Smrt Lernins

Today is National Teacher Day, which comes, somewhat predictably, in the middle of National Teacher Appreciation Week.

As homeschoolers, we are each our child(ren)’s teacher…excepting those unschoolers who eschew the word “teach,” of course. I’d like to take a moment to tell you teachers-in-your-own home how much I appreciate you.

Homeschooling isn’t easy. You do it anyway.

Your day isn’t done at 3 o’clock or even 6 o’clock — it’s not done until your children are all tucked in bed, and even then, you often stay up for hours going on plans for the following day or preparing for the weeks and months ahead. You don’t get summer vacation. You don’t get a two-week break at Christmas. You can’t draw a line between your job and your personal life. You can’t walk away from the work and the children when the day is done. You do it anyway.

You don’t get paid to do this. You don’t draw a salary and you don’t get a pension at the end. Your “salary” is intellectual growth of your children. Your “pension” is the well-adjusted, well-educated adults you have raised. Your “benefits” aren’t in the form of health insurance and paid leave, but in the amount of quality you spend with your child. The nest egg you’re building for the future isn’t financial. You do it anyway.

You don’t have a union. You have to scrap out the support where you can find it, through online forums or local homeschool groups. You have to be your own advocate, figure things out on your own, or ask for help from others like you. It can be an uphill battle the whole way. You do it anyway.

You don’t have a mandate from the State. You may even be at great odds with your state by choosing to homeschool. You fill out forms, jump through hoops, and then fill out more forms about jumping through hoops. You may have to put your family and your life up for scrutiny for someone else’s determination of whether you’re fit to homeschool. You do it anyway.

You don’t have someone developing an approved curriculum for you, setting academic standards for you, or giving you the exact information your children should learn. You don’t have it that easy. You have to figure it out on your own. You can’t just teach to the test, satisfied that the test scores will be the end to justify your means. You have to determine what you can use, what you can afford, what standards you will set for your children. You have to find a way to teach them everything they need to know for college and for life. You’ll probably miss a few things, and you agonize over which things you’ll miss. You do it anyway.

You don’t do it “their” way. Your job isn’t always respected. You don’t get special license plates. When someone asks you, “What do you do for a living?” your answer often isn’t what they want to hear. You’re subjected to a rigorous line of questioning about what you do and what you teach and why. Your motives are suspect. Your methods are scrutinized. Your rigor is challenged. You do it anyway.

Day in and day out, you do it anyway. You continue to educate your children, despite others’ misgiving, despite criticism and unwanted commentary. You invest time, money, and energy that you may not actually have in making sure your children have a thorough, meaningful education. You reach out to others like you and offer them help, advice, materials, support. You raise your children with character and creativity.

You’re homeschoolers. You don’t give up. You do it anyway.

Happy Teacher Appreciate Day, to my community of wonderful home-teachers. You’re loved. You’re appreciated.

Once upon a time, there was a mom named Smrt Mama, with three lovely children, one of whom was unhappily public-schooled. She was miserable, her child was miserable, but she lacked the self-confidence and knowledge to make the leap to homeschooling. She was homeschool-curious, but didn’t know where to start, how to start, if to start.

Then there was Patchfire, and she was good. She placed The Well Trained Mind into Smrt Mama’s hand. She walked Smrt Mama and Officer Daddyman through curricula and scheduling. She gave Smrt Mama books on the philosophical workings of homeschooling. She gave Smrt Mama curricula to get started. She answered questions with infinite patience and she agreed to teach science classes to Captain Science.

One day, Patchfire fell in love with a house. The house was beautiful, had many bedrooms, had a completely finished basement with full second kitchen, and, miracle of miracles, was in the neighborhood right behind Smrt Mama’s. The children could walk to each other’s houses. Smrt Mama and Patchfire could co-op chickens (at Smrt Mama’s, on her half-acre) and vegetables (at Patchfire’s, in her flat, sunny, already-garden-plotted backyard) together. The house was perfect in every way, and Patchfire and Smrt Mama rejoiced.

Now there is but once catch: Patchfire’s old house must sell so that she and all the Mitnens (that’s what we call them, since Tank says “Mitnen” for Mister and Missus, and they’re Mitnen Ham and Mitnen Tash) can move into The House of All Things Good.

Here is what Smrt Mama needs from you: She needs you to pray, light candles, vibrate on a higher frequency, send positive thoughts out into the universe, or just plain old think good thoughts for Patchfire and the rest of the Mitnens to sell their house quickly and easily, so that they can move into the house that’s just through the woods from my house.

I love Patchfire. I (in a very platonic way) love her husband. I adore her children. My children adore her children. My husband likes them all is his stolith* manly cop way. She must be within walking distance of me. This is absolutely imperative. Please send the Great Universal/Divine Love her way.

*My awesome Japanese friend Ai made up this word. We think it means a cross between stoic and stolid. She says, “The Japanese are so stolith. They don’t know how to have any fun.”

Lo, so many times doth I find myself declaring thusly, “This is why I homeschool!”

Today, at Olan Mills photography, the photographer argued with me over comma placement in the title on a photograph collage. The main picture was of all three of my beautiful, talented, and delightful children (whose behavior while Nana and I looked at photo proofs was such that they are lucky I did not devour them on the spot like a disgruntled hamster), with one small photo of Tank and Captain Science and one small photo of Babypie below. The collage was captioned “Captain Science, Tank & Babypie.”

I protested the lack of Oxford comma between “Tank” and “&” (the “&” was necessary in lieu of “and,” due to the length of Tank’s real name), only to have the photographer tell me, “No, that’s right. I thought it was supposed to be the way you’re saying it, but an English teacher was in here the other day and said this is the right way.”

I responded, “Well, I have a master’s degree in writing and editing. I can assure you that it’s supposed to have a comma,” then said to my mother, “This is why I homeschool!”

While it turned out to be a non-issue, as an additional comma wouldn’t fit on the line, I will not accept the dropping of the Oxford (or “serial”) comma simply because some English teacher says so. Dropping that comma may be acceptable in AP style, which is designed to minimize space, but dropping the serial comma is not otherwise acceptable to me. Unless the final two items are together (“peanut butter & jelly,” for instance, or even “Captain Science and Tank,” since they were in the same photograph, while Babypie was in her own), that comma belongs in that list.

But me no buts* about how this is acceptable in non-academic American written grammar, because Americans say and do many things that are an abject butchery of proper grammar and usage. American writers have become lazy, American grammarians have lost their spine, and American teachers are failing to impart a respect for proper punctuation in their students. If it’s good enough for Strunk and White, the MLA Style Manual and The Chicago Manual of Style, it’s good enough for me, and it should be good enough for you, dammit.

Yes, when Lynne Truss (author of Eats, Shoots & Leaves) talks about not getting between those on opposing sides of the Oxford comma issue when drink is involved, she is, in fact, talking about me.

Considering that most public schools use MLA writing guidelines, which advocate the use of the Oxford comma, the idea of a public school English teacher telling a photographer that the comma isn’t necessary incites me to a new level of grammatically righteous anger. I’ve tolerated too many notes (both from Captain Science’s old public school and Tank’s private preschool) that pluralized with an apostrophe or misused “to” and “too” (No! You do not have “to many volunteers!”). While I often have a playful relationship with English, I will not give up my commas without a fight!

*Neither Officer Daddyman nor Patchfire have heard the phrase “but me no buts.” They both thought it was a typo. I promise that it is not. Here is a nice article about the “X me no X’s” model.

Why, why, why do the mommy groups all plan their activities for traditional school hours?

Ok, I understand why it works for them. They can ditch their older children on the public school system and now want to use that time to do their various mommy activities. Unfortunately, they don’t seem to understand that those times are really not the best for their homeschooling friends–or if they understand it in theory, they either don’t understand it in practice or don’t particularly care–and either get miffy about our expressions of scheduling dismay, start the process of subtle exclusion from that social group, or both.

I’d love to attend some local parenting group activities. I really would. I’d love to be more involved in local birth and breastfeeding advocacy organizations. I’d love to go to cloth diapering workshops, play dates for toddlers at various parks, and moms-only coffee at the local coffee shop. Unfortunately, I do not have someone else available to educate my kids for me.

Believe it or not, the flexibility of homeschooling doesn’t mean I can go to some adult- or toddler-geared activity multiple days a week. I know you’re all shocked, but Captain Science has to do his schooling at some point, and that point needs to not be dinner time. Even if we were one of the “done by noon” homeschooling families, we still couldn’t make all these 10am activities for small children, because Captain S is still there. He doesn’t magically disappear during school hours. He can’t stay here alone while I cart Babypie and Tank off to play dates. He can’t go to music time or story time without being the inappropriately old, freakishly tall boy at whom the other parents look askance when he smiles at or talks to their toddlers, and frankly, I don’t want some stranger-danger fearing mama mentally profiling my sweet and innocent 9-year-old son as someone who might in some way be a threat to her baby, simply because he’s friendly and doesn’t have anywhere else to go.

As much as I joke about doing something and “counting” it as a lesson (example: “Going to Costco involves a lot of walking. Totally counting that as P.E. for today!”), we are not a homeschooling family whose educational philosophy is based primarily on getting out of the house and doing stuff. We aren’t unschoolers; We have quite a lot of formal curricula to work through in a week. We also have other lessons and classes, scheduled for, amazingly enough, school hours, and no school bus is going to come to take Captain Science to and fro.

In a perfect world, the “crunchy” mama set would realize that many of their number homeschool, but this world is far from perfect. I’m watching homeschooling slowly, ever so slowly, result in a gradual exclusion from many of my former social groups. Part of it might be natural growth, as our children are taking different paths, but I think that much of it just has to do with the fact that my “free” time is now decidedly less expansive, my entourage size doesn’t change based on school hours (it’s always Smrt Mama + 3), and I can’t meet up with most of my non-homeschooling friends/groups with enough frequency to maintain the friendships/sense of membership.

I feel like I spend so much time talking about exclusion — from the homeschooling world as a whole, due to secularity, from secular homeschooling, due to rigorous classical curricula. This is just one more facet of that. The inconvenience of the rigorous homeschooling schedule can be a stumbling block in maintaining pre-homeschooling friendships and activities.

I don’t mean the things that we long for, but the things that we homeschoolers tend to overlook.

When I had to get up at 6:15 to get Captain Science off to school in a timely fashion and received a backpack full of reminder notes every day, life was quite different for us than it is now. More predictability. More routine. That’s not to say that we don’t have a routine now, but it’s different each day of the week, as we have co-op on Tuesdays, science at Patchfire’s house on Thursday, piano lessons two days, things here and things there. It’s not 7:45 to 2:15 every Monday through Friday. It’s not on someone else’s time.

This sort of nonreliance on the schedule of others is wonderful in almost every aspect, save one…we’re totally, completely responsible for keeping track of stuff for ourselves! That means that, sometimes, things just don’t get done. We don’t think about them. We don’t remember them. Here are some examples:

1. Picture Day. There is no official homeschool picture day. As a result, Captain Science is almost through with his 4th grade year and has not had formal pictures made. We keep saying we’re going to get them done, but that just hasn’t happened.

2. Hair cuts. Without planned picture days and school field trips, for which I didn’t want my child to look like he was being raised by stewbums, hair cuts tend to fall by the wayside. I wasn’t the best about scheduling them regularly as it was, but at least three times a school year (for first day of school, fall pictures, and spring pictures), Captain Science got a really nice hair cut. Once we got that “picture day is coming” notice, we’d schedule the hair cut. Now, it’s more like Officer Daddyman spends weeks complaining about Captain Science and Tank’s ever-growing hair, I swear I’ll make an appointment to have it done, Daddyman gets frustrated and just takes the boys to his barber, at which point I complain about their hair being too short. OH THE JOYS OF HOMESCHOOLING!

3. Watching what we say. If the boys were in full time public school, I think I’d watch my mouth a little more carefully. Since they’re home so much, I have developed an unfortunate tendency to just say the things I’d normally have saved for times I wasn’t in their presence. My worst offense is, “So’s your face,” which my brother says is the appropriate response to absolutely everything (and the response to “So’s your face” is “Your mom”). Captain Science will announce, “Mama, I’m done with math,” and I’ll say, “Oh yeah? Well, so’s your face!” Captain Science will say, “So’s your mom,” and Tank, who is the classiest among us, yells, “So’s your BUTT.” I know I should correct it, simply because it’s not socially acceptable for my kids to say that, but it’s not like they’re going off to school and saying it to their teachers, right?

4. All that important non-curriculum stuff that kids still need to learn. Did you know that you were supposed to make sure your kids memorized their address? I know I totally didn’t think about it until Patchfire told me Eclectic Girl was six before they realized that she didn’t know her address. Oops! Public schooled kids get it drilled into them in kindergarten, but our homeschooled children are going to grow up with no clue as to where they live. Someone needs to put together a checklist of non-curriculum stuff that our kids need to learn. That list will also include how to spell their last name, their parents’ names, and their phone number.

5. Cops and firemen. Unless you’re luck enough to have an Officer Daddyman in the house, your kids may be missing out on the awesome public school experience of fire fighters and law enforcement officers coming out to the school to teach your kids about safety and how to dial 911 while mama and daddy are sleeping late (they say that’s not what they’re doing, but you KNOW that’s what they’re doing). There’s always the option of trying to get your co-op in to the fire station, I suppose.

6. Fire drills. You should be having these for your family anyway, but I bet you don’t. I know I don’t. At school, your kids would be having fire drills. They’d learn to “stay low and go” and to “stop, drop, and roll.” Maybe when you plan that visit to the fire station that you aren’t actually going to plan, you can make sure the firemen address those topics.

What things do you think that you’re missing as a homeschooler? What critical gaps in your child’s education (academic or social), appearance, or experience are you completely overlooking?

I’m sometimes amused by some of the ways in which people stumble across my blog. I use Google Analytics to track my site statistics, so I get a nice breakdown of search terms used to find my site. While I’m usually glad to grab a new reader, I’m not sure I’m really the site that some of these people are searching for in their great Googling adventures.

The search terms may be completely straightforward:

smrt lernins
smrt lernins blog
smrt mama
smrt learnings
patchfire eclectic girl (who was looking for you and got me instead, Patchfire?)

Sometimes the search terms are curricula-centered:

mct grammar
can abeka be secular?
building poems m clay
ellen mchenry “the brain” homeschool
compare just write and writing strands
life of fred math overly christian
jesus in math class/jesus mathematics/jesus math/bible verses on mathematics (four separate searches)

Sometimes, the searcher clearly has…let’s just call them “strong feelings” on certain topics:

unschooling failure (well, yes, I do give some examples of that here)
are there unschoolers that are not hippies (yes, but the other unschoolers killed and ate them)
being unschooled did not prepare me (Am I the only one who is terribly curious for what this searcher was unprepared?)
are home schooled children to sheltered (My answer: No, but they are able to distinguish between “to” and “too”)
homeschooler sheltered (also “sheltered homeschooler”)
pitfalls of unschooling (better than “pit traps of unschooling”)
unschooling idiocy (this works on a few levels, so please feel free to insert your own joke here)

And finally, the downright bizarre:

“a lot of pee” (their quotes!)
captain underpants valuable lessons learned (lesson learned: Don’t read Captain Underpants)
lern sex (No! Learn spelling!)
distilling urine (Ok, fair enough. I do have a post tagged with this)
etymology of sexy (I’m pretty sure it derives from the word “sex”)
in the event of this tough situation (break glass, remove homeschooler)
seculat thrusday (yes, I know this is just a matter of typos, but what a glorious combination of typos!)
why is math hard for pretty girls (because God doesn’t give with both hands)

Then there’s the one search that really tugs at my heart strings, because I could have been the one who searched for it about a year ago:

homeschooling parents who feel panic and anxiety (You aren’t the only one out there! I’m here! You aren’t alone!)

If you found my site through a search engine, how did you get here? If you were searching for my site, what do you think you’d search for?

You know how some wealthy people have those special rooms in their houses in the event of a home invasion or assault, that go into a full lock-down mode with a line out to contact the police? I need something like that to protect me from reading other people’s plans for next year, because I have a rising sense of panic that is possibly on par* with what I would experience in the event of a break-in.

I wish I were capable of preparing my ‘10-’11 curricula that far in advance. It’s not that I’m not capable of making the plans, but I just can’t afford to buy that much curricula that far ahead of time. I can’t buy dozens of supplemental history books, get my language arts stuff two or three levels out, or an extra few books ahead in math six months before they’ll be needed. I’m envious of people who can afford to do that, but I’m not one of them. I see people’s lists for next year and I panic, because they have the books and I don’t. I can’t make too detailed of a plan for next year w/o the books, and I don’t have the books yet.

I know what I want Captain Science to be working on next year. It looks like this:

• Grammar Voyage
• Caesar’s English 2
• World of Poetry
• Essay Voyage
• Practice Voyage
• Complete Life of Fred: Beginning Algebra and Fred’s Home Companion: Beginning Algebra (will begin this semester, work over summer) Life of Fred: Advanced Algebra and Fred’s Home Companion: Advanced Algebra
• Ancient Asian, African, and American history using History: The Definitive Visual Guide**, The Complete Illustrated History of the Aztec & Maya**, Eyewitness: Ancient China**, and more, transitioning into medieval/renaissance history at the end of the year (I have a ton of resources for that, at least)
• Begin Japanese language (probably w/ tutor and whatever books s/he recommends)
• Begin Lively Latin (we put off starting Latin this year)
• Some type of art class and an art appreciation study
• Continue with piano and keyboard

It looks like a great plan and all, but I don’t have most of that stuff yet.  It’s not like we’re taking the summer off from homeschooling, either — we’re doing several subjects over the summer, plus a co-op’d unit study through Pennies for Peace – so while I will be buying books and working on lesson plans over the summer, it won’t ever be something to which I can devote my full attention (like it was the summer before our first year of homeschooling). This wasn’t something I had counted on, the feeling of always being a step behind where I should be. The lazy pre-homeschooling summer and hand-me-down curricula gave me a false sense of the ease and affordability of preparing for a school year. Of course, we’ve bought many, many books since then, so I’m not a total newb, but having to get it all together at once? Having to prepare for the next year while still working on the current year? Never getting a summer totally “off”? Can you blame me for panicking.

It’s a true blue Earnest Mom moment here, folks. I feel like I’m not doing it right and none of Patchfire’s protestations that she’s only getting ready for next year this early because they’re probably moving will convince me that I’m not behind. When you think of me, just picture Jodie Foster.

*I have an anxiety disorder, so I spike a comparably high level of panic over a wide range of things, regardless of whether or not the situation actually warrants it.
**I already have these books, thank goodness!

Remember the homeschooling mom archetypes? Today’s Secular Thursday post is the first in a series about how to play to your archetype’s strengths and plan for your archetype’s weaknesses*. Of course, few homeschoolers really fit into one category — we’re mostly a sampling of two or three (I’m Earnest Mom, with a side of Idealist Mom and a little sprinkling of Allergic Mom) — but knowing how to work around our tendencies to keep from getting hung up will only benefit us.

I’ll start with the archetype nearest and dearest to my heart butt ( because it’s possible I once got drunk after a hard day of homeschooling and had her motto tattooed there)…The Earnest Mom. A little about Earnest Mom:

The Earnest Mom — She really, really wants to be good at this. She’s absolutely certain that homeschooling was the right decision for her children. She’s equally certain that she could screw up at any moment and doom her children to a lifetime of social awkwardness and community college. She relies on the experience and expertise of other homeschoolers, especially The Organized Mom, to guide her curriculum choices. At one moment convinced the work load is much too heavy, and the next, adding logic and Bavarian folk dancing, she’s desperate to get it Right™ so that her child can be successful and well-rounded. Her motto: “Does this sound rigorous enough to you?”

I think this archetype’s weaknesses are fairly apparent. Yes, Earnest Mom is a little needy. She’s also insecure and at times quite demanding (“What’s your opinion on this?” “How do you think I’m doing on this?” “Please pause your busy day so you can address my curriculum insecurities!”) She never feels quite confident about her children’s work loads or her curricula choices, which means she does a lot of rearranging of the schedule and tends to go through multiple curricula options in a year for any given subject. This can be frustrating for the children and expensive for her. She needs a lot of feedback from those she views as “expert homeschoolers” (especially Organized Mom).

Weaknesses she has in spades, but what are Earnest Mom’s strengths? For starters, Earnest Mom isn’t usually going to be the one assuming she’s doing it right and everyone else is wrong. She’s open-minded about curricula and is willing to experiment and even completely toss something if a better option goes along. This means she’s eager to engage in discussions on curricula with other homeschoolers and take their opinions into account. She wants to do it Right™, so she won’t keep doing something that doesn’t work, just because that’s the way she’s always done it. She values a community and will usually willingly participate in an open exchange of ideas and materials.

How can Earnest Mom make the most of her strengths and turn those weaknesses into something useful? Here are some suggestions on combining strengths and weaknesses into helpful tools for Earnest Mom’s homeschooling toolbox:

• Weakness: Earnest Mom is insecure about the rigors of her curricula.  Strength: Earnest Mom values input from experienced homeschoolers.  Helpful Tool: Find a tolerant homeschooling mentor, especially one with similarly-aged and/or similarly-skilled children, who can model how s/he uses certain curricula to its utmost advantage. Feedback from someone who has been there and done that will bolster Earnest Mom’s confidence in her choices.
• Weakness: Earnest Mom replaces curricula frequently, which can become very expensive.  Strength: Earnest Mom enjoys a feeling of community with fellow homeschoolers. Helpful Tool: Look for a like-minded (or like-minded enough) group of homeschoolers for a regular curricula “open house” and meet n’ greet. Earnest Mom’s wide assortment of discarded curricula can be helpful for other homeschoolers, engendering goodwill, which helps Earnest Mom feel validated.
• Weakness: Earnest Mom feels uncertain about balance and rigor in her children’s schedule. Strength: Earnest Mom actively seeks out input, especially advice from Organized Mom, whose children’s schedules she perceives as perfectly (or nearly perfectly) balanced and rigorous. Helpful Tool:  Organized Mom’s color-coded daily schedules clearly demonstrates how her school days are balanced, allowing Earnest Mom to easily take note of the amount of academic, rest, play, etc. time in an average day. Earnest Mom can take a page from Organized Mom’s book, and develop her own color-coded schedule — a week-at-a-glance version, so that she can easily see any gaps that need to be filled. Earnest Mom will get to feel like an Organized Mom and develop more confidence in her ability to adequately meet all her children’s educational needs.
• Weakness: Earnest Mom is very self-effacing, as a coping mechanism for her insecurity. Strength: Earnest Mom has no problem confessing how incompetent she feels and years of self-effacement have made her at least remotely funny about it. Helpful Tool: Start a homeschooling blog, sharing all the ins and outs of your struggles with homeschooling. Earnest Mom’s ability to point out her own massive failures will make readers forgive her when she questions decisions made by others. Positive comments will make her feel better about herself. Negative comments will make her spend hours of introspection trying to discover areas where she could either be a better homeschooler or be funnier about not being a better homeschooler.

Hopefully, this advice will help the Earnest Moms out there. Do you like it? Is it okay advice? Was it useful? Someone please tell me I’m not failing as a homeschooler blogger! (That’s a joke right there, see?)

Tune in for our next installment, Homeschooler Archetypes: The Organized Mom.

*Lest you think I’m putting myself out there as some homeschooling expert (oh heavens, no!), I’ve been talking to other homeschooling moms who would self-identify as these categories and getting input from them on how they augment the stuff they’re best at and work around the stuff that isn’t their cup of tea. If you ever see something vaguely smart in this blog, remember that it probably came from somewhere else, as all you’ll get from here is SMRT. As I continue this series, expect to see some guest bloggers who have much better advice to give than I could ever fabricate!

When one is a liberal, secular, rigorous home educator with the inability to control one’s virtual mouth, I suppose the potential for controversy runs pretty high. I’ve never been a punch-puller or an eggshell-walker. That’s part of what makes me a great advocate and activist in several non-homeschooling areas (which I generally opt not to blog about here, though I might some day, especially if someone were to express any interest). It also makes me a great target for those who don’t cotton to any form of criticism.

I’m perfectly fine with being called judgmental, because I don’t find judgment to be a bad thing to exercise. There’s nothing wrong with setting reasonable standards of behavior, based on your experiences and ethics/morality, for the people you allow into your life. I will most certainly judge someone based on their words, actions, and/or choices. I don’t have a high tolerance for certain types of jackassery or tomfoolery, but I also don’t expect a high degree of tolerance from others. If my own brands of jackassery and tomfoolery offend you, feel free to judge.

I will not tiptoe around certain subjects, simply because someone’s feelings might be hurt when I knock their choices — choices being the key word here. Once you make the choice to think or act in a certain way, you need to be ready to stand for those choices. Own them. That means owning the fact that not everyone will approve of those choices, and developing coping mechanisms for that disapproval. “Bad choices” vs. “good choices” may be subjective, but when we make our choices public, we are willingly subjecting them to the praise or criticism of others.

I am comfortable with my own concepts of “good” and “bad” choices. I don’t expect yours to be the same, nor do I expect to change your mind or anyone else’s, but I’m not going to dance around a subject out of fear that your morals and ethics aren’t like mine. As such, I have no problem writing or reading controversial posts about:

Philosophies or ideologies
Schooling methods
Parenting choices
Family dynamics (such as valuing sons over daughters)
Religious beliefs and practices, or lack thereof
Public behavior (like making a fool of yourself at a peewee football game)

In all these areas, you have a choice. If I think that choice is dumb, I’ll probably say something (though I’m most likely going to say it here, not on your blog, because I don’t like kicking up a fuss in someone else’s yard). You have ultimate control over those areas. You can change any one of them. Because it’s something over which you have power, and because it’s something you choose to make public, it’s something I feel is within the purview of public criticism. I don’t expect any different from you, however, and I won’t get my pretty plus-sized panties in a wad because you criticize me in those areas. Perhaps you have more grace that I or you ascribe to the notion of never judging anyone, ever, no matter how off the charts their actions may be, mote/beam and all that. If you don’t have something nice to say, however, you’re still perfectly welcome to come sit by me.

I’m not going to write (or speak) negatively about someone on the basis of their race, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, abilities/disabilities, physical features (including height and weight), sex, gender, sexual orientation, or any other aspect intrinsic to their being. I believe humans inherently have worth, regardless of what they look like, their roots, or who they love. I won’t tolerate sexist, racist, homophobic, or other bigoted comments*. You’re spared those particular offenses on this blog and I won’t participate in a discussion where that kind of language is bandied about. I won’t waste my time on a bigot.

It’s also worth noting that when I write with “flowery prose and glittering generalities”** about systems and methods and organizations, I am aware there are real, individual people within those, with many individual merits, to whom those generalities don’t apply. I am able to think the idea of young earth creationism is rather ludicrous, while simultaneously having great respect for the intelligence and humor of an individual who believes in a young earth. I can think unschooling is a flawed educational philosophy overall, while acknowledging the well-brought-up and well-educated children that resulted from a particular unschooler’s implementation of that philosophy.

Most importantly, I know I am as absurd as any of you, probably more so. The very basis of this blog was to lay bare my own inadequacies as a homeschooler, mother, and person for the sake of personal introspection, community dialog, or a good old fashioned point and laugh. I am an innately flawed individual, inviting critique and even criticism through my decision to blog about my thoughts and experiences. I won’t cry, stomp my feet, throw a hissy, delete your comments, or come throw stones at you in your own blog if I don’t like what you have to say about me. If someone’s laughing at me, I’m probably laughing at me longer and louder. I don’t dish what I can’t take. I don’t dish what I don’t dish at myself.

Them there’s the ground rules, folks, straight up and on the level. I’ve never been particularly good at subtlety. I am what I am, like it or lump it. If you find yourself offended, just move right along, because this isn’t the blog for you. If you find yourself wanting to take me to task, however, step on up to the plate. You throw it and I’ll swing at it, and we’ll let the other readers decide whether I hit, miss, or foul out.

*To be perfectly honest, I will put up with a teensy tad of Yankee-bashing, but only because the victor writes the history and they’ve had a good 100+ years of Southern-bashing and making fun of my accent to build up a little karma.
**As my AP US History teachers use to accuse us of slipping into our papers.

If I have any other Michael Clay Thompson curriculetes* out there reading my blog, your input on this would be most welcome.

Tomorrow, I’m planning to get Captain Science rolling on his new MCT language arts curriculum. We have the whole Town level at our disposal, so any topic staging I do won’t have to revolve around the ordering of and waiting for books to arrive.

The recommended order of events seems to be:

1. Start the four-part grammar text (Grammar Town).
2. Halfway through grammar text, start the Latin-based vocabulary (Caesar’s English I).
3. Upon completion of the grammar text, begin writing (Paragraph Town), poetry (Building Poems), and practice workbook (Practice Town).
4. Upon completion of writing/poetry texts, start next level of grammar text (Grammar Voyage).

Is my understanding of the recommended order of text introduction (per this elemetary curriculum guide) correct?

Because Captain Science has such a good foundation of grammar already, I am considering starting him with the Latin-based vocabulary at the same time as the grammar, then alternating writing and poetry once the grammar is completing. I don’t forsee completion of Grammar Town taking any great length of time. Any strong recommendations for or against these plans?

I suppose I could just scatter the books around on the floor and let Captain Science chicken-peck at them at his own pace, but I guess I’m just the conventional type.

*There is something practically athletic about developing rigorous curricula for our classically educated children, isn’t there? I suppose we could also be curriculists or curriculeers, but that’s not nearly so awe-inspiring.