supposed to be.

Related:

The Search For The Girl Scientist In Literature

Books Featuring Homeschoolers

Trust the Transfer

“This was not my idea. I don’t want to be here.”

In my goal-setting course and in my book Homeschool with Confidence, I walk teens through the process of setting and achieving goals. And each semester, I ask the students to tell me whose idea it was for them to be there.

Since 2016, only one student has ever answered, “mine!”

Goal-setting sounds…bo-o-o-o-o-oring!

That’s the first hurdle I have to get over with teens, and I do it by keeping in mind the educational property of transfer. According to whoever wrote this web page for Yale, “‘Transfer’ is a cognitive practice whereby a learner’s mastery of knowledge or skills in one context enables them to apply that knowledge or skill in a different context.”

It’s an easy concept: a piano student practices scales and arpeggios not because they’re pretty music, but because playing them builds skills that they will apply when actually playing music.

But scales are… bo-o-o-o-o-oring! And many a piano student has quit in frustration when their teacher emphasizes scales too early.

So…start with enjoyment

I start by asking students what they like to do. Some of them respond with academic pursuits, some respond with so-called “extracurricular” activities, and many respond with…you guessed it…playing video games!

But no matter what their response, that’s where we start to build their goal-setting skills. Students are passionate about their passions! And yes, some students have passions that align well with their parents’ expectations. But many teens’ passions seem unimportant, or worse, a waste of time to their parents.

Build on passions

In my course, no pastime is a waste of time. If the only thing a kid can tell me really lights up their world is a videogame, well, that’s where we start. And I say this as someone who has played Minecraft once. (Short version: I started to walk, fell into a hole. Painstakingly climbed out of the hole, turned around, and fell back in. Went off to make dinner while my kids continued to play.)

It’s important not to judge any other person’s passion if you want to reach them, and in any case, the relative “value” of their passion is not important. I’ve had students whose initial goals were built on gaming, coding, photography, cleaning out a basement storage room, doing push-ups, and planning a D&D campaign. Their success at goal-setting had no relationship to any value that their parents or I ascribed to their goal—but their success was intrinsically tied to the value that they ascribed to their goal.

Focus on positive success

The human brain likes to succeed. Once we experience that feeling, we seek it out. If the only thing a kid ever succeeds at is getting attention for hitting another kid, that’s what they’ll seek out. If the only success a teen ever feels is hiding their gaming from their parents, that’s what they’ll seek out. Shaming our kids will always backfire, because shaming excites our brains and gives us a backwards sense of success by focusing attention on a negative attribute.

Sure, we don’t want our kid to be a bully or a 30-year-old living in their parents’ basement playing games all day. But the way we get the result we want is to set them up for success that feels just as good—or preferably better—than the negative attention that sends them in the wrong direction.

Step into their world

The way to get buy-in with goal-setting is to turn around and step into your teen’s world. What is important to them? What do they want to happen in the short-term? (Please don’t ask them what they want to be doing when they’re 30—they don’t even believe in 30 yet!)

Express your own enthusiasm and support of a goal, no matter how small. That kid who came into my class and made a goal of organizing a room in his basement initially did it to make a little space for himself. But how surprised was he when his dad came in and joined him in the effort? By the end of our 8-week course, they had created a new work space in their basement and were planning projects to do together.

Trust the transfer

Photo by Afif Kusuma on Unsplash

This is the hard part: You have to trust that as your child matures, they will automatically do a transfer of skills. Goal-setting is a skill that can be practiced using any activity, no matter how small. Once they need it, they will have the skill to apply to more “important” pursuits.

The parent of the student who was designing D&D campaigns told me that the student was “totally disorganized and couldn’t plan anything.” Well… I beg to differ. Each week, the student would upload snapshots of all the work they’d done, and it was impressive. Sure, it was “just Dungeons & Dragons,” but they were developing pretty awesome organizational skills. At the time, they didn’t yet value academics in the same way, but once they did, they’d be ready.

The student who only wanted to code every day and all day is a great example. They realized that in order to get into the college they wanted, they’d have to focus on academics, and so they applied their problem-solving skills to academics without a hitch—but only once they valued college as a goal.

We’re all works in progress

We parents spend a lot of time telling kids what to do, but how much time do we spend telling kids little tidbits about who we are, what we want, and how hard it is to get through a day knowing we haven’t yet reached our own goals? I’m not advocating bo-o-o-o-o-oring your kids with unnecessary details, but just a little bit of, “Wow, I’m really excited I finished that project” or “I think I bit off more than I could chew—any advice?” can let kids know that you’re still a work in progress, too.

Our teens may look “all grown up,” but they are works in progress, and with support and encouragement, they will be able to reach their goals.

Looking for a good online class? Here are some tips.

Before we start, here are a few key details about what online education is and isn’t:

  • Good online courses are not equivalent to the “distance education” provided by many schools during the pandemic. An online course should be designed to be online.
  • Online courses are usually standalone and this article won’t cover full-time online education (which I don’t usually recommend except in emergency situations).
  • Some children thrive in online learning; others don’t. Know your child, and don’t blame the class or the teacher if your child simply doesn’t take to online learning.
  • Good online learning requires parental involvement.

Choose a course through direct recommendations from parents when possible

At Athena’s where I teach, we get almost all of our new families through parent referrals. There’s a good reason for that: We are a known quantity and provide consistent quality. You can certainly take a chance on someone new, but don’t think that just because they are using a well-known platform that anyone can pay to use that it will be a good class. I suggest that you join a group on the platform of your choice that has parents whose children have similar needs to yours, and ask for recommendations.

If possible, the course should have a live, synchronous component

“Synchronous” just means that the students and teacher are sometimes in the same place at the same time, interacting in real time. When you start looking for classes, you’ll notice that this isn’t always the case. The reason I recommend it is that asynchronous learning really isn’t most kids’ cup o’ tea. No matter how engaging pre-recorded videos are, they don’t substitute for real, live interaction with a human.

One aside about video courses: Kids who have a specific passion might find that self-directed, asynchronous courses are very engaging for them. For example, I have known some science-crazy kids who just love video-based online science courses.

Asynchronous components should be engaging and keep the student connected to the material between live classes

“Asynchronous” materials are parts of the course that can be accessed anytime. A great live teacher will lose their audience if there is no connection to material outside of class. Students should be able to explore on their own and learn more deeply between live classes.

This is a screenshot of one of my asynchronous classrooms. I interact with the students via messaging and forums all week long, and the students interact with each other via forums and Open Chat.

There needs to be open, two-way communication between the teacher and the students

Lots of courses have distant, inaccessible teachers who pop on once a week, say their piece, and then leave. That may be OK for a college course, but not for kids. Kids should feel free to connect with their teacher anytime via email, a messaging system, or forums.

The most engaging online environments include multi-way social opportunities for the students

At the very least, students should be able to chat before and after class. On top of that, there should be open forums where students can trade ideas and collaborate between classes. Remember, learning is a social activity. One of the big mistakes that teachers new to online learning made was to try to shut down the sort of chatter and fun that makes a school worth going to.

My own opinion is that courses for younger children should be ungraded

Grades do encourage a small subset of students to achieve higher, but research shows that those students are already the high achievers. An ungraded, supportive environment is the most encouraging environment for the bulk of students.

Online learning can be as rewarding and fun, especially since you can bounce on a trampoline during class…

Yup, my kid really did attend a class at Athena’s from the trampoline! This photo was posed, however: he spent most of the class sitting still, enjoying learning outside!

CA legislators want to restrict Independent Study. Here’s why that’s a bad idea.

UPDATE: The changes to the law were enacted. Our local homeschool programs have responded in a variety of ways, from struggling to comply by canceling or postponing services, to hoping that what they’re doing will be seen as compliance. And it turns out that it’s not only homeschoolers are who inconvenienced. (Who woulda thought?) Neighborhood school administrators are experiencing the nightmare of having to send students home because of Covid exposure and finding that there is no way that their school can comply with the law. So they are losing ADA funding, on top of having to run schools in the middle of a pandemic.

I am darkly amused by this quote in a CalMatters article: “I know legislators are well-intended people, but they didn’t have enough educators’ perspectives.” They got plenty of perspectives, but chose to ignore them. That’s politics!


Following is a letter I wrote in conjunction with two other local homeschooling parent/teachers, Heddi Craft and Hiranya Kliesch. Readers of this blog know that I started homeschooling when my younger child was in crisis. I continued homeschooling when my older child’s academic needs couldn’t be served in a typical school. Heddi and Hiranya, both certified teachers, have similar stories.

Here in California, the portion of education law that allows children like ours to remain public school students while also homeschooling is threatened. Faced with the news that a significant portion of California parents are considering using this part of the law to keep their children home out of fear of Covid, legislators are considering changes to the law that would force those parents to make harder decisions.

However, legislators are largely unaware of the way that the law is used for many students with special needs across our state. Some of the changes they are proposing will decimate the public schools that were created to serve these students. Here in Santa Cruz County, our students can choose from site-based, family-focused programs like Alternative Family Education or Ocean Alternative, or they can enroll in Independent Study charter schools like Oasis or Ocean Grove. Although the student numbers are small, the influence of these programs on the lives of those students is immeasurable.

Please read this letter and share it with your local legislators. For a PDF version that you can send out, please click here.


Dear Senator Laird, 

Thank you so much for meeting with us. Below, please find a summary of the points we made to you that express our concerns over the proposed changes to Independent Study (IS).

Background:

Independent Study has been around for more than 30 years. The law was originally written for students with special needs: social/emotional issues, illness, travel, or unique learning needs. Not all IS programs are charters. Many families who might not otherwise attend public school families are a part of IS programs, bringing needed funds to the districts’ district-created programs.

How is Independent Study used?

Independent study is a family affair, with parents often serving as the child’s primary instructor with the support of a certified teacher. Students have the flexibility to explore their passions with one-on-one conversations and experiences with a parent. Families rely on the flexibility of IS and appreciate the need to check in on a monthly, not daily, basis, especially in situations regarding illness, anxiety, or travel.

Concerns:

  • Our first concern is with the change to daily synchronous instruction (whether opportunity or requirement) in 51747 (e)(1-3). Requirements to have daily video or in-person check-ins with all students dilute or restrict the much more meaningful interactions already happening. AFE and Ocean Alternative offer valuable class days in addition to meeting with parents. Monthly meetings are lengthy and generate deep discussions about learning while optional class days allow students to do group activities, often in multi-age settings. In addition, students who are travelling or have health or social/emotional issues will have difficulty committing to daily check-ins if they are required.
  • Our second concern is with the requirements of detailed tracking in 51747.5 (a-d). Planning and daily schedules are unique to each child in most established IS programs, so requirements for daily tracking means making an individual lesson plan and gradebook entries for each child. Independent study is designed so that students who need more time on a topic can work as slowly as needed and those who have already mastered a topic need not waste time on work they already understand. In addition, the one-on-one aspect of independent study with parent and child means there isn’t always a paper trail for learning experiences. Teachers would have to write up unique learning plans and gradebook entries in virtually every subject for every student, significantly adding to their workload.
  • Finally, it is unfair to families who are enrolling/signing contracts for the coming year to then have the Independent Study laws rewritten with potentially impactful changes after the school year has already begun. This doesn’t give families a chance to make choices about their schooling plans in advance. These changes would negatively impact currently existing, successful and longstanding programs such as Alternative Family Education (AFE) and Ocean Alternative Education Center (OAEC) in Santa Cruz County.

Recommendation:
We recommend adding a tier or category to the existing programs and calling it Distance Learning (or another name) for the temporary students who would not attend classes due to the pandemic, rather than changing the Independent Study laws without accounting for the unintended consequences to unique and long-standing programs like ours.

Please see the attached recommendation for preserving the existing IS laws.

Thank you,

Compiled by:
Hiranya Kliesch, certified teacher and AFE parent 
Heddi Craft, current Ocean Alternative teacher and former OAEC parent 
Suki Wessling, former AFE and OAEC parent, current online education teacher 


Preserve Existing Independent Study Laws

The best solution is to create a new category for Distance Learning that specifically addresses the current, temporary needs of the population you are intending to serve. We request that you respect the provisions made by the original IS laws for the population they were intended to serve in the following ways. These requests were compiled by parents and teachers with extensive, pre-pandemic experience in how Independent Study (IS) programs are implemented in their communities. 

  1. Respect that Independent Study has a long history of serving a wide variety of at-risk and unusual learners. The use of IS for a wider range of students throughout the pandemic was a temporary adaptation.
  2. Understand the special needs populations that IS serves:
    • Working full-time to support their family
    • Avoiding classroom settings due to mental health needs
    • Going through gender and identity transitions
    • Medically fragile (chemotherapy, life impacting illness, addiction recovery, etc.)
    • Pregnant or parenting
    • Enrolled in Community College courses concurrently
    • Traveling for competitive sports or work in the entertainment industry
  3. Continue to allow maximum flexibility in these programs, due to the needs of families and students to schedule their learning and interactions in appropriate ways.
  4. Remove the mandate for daily meetings with staff, as this does not recognize the high value that students receive from weekly and monthly in-depth interactions. Ref: 51747 (e)(1-3)
  5. Respect teacher workload and do not increase daily tracking that will take away from the value of student-teacher interactions. Ref: 51747.5 (a-d)
  6. Respect contracts already signed by IS students at schools across the state for the 2021-22 school year.

Compiled by:
Hiranya Kliesch, certified teacher and AFE parent 
Heddi Craft, current Ocean Alternative teacher and former OAEC parent 
Suki Wessling, former AFE and OAEC parent, current online education teacher 


For more information:

An Open Letter to California Lawmakers about Restricting Educational Choice

Dear Lawmaker,

Today as I read in CalMatters that state lawmakers have introduced an amended budget bill that would require schools to offer independent study programs, it occurred to me that Independent Study is a particularly important issue for LGBTQ+ students. I am writing to urge you to keep our at-risk students in mind when you consider how to vote on educational issues.

Although we all hope that our students would be able to attend the school of their choice, sometimes this simply isn’t possible. Especially at sensitive times such as when they first come out, when they socially transition, and when they are going through medical transitions, transgender students often choose to transfer to Independent Study (IS), either permanently or on a short-term basis.

As you may have noticed, IS programs are under fire from California lawmakers. Starting with 2019’s ill-timed AB 1505/7 bills that restricted IS charter schools right before a pandemic, continuing with AB 1316 (which thankfully didn’t reach the governor’s desk), and now with Gov. Newsom pushing further restrictions in his rewrite of Independent Study law, transgender and other at-risk students are facing the clear possibility that they will not be allowed to seek a fair, free, and appropriate education.

The fact is that in-person, full-time schooling does not work for some students, and it is directly harmful for some. And the students that are most harmed by mandatory in-person learning are those who are the most vulnerable. Even restrictions like requiring mandatory daily contact with teachers places an undue burden on students who live in remote places, who are medically fragile, or who choose to homeschool in the real world, free of the narrow restrictions imposed by computer-based learning.

At different points during my children’s educations, we chose to homeschool. We were so lucky to live in Santa Cruz County, where we had our choice of IS programs. My students were full-time public school students while also getting an appropriate education. Both of them are now in college, one at a UC, the other at a small private college. They had their choice of colleges that suit their needs, just as they had their choice of K-12 education that suited their needs.

I beg you to keep our at-risk students in mind when you vote on educational matters. Restricting independent study, whether it’s through a district school or a charter school, is discriminatory and wrong. So many students are saved by that time at home, and go on to happy, healthy, productive adult lives. Furthermore, allowing IS programs to offer appropriate services to homeschoolers keeps those families in the public school system, a win on both sides.

Thank you again for taking time to consider the effect of your votes on at-risk, LGBTQ+ students.

Sincerely,

Susana Wessling

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