The miracle of modern homeschooling is not that the product is academically superior. The miracle is that parents are discovering their children and finding they can provide their child with a moral context for the academic education. The majority of parents find their goal grows from providing a better education for their child to producing a whole adult who is ready to assume their role in society.
I have just read the best post I've seen in months, maybe years.
If that didn't get your attention, you're too busy so nevermind. The rest of you need to get a cup of coffee, tea or whatever it is that makes you pause while you drink or eat it. Sit down and read Melissa Wiley's Every Face I Look At Seems Beautiful To Me. It's so good, I italicized it. Finding this gem is the reason I read blogs in the first place. This one challenges me to stop looking forward to things and simply savoring all I can out of the moment I find myself in. Helping our kids nurture their love for learning is more important than deskwork, and Wiley's post reminded me at just the right time.
One more thought to add. My disability helps me see the wisdom of what she said. Often my condition puts whatever goal I had for the day or even the week out of reach for me. It's dumb, really dumb, to get frustrated about it. It doesn't change anything. Instead, I need to focus on enjoying what I can do, even if it's just lying still and breathing in and out for the next hour or two. I'm really grateful for this post.
From the government's Department of Ridiculous Studies, it's reported that fully half of America's schools are underfunded. The NEA indicates that it has corroborated the results of the study with its own research. Alarmed, the Senate has formed an indipendent committee to increase funding to 150% of these schools' budgets. They also plan to monitor the other half of the schools, in the event that they too become underfunded. Contingency plans are already in place for this development by also increasing funding in the same percentage as above in the interest of remaining fair and balanced.
In related news, the NEA has placed little, red schoolhouse enclosures over each of its entrances at their DC headquarters to remind their staff of the true purpose of the NEA. It's also hoped that the structures will deflect the smoke from the staff on their hourly smoke breaks as well as the smoke from the money-burning department from being blown back into the building. A 10 year study on smoke particles from burning hundred dollar bills was found to be nearly as toxic as tobacco smoke. "As you can imagine, we were quite concerned," said NEA spokesperson Eromye Nomesaelp. "Our initial plan was to call in substitute teachers to filter the air by breathing it. That was only partially effective, so we've supplemented the teachers with ionizing air filters everywhere inside the building. The results from the EPA are still pending."
The ruling in California on homeschooling has caused quite a stir in some of the local homeschool communities. One mother who declined to give us her name, her phone number or even an e-mail address claimed that they were ready for whatever would come next. She said that she had stockpiled powdered milk, instant oatmeal and plenty of jean jumpers for the next year. Another homeschooling mom, Anna Bobanna of Stockton, planned to keep her children indoors in a makeshift fort they had constructed out of unused curricula. They planned to use their skills at hunting, knitting home-made yarn and legislation to safeguard their "little republic" as Mrs. Bobanna called it. Her twin children, Lana and Montana seemed to be fully adept at each and also helped re-program our correspondent's computer by correcting all the bugs in Vista. "I can't believe how they botched the code," remarked Montana, who will be 7 on Tuesday.
That's it for the Nearly News, Briefly team. I'm the only one on staff at the moment and I took a clue from Ford and just gave the entire company a vacation. Whether this is a cost-saving measure or an attempt at boosting morale remains to be seen. Whether this is a weak attempt at satire, however, has been fully proven.
Home schoolers who have coloring book-aged children might be interested in this flag coloring web site with outlines of flags that you can print up for the cost of ink and paper. As a kid, I thought flags were really cool. Maybe I never outgrew it.
Here's my first attempt:
...Oh, wait. I'm supposed to print it, then color it. But it turns out better when I do it this way!
We Americans call the flag of the United States of America "The Stars and Stripes" and sometimes "Old Glory," but I had never considered that other nations have names for their flags too. For example, Switzerland has the Federal Cross (no comment on this from the S.C.L.U.) and Japan calls their simple design the Hinomaru (sun disk flag).
Flags are a great starting point to teach geography and one terrific resource is the Central Intelligence Agency. Yep, you heard me. They have a World Factbook that was just re-published for 2008, but you can always check out their up-to-date, online version. They have a flag database, but there's so much more. Do you want a political map of the entire world in PDF? How about get an approximation of the comparative area of Uzbekistan?
It doesn't have to get very complicated. One other way to use the flags once you color them is to help your kids understand how one place can have a flag representing their nation, their province or state, and even their county and city. Point to a map of North America and have them pick the right flags for Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada or Chicago, Illinois, United States of America. Here's my home town's flag. Depending on how creative your kids are, you can have them make up their own personal flag or family flag. Ask them what they would put on it and see what they think is important to them or what makes them and your family unique to the world. You might have your eyes opened a bit by their responses.
One last thought: Geography is a great opportunity to teach your children to pray for the countries, people groups and tribes. Where people live and how they live is important, but praying for others is eternally significant.
PS: For Canadians, the proper title of this post is "Colouring Flags and Learning Geography"
I can't believe how insane California's jurists can get. According to the ruling, every homeschooling parent in California is now criminally liable--yes, you read that right--for educating their child at home. James Dobson says it's "an imperious assault on the rights of parents..." I can't say he's wrong or even overstating the fact, as activists are known to do. Please visit HSLDA to sign their organized petition to get the Supreme Court to "depublish" the case and have it only apply to the family in the case.
I have a musical brain. The trouble is, I don't play an instrument. Oi vey, everybody.
It is a sad and sometimes painful truth that I bailed or failed piano and trumpet after a few years each. Of course this was before my parents discovered that I had a learning disability. Yeah, you can hear the screaming now too, eh? Yep, my eyes were broken and my ears took over. I could pick out any tune I heard and could play it pretty well until my piano teacher refused to play through the pieces for me. My pleas fell on deaf ears and I was forced to stumble through reading each piece one painful note at a time. You can see why I quit, but my teacher, God bless her, she called me lazy. One last painful sizzle across the soul and I was out of there.
Seriously, I couldn't understand why it was so hard for me to read music. Trumpet was easier because there's less of a demand to learn to read sheet music in band. Lessons were easier too, but it only got me to a certain point. Eventually, I had to read there too and that was that.
I don't mean to drag everyone through my own childhood failures, but I want it to underscore one very important thing parents need to remember: Your child has a natural learning ability that may or may not follow the traditional education methods.
If someone said it or read it in class, I knew it. If it was on the board or in my book, it was like it didn't exist to me. This is why I soared with some teachers and sunk with others in my private-but-just-as-flawed schools. To this day, I am still remembered by most of my teachers for all but the best reasons.
If you're struggling through something with your child as you homeschool, if your public or private schooled child is struggling with just a nominal amount of homework, if things just don't add up in their education, seek help. Check their eyes with a learning specialist. Check their ears. Find out if your child does better thinking while they move around or if they just sit or lie still in a quiet room. There are many ways of learning and if you take the time to find them out, you will save your child so very much.
That doesn't help me get this song out of my head. Press play. I dare ya.
According to the Grand Junction Sentinel, the Colorado Department of Education has approved a "vision" school on the Western Slope. Mesa Valley Vision Home Community Program Contract School "would provide home schoolers [sic] a network with teachers, a set curriculum, instructor employment policies and a home-school director," as well as "give the district the opportunity now to have more ability to track students that are home-schooled."
Colorado school districts are not supposed to be tracking which students in their district are homeschooled. The homeschooling law in Colorado is written in a way to separate homeschool students from the districts they live in. As I understand it, parents can file their notice of intent to homeschool with any school district in the state.
I find the following quote more ominous. Cindy Enos-Martinez said, “Right now, they can go in and sign up, and there’s really not a good way to track them." Why isn't "signing up," as Ms. Enos-Martinez calls it, a good way to track homeschoolers? The last part of the article makes the reason for the CDEs approval of the school abundantly clear:
“It’s a terrific challenge,” said Lu Vorys, who is on the board of the Lamborn Vision School in Paonia. “To work out the finances was a huge challenge.”
What was good about it for the school district, she said, is it was losing enrollment, but it got paid by the state per child, “so when all these Vision students came on, they [the school district] had much more state funding.”
It's obvious that they're happy about solving their declining enrollment, but why was enrollment declining and why did they look to bring in homeschoolers to bring in much more state funding? I believe the two questions are related. Western Slope parents are coming to the same conclusion many other Colorado parents have come to, which is that public schooling is no longer a viable solution to their educational needs. As a result, the school districts are looking for solutions that will continue the flow of money from the state.
While I welcome any option that increases the parents' choice between educational models, I can't help but feel this is a back door approach to funnel money out of state coffers into a struggling, outdated and hopelessly inefficient method of education. Having 1 teacher to 25, 35 and even 45 students fails to give children the attention they need in their schooling. Placing them in an artificial environment with unwritten codes of conduct enforced by a caste system made up of their peers doesn't prepare them for the real world. Forcing all students to learn from curricula that are designed for a pedestrian pace serves neither the quick nor the slow students among them.
Rather than force my child to suffer these ills of the public schools, I believe, along with many other Colorado homeschoolers, that homeschooling is a superior and efficient method for educating my children. I have yet to see how providing homeschoolers "a network with teachers, a set curriculum, instructor employment policies and a home-school director" would assist most homeschooling parents. Instead, it seems to me that they are looking to imbue homeschoolers with the same failed policies of class-based instruction, unswerving commitment to a single curriculum and school district bureaucracy. What's worse, when that approach fails a student, I fear that the parent might think that it's their own fault and shuffle the child back into public school instead of tasting the true freedom offered by homeschooling without the district's "help." For the thirsty, the vision school offers a bucket, but the well is dry.
Parents need to know their options. They need to know that they have a choice in where their child spends time every day. Most importantly, they need to know how some students aren't merely surviving their schooling, they're thriving in homeschool! Rather than pour more money into broken schools, lets help promote public awareness of parents' options and their irreplaceable role in the education of their child, whether they're public, private, or homeschooled.
Maybe just in walking by great books the youth of Detroit will somehow get smarter, but I doubt it. In reality, using GH3 and other console games to bring in crowds of teens will only succeed in the goal of filling a room not the goal of filling minds.
In contrast, when I tell my three children who are homeschooled that we are going to the library, they can barely contain their excitement. They can't wait to go and pick up new books. Our children are instilled with a love for reading and learning. Passing on this love is possible in a homeschool, but next to impossible in a class-schooling environment like in a public school.
My children may be "nerds" and "bookworms" when compared to public school students, but if the 90s taught us anything, it's that nerds can and will succeed in life. In fairness, I should add that my children like games like Dance Dance Revolution (and Dance Praise). They just know that there's a time to work and a time to play; a time to read and a time to dance.
