If this school year has a theme, it’s color coding...

Ever since my kids started homeschooling, or rather, ever since I started schooling more than one child, I have taken to color coding. E was always pink, S was purple, and F was blue. Up until yesterday, the color coding was mainly done in my record keeping. Each kid’s schedules were highlighted in their individual colors. For a while, I did all of my record keeping in just one planner. That was messy, albeit colorful. I briefly tried out a record-keeping software program which didn’t have a color coding option. I’m old school anyway, and preferred writing everything out by hand. So one planner, turned into three, but at least I could color code in them. And yes, that’s an awful lot of writing, and I’m sure that that may seem tedious to many. For me, it’s soothing.

This year, after many many MANY episodes of “this-is-mine-no-this-is-mine,” I decided to color code just about everything—schedules and all school supplies. What couldn’t be purchased in color is initialed. What couldn’t be initialed stays with me. I’m like the keeper of the keys. I’ve debated making my personal stash of supplies available to the kids in a lending library sort of way. Okay, I haven’t really planned on this, but writing it all out makes me wish I’d actually follow through with this idea. After years of homeschooling in a cramped apartment where everything seems to go missing, I’ll hold fast to any idea that gives me a semblance of order.

As usual, each year comes with a whole bunch of new expectations, attempted improvements, and a dose of anticipation. This time it will come with an added bit of color.

"Shaolin Family" Experiment Update, Take One

Sheesh! I've been MIA, and I'm sorry. Lots of stuff going on in my head and in my life. Nothing major, but definitely time consuming. Even my precious Korean dramas have taken a back seat. And if that doesn't tell you something, nothing will.

This whole "Shaolin family" experiment (in reference to a previous post in which I shared my lofty goals on how we were to address the needs of our bodies, minds, and spirits) has been tough, yet unbelievably rewarding. Finding time for everything is challenging, and we haven't stuck to it as closely as I would have liked. More often than not, it's the physical/body stuff that gets tossed to the wayside. We really need to work on that. That said, our prayer life is AWESOME. We went from a few prayers said at bedtime and before meals, to (recently) starting Morning and Evening prayer (Lauds and Vespers) using the Shorter Christian Prayer book, followed by a Morning Offering, Trinity Prayer, and Guardian Angel prayer. At noon we say the Angelus, at 3:00 p.m. the Divine Mercy Chaplet, and then we recite the rosary in the evening (as well as Vespers as mentioned before). That sounds like a lot, but it's really been such a great change for us. It has introduced a steady rhythm to our days, one that we had been lacking. And in addition to that, it has also given us all a sense of calm. The peaceful reflection, particularly in the morning, just feels right. We feel more capable of managing whatever the day brings with it. It's kind of hard to put it into words, but my soon-to-be 16 year old said, "Mom, this feels great," and I agree with her.

In addition to the above, my plans for personal spiritual enrichment have also included making adoration once per month, and finding time for more spiritual reading. We made it to adoration on the first Friday of the month, and I hope that this remains consistent. The spiritual reading however, hasn't actually happened yet (aside from the Divine Office that is). Again, I think it's more of a time management issue.

As mentioned above, my plans for how to address the physical/body bits of this whole undertaking are sorely lacking. I've determined that perhaps I was being too ambitious. Understatement alert! Rather than fit it ALL in, i.e., conditioning, tai chi, forms, weight training, etc., I'd do best to just choose one or two on which to focus each day. Being up early for Lauds really helps with the morning alertness factor, and makes me more likely to just "do it already." I also figured that I could give us some days "off" on kung fu class days. Okay, so technically, those really aren't off days at all since we'll be in class later anyway.

As for the mind bit of this lofty plan, things are moving along nicely. Another positive that has come out of this is that I'm realizing just how much time it takes us to do things. Some of those realizations have been positive, others haven't been exactly positive, but rather, enlightening. For instance, I've found that my son is lagging considerably behind his sisters when it comes to written work. He composes well, it's just the physical act of writing that is arduous for him. I can't decide if it's a perfectionist trait, or if he just finds it genuinely difficult. I always knew that this was an issue, but I didn't realize just how much of an issue, or how time consuming a problem it was until now. It doesn't appear to be dysgraphia either. He doesn't reverse his letters, and he's generally neat, with all of his letters being of consistent size. He's also a decent speller, with a broad vocabulary. I find that when he's composing something and writing it as he goes along, he is faster than when asked to recopy what he's written, as in the case of writing a final draft. We'll be taking him in to get his vision checked as well, in case it's a tracking problem, or just that he may need vision correction, and in the meantime, I'm checking online for ideas on how to address this issue (i.e., what I can do here, or where I should go for help with this). What's weird is that he doesn't seem to have a fine motor skill problem either. He's a tinkerer, and he puts models together with small pieces, and he's able to make the tiniest paper airplanes known to man. Seriously! He also handles his utensils properly, even chopsticks. Frankly, I'm confused by all of this. This week, we'll probably be focusing on handwriting, and I just may make it into a game or something as a motivator.

There's more to share, but I'll save it for another post and another day. ;-)

High School, Past and Present

It’s homeschool curriculum sorting and planning time again. Every year, while perusing catalogs, checking in on message boards, referencing online scope and sequence guidelines, as well as state standards to be met, I’m struck with a huge realization: In my own experience of public and parochial school education, all of those guidelines and standards were seldom met.

If I were to list the college preparatory classes I took while in high school, it would surely sound impressive. In four years of high school, I took the following mathematics courses: Algebra I, Geometry, Algebra II, Trigonometry, and Calculus. I took the following science courses: Biology, Chemistry, Anatomy & Physiology/Marine Biology (two semesters of one, followed by two semesters of the other), and Physics. That sounds like a lot of math and science, doesn’t it? And yet, it was a shallow education, and most of my teachers were either ill-equipped to help us, or just so frustrated that they had given up years earlier. Well, with one exception—my Biology teacher, who also taught the combination course of Anatomy & Physiology/Marine Biology, was truly a gem. She was the teacher who stared us down, dumb-founded, when she learned that as freshmen, we had never in our lives had a single geography lesson, and not one of us could name all of the continents. She was the teacher who really took her job seriously, and set out, as much as was possible, to fill in major gaps in understanding, regardless of the subject.

My school was apparently not well funded. We didn’t have textbooks for any of the sciences or for history. We did however, have textbooks for foreign languages and math. These textbooks were old and worn, not a problem in and of itself, but I remember receiving a book that had belonged to one of my sisters nine or ten years earlier, and in the inside front cover, where kids used to list the condition of the book, she had listed it as having been in fair condition. Ten years of food spills, being tossed into lockers, and dropped on the floor, or otherwise abused, had rendered the condition of my copy as incredibly poor. Again, this was not a huge problem. I mean, at least I had a book. But as mentioned, I didn’t have textbooks for the sciences or for history. As a matter of fact, I had never had a history textbook in my life (i.e., up until college). Even in the seventh grade when I had a super enthusiastic history buff for a teacher, we didn’t have books. But that didn’t seem to make a difference. I learned more history in his class than I ever had.

Speaking of history, our state requires three social studies classes for high school graduation. Two of these must be U.S. History I and II. My own experience with high school history was a joke. The football coach taught our class by reading out of the only copy of the history book on hand. The text didn’t lend itself well for this and was so dry, that most of us would just zone out by paragraph four. From time to time, he’d pass out dittos for reference. And that was it. U.S. History II was an even bigger joke. This was one of the teachers who had just given up. He sat at his desk, with a newspaper in hand, and he’d take attendance. That was it, and I’m not even joking. It was quite literally a free study hall period. If you had attended most of the classes, you’d be exempt from the final. I was exempt. He went over what was to be on the final in one day, and that was to 1. List the presidents in order, and 2. List the presidents that were assassinated.

The sciences weren’t as bad. I do remember doing some science, although conceptually my understanding was limited, but was shocked later to learn that there should have been some math involved, particularly when studying Chemistry and Physics. I asked my husband if he remembered Algebra or Calculus based sciences, and he said that he didn’t either, so I’m sure my experience is not unique.

My math experience was horrendous. Algebra I was intuitive enough for me to figure things out on my own. Geometry wasn’t as easy for me. I don’t remember anything about my Trigonometry experience. Algebra II was confusing, and Calculus was impossible. My poor teacher was at a complete loss as to how to help me. When he’d complete writing out the solution to a problem on the board, I’d always say, “I don’t get it.” So he’d erase the entire thing and start all over again. But I still didn’t get it. And there was no Internet to come to the rescue. Obviously, there was some major foundational stuff I was missing. I knew I wasn’t uneducable, and yet I was struggling so much. At one point, after getting back countless calculus tests littered with question marks, the teacher asked to have a student-teacher conference. No parent-teacher conference was suggested, as by then, my Dad had already passed away, and my Mom didn’t understand English anyway. In any case, the teacher asked me,

“Patty, are you planning to go into any of the math or science fields?”

By the time he asked this question, I was sufficiently scared away by this idea, not to mention that I had had my heart set on studying English since the time I was nine years old. My reply of, “No,” seemed to ease his mind. He told me that he didn’t want to see my grade point average suffer, considering I was acing every other class, so he decided to pass me for this reason. And so I passed, but not really. I still feel awful about that. On the one hand, I’m glad I managed to look good on paper, but on the other hand, it just felt rotten to feel like I had just gotten a free pass. Calculus has been the thorn in my side ever since, but I am determined to figure it out, especially now that I’ve had the opportunity to relearn math from scratch. I figure that I should have covered all of the foundational stuff this time around. I hope?

Now, what I’m not mentioning in all of the above is that in addition to all of the issues discussed here, there were oh so many other things we had to deal with as students at this school, including, but not limited to, a whole host of inappropriate student-teacher relationships. At times it really felt as if the motivation to establish these “relationships” trumped the motivation to educate any of us. And I’d be lying if I said that this sort of stuff didn’t contribute at least in part to our decision to homeschool our children. It wasn’t THE reason, but it certainly crossed my mind from time to time.

As for high school today, I can’t tell for sure if or how things have changed. I do think that parents now wouldn’t tolerate a complete lack of textbooks, and generally, I think that parents are more prone to jump in and help their kids when they’re stuck. I keep hearing accounts of parents stating that their kids’ school projects turn out to be school projects for the parents. I don’t remember this ever being the case when I was a kid, but I don’t remember having a very project-heavy education either. My daughter has mentioned that in speaking to friends, she has noted that a lot of their education has been “excerpted.” When I asked her to elaborate, she mentioned that while her friends’ school reading lists sounded fairly impressive, that further discussion illuminated the fact that what they had read were excerpts of the literature, rather than complete novels, and that text books are often skimmed. This wasn’t altogether surprising for me, because I remember that sort of stuff happening when I was in school as well. But it’s easy to forget sometimes, particularly when you’re the one in charge of your child’s education. It’s very easy to set the bar way up high, and then feel like a failure when you haven’t accomplished every single thing you’ve set out to accomplish. And I don’t want to be the parent that says, “Well, they’re not doing as much in school anyway…” because well, I don’t really know what they’re doing, and part of me doesn’t really care. I didn’t set out to home educate my children just so that I could reproduce exactly what others were doing. And yet year after year, I find myself referencing guidelines, just to feel safe and secure that I’ve complied at least enough for us to have achieved equivalency…at least on paper. I know that what’s on paper however, is seldom far from the truth, and it’s hard to quantify my kids’ education in so shallow a manner. And to be fair, I don’t think other-schooled kids’ educations can be quantified this way either. It does make it convenient for the paper pushers though.

The Wannabe Shaolin Family

It’s not unlike me to get all carried away with making big plans. Often the instigating factor is a cool news article, a message board discussion, or a Youtube video. One time I saw something about making your own soap. That’s not a huge deal, right? But within minutes, it wasn’t just a bar of soap I was envisioning. I was envisioning my own line of soaps. Then there was the time I wanted to be a polyglot after watching videos of Tim Ferriss speaking about a half dozen languages. This is me we’re talking about here, so of course I zeroed in on the most difficult language ever. I watched one video lesson for Mandarin, and got so anxious over the enormity of learning such a difficult language, that I abandoned the idea. I’d still love to learn Mandarin, just not right now. We are already learning Greek, Latin, and Korean in our homeschool, but those don’t inspire nearly as much anxiety in me as Mandarin does. At least they’re all phonetic. And then there was that time when I joined Flylady’s housekeeping email list, only to burn out by day two. I haven’t entirely abandoned Flylady though. I just found her book much less anxiety inducing than all of those emails I was receiving.

Now lest it be assumed that I have absolutely no stick-to-it-tiveness, that’s not the case either. I do stick with things that matter…like the homeschooling, which I’ve been committed to for eleven years. For a lot of other things however, I think I’m part magpie, getting perpetually distracted by anything shiny. Whether this new plan we’re envisioning really matters enough to me, and to us as a family, or whether it is just another shiny thing to distract us, is still to be determined. That said, it’s something the kids say they want to do as well (read: it’s not just my idea), and I feel good about it. And that’s not exactly the feeling I had with all of the soapmaking- polyglot-Flylady stuff.

It all started as a discussion with the kids over working on improving ourselves, stemming from an earlier discussion we had had on Lent. We talked about leading a lifestyle that would focus on improving our bodies, our minds, and our spirits. The more we thought about it, the more our ideas started to resemble a simplified, hybrid form of Benedictine monasticism replete with Shaolin conditioning. It’s so funny that my kids are sometimes so much like me; it’s crazy. We all seem to be attracted to the idea of asceticism. We find the idea incredibly romantic. Now of course, I don’t mention asceticism here to suggest that that is our intention. That would be a way bigger plan than the one we had envisioned. In reality, our plan is simply to find our balance—a healthy balance. One that would help keep us focused on things that already matter to us. The key here is simplicity.

We figured that we already had the “mind” aspect covered, what with homeschooling already being such a large part of our days. Granted, there is always room for improvement. Autonomy on all things school related continues to be an issue. While I can trust my teen to work well independently most of the time, the younger two still need a bit of prodding along. My presence has an almost magical effect on their output. If I’m as far away as the next room, they’re less productive. The plan is to schedule well-organized time blocks, and set clear initiatives and goals to meet each day.

The “spiritual” aspect has had a bit of a spike in recent weeks, thanks to it being Lent. There has been more stuff going on at church, and more related discussions about relevant spiritual issues at home. But as with the “mind” stuff above, there is still ample room for improvement here as well. I’m thinking more time spent on meditation and reflection on the rosary, the stations of the cross, the Divine Mercy chaplet, etc. More silence would definitely be welcome as well. I figure that at the very least it would be an exercise in self-control, for all of us! Our plan here is to start the day simply, with a Morning Offering, and then move on from there.

The “body” aspect of this glorious plan of ours is quite possibly the part that needs the greatest overhaul. We’ve already been striving to eat healthy, cut our sugar intake, and avoid overly processed foods while out of the house. Our fitness levels, while better than they were once upon a time, are still lacking. On our Kung Fu nights, we do okay, but our days off are primarily spent on sedentary activities. The plan here is to incorporate more Kung Fu. We would want to include daily conditioning (my son is petitioning hard for iron body training), as well as stretching, stance drills, and forms. Tai chi and Qi Gong would work best in the morning, while the other higher intensity work would fit best in the early afternoon.

The kids and I brainstormed ways on how to fit it all in, and while we have a rudimentary idea as to how our schedule would look, it hasn’t been put into practice yet. It doesn’t look crazy or outlandish, or even all that difficult to follow (I think). I’m sure that many families do a lot of the same, with some subtle differences. I’m envisioning a Catholic family that sends their children to school, where they also partake in sports as an extra-curricular activity. Their children would already be getting a lot of what I describe above, so in that sense, this is not a novel idea at all.

I’m thinking that after a bit of tweaking, next week will be our first full week trying this out. We’ll either feel healthier and stronger in body, mind, and spirit, or we’ll burn out. I’m hoping for the former. If not, it’s back to the drawing board. This is not an idea I’d want to just abandon.

School, a New-Used Vehicle, and Other Stuff

Again, I've gone and neglected this blog. For my loyal reader (yeah, singular--you know who you are! lol), I am sorry.

It's our third day back at school and already it's been like a roller coaster. The kids seem content enough to be back at it full time, but I'm still getting over the end-of-summer blues. Things were so relaxed and stress free for a while there, and then, BAM! Because of this, we all decided to take a few weeks off of the kung fu. And then the hurricane interfered with our plan to finally attend class the week before last, and of course, last weekend was a long holiday. So we've been out even longer than we had anticipated. It's been nice to be off. But the longer we delay, the harder it will be to return.

And then CCD starts up again this coming Sunday, and for some reason, I'm irrationally stressed about that as well. This will be my fifth year teaching CCD. This year, like the last, I'll be teaching the 2nd graders preparing for first penance and Holy Eucharist. We're using a new curriculum again this year, so that's another program I have to adjust to. I've thumbed through the text, but I've yet to really sit and read through a series of lessons to get a feel for it. I think I'm most worried about getting it all done. We use large school editions of the texts, rather than the smaller, "intended-for-once-a-week" manuals, and I suspect that this is because many teachers are able to get through the shorter books at a clip, leaving these teachers with nothing to cover for the last few weeks of the year, whereas I tend to stray from the text all of the time. I never feel that the text explains things well enough to foster a deeper understanding of the Faith. I know I can teach the material with just the shorter volumes, and expound on topics as necessary. But frequent straying from the larger text isn't really feasible long term, as I'd just get further and further behind. It's expected that we get through an entire chapter per week, and we only have about a one hour session (not counting time spent in choir practice). Add into this the time spent just on classroom management, it just seems like a tall order for me, especially with classes that sometimes exceed 20 students. I will have a teacher's aide this year, so I'll have some help on that front, thank God!

But yeah, about school...

I'm trying something a bit different this year. I'm starting off with the younger two. So far, this appears to have been a good idea. They're highly distractible, so getting them done nice and early has been a positive change. Rather than having everyone rotate times spent with me, it's just a nice long block with the younger two first, and then one-on-one time (mostly troubleshooting problem areas) with my teen. She spends most of her morning working independently...viewing her math lesson on the computer, taking notes from her textbooks, working on her language copybook (mostly her Latin paradigms per the Dowling Method), and reading her literature selections. We're still trying to work out little things like meeting deadlines, and learning to more efficiently schedule time spent working independently. This is a big challenge for her. It's almost like she sees her morning as this long, endless stretch of time, and doesn't realize the need to schedule her time appropriately in order to accommodate everything. I've suggested time limits for certain tasks, but she hasn't seemed to take to them just yet. I'm -->thisclose<-- to just handing her a wind-up timer to see if that would help. I suppose it would. We'll see. I don't think my expectations are irrational, and neither does she, so at least we're on the same page on that note.

Let's see...what else?

Oh, my husband's friend at work just gave us his mini-van. It seems his sister recently bought a new car, and passed her old one along to him, so we luckily became the happy recipients of his old mini-van! It's lovely, too! And we couldn't be more grateful, particularly as the Banshee, i.e., our little eyesore of a vehicle, has seen better days. We're just relieved to have a vehicle large enough to accommodate us all, with enough room to spare so that we are able to take my Mom out when she's up for taking a spin. The kids are over-the-moon excited over it, as it's all one even color (LOL!) and it has a CD player. That's like cutting edge for them. Sad, but true. Our older vehicles only had tape decks (this blog is called "Ye Olde School" for a reason after all), neither of which worked. And the radio in the Banshee was temperamental, too, and would only go on for my husband. I'm just delighted that our coming and going won't be obnoxiously heralded by loud screeching anymore. That got old really quick. The kids found it amusing some of the time, but most of the time, I'm sure it embarrassed them. My repeated assertions to them that routinely dealing with such annoyances would only build character, started to fall on deaf ears. They were definitely ready to move on, and I can't blame them. I was too.

Indecision Tango

Now that freshman year is nearly past us (well, yeah, just nearly…we’re still schooling throughout the summer months…finishing up labs, and attempting to complete our Algebra text), what to do for a career, or specifically, what to major in, has become the near-constant topic of discussion with my young teen. She went from just taking all school related things lightly, and only really “worrying” over trivial things like what to wear, or how to keep her hair pin-straight, to getting incredibly serious and kind of wound up over this one issue. Her inner voice seems to be shouting, “Just make a decision already!” It doesn’t help that her younger sister and brother seem to know exactly, or somewhat exactly, what they want to do with their lives—all subject to change of course. S wants to be an artist and she seems to have always just known this. She sometimes switches her focus, from computer animation to general illustration, but it’s all about art with her. F on the other hand, just wants to be rich. He’s set on becoming some kind of business mogul and spends most of his free time accounting for every penny he owns. He regularly contemplates how he can make his money grow—not to mention, he keeps close tabs on what everyone owes him. S tops his list of debtors, owing him a whopping $26.75! But poor E has no idea. I can’t remember E ever knowing, or being sure of what she wanted to be, other than maybe a fairy princess when she was two. I guess all other options paled in comparison for her. Actually, now that I think of it, there was a time when she showed a bit of an interest in fashion design, largely due to our watching a season of Project Runway (the season in which the oh so “fierce” Christian Siriano won). I totally ran with it. My Mom, at my prompting, bought her a fashion design game, and I bought her a fashion illustration how-to book. Soon afterwards came the purchase of a sewing machine and few how-to-sew guides for her to wade through. All remained largely unused. Obviously, it was just a passing fancy. Not a problem. We all go through it. Now, while this indecision is not uncommon at her age, as I’ve assured her countless times, it really seems to be bugging her greatly right now. So far my advice to her has been to just relax.

I know my response surprised E, as I’m not exactly the sort to relax about anything. I’m sure she’s thinking that I’m just disregarding her feelings on the matter, and making light of it all, but really, I’m not. While I do tend to stress over things way too much, often crediting my tendency for worry as my main motivator in life (Well, that and guilt. Guilt is a tremendous motivator, but it’s not exactly a healthy route to take anywhere), that’s the last thing I want for my daughter. The truth is that once upon a time, I never used to understand people who just didn’t know what they wanted to do with their lives…yes, even if they were as young as 15. I was a stickler like that. Considering this, my laid back answer to “relax” was frankly out-of-character for me, and E called me out on it. Yes, it was out-of-character for “old me.” That would be the “Me” of last week, or in all truthfulness, the “Me” of a few years ago when I was still apt to attempt doing all things “by-the-book.” Old Me (i.e. the flashcard parent I once was) would have panicked, and suggested immediate career testing, or several books on the topic as a prompt for ideas. I wouldn’t have known another way to respond. My own experience was so different. I had practically declared a major at the age of eight, after briefly entertaining, and later abandoning, the thought of becoming a veterinarian and/or zoologist at age seven. Being diagnosed with allergies to pet dander laid waste to those pipe dreams, but I quickly bounced back and settled on the dream of becoming a writer.

So it was, that from the age of eight, I was certain that I’d go to college and study English. I eventually did. And while I may not be a published author, I do still get lots of enjoyment out of writing whenever I have the time. It certainly hasn’t turned out to be a very lucrative choice for me, but I never really cared for anything else. That said, I think that I probably cared for it as much as I did because I felt I had an aptitude for language arts. It’s like a “What came first—the chicken, or the egg?” scenario. Are we drawn to certain careers or choices of major because we have an aptitude for them, or because we are just interested in the subject? Does a natural inclination for something automatically lead to our becoming interested? I know that I was also interested in topics and activities for which I had little skill, but I never would have considered those as feasible career options. The aptitude connection seemed to be it for me. But I’m sure it varies with people. I’ve met people who have shown great talent in different areas, and not care one whit about any of them. That kind of effortless talent, despite lack of interest is mind-boggling to me. I figure that if I were just disposed to be good at something, I’d just do it contentedly. But of course, that’s just me speculating. Besides, I just can’t imagine being super great at anything I feel just lukewarm about. I’d imagine that I’d be using only a small fraction of my potential, which is an amazing thing to ponder. I mean, if someone manages to be super talented even while disinterested, just imagine what they would be able to accomplish if they were able to channel all of their interest and potential into their particular area of aptitude?

So yeah, I told my daughter to relax. This whole homeschool experiment has taught me many things, including a lot about just letting go, allowing things to progress organically, and just plain RELAXING. It’s also taught me that I can be good at a number of things for which I previously thought I had no aptitude. I had a severe math-phobia when I was in school. Now that I’ve had the opportunity to teach and re-teach myself, I’ve discovered that I love it. It’s still challenging, but not in a horrible, “I’ll never get this!” kind of way. I feel I’ve become more logical, and more methodical in my thinking. I find myself doing extra math for fun, just to exercise my brain. So obviously, what you’re good at or interested in at 15, is not necessarily what you will be good at or interested in at 18 and first embarking on your journey through college, or at 38 and juggling the demands of family and adulthood. If I had to decide on a major today, I’m not so sure I’d be able to make up my mind. My interests have grown exponentially over the years, and this allows me to better identify, for the first time ever, with the legion of “undecideds” out there.

I tried to impress upon my daughter that we are constant works in progress, with evolving interests, and that it is not uncommon for several of us to succumb to long periods of indecision at various points in time. Tiger mothers all around the world would recoil at the thought, I’m sure. And then I remembered a story about one of my college roommates. I told E the story in an effort to illustrate how she’s not the first, nor the last, to face this kind of uncertainty. I may as well retell it here.

One day as our then current semester was winding up to a close, one of my college roommates approached me with a conundrum. She was just one semester shy of completing her senior year, and she had still not declared a major. This was the stuff of nightmares for Old Me. I guess she was feeling pressure from her parents and her guidance counselor to “just decide already,” so she was desperate to just pick something willy nilly. She had jotted down a list of the courses she had already taken and passed, and asked me to help her make sense of it all. We both pored over the undergraduate course handbook, and after a few hours of deliberation, I looked over at her and said, “You’re an English major.”

“I’m a what?”

Yeah, it was like a “Harry, you’re a wizard…” moment, if ever there was one. We were both surprised. For starters, I would never have pegged her for an English major. I kept thinking that she would probably be better suited for something like public relations, or communications. But the list of courses before us told a different story. She seemed to continuously gravitate towards English courses. She had counted them all as electives, and while some were not purely English courses, they still fit somewhat under the big English umbrella. After some more discussion, we found that she just needed about three more English classes to fulfill her major obligation. It was a big “a-ha” moment for the both of us. I’m embarrassed to say that for me, what I learned that day sort of cheapened my opinion of the way that English as a major was regarded at our college. I mean, some of the classes that qualified as English were just general, broad humanities courses. It occurred to me that you could have taken just a handful of literature and/or writing courses and still have met the English major requirements. While this wasn’t the case with my roommate, who had indeed taken more than a few literature courses, I wondered how many students managed to earn a B.A. in English, with barely any literature or writing courses under their belts. Now, despite the happy ending, I can’t say for certain that this was the best choice for her. I don’t even know what she’s doing now, or how declaring English as a major helped or hindered her along the way. What I do know, however, is that her interests, unbeknownst to her at the time, were clear by the choices she made.

After listening to my roommate’s story, E was still perplexed, asking questions along the lines of, “How does this apply to me?” Apparently, my former roommate’s late college career indecision and eventual epiphany moment didn’t inspire much serenity in my daughter after all. I vainly tried to assuage the situation by telling her that the way I interpreted the whole experience, had me believing that sometimes, what we are most drawn to is not always so obvious. The significance of my roommate’s propensity for choosing English-related courses time and time again went unnoticed for years. I took this as proof positive that this could be the way it is with many other people as well. We just don’t always see the big picture, or how all of our interests and aptitudes can be linked to create the perfect assortment of skills necessary to become a great librarian, lawyer, bookkeeper, healthcare worker, filmmaker, educator, etc. So for now I’m just suggesting that E look more closely at what activities and topics she finds herself regularly seeking out. The answer may be there somewhere, but it’s also entirely possible that it’s not there yet. Beyond this, I seem to be currently tapped out of ideas. I may just find myself consulting a few career books on my own to prepare for when this becomes the topic du jour again. And if pressed, I may even urge her to take a general aptitude test that lists career niches to consider. But those wouldn’t be my first options. As a mother, it is inevitable for me to see what I believe are her strengths. E is a nurturer. She really is. Everyone who has been in her presence for any significant length of time can plainly see this about her. She is incredibly empathetic and has such a beautiful spirit. I could possibly suggest careers in healthcare or social work, but that would be a bit like leading the witness. There’s a fine line, I think, between tossing out general suggestions, and full on prodding. So I’ll tread lightly. I really do favor more of an organic unfolding for this sort of thing. But I’m not sweating it for once, and I hope E learns not to either.

A Tisket, a Tasket, and an Enormous Transcript

I’m actually writing this post offline. We’ve had no Internet access since Sunday. The powers that be said something about our having a slow connection and an outdated modem. I swear it feels like a whole new dark age. I’ve determined that pre-Internet I had managed to be very constructive. I hadn’t really considered my prior output before. I was taking about 24 credits per college semester, and holding down two part time jobs, adding up to regular full-time hours. During this time, I also managed to make the Dean’s list and graduated a year before time. Now however, it almost feels, as my Mother so aptly puts it, that I’d as much as drown in a bucket full of water. I find that I overwhelm easily, and after no Internet for the past few days, I’m fairly convinced that the Internet, or rather, my propensity to surf the web for any reason, several times per day, is behind my general (as of late) lack of productivity. Not having Internet access therefore, has been a bit of boon. It has meant that I’ve begun to engage in more productive endeavors, some which I had been frankly dreading. One of these was starting to formally put together E’s high school transcript.

Of course, it would occur to me to put together my daughter’s transcript on a day when I wasn’t able to locate the transcript book I’ve kept on-hand for-like-ever. And as the Internet was down and I was unable to check transcript guidelines elsewhere, I resorted to the one small section on transcripts in The Well Trained Mind for some direction. Per TWTM, traditionally, 120 hours equals one credit, but this may vary by state or district. Not having access to our state’s or district’s guidelines at the time, the first thing I did was look over our records, and our previous schedule, to nail down the approximate time spent per subject. I made sure to keep track of time spent on independent work (for everything besides independent reading), as well as one-on-one tutorial-like times with me. What I ended up with looks something like this, based on a 36-week schedule (Note that Language Arts was the hairiest, and my projections for next year are hairier still):

Language Arts – 396 hours

This included time for spelling (2x/wk), writing (4x/wk), interdisciplinary writing (2 days/wk), grammar (2x/wk), rhetoric (2x/wk), and logic (2x/wk), and finally literature (2x/wk). Considering we were only able to fit five of the about eight books I wanted to have E read this year, I was thinking that more time should be dedicated to literature next year. And yet already, under the big language arts umbrella, we’ve managed to log in at least two classes’ worth of hours. And this doesn’t even include vocabulary, which we sort of dropped by the wayside.

Other subjects were pretty average in terms of time. E spent about 180 hours on Algebra I, and we still haven’t completed the book. I was thinking we could work on the remainder of the book this summer. I don’t recollect ever completing any of my texts in high school or college, and I do remember we did a lot of skimming and skipping around, yet I can’t get myself to do the same with E. She’s totally her mother’s daughter, as she’s shot down any ideas of skimming as well. So we’ll persevere a bit longer.

Science (Chemistry) came to about 144 hours, counting projected time for all labs, which we’re still in the process of completing.

History came to 108 hours, as did Latin.

I counted our time at Kung Fu, Tai chi, kickboxing, and weapons classes under Physical Education/Health. I added only the time for our regular classes, and not for any of the additional seminars and extra classes we take from time to time. Still, this all came to a whopping 216 hours.

We really dropped the ball on our elective classical language, i.e. Koine, having spent only about 36 hours on it all year long, with two brief sessions/wk, not nearly enough time to count for much credit at all.

In addition to the above, E took three homeschool art classes, about 2 hours each—again, not nearly enough to count for much credit.

She put in 42 hours volunteering as a CCD classroom aide, and then there was some time (not a significant number of hours at all), involved in a volunteer capacity at events and such at our Kung Fu school. I didn’t log in times for that, but I suppose I could have. She had scant involvement in our church’s youth group, so I didn’t add that in either.

This all came to, not including the art classes and volunteer work, approximately 1,188 hours for the entire year, including the 36 hours for Koine, which I’m considering just lumping in with Latin, under the “Classical Languages” header. This comes to approximately 6.6 hours/day, based on a 180-day schedule including the physical education, and 5.4 hours/day without the physical education hours added in. I thought that that was fairly standard. Oh, but I just realized now that I never considered the time she’s spent with her Dad on learning computer applications and typing. I’ll have to discuss times spent on those with him, but even so, I think that will only come up to enough hours to account for about a half credit in technology.
What left me a bit unsure was how to account for the extra hours logged in under language arts. The Well Trained Mind offers an example of what to do in such a case. The example is associated with the great books study recommended in the text. According to the example, 320 hours’ worth of study can translate into a full elective credit for literature, and one full credit for history (provided of course, you follow the guidelines in the book and your study involves historical documents and source readings). Go figure that the few books we “cut” due to lack of time, were the autobiographies that correlated to our history studies. But in our case, as we were covering U.S. History 1 anyway, it would have made more sense for those readings to be added onto the time spent separately on history. The individual parts to our language arts study, as mentioned above, were: spelling; writing; grammar; literature; rhetoric and logic. I figured that the most common sense way to sort these into groups was to lump spelling, grammar, and literature under the English 1 course title, and put writing, logic, and rhetoric into another group under the Speech 1 course title. The latter would count as an elective, and fit under “Speech” as rhetoric is classified in TWTM. It made sense to lump the logic and writing together along with the rhetoric, and I’m relieved to have that settled.

I’m still nowhere near done with this. I still have to check my state and district guidelines, find that dang transcript book (I swear I saw it just a few days ago, but where could it be now? It’s anyone’s guess.), and figure out how to put it all together and make it look as official as possible. In addition to preparing the transcript, I’ll be gathering materials for a portfolio of representative work. I’d like for it to include a cross-section of examples ranging from typical assignments, to quizzes, tests, lab and project photos, as well as reports and response papers.

If anyone is out there and has had experience with writing transcripts, I’m all ears, and open to some been-there-done-that advice!

Wish I Had a TARDIS to Transport Me Back

I'm feeling BIG feelings today. Just before this I visited a homeschooling board, and noticed a post by someone who was just starting out on her family's homeschooling journey. I was immediately reminded of a friend of mine who is only a few years in, and how everything is still so fresh and new and exciting for her. It has all made me think back on our days, once filled with learning letters, spelling words, playing math games, making crafts, playing dress-up, and cuddling on couches with storybooks. I remember their little voices begging me to re-read Tikki Tikki Tembo for the third time in a row. I'd feign a bit of reluctance, just to make my eventual succumbing under pressure all the more exciting for them. "Score! Mom caved!"

I remember when my three were just learning how to read, and how fun it was to see them getting all excited about everything. I know I'm choosing to remember only the good stuff right now, as I've previously written about some of our early reading struggles. But still, it was a simpler time. One I didn't fully appreciate as much at the time. I'd give anything to have a bit of that sweet simplicity back in my life.

And yet I really do love where we are right now. I remember feeling that I wasn't all that well-suited for "teaching" in the early years. I wasn't particularly crafty, and I felt that that worked against me at the time. I struggled to add in a bit of creativity of my own, when I felt I was better equipped at presenting a lecture instead. I'd find myself digressing a lot, going off on tangents on topics that were way over their heads. I remember how much I looked forward to their getting older so that we could finally get to discuss things thoroughly--serious, deeply meaningful things. And then before I knew it, that time came. They were old enough, and we started discussing to our hearts' content. And while it's been wonderful, now I'm finding myself getting all nostalgic. Funny how that happens.

I wonder if I can get the kids interested in making a macaroni necklace today. Or perhaps some finger painting? It's worth a shot.

Long Time No Writey or Staying Productive While Sick

Egads, I feel awful about not having come on here to write a post in so long. I've been occupied with loads of other things. Some school related, some not.

Let's see...here's a quick update.

We've all been sick on and off. Just when one of us gets better, another one of us gets sick, and the bug makes its rounds again. But we're working through it as best we can. I can't wait for the spring. The milder weather would surely help us stay healthy.

I feel rotten, too, because we've all missed a few kung fu, kali, tai chi, and kickboxing classes. I'm going to pay dearly for this later. I find that whenever I miss a class, I get extra achey when I start up again. Yikes. And we're doing so many cool things, too! Stuff like Wing Chun, Ba Bu Chuan, and some Jeet Kune Do kicks. :)

Because everyone has been either sick or borderline sick for weeks, we've lightened up on schooling load. Despite the lightening of the load, we've probably been more productive than usual. Weird, isn't it? I've come to realize, particularly within the past few weeks, that we do a fair bit of learning via discussion, or just plain conversation. What usually happens, is that something will be brought up, or overheard on the news, or in a read-aloud session. Often, the kids' curiosity is sparked, and that's all it takes. In the past few weeks, as the kids were exposed to new ideas, we've discussed, researched, and read about all of the following: Libya, Tunisia, Egypt, Nathaniel Hawthorne, John Hathorne, the Salem witch trials, puritans, plate tectonics, natural disasters, tsunamis, Chernobyl, clean energy, the history of kung fu, the recognition and interpretation of different traditional Chinese characters, some words in Mandarin, and contact juggling. And those are just the things I can remember right now, as I sit here and type this.

When I first started homeschooling, I stressed over whether or not I could provide my children with a gap-free education. Several years later, I've come to the conclusion that a gap-free education is really a myth. Over the years, I've thrown together our curriculum, picking books and materials from a number of sources, and while I find what I use enriching, what I'll think back on fondly when the kids are grown and no longer homeschooling, are all of the times we've spent on discussion, often while cuddling together on the couch, or hovering around a computer monitor, with mouths agape in wonder, as they read or watch material that fascinates them.

Offering up prayers for all of those effected by the horrible earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear plant explosions in Japan. You are all in our hearts!

Anytime Schooling

There are a great many things that I love about homeschooling. So many things in fact, that I'm hard-pressed to come up with a short answer to questions from people who ask why we chose this path, or why we have decided to continue for this long. I don't think on my feet very well, and find that my usual canned answers, just don't do my real reasons any justice. Rather than go on and rattle off a long list of reasons all at once, I'll just focus on one at a time.

My first reason: Learning All the Time

Midnight chats, often on world events, past and present, without worry about missing bedtimes, or needing to wake up early.

Discussing renewable energy sources during a cross-country trip when school is usually in session.

Seeing how unstructured, unscheduled time often leads to the discovery of new interests.

Stopping what we're doing to accommodate interest-driven learning.

Easy chats over tea, usually time spent brainstorming new and interesting things to do.

Answering all of the children's questions, to the best of my ability, while assuring them that I am not the font of all knowledge. Also related to this, is showing them how to seek answers on their own.

Allowing time to observe my children, and keeping myself from stepping in too readily during the learning process. This is often easier said than done, and I still struggle with this at times! There's something to be said for allowing a child to struggle and get a bit frustrated at times.

Actively participate in their learning process, seeking to understand and appreciate their interests, even when it's hard to do so.

Taking time to play games.

Allowing room for organic learning.

Acknowledging that education is not a one-size-fits-all kind of thing.

Now, as I write all this, it all sounds like unschooling to me. Of course, I'm not an unschooler as my prior posts have already illustrated. This is not to say that I don't see value in the method or the lifestyle. I certainly do. I like to have my cake and eat it, too. And combining a somewhat relaxed, traditional approach to education, with lots of down time and wiggle room for all of the above, has worked well for us.

Fitting In, or Oh No You Didn't

Here's an amalgam of like a dozen conversations I've had over the past several years.

Neighbor/Acquaintance (N/A): "I just have to tell you what a delight your children are!"
Me: "Oh, thank you!"
N/A: "Yes, they're so sweet and mature. You are very blessed."
Me: "Thank you. I really can't complain."
N/A: "They are so courteous, really. So different from most kids out there."
Me: {Smile} - By now I start feeling a bit uncomfortable with all of the adulation, and start to think I'm being set up. Okay, so I'm a bit paranoid.
N/A: "But you know, I'm concerned about them."
Me: {Here goes...} "Really? In what sense?"
N/A: "Well, how well do they relate to other children? Do they have any friends?"
Me: {Deep sigh...) "Very well, I guess. And yes, they do."
N/A: "Do they fit in?"
Me: "I think so."
N/A: "Oh, that's nice."

Sigh...

It often feels like other people are more concerned about my kids fitting in than we are.

Yes, My kids relate well and fit in well with the kids that they count among as friends. That's no different than how it is for adults. We have friends, and we have acquaintances. It is up to us to discern the difference between them.

Ultimately, I think these comments betray how some people really feel about homeschooling. There are just so many misconceptions about it, and about socialization in general. Most people opt to soften their delivery, by dropping compliments as a lead up to the criticism. Some other veiled criticisms are preceded with praise for me.

"Wow, you are amazing. I could never homeschool my kids."

To be fair, criticism doesn't always follow these compliments, but things do tend to go that way in a number of cases.

For the record, my children are completely "normal." Yes, I am their mother, and I teach them, but last time I checked, I was fairly normal, too. They have their good days and their bad days. Some days, they're irritatingly irrational and immature, and on other days, they're so darn angelic, I can't keep myself from gushing over them. Thankfully, they do tend to be very well-behaved when we're out and about, and reserve most of the "acting up" for when we're home. Often, my husband and I are the only witnesses to those episodes.

There's a lot that annoys me about this sort of conversation.

-It assumes that good behavior and maturity are an obstacle to fitting in or making friends. An absolutely ridiculous assumption!

-It reveals a very negative view of kids today--a view that I don't share. There are a great number of children that are pleasures to be around, regardless of how and where they're educated.

-It suggests that being well-behaved and mature is only a problem in a social sense, if you're a "misfit" homeschooler. An adult in a child's body, unable to relate to other children. Conversely, if you're a homeschooler and you're misbehaved and immature, then it's because you're home educated and don't know any better.

-It suggests that by "fitting in" we mean "uniformity." If that's the case, and I don't believe it is, then who wants to fit in anyway?

Imagine hearing the following from your boss...

"Yeah, you're super reliable, well-adjusted, and punctual, but well, how are ya gonna fare with the water cooler crowd?"

It all seems a bit silly, doesn't it? Especially as it assumes that the entirety of your life, at least in terms of social acceptability, revolves around the workplace, or the school, as in the sample conversation above.

Note to self: The next time this conversation comes up, I think I'll do like the Madagascar penguins, and just smile and wave.

Classical Education or Bust

When we first decided to homeschool our children, I was filled with all of these romantic thoughts of how joyous it would be to educate them. Actually, I probably would have not even used the word "educate." I preferred saying that I would facilitate my children's learning. Somehow, that seemed less controlling in my view. I remember having read John Holt's Teach Your Own, and being completely enthralled by the idea of unschooling. Heck, I still am! It made sense to me. It was organic, and wonderful, and yet really really tough--at least for me. Within a few months of starting out as "unschoolers" (in quotes because I'm sure there will be those who may believe, as even I do, that I went about it all wrong, and therefore wasn't technically a practicing unschooler), I was stressed beyond belief. A large part of it was because I didn't trust the method would work for me. I still wholeheartedly believe that it can work for nearly any child (if not all children), but perhaps not for every parent, as was the case with me. So I branched out and my homeschooling library grew to include books on other methods.

I think I ascribed to the "better late than early" philosophy for as long as it took before I was inundated with questions from well-meaning friends and family regarding my daughter's progress. Some people are able to field these questions effortlessly, but I was still working on thickening my skin in all matters related to home education. And frankly, the only reason I decided to jump on board with the whole "better late than early" view to education, was because I had already tried pushing early academics and made absolutely no progress. I guess you could say that personally, I was a reluctant advocate of the "better late than early" approach to homeschooling. Choosing to wait wasn't my preference, but it made me feel better to know that there was a school of thought out there that saw nothing wrong with waiting. Still, I felt conflicted.

I went on to read about the Charlotte Mason approach, and then moved on to other books on classical education. That's when I became interested in The Well-Trained Mind. It was the sort of education I wished I had had. I  quickly fell in love with the method, and tried to follow the schedules perfectly. I later learned that those schedules were only added to the book at the insistence of the publisher, and that they were only just loose suggestions. Still, I wanted to do it all. But I ran into a wall. My daughter was not learning to read as effortlessly as other children I read about on homeschooling boards. She struggled so much. I found that my perfect schedule was getting left behind. There was no time for all of the cool and interesting things I had planned to teach her, because our days turned into hours-long reading lessons. It ceased to be fun, for her and for me. And here's where I feel very ashamed of myself. I built that initial difficulty up into this insurmountable obstacle. I wasted precious time getting my daughter to excel at reading, without realizing that I was making it all such a tedious chore. Thankfully, it was around this time that I started to seek out support again online. And go figure, there were several other homeschoolers out there who were experiencing the same things! These homeschoolers also wanted to give their children a classical education, and were finding ways to do so, regardless of their children's struggles with reading. This was a major a-ha moment for me, because in my mind, I was still regarding the task of reading, and writing, to be prerequisites to a classical education. Once I eased up my expectations, and we started to conduct a lot of our lessons orally, setting aside a decent amount of our time each day to reading and writing instruction, things started improving. Those romantic ideas I had when I first started out, were not wholly unfounded after all. Granted, among our good days, were a smattering of difficult days. And as good as the good days could be, the difficult days were HARD, often bringing me to the verge of tears. But we pressed on. (Note: We eventually made our way into a more Latin-centered classical approach, but that's another story, best kept for another post!)

My little girl is now fourteen years old. She's a reader. She's still a reluctant writer, but she's making progress. She works very hard, and has taken ownership over her education. Yesterday, as we were discussing John Steinbeck's "Of Mice and Men," and really getting into our literary analysis, I was just struck by how much she's matured. She's grown to be such a sweet, mature, and introspective young lady. I don't think I've ever enjoyed homeschooling her as much as I do now. She is such a pleasure to be with, and discuss things with. This is exactly what I had hoped to get out of our homeschooling, all those years ago when I first romanticized about setting out on this journey. She may not be getting a "by the book" classical education, but she certainly seems to be no worse for the wear.