Smrt Lernins

I love it when I can start my Secular Thursday off with a story about dinosaurs. Scientists have discovered multiple 243 million year old Asilisaurus skeletons*, enough to assemble a complete skeleton. If you want to get technical, this Labrador-sized creature (which lived during the middle Triassic period) is a silesaur, another member of the clade dinosauriform, so more like a cousin to the guys we call dinosaurs. Still, dinosaurs and silesaurs existed simultaneously, springing from a common ancestor, so if silesaurs existed earlier than originally thought (by about 10 million years, by scientist’s estimations), their dinosaur cousins likely did, as well.

Now, “clade” is a fun word. It refers to a branch on the tree of life and includes the ancestor and all of its descendants. Cladistics is one way of studying/classifying the diversification of life of Earth through looking at evolutionary relation. The diagram demonstrating cladistics is called a cladogram, and it’s pretty nifty-keen in that it can show the origins and derivations of pretty much everything, or at least everything related, neatly laid out so that you can see what came likely from where (or who) based on shared derived characteristics.

Cladograms don’t indicate how much time has passed, just the relation between species, which makes it a useful tool in demonstrating evolutionary concepts to children. Explaining evolution to (especially younger) children can be tricky, in my experience, because children’s understanding of time is fairly limited. Trying to conceptualize time relations between species and understand tiny changes over millions of years is confusing to a kid who still think of his years in halves. Cladograms just show the probable order of speciation, like a family tree, which kids don’t seem to have a problem understanding.

If you want to look at something really cool (though now out of date, because science…always updating and changing as we develop better tools and find more clues!), you should take a look at this dinosaur cladogram completed in 2001. The way this tool can be useful for your kids isn’t because it has an up-to-date degree of accuracy (too many discoveries sticking other creatures in between the ones list), but because it does provide an interesting visual way to track how creatures change over time. The simple dino silhouettes will probably much a lot more sense that a text-only “family tree” of evolution, plus, what kid doesn’t love dinosaurs (probably some kids, but mine aren’t among them)?

If you’d like to read more about the Asilisaurus, you might enjoy one of the articles from Discover magazine or Wired. I’m sure you want to read more about this herbivorous lap dog of the Triassic period!

Nice looking guy, isn’t he?

*Sterling J. Nesbitt, Christian A. Sidor, Randall B. Irmis, Kenneth D. Angielczyk, Roger M. H. Smith & Linda A. Tsuji. “Ecologically distinct dinosaurian sister group shows early diversification of Ornithodira” Nature 464, 95-98 (4 March 2010) | doi:10.1038/nature08718; Received 16 September 2009; Accepted 1 December 2009

Mention homeschooling in the wrong company and you’re bound to get an earfull about all the potential damage your irresponsible choice is doing to your children, particularly their “socialization” and their ability to ever, ever get into a college that isn’t named after a guy called Bob. Some will share cautionary tales of a homeschooler that their cousin once knew who wasn’t able to do 8th grade math upon graduation or who wept copiously when spoken to by strange children on the playground. Some will be rude enough to make negative statements about homeschooling in front of your homeschooled children.

I will ignore the stunning fact that no one even asked these people, who are clearly ignorant about what homeschooling actually entails, for their input, advice, or predictions for the (clearly hopeless) future of our children, and instead ponder what it is, exactly, about homeschooling that makes it so offensive. I’ve come up with a few possible reasons why someone might feel threatened by homeschooling:

1. Assumptions about religious motivation — Some homeschool detractors seem to think all homeschoolers are doing it for (extreme and/or fundamentalist) religious reasons and assume that our choice to homeschool means that we don’t want to teach our children about evolution, sex education, or extra-Biblical literature. With this assumption often comes comments on our family’s size and dynamics, since we’re probably also Quiverfullers who beat our kids with flexible PVC pipes. People with these assumptions view homeschoolers as religious nuts who are afraid that the government is trying to brainwash children into believing in global warming and pre-marital dating. They may or may not have opinions on secular homeschooling, or even know it exists, so (if you don’t have the time or energy to explain that many religiously-motivated homeschoolers also have a very rigorous, classical curriculum that may include those supposedly verboten subjects) you may be able to quickly quiet the naysayer by explaining that your homeschooling curricula is secular.

2. Assumptions about parenting (ie. “Special Snowflake Syndrome”) — Some homeschool detractors believe that non-religious parents who choose to homeschool do so because they believe their children are too “special” (imagine a snide tone on that word) to follow the rules/policies of the public school classroom. With this assumption comes comments about how we think our children can never do any wrong, how we blame every problem on an allergy or other condition, or that “every homeschooler thinks her kid is gifted.” People with these assumptions view homeschoolers as having babied, out of control children who think everything must always be tailored to suit their “special” whims and can’t handle even simple tasks without parental help or oversight. There isn’t any real way to clear up this misconception in a stranger, especially if your kids are flipping out in a particularly slow checkout line, but someone who spends any length of time around you and your children will probably start reassessing these assumptions’ validity.

3. Assumptions about socialization — Some homeschool detractors are concerned that homeschooled children are not offered enough (or the “right”) opportunities for socialization and will therefor be unable to adequately function in an environment outside of their own family. With this assumption comes a tendency to blame any shyness or social awkwardness on the homeschooling, rather than the personality of the child, and to make dire proclamations about the child’s potential for handling college or the “real world.” People with these assumptions view homeschoolers as insular and isolated. This concern is easily addresses by explaining the many social (and legal) support networks, co-ops, and resources available to homeschooling families to ensure myriad opportunities for socialization.

4. Assumptions about rigors of homeschool curricula — Some homeschool detractors believe that not being held to the identical grade standards of the public schools results in homeschooling parents providing an inadequate amount of instruction and setting low standards for their children. With this assumption comes commentary on that one homeschooling family their aunt knew whose kids could barely read in the 10th grade and were never, ever able to get into college due to their poor education. You know, that family. People with these assumptions often have a misconception that secular homeschooling is synonymous with unschooling, that homeschooling parents don’t make the choice to homeschool in order give their children a more rigorous education, and that homeschooling is somehow the “easy road” (the “wow, I wish I didn’t have to get the kids up for school every morning! It must be nice to be able to sleep in every day” comments). You’ve got two options here: the catty response (“Oh, your son is only just starting long division? We did that two years ago and have moved on to algebra.”) or the civil response (“I’m glad that being allowed to set our own standards means we can set them as high as we’d like.”) I’d recommend thinking the former, but speaking the latter.

5. Assumption that by choosing to homeschool your child(ren), you are actually making commentary on their educational choices for their child(ren) — Most controversies boil down to “if you do it differently than I do, you’re saying my way is bad, so I must defensively point out that your way is bad.” Some homeschool detractors seem quite certain that your choice to homeschool your own children means you think anyone who doesn’t homeschool their children is doing it “wrong.” With this assumption comes comments about all of the above assumptions, because they’ll blame their defensiveness on anything but what it actually is, the fear of someone doing something differently from how they’re doing it. People with this assumption don’t care what studies or data show about the efficacy of homeschooling, how delightfully well-behaved and well-adjusted your children are, or how well your children perform academically — they know homeschooling is wrong, because they aren’t doing it, and the choices they make are always “right.” Don’t even try to reason with people making this assumption; just tell them you’re glad that public/private/military school is working out so well for them and move on with your day.

We had another fantastic week at the McLernins Academy of Advanced Lernins (no, I don’t actually put that on my DOI or attendance reports, but I’m considering it for next year)!

Monday was only a half-day, because Captain Science and I had a special day planned. I wasn’t going to have him do any work at all, but the little darling woke up early, knocked out his run, math, and grammar before I ever got up! We closed shop early to go see Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief, which Captain Science declared one of the best movies ever, even if it wasn’t very much like the book. We rounded out our awesome afternoon with corned beef and roasted potatoes, which is his favorite meal (other than chicken fingers and french fries), for a full day of Captain Science/Smrt Mama fun. It was the best President’s Day ever.

Tuesday is co-op day at the McLernins house. We were down two students (Ari and Eclectic Girl, both on family vacations), but the board game class was still boisterous and productive. The children voted on their game idea, which, somewhat ironically, is a food fight game set in a public school cafeteria! We only had one student who didn’t like that idea, but hopefully he’s having enough fun that he won’t mind working on his less-than-first choice.

My writing students are making great progress, too. Since EG wasn’t there and I didn’t want her to get too far behind, my three students (Cpt. Science included) read Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wall-Paper.” We then discussed things like protagonists and antagonists, pacing, climax and resolution, and reliable vs unreliable narrators. Their assignment for next week was to rewrite their climactic scene from a different POV. Captain Science finished his rewrite last night.

Jumping into our subject by subject review:

It was what we’d call a FABULOUS week for math. Captain Science knocked out chapter 25 in Life of Fred: Decimals and Percents, then completed the bridge to chapter 26 in the first try! He also completed chapters 26-28 without making any mistakes. Woohoo!

Language arts was also good this week. We reviewed clauses and phrases one more time in Grammar Town, because I was still a little concerned about Captain Science being able to identify a gerund. He did several pages from Practice Town, a lesson from Caesar’s English I plus review of prior materials, and did a lesson on rhymes in Building Poems. He’s currently writing a neat final draft of his end rhymed, internal rhymed, and eye rhymed poems, which I’ll post later. Once he’s done, he’ll read the first section of Paragraph Town, wrapping up our LA work for the week.

With Patchfire on vacation (how dare she, right?), we were left to our own devices for science. She left me the materials for the brain class for co-op, so I took the students through that (messing up my own materials by coloring incorrectly, which made them laugh at me). Captain Science also did workshops I, II, and III and experiments I and II from his Thames and Kosmos physics lab, getting all caught up for the week we missed due to not having the kit yet.

Piano! I always forget to add piano. Captain Science is making huge strides. He’s an excellent sight reader, but also has a good ear for music. He’s advancing quickly into chords, playing duets with his teacher, and is slowly integrating scales. I’m so impressed by how naturally he’s taken to it, considering I was not that much of a natural on the piano. I’m so happy that he’s musically minded!

The Tank’s week was fairly uneventful: no class on Monday, happy and sunny days on Wednesday and Thursday. Have I mentioned that I can’t wait to start homeschooling him? I’m lining up my resources for next year!

Babypie has a cold. I have a cold. Officer Daddyman has a cold. That’s our big accomplishments for the week.

The second in our Secular Thursday series of secular homeschooling mom archetypes, The Organized Mom, has been guest authored by my own favorite Organized Mom, Patchfire of A Little Rebellion:

When Smrt Mama was preparing for this, her first year of homeschooling, I probably overshared my own preparations. Needing to balance the needs of two students and a toddler too, I was even more organized than ever before. I think it was the color-coded schedules that finally did her in. The result was being used loosely as a model for the Organized Mom archetype. Now Smrt Mama’s asked me to pontificate for a bit on the strengths and weakness of Organized Mom.

Here’s a quick refresher on the Organized Mom archetype, pulled from Smrt Mama’s original post on the topic:

* The Organized Mom – She is better at this than you will ever be. If you’re comparing yourself to other homeschoolers, just go ahead and quit before you get around to comparing yourself to her. You might even consider flinging yourself on your sword. She has her days scheduled to the color-coded minute and her children obey them perfectly. She researched her curricula extensively and is most likely following a Classical model. She’s already finished planning her curriculum for next year. Her children are enrolled in enrichment programs and are now very enriched and can Appreciate (with a capital A) art and music. Her motto: “It’s never too early to start looking at colleges.”

Her strengths are many. Organizing, knowledge, vision, and confidence stand out amongst them. There are weakness there, too – overscheduling, trying to do too many books and too many curricula, and above all, the possibility of arrogance. Organized Mom doesn’t know how not to be organized, though, so the key is mitigating the weaknesses.

Strengths: The obvious is first: organization. Organized Mom has a system for computer files, pieces of paper, and everything in between. Often blessed with a good memory (or a good back-up system!), Organized Mom has a place for many things, even if it’s not immediately obvious. She extends this organization onto her time, with an almost eerie ability to coordinate errands, enrichment activities, exercise, and other time demands in order to maximize efficiency. The color-coded schedule? Merely a written diagram of what’s inside her brain.
Weakness: Kids need time to play freely. They need downtime, and some spontaneity, too.
Solution: Be sure that the color-coded schedule allows that time for free play and downtime. The kids will come to look forward to it, and will also know no screen time is allowed during it. Also, don’t extend the color-coded schedules too far. Scheduling the schoolwork: good. Scheduling your Saturday down to fifteen-minute intervals? Bad. Sometimes a block of time would be better served by a checklist than a schedule, and other times, the schedule kept 95% of the time should enable Organized Mom to break the schedule entirely.

Weakness: Armed with her knowledge of curriculum, Organized Mom wants to use the best resources. All of them.
Weakness: In an attempt to play to her personal subject strengths as well as shore up her personal weaknesses, Organized Mom can easily unbalance her children’s curriculum. Afraid of shortchanging them, their enrichment activities may end up concentrated in just one or two areas.
Strength: Organized Mom knows about lots of good resources, and can change course for various children, or offer suggestions for other homeschoolers.
Strength:Organized Mom knows where her homeschool is going. She may have a formal vision statement written, or a list detailing what a high school graduate should know. She’s looking into the future, and planning with the end in mind.
Solution: Use that vision statement! Organized Mom sometimes needs to step back and look at the big picture when she’s caught up in the minutiae. Often, simply picture where a certain program or curriculum fits (or doesn’t!) in the overall plan will help her make a good decision. Organized Mom is also a perfect choice for running (or at least attending religiously) a homeschool moms’ night out or curriculum sharing night. With her knowledge of various curricula, she may know just the program for Suzy Neighbor’s advanced ten year old, or Kelly NextTownOver’s budding reader. She’s also unafraid to change programs for the needs of her different students. One child may thrive with one approach, and the next another. Luckily, she knows the ins and outs of many, and can meet her children’s needs accordingly.

Strength/Weakness: Organized Mom is confident. She has a plan and a vision, and knows what to use to achieve it. If she were inclined to make comparisons with other homeschoolers in the beginning, she’s stopped after just a year or two, or maybe less. Even when there are doubters, she just tunes them out. Think Rachel Berry on Glee singing “Don’t Rain on My Parade.” There can be a fine line between confidence and arrogance, however, and one of her biggest strengths (confidence) can all too easily become a big weakness (arrogance).
Solution:The phrases “in my opinion” and “in my experience” can help mitigate the occasions when she steps close to the line. Organized Mom must still be careful to gauge people’s reactions, whether online or in person. If she’s not skilled in reading people, even more caution may be required. She shouldn’t let fear of alienation through arrogance keep her from sharing what she knows and has learned, however, which makes this strength/weakness duo by far the most difficult to navigate.

Organized Mom is the quintessential Girl Scout, living up to the motto of “Be prepared.” If her children don’t win college scholarships and go on to rule or change the world, she’ll have just one thing to say. In the immortal words of Han Solo, “It’s not my fault!”

[Note from Smrt Mama: Do you identify (even partially? somewhat humorously?) with any of the remaining homechooling archetypes? Would you like to guest author a future Secular Thursday blog post at Smrt Lernins? Email Smrt Mama with your ideas for the Secular Homeschool Archetypes series!]

Happy Darwin Day to one and all! Here’s a little bit about what Darwin Day means to me:

My county’s public school system (an otherwise well-thought-of system, high scores and all those things one uses to grade a public school system as “good”) has a somewhat ignoble history of dealing with the topic of evolution. Up through the ’90s, the county’s policy was to avoid the topic entirely, so as to avoid “compelling of any student to study the origin of human species,” a stunning example of the separation of church science and state. In 2001, the school system started looking for new science books and new approaches towards evolution (new approaches encouraged, I suspect, by my former biology teacher, Dr. Wesley McCoy, who has testified in favor of evolution at public hearings and federal court — it’s worth noting that Dr. McCoy, when I knew him at least, was also highly active in his church and involved in trying to bridge the gaps between the religious and scientific communities). When the religious community got wind of this shift towards the more scientifically-sound teaching of evolution, they responded with a protest signed by some 2,300 parents (a number which makes up only a small percentage of the parents of the 100,000+ students enrolled in Cobb County schools).

The county, in order to avoid a media mess over the change toward a more evolutionist science text (the horror!), decided the solution was to include this sticker in the new science texts:

This textbook contains material on evolution. Evolution is a theory, not a fact, regarding the origin of living things. This material should be approached with an open mind, studied carefully, and critically considered.

Approved by
Cobb County Board of Education
Thursday, March 28, 2002

I was lucky to have graduated five years (and my brother two years) prior to this incident, but it still struck a nerve. A small group of religious individuals had put pressure on a public school over the inclusion of secular scientific theory — and had won. To those with a decent understanding of science, “scientific theory” means an explanation based on observation, experimentation, and reasoning, especially one that has been tested and confirmed as a general principle helping to explain and predict natural phenomena. We understand that a “fact” is a single piece of quantifiable data and a “theory” is the means of correlating and interpreting multiple facts. To say that say “evolution is not a fact, but a theory,” is to say “a duck is not a wing, but a bird.” There’s a twisted degree of limited accuracy there (the wing is not the whole duck, nor is the duck nothing but a wing), but a fundamental lack of understanding of the relationship between evolutionary theory and the factual existence of evolution (the wing is one necessary component of the whole duck; the wing doesn’t exist without the duck). Evolution is a theory…that evolution itself exists is a fact. Trying to use the “just a theory, not a fact” argument to discount the scientific validity of evolution only demonstrates one’s lack of understanding of the basic principles of empirical evidence-based science and of current modern evolutionary synthesis. Or, as one writer put it, “Evolution isn’t just a theory; it’s triumphantly a theory!”

In 2004, plaintiffs Jeffrey Selman, Kathleen Chapman, Jeff Silver, Paul Mason, and terry Jackson, who all had children in the school system, brought suit claiming that the sticker violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. 2005, a judged ruled on the case (Selman v. Cobb County School District), finding that the stickers violated the Lemon test (which details the requirements for legislation concerning religion):

1. The government’s action must have a legitimate secular purpose;
2. The government’s action must not have the primary effect of either advancing or inhibiting religion; and
3. The government’s action must not result in an “excessive entanglement” of the government and religion.

The stickers failed the Lemon test because they gave the appearance that “the School Board [had] sided with the proponents of religious theories of origin in violation of the Establishment Clause.” The board’s choice of language — referring to evolution as “a theory, not a fact,” a well-known tactic of evolution-opponents, using “theory” in the colloquial sense to mean an opinion or guess — was ultimately the hill on which the battle was lost. Judge Cooper, who heard the case, wrote: “…the distinction of evolution as a theory rather than a fact is the distinction that religiously motivated individuals have specifically asked school boards to make in the most recent anti-evolution movement.”

The case was appealed and ultimately settled out of court in favor of the plaintiffs, at which time Cobb County School District state it would not order the placement of “any stickers, labels, stamps, inscriptions, or other warnings or disclaimers bearing language substantially similar to that used on the sticker that is the subject of this action.” No stickers getting in the way of children learning about evolution in public school…at least, not in Cobb County.

The National Center for Science Education, the ACLU, and Smrt Mama called this a win.

The full text of Selman v. Cobb County can be read at Talk Origins Archive, a “collection of articles and essays that explore the creationism/evolution controversy from a mainstream scientific perspective.” You can find a list of additional resources on teaching evolution to your pre-collegiate students here.

Captain Science had a great week. Thank goodness, because I was fixin’ to put him out in the yard in a box labeled “free kittens (large).”

He finally, finally passed the Life of Fred: Decimals and Percents bridge to chapter 20 (we won’t even talk about how many tries that took) and then zoomed through chapters 20-24. Even though chapter 24’s work was as long as a bridge and over new concepts, he finished it quickly and completely correct!

Caesar’s English I is also going swimmingly. After finishing the second chapter last week, Captain Science reviewed the materials and then took the cumulative quiz over the materials . 100% — surprising, as he took it in a noisy coffee shop while I was attending a baby-wearing meeting. He’s such a little peach sometimes that it makes those bad weeks much more bearable.

He has also officially completed Grammar Town, though I have to say, bless his heart, we’re having to go back and do review over a few concepts. He missed 10 of the 25 questions of the post-test, due mainly to zooming through without paying attention. He can identify all the relevant parts of speech, phrases, etc. in a sentence, write an example sentence using the required sentences parts, but totally bombed the multiple choice?   Yeah, I’m going to call that an effort issue, not a retention issue. It was hard to keep him focused through his work on Practice Town today, as it has started snowing to beat the band, a rare treat in Georgia. We went through a little review of direct object vs. indirect object vs. subject complement, then he broke down a few example sentences for me (all correct), before I booted him out into the snow, where he is currently leaving giant footprints all over the formerly pristine snowy driveway.

Our mini-co-op is going swimmingly. We added new students to Daddyman’s game class this week and two of the new students (some of my favorites from my writing class last semester) stayed to do Patchfire’s class on the brain and my writing class. We now have an age spread from 9-12 (maybe almost 13?) and an additional girl, which is nice for balance. They came up with their board game ideas, looked at slides of the brain online, and worked on the main conflict from their stories. The dynamic is just perfect now, as the oldest student is genuinely admired and respected by the younger kids, which lets him act as a leader and keep them on track. Love these kids, seriously. Such a wonderful group, every single one of them, from our morning gamers to our afternoon writers.

Science in general is moving in a fun direction. Captain Science’s Thames and Kosmos Physics Workshop came, so he and EG spent Thursday building various machines to test force and weight. Patchfire et al. have prior commitments on Tues/Thurs of next week, so I’ll be managing the brain class and having Cpt. Science catch up on a couple of experiments from the phsyics kit next week — something to do with dropping potatoes and making a sail car? Or maybe sailing a potato car?

The Tank surprised me this week with his ability to write his name, which isn’t exactly short or easy (and we’ve had some arguments over the inclusion of the letter “v” on a few occasions). He wrote it on 10 valentines for his classmates and teachers, with no help and only one or two gentle reminders that his name doesn’t start with “O.” He missed class on Wednesday due to a mild fever the night before (24 hour fever policy? — homeschool doesn’t have that), and when I walked him in, all the little boys in his completely-male (by lack of girl enrollment, not by sex-segregating design) class were sitting at their desks with giant globs of pink play-dough (made by yours truly) and hollered, “You’re here!” His teacher also gave him a huge hug and said, “I’m so glad you made it today!” Queue moderate guilt over not re-enrolling.

Babypie’s newest skill this week is incessant chattering. She talks almost constantly in nonsensical syllables that perfectly mimic the tone and form of our speech.

I stayed busy with both a La Leche League meeting and a baby-wearing social, plus the co-op and science at Patchfire’s. I’ve been under the weather and am dragging, so I’m amazed our week has been this productive. I just want to drink coffee and snuggle under a blanket all day, but that’s not a good way to get homeschooling accomplished, sadly.

It’s currently snowing all fluffy and Yankee-like out there, so I’m going to take some pictures and document this magnificent snowfall. I’m sure I’ve forgotten stuff from the week, but such is the nature of things.

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!

Dear Crazy Internet Christians,

It’s time I had a little come to Jesus meeting with y’all, alright? And yes, I’m aware of the irony there.

Now, you intelligent and compassionate Christians, who treat others with respect and who actually try to live life as modeled by Christ, can just sit right back down. This isn’t about you or even about Christianity (or at least, its foundations). I know that the crazies aren’t the only representatives of Christianity, or even comprise the largest percentage of Christianity, but they are, unfortunately, the loudest. You reasonable people have my love and appreciation for making this world a kinder place, though most of us differently-believers and non-believers wish your voices were a little easier to hear over the fray. God bless you for trying.

I’m talking to y’all over there, the other Christians, the ones who use your religion as a weapon of hate and denigration against others, who expect everyone in this world to treat your beliefs as true and absolute while you dismiss all of theirs as falsehoods and heathenry, who balk at any implication that an alternative set of beliefs might ever be acceptable to discuss (or God forbid, to actually believe), who wander around like rabid dogs in a hot summer street, looking for a chance to become righteously offended and bite anyone who commits the grievous crime of not thinking how you think.

If this is your version of Christianity, well, I feel awfully happy that I’m not a Christian (and even if I were, I’d be happy that someone like you probably wouldn’t consider me the right kind of Christian). You are not convincing me to become a Christian. You’re not convincing me to think highly of Christians or Christianity. You’re certainly not convincing me to think carefully about what I say, out of fear of offending you punkin dunkin liddle baby feelings.

Have you ever wondered why some people seem to hate Christians so much? A little hint — it has nothing to do with being afraid that your religious beliefs are right, being jealous of you, being lead astray by the devil, or any of the other nonsense your more extreme Christian groups keep claiming. Here’s a great example of the behavior that triggers that sort of response from others: Getting worked up over someone asking for recommendations of “books about Christian mythology for non-Christians”, dressing them down for daring to (accurately) use the term “Christian mythology” to refer to “the body of traditional narratives [everything] associated with Christianity,” accusing them of “insulting [your] intelligence” by asking for secular resources in a manner you find unacceptable, and really, when it all comes down to it, making an ass of yourself because someone is addressing a question to non-Christians on a board where you seem to think that everyone should feel obligated to ascribe to your narrow and unreasonably rigid view of Christianity, all while making plenty of blatantly insulting and ignorant comments about adherents to other faiths and their beliefs in the exact same thread and plenty of others.

That’s why people hate you. You’re narrow-minded. You’re petty. You’re completely self-absorbed. You see insult where none is meant just for the pleasure of feeling wronged. You’re judgmental. You’re hypocritical. You’re passive aggressive when you aren’t being openly aggressive. You cast the first stone into your neighbor’s eye. You’re just plain mean.

In short, you give Christianity a very bad name and you look like pure fools in the process. The best thing you could do to win people to Christ would be to just shut up, because y’all aren’t doing him any favors right now.

Sincerely,
Smrt Mama McLernins

P.S. The heathens called and they’d like their holidays back.

My little author finally decided he’d do the assignment as assigned. This version is a little less amusing, but actually correctly incorporated all 8 parts of speech and was free from glaring grammatical/punctuation errors (he could have just rewritten the first story, but wouldn’t).

Once there was a boy, living in a town, and he ran so confidently and fast during races that everyone who saw him run would say, “Wow!” One day, in a racing tournament, he participated and raced into the finals. as soon as the starter gun fired, he and his three competitors took off. He was in first place neck-to-neck with another guy. 100 feet…50 feet…he was now in first place alone. 25 feet…10…15…10-9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1-0! He won the tournament for the 34th time, and felt great holding up the golden trophy.

When asked to correct some minor grammar and punctuation errors, Captain Science instead chose to completely rewrite his story. Unfortunately, this resulted in it no longer fulfilling the requirements of the assignment, so he is now working on draft #3. As you can see, version two is as bizarre as version one, of not more so.

Once upon a time, there was a nice town, and nice people lived in this town, but they had been cursed by a wizard, so they couldn’t speak any adjectives. As a result, their sentences were dull. One day, a spy who worked for the wizard noticed two men talking…about his master! The first man said, “The king will surely like when I deliver the culprit.” The second man said, “He certainly will.” Then a third voice said, “Listen up, both of you! Your wretched town will never survive with my spied lurking in every corner!” The spy’s eyes widened. The third voice belonged to his master. He then hurried off to prepare for a siege.