Smrt Lernins

A few weeks ago, Captain Science did the first round of standardized testing since he’s been out of public school. He took the ITBS through a neighboring homeschool co-op and it was an overall interesting experience.

Both days ran very late. In fact, the first day ran so late (almost an hour) that the director rescheduled the next day’s testing to account for an extra hour and a half…and they still ran another 45 minutes late over that! I’m pretty sure they took long breaks between every 15 minute test section.

Captain Science felt like he aced the math and the language arts, but he was a little concerned about the social studies, since he hasn’t actually had any of the stuff they covered. Oops! Told him it didn’t matter; all I want is to make sure he’s on track in math/LA and to satisfy the state’s requirements for standardized testing. None of this is the part I’d call “interesting,” however.

No, the interesting part was when, the day after testing, I picked Captain Science’s backpack up from the floor where he’d tossed it…and his test booklet and Scantron fell out. *headdesk*

That was an “oh, shit!” moment, because I was pretty sure that taking the test off site invalidated the test, meaning we’d wasted two days and $60-ish dollars on a test that would never get scored. The front of the book declared it to be property of whoever it is that distributes and scores the tests, so I emailed the test proctor and let her know we had her booklet and ask if I could drop it off. I became ever so happy to be a homeschooler when she let me know that, since the tests are only for our benefit (we have to DO them, but the state doesn’t get the scores), she’d just let me bring her the booklet and the Scantron and no one would need to be the wiser.

I zipped the whole kit n’ kaboodle up into a gallon-sized Ziplock bag, because for some reason, that made me feel like it was some how not being compromised by being away from the testing facility, and brought it to the proctor the next day. Results are already back and she’s mailing them to me.

The quirkiness of homeschoolers is how the test book came home to begin with — space cadet son + apparently equally space cadet proctors — but the quirkiness of homeschoolers also allowed us to turn the results in anyway. I’ll call it a win.

That is how rumors get started.

So, I haven’t been around in a while. I guess a few of you might have noticed, because I got a couple of “hey, where’d you go” and “I hope everything’s ok” comments, which is very sweet of y’all. To answer the questions:

Q) Where did you go?
A) To hell in a handbasket (but only figuratively, Rapture not withstanding).

Q) Is everything ok?
A) Yes, but also crazy.

Having a fourth child in the house, coupled with things like the end of the school year, some drama with Officer Daddyman’s work (furloughs aren’t exactly conducive to humor), my new commitment to personal health, and a newfound addiction to Glee fanfiction (for which I blame patchfire), I haven’t been in a blogging mindset. I’m just freaking tired, y’all. I do my best to be either funny, insightful/inciteful, or some combination of both, but I haven’t been able to muster up the energy for any of that over the last month or so.

Here’s what’s been up with us the last month-ish. I/we have:

• Finished our school year (technically, the 180 days is over), but Captain S still has a little more science and math to wrap up before he’s done w/ the subjects.
• Did our first round of standardized testing as homeschoolers (which was dramatic in its own right — will elaborate on that in a later post)
• Wrapped up our second season of soccer. Captain S enjoyed it and actually put in some effort this year. Tank actually shows some real athletic ability, which completely flabbergasts me, since I have none and don’t know what to do about it. Luckily, Officer Daddyman is a nice Midwestern yankee boy who grew up playing soccer, so at least someone around here isn’t sports-incapable.
• Completed the 30 Day Shred. More on that once the dress of doom is purchased, but suffice it to say, it was a HUGE accomplishment for the couch potato that was Smrt Mama McLernins.
• Watched our county commissioners refuse to raise the millage rate in order to continue fully staffed and equipped public services and tell the police department (whose budget is 96% salary) to cut 10% from its budget. They negotiated down to a <4% cut, which still means 40 furloughed hours between May and September. They've already had their overtime taken away. They've already gone without salary step increases or cost of living increases for a few years now. I'm grateful for Daddyman's promotion to FTO (so we had a slight salary increase this year) and his continued ability to get decent part-time jobs. I'm not grateful that our county commissioners would rather get reelected than take care of cops, firemen, and other county services.

And really, that’s just some of it.

I’ve got some stuff in the mental works. I need to report on my failed Four Books a Month in April (seriously, I didn’t manage it). I need to tell you about the dress of doom. I should talk about the testing debacle. All of that will have to wait, though. Right now, just know that I’m not dead. That’s as good as it gets.

I’m very excited to say that I will be teaching again starting in the fall! I really enjoyed the two semesters I spent teaching writing through the various co-ops, and I’ve been looking for a venue to teach again. I won’t be teaching writing in the ‘11-’12 year, though. I’ll be teaching blogging and “digital literacy.”

Here are my course descriptions from the online catalogue, if you can indulge me a bit, for Digital Literacy:

Email, instant messenger, Facebook, forums, blogs – our children have so many ways to reach out to other people with similar interests and wide array of backgrounds. Being online means being part of a large and vibrant community, but like any community, the online world has its own rules, social expectations, and occasional dangerous elements. Do your children have the skills they need to be smart and safe digital citizens?

Digital literacy is the ability to locate, organize, understand, evaluate, and analyze information using digital technology. More than that, it’s the knowledge of how to traverse the Internet safely, how to interact with others online in a way that is polite and appropriate, and what information they should or shouldn’t share. Students will learn the basics of email, safe web navigation, distinguishing between reliable and unreliable websites (a useful tool for research), online etiquette, and how to be a responsible online “citizen.”

And Blogging 101:

Are your children reluctant writers? Are they technophiles who are more comfortable behind a computer than in front of a crowd? Do they have a lot of subject-area knowledge they would like to share with others? Blogging is the perfect format to let them share their thoughts and to develop their passion for writing!

Blogging is a meaningful way to add your voice to the Great Conversation happening all around us. Students will establish and maintain a personal blog, participate in a class blog, learn basics of HTML, and generate content for their blogs that includes text, links, and embedded images and videos. They will learn online etiquette as they comment on others’ blogs and manage comments on their own blogs (with adult guidance). Parents will be provided links to class blogs and access to their students’ blogging accounts (unless declined).

Yeah, they’re a little hokey, but the point is to get parents to want to enroll their children, right? Plus, I really do believe blogging is both valid and valuable (perhaps especially for homeschoolers). I may have mentioned before that I spent two years working for a NCLB-funded grant initiative called Blog2Learn, where I taught middle and high school teachers how to integrate blogging into their (mostly low performing/at risk) classrooms. We had a lot of success with the program in terms of increasing writing output and improving writing quality. I’ve also taught a grown-up version of Blogging 101 (and the follow up, predictably called Blogging 102) at conferences. I feel pretty comfortable and competent in this area.

If I get parental consent, I may share some links to students’ blogs or to our class blog over the course of the school year, starting in the fall. Hopefully you’ll indulge me a little and give them some positive feedback.