Smrt Lernins

Today is a day for tuning the piano, literally and metaphorically. Tommy Tucker, piano tuner (yes, his real name! how great is that!), is here fiddling around with my piano, getting it back where it needs to be for Captain Science to start piano lessons in January. I am trying to get Captain Science back in tune, after a 5-day absence, which is enough to make me want to never take a vacation again! Dawdling, forgetfulness, and all manner of irritaitons.

It feels like we’re trying to tune most everything at the moment. Babypie is recovering from her illness, rash slowly fading, but she’s still a little sensitive and not sleeping well. I’m shaken and out of sorts over the Lakewood police shooting, because when you’re the wife of a cop, every officer is your officer, so you take every incident like this to heart. The Tank is back at preschool this morning, and honestly, I was much happier having him at home. Our attempts to regain a sense of normalcy seem all wonky and ill-fitting.

Even this post, which should be a celebration of a successful completion of NaBloPoMo, feels out of tune. I need a mental pitch pipe to help get me back to where I need to be, I guess.

“Everyone homeschooler thinks her child is gifted.”

I haven’t even been homeschooling for a year, and I’ve already heard that statement more times than I can count. The perpetrator of the remark is usually a fellow homeschooler, though public/private schoolers sometimes say it, too. I’ve heard it said sarcastically, dismissively, bitterly, apologetically, patronizingly, and sometimes good-naturedly (with a little “bless their hearts” chuckle). I’ve seen it in blogs and on forums. Whether or not this is an attitude that the majority of people believe, it does seem to be fairly ubiquitous in the collective homeschooling mythos. I think there are a few different thoughts/intents behind the statement:

1. “My child isn’t gifted, so yours can’t be” (or the variation “My child isn’t gifted, and I’m resentful that yours is”).
2. “My child is gifted, but I’m afraid that if I say that, people will think I’m one of ‘those’ homeschooling moms.”
3. “I don’t understand the motivation to homeschool (or I fear that you think less of me because I don’t homeschool), so I’ll dismiss it as Special Snowflake Syndrome.”
4. “I’m tired of hearing bad behavior/developmental issues/general unpleasantness in a child rationalized by ‘he’s gifted!‘”

Now, I’m totally on board with that last one. I, too, am tired of all manner of behaviors being somehow justifiable because a child is supposedly gifted. Being smart doesn’t give you license to be a jackass. Quirky, yes. Eccentric, yes. But not a jackass. Having a gifted child doesn’t absolve you of your obligation to parent him, guide him, or correct him when he’s being a jackass. People are a lot more willing to accept your child’s giftedness if it isn’t wrapped in a box made of obnoxious jerk.

As for the others, well…

Here’s the thing: I do think there may be more gifted children among the homeschooling population than the mainstream school population, not because I think homeschooling makes your child gifted (I believe giftedness is inborn), but because I know there are many parents like me who have gifted children whom they have pulled from mainstream school because that particular set-up fails gifted students. Gifted students need to be taught differently than most public school teachers have been taught to teach. Homeschooling allows for working around some of the quirkier habits many highly gifted children share, while still challenging them to their fullest ability. For twice exceptional (2E) students, who are both gifted and have a learning problem, a homeschool environment can be even more beneficial. So yes, I think many, many parents have turned to homeschooling as a means of addressing the frustrations of the public school system (which was just not designed to teach the highest level of students).

In the homeschooling world, admitting you have a gifted child seems to be almost shameful. There’s the assumption by other that you’re making it up. If you don’t have “proof” of your child’s giftedness, you’re probably just another Special Snowflake mom with delusions of her own child’s grandeur. Of course, the parent of a truly gifted child can usually tell you as well as any test that something is different about her child. Gifted children don’t just work at a higher level, but have an ability to comprehend that is often far beyond their years. You can’t live with a child and not see that they grasp concepts most kids their age can’t.

Despite this, if you don’t have proof through testing, your child’s giftedness is in question in the homeschool community. As a result, parents write forum posts that include phrases like “my daughter isn’t gifted, just really bright…” and “my son is he’s working three grade levels ahead in all academic areas, but he’s not officially gifted…” Without proof of giftedness, they’re afraid to use the “g” word. If they did use it, the responses might vary from “why do you think your child is gifted?” to “a gifted child must use xyz curricula” to “you’re pushing your child TOO HARD!” Not only are you incapable of figuring out that your child is gifted, but on the off chance that he might be, you’re probably failing him academically, so it’s best to just keep your mouth shut about the whole thing (or just don’t mention your kid’s age when talking about curricula).

The first few times I heard “all homeschoolers think their child is gifted,” I said nothing. I wasn’t sure what to say. “My child is gifted” always sounded both defensive and like I’m exactly the kind of mom they’re talking about. Now, however, I’ve decided I can’t let that sleeping dog lie any longer. Captain Science is gifted — not “special snowflake gifted” or “working above grade level in a few areas gifted” like some people assume I mean, either. He knew upper and lower case letters and could write several of them at 18 months, could read at two, could follow (and often participate in) adult conversations — and understand that we’re an intelligent family (my brother, my parents, and I all tested into gifted classes when we were in school), so our conversations are often pretty fast-paced. We were told by his first school that they couldn’t challenge him enough because he already knew their whole curriculum through preK 4. He was skipped past kindergarten and into first grade by his second school. Before enrolling him in public school, we had him tested privately, and he tested an additional grade level ahead of his age (though we opted to not advance him a second year). In public school, he tested into gifted classes through both cognitive testing scores and subject knowledge testing scores. He’s gifted by any definition of the word — and still, I feel I have to justify my description of him as gifted (in fact, I’m doing that now, aren’t I?).

Let me tell you a little something about gifted children: A gifted child can still be awkward. He can still be as dorky as any kid. He can be totally disinterested in a subject. He can be perfectly willing to foist the work off on someone else. He can fail to grasp a concept on the first try (or he can care so little about the subject that he becomes purposefully obtuse). His sense of humor may seen absolutely bizarre to many people. He has areas of greater skill and natural talent, and areas where he’s ahead of grade level, but it’s still not his area where he flourishes. Just because the child in question does those things, it doesn’t mean s/he isn’t gifted.

Should I hide his light under a bushel because people believe identifying homeschooled children as gifted is de rigeur? Should I exhibit modesty topos on the Well Trained Mind forums for fear of people thinking I’ve misassessed my child’s abilities? Should I pander to the myth that gifted homeschoolers are a myth?

Personally, I’m inclined to tell them all to stuff it.

Today, Captain Science turns nine. I had anticipated feeling a little glum when his 10th birthday came along, because those double-digits are hailed as the point of “I’m so OLD! My baby is so OLD!” for parents. Instead, I found myself feeling pretty blue last night thinking about the birthday today. It wasn’t until I was in bed for the night that it hit me — I’m halfway “done” with raising him.

Captain Science is nine, and as anyone who has just completed Life of Fred: Fractions could easily tell you, 9 is 1/2 of 18. Eighteen! That rather arbitrary number indicates legal adulthood and we’re halfway there. In the same span of time it took him to reach the age he is now, he’ll be eligible to vote, to be drafted, to purchase cigarettes or lottery tickets, and to be completely legally responsible for all his own actions.

Of course, adulthood is much less concrete in actuality. Physically, he may well be man-sized at sixteen. Emotionally, he might not be ready to leave the nest at 18 (or he might be ready to fly earlier). If he never advances through lessons any faster than he has up to this point (a grade ahead), he’ll graduate at 16. Knowing Captain Science, though, there’s a good chance he could finish earlier than that. There’s also the simple fact that eighteen doesn’t really mean you’re done raising that kid. My parents continued to provide guidance, advise, and support (sometimes financial, sometime emotional) long after I turned 18. I lived with them for several years of my 20s while I was getting back on my feet after my divorce. Captain Science might leave home a happy, well adjusted college freshman at 17. We might have to pry him out of our basement with a crowbar in his late 20s.

Still, the idea of childhood being birth to 18 is firmly ingrained in my consciousness, and it’s hard to view 9 as anything other than Captain Science being halfway to that mythical land of Adulthood, where everything is finally Fair, and he can Have His Way, and do all the things he said he’d do when he became a Grown Up. My little nine pound baby is now nine years old. This is going way too fast.

I hope all our smrt readers had an excellent Thanksgiving. This being a holiday week, we only had school on Monday and Tuesday, and I kept the lesson plans light, which will make this quite the truncated weekly review.

Huzzah and hooray! We have finished Life of Fred: Fractions! Well, technically, we told Captain Science we’d like him to complete the additional tries for the final bridge to be considered “done,” but he did pass the second try of the final bridge, so he’s officially done according to how the book is set up. This means I must get Life of Fred: Decimals and Perfects from Patchfire before Monday, and that I need to hit Scary Jesus Book Store to grab some Key To… books for additional practice.

Captain Science also completed exercises 2 and 3 in Editor in Chief A1. He has no problem identifying the mistakes, but he’s lazy about rewriting the paragraph, leaving out punctuation (and forgetting to cross the letter t) as he goes. After having to rewrite the paragraphs a few times, though, I think the light bulb came on and he realized that rewriting the paragraph correctly is an important part of the lesson.

He really didn’t do much else in an official capacity. We talked through what we would be doing with Rome starting next week. I think he did some work from Logic Countdown, though which activities he worked on are escaping me at the moment. We did some good deep cleaning of the house, so I can count that as Home Ec, right? *wink*

With the exception of the SEE homeschool co-op, we haven’t really done activities outside of our academic curriula (math, science, history, language arts). We were just getting started with homeschooling and I wasn’t sure what we could handle, so I erred on the side of too little, rather than too much. Now we’re finishing up our first semester, and I have a better feel for what Captain Science is able to balance, schedule- and work-wise, so it’s time to start adding in some other things.

I wish we had the money in our budget for Captain Science to take classes through Master’s Academy, which, though definitely not secular, offers some fantastic classes in the arts. Unfortunately, that’s just not affordable for us this year.

Luckily, my great aunt has recently moved into town and happens to be an accomplished pianist and piano instructor. In January, she’s going to start teaching Captain Science piano. He’ll start with two lessons a week and has been promised that he can take an additional class in electric keyboard once he has learned his scales and the basics of piano playing. He was a little reticent at first, until he heard Great-great Aunt Elaine would be teaching him, and now he’s excited and keeps pestering me to let him start before the new year. Glad you’re stoked, kiddo, but I’ll need to revamp our schedule a bit before we can start that!

I’m also hoping to start him in a foreign language (probably Japanese). We have an old friend of the family who may be dating a woman from Japan who is also a Japanese instructor, so that’s one possibly avenue for that. Alternately, our local high school has had a great Japanese language program for many years and may have some one who could tutor Captain Science in Japanese.

Finally, my mother suggested adding arts and crafts into our schedule, rather than just feeling bad that I don’t make time for it. I think that sounds like a good idea. I would like to pick one day a week where we do some time of at least vaguely directed crafting or art work of some time. I’m going to pull out my craft project books and try to remember some of the best stuff we did in Girl Scouts. Paper making springs to mind. I think he’d enjoy that!

I’m really looking forward to the ways in which we can flesh out our homeschool experience with the addition of more outside instruction and artistic experiences.

On September 6, 1620, a group of travelers set forth from Southhampton, England with the best of intentions, forgetting that’s what the road to hell is typically paved with. Nearly 400 years later, some of those unquestionably good and some of those unspeakably ugly, we celebrate this day by giving thanks for the best of those days, for our family and friends, and for the other blessings in our life.

Some of the pilgrims came to this nation looking to establish their own godly colony, but with those religious travelers came an even larger group of secular (or at least not religiously motivated) farmers, sailors, and adventurers (collectively called “The Strangers”). America’s roots aren’t inextricably planted in Christianity, but they do grow deep and twisty into a sense of adventure and hopefulness, watered by the tiny voice that whispered into the ear of our ancestors, “Go West, young man.”

On this Thanksgiving, I’m thankful for my children and my husband. I’m thankful for my parents, my brother, my grandparents, my extended family. I’m thankful for dear friends, both the ones I know in person and the ones who remain thus far typed text on a screen, but who still offer helpful advice, support, and love. I’m thankful for the freedom to speak my mind about government and religion. I’m thankful for our decision to homeschool Captain Science and for the many blessings we have had over this year. Finally, I am thankful for the varied and diverse roots of this nation, that we do not come from any one people, from any one idea, from any one faith. Homogeneity is practically unAmerican, and I consider that a great blessing.

Happy Thanksgiving, folks!

Yesterday was the 150th anniversary of Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species. Since then, our understanding of how evolution works has changed and expanded, and scientific discovery has advanced at an almost exponential rate because of it. The field of evolutionary biology has helped us learn about genetics and the science of aging, and has even provided the framework for nanotechnology.

Of course, evolution fails far more often than it succeeds, and that failure teaches us, too. Too much change, too quickly, and a species can’t pass on the necessary traits quickly enough to continue. The little mutants who struggle gamely on can’t reproduce swiftly enough to make generations of little mutants who thrive under the new conditions. For any species to reach its evolutionary potential and not snuff it at the first big challenge makes the process all the more incredible. That infinitesimal biological differences, compounded over time, have taken us from the cell to the brain that can study the cell is enough to blow the mind of this particular collection of cells.

Adapt or die. Change or become extinct. This concept is practically ubiquitous in humanity, isn’t it? It’s not just in our biology, but in our technology, our culture, our beliefs. Those who cling to the outdated perish, either literally or figuratively through a death of relevance. Those with the tiny differences, the small but significant ways of adapting, that genetic willingness to take a risk and strive towards the new, survive and pass those traits on in a stunning continuation of the evolution of the human mind and that thing we call the human spirit.

What is our evolutionary potential as human beings? How far will we go? Is that change that could spell our end out there, waiting to wipe away all but the traces we left on the world? What tiny mutations — currently undetected, inconvenient, or seemingly irrelevant — might spell the success of our species?

Happy Birthday, On the Origin of Species — you didn’t get it all right, but you opened a doorway in our minds through which we could travel towards understanding.

With Thanksgiving right around the corner, I though today might be a good idea to answer some questions about those parts of homeschooling for which I am most thankful (and, yes, least thankful).

Zelda asks, “What is your LEAST favorite thing about homeschooling? What is your MOST?”

Since one of the glories of homeschooling is that I have no obligation to do things “in order,” I’ll address my most favorite first.

I love many things about homeschooling: not having to get up at 6am, having control over the depth and breadth of the curricula, having the freedom to take our work with us, having the opportunity to take fun classes through the co-op, developing a wonderful new community of friends for both of us, and more. The thing I love most, however, is how much homeschooling has improved my relationship with Captain Science.

This was actually the area I was most concerned about before we started homeschooling. We butted heads over homework so often when he was in public school, and it led to a lot of tears, yelling, stomping around, and general frustration and unhappiness. When homeschooling first popped up on our radar as a possible solution for Captain Science’s school problems, family member questioned whether the parent-child relationship could really hold up to me being the primary instructor day in and day out.

Miracle of miracles, however, we are getting along better now than we ever have! I enjoy working with Captain Science, and I know he can see that. My positivity over the curricula and the educational experience rubs off on him, and his joie de vivre that comes from not having to sit in a boring classroom, going over repetitive work as a snail’s pace rubs off on me. This isn’t to say that every day is easy, joyful, and stress-free. It’s not (and I think I blog about that pretty frequently, too). Our overall attitude towards school and each other has changed, though. We like each other’s company more. We don’t have to go back and forth over homework that neither of us see as being worthwhile, but I feel obligated to make him do to keep him from failing a subject that he mastered two years ago. I’m proud of his hard work now. I’m excited to see him engaging with challenging subjects. I’m in love with his love of learning. I’m rediscovering what an amazing child I’ve brought into this world and seeing what a remarkable person he is growing up to become. Who wouldn’t love that?

Homeschooling is definitely more than just joy and good times, though. It has its own host of frustrations and difficulties. I’ve written before about the isolation that a classical, secular homeschooler can experience, my frustrations with religion being so pervasive in homeschool curricula, and some of the (stereo)types of homeschooling moms with whom I have come into contact (including the ones that are homeschooling their 11-month-olds). I dislike the lack of diversity without our homeschool community, having to always be the one who has to take care of everything, and those days where Captain Science dawdles and wastes everyone’s time.

Despite all that, however, the one thing I have to say I like least about homeschooling is no more school lunch. I didn’t go up and have lunch with Captain Science often in the previous year, because the temptation to bitchslap his teacher into next Tuesday was just too hard to resist, but when I did, I usually planned it carefully around what they were having. Seriously, I love school lunch. Those little Krystal-style hamburgers, the fluffy rolls, the practically-cardboard school pizza, and little cartons of orange-flavored pseudojuice — HEAVEN! Alas, we bid farewell to that world of giant cinnamon rolls, diced peaches in a tiny plastic container, salad dressing pumps the size of my torso, and the weirdly delicious meat-floating-in-gravy that I can only assume is supposed to be Salisbury steak. I’m pleased that Captain Science now gets a more nutritious meal every day for lunch, but I do miss those pastel-colored sectional lunch trays full of tasty, nutritionless, institutional faux food.

I never worried about Captain Science being expose to a diverse enough assortment of people. Our family isn’t monochromatic. The kids’ godmother is black, our dear family friend who is for all intents and purposes their aunt is Japanese (lives in Japan, visits yearly), their great-grandfather is Mexican. Captain Science went to a Montessori school for three years. It was owned by an Iranian couple and the ethnic/racial make up of the school was mainly Iranian, Indian, black, Chinese, and white, in that order. From there, he moved to the public school, which adequately represented our part of the county’s diverse makeup. His classmates were white, black, Hispanic, Arabic, of varying religions and socioeconomic backgrounds. Being around people of all colors was normal for him.

Now we’re homeschooling, though, and that has changed. The homeschool co-op is predominantly white. Most of the children he plays with regularly are white, because that the demographic of our street in the neighborhood. Every child in The Tank’s preschool is white (and most are Methodist, because it’s a Methodist preschool and their parents belong to the church — we don’t). When we go to the local playgrounds, they seek out playmates of all colors, but they just aren’t getting the same sort of daily exposure to diverse groups that Captain Science used to have.

This worries me. How do other homeschoolers address this issue? Do they address it at all? Do they worry about their child being limited to other children who are of the same race, religion, and/or socioeconomic status? I know that for some homeschooling parents, this is exactly what they strive for, but to me, it’s one of the few down sides to homeschooling. Most of the homeschoolers around here are white and that’s just the way it is. It’s not like I can magically manifest a more diverse group of kids, just to compensate for that uncomfortable feeling of homogeneity.

I think race is an important issue to address, though. I don’t buy into the whole “we live in post-racial times” nonsense. We don’t. Having a president with his own diverse background doesn’t completely eliminate racial (or socioeconomic) tensions and disparity in this country. It was just so much easier to talk about diversity when we were in a group that was actually diverse.

I’m taking a slightly different tactic with the study of Ancient Rome than I did with Mesopotamia, Egypt, and Greece. While I’ve been happy with the summaries Captain Science has produced, I’d like to guide him towards exploring slightly more difficult concepts within his chapters, encouraging him to really delve into logic-stage learning. Towards that end, instead of a list of vocabulary words and a summary of Captain Science’s choosing, I will now give him a list of essential questions (probably between 1-3, depending on the length of the chapter) for each chapter. As he reads through the chapter, he should look for information pertaining to those questions, and write a paragraph to answer them. Questions may be along the lines of “Who was [such and such] and what important changes did he make in [place]?” or “If you were a slave in [ancient empire], describe what your day might be like.”

Here is my tentative lesson plan for Ancient Rome.

Ancient Rome Spreadsheet