• Dec. 1, 2009 - A, B, C, D, & F Too Hard for Parents?
Posted By Gena Suarez, The Old Schoolhouse Magazine
Apparently the Spokane School system thinks letter grades are the cause of ongoing problems with communicating how a child is doing in their subjects. Numbers on the other hand make everything clear. Read the article to find out how.
I have nothing against numbers, and I have nothing in favor of letters--as grades, but the problem the Spokane schools are hoping to solve won't be cured because of their preference for numbers over letters. They could do the exact same report card using the letter system. Nor will telling parents how their children are doing after the term help. Parents need to know how their children are doing during the term. Unfortunately many teachers never communicate that at all and leave it to the report card to do their "dirty" work for them.
Just a few weeks ago I spoke with a mom whose son had been placed in a new school. She thought her son was doing well. She had signed up to be a substitute teacher's aide and one day she was called in to help in the remedial math class. She was shocked to find her son in it. At first she thought he'd lost his way or something, but he soon let her know that this was his math class. It was a rough day for her as she waited for the day to end to find out the answers as to why her son was in this special class and why hadn't she or her husband ever been told?
While the parent should always be the one to keep tabs on their children and not leave it up to the teachers to relay how a student is doing, parents have been conditioned to believe that they have put their children in safe hands and that until they are notified, by report card, everything is fine and dandy.
Communication among parents and teachers is bound to get worse, not better, no matter what grading system is used as long as parents continue to blindly follow the blind.
Your guesses were right on the photo in the post below! We did indeed go to the Grand Canyon, and it was Grand indeed!
Ken's accustomed to staying up at night, having a night-shift job, so he decided we'd do the bulk of the 14 hour van ride while the sun slept.
The children were fantastic travelers, but some found it easier than others. This photo pretty much sums up Kieran's thoughts about 14 hours in a carseat--he was good and didn't really cry or grumble, but he wasn't exactly excited:
Keegan and the girls were more cheery, but then they understood the destination a little better:
More coming as I get the pictures up. Not only did we stop by and enjoy the Grand Canyon on the way to see Ken's brother in Arizona, but we took the... oopps, I'm getting ahead of myself again! Stay tuned...
I apologize for the unexplained blog absence. Ken kidnapped us and took us on a ride--a long ride. We had a fabulous time, and I'll update more later, as I'm catching up on laundry and decorating for Christmas tonight!
Meanwhile, can you guess where we were? Photohint below:
Posted By Gena Suarez, The Old Schoolhouse Magazine
It's really no surprise to anyone ever that the NEA was more interested in protecting its power than educating children. What is surprising is that they actually feel confident enough in their power to admit it. Here's the NEA's General Counseladmitting as much in his retirement speech this past summer.
"Despite what some among us would like to believe it is not because of our creative ideas. It is not because of the merit of our positions. It is not because we care about children and it is not because we have a vision of a great public school for every child. NEA and its affiliates are effective advocates because we have power....
This is not to say that the concern of NEA and its affiliates with closing achievement gaps, reducing dropout rates, improving teacher quality and the like are unimportant or inappropriate. To the contrary. These are the goals that guide the work we do. But they need not and must not be achieved at the expense of due process, employee rights and collective bargaining. That simply is too high a price to pay.
If you're a parent with children in the public schools you can voice your objections here. But the best way to object is by removing your children from their schools. Without your children they have no real power.
In a related story, future teachers in Minnesota are being "reducated" and become "culturally competent"
Hat Tip: Michelle Malkin in order to obtain a teacher certificate.
Posted By Gena Suarez, The Old Schoolhouse Magazine
For all my homeschooling friends who think ObamaCare will solve their financial and health insurance woes, think again. It may give you temporary relief for your financial headache, but it may also invite government nannies into your home to improve your child's well-being and health.
HR 3200 that passed the House of Representatives, currently has a provision for funding states that implement a "voluntary" home visitation program for parents with young children or who are expecting. (See Sec. 1904 sec. 440)
The intended purpose is to " improve the well-being, health, and development of children by enabling the establishment and expansion of high quality programs providing voluntary home visitation for families with young children and families expecting children."
"Health and safety inspectors are to be given unprecedented access to family homes to ensure that parents are protecting their children from household accidents.
New guidance drawn up at the request of the Department of Health urges councils and other public sector bodies to “collect data” on properties where children are thought to be at “greatest risk of unintentional injury”.
Council staff will then be tasked with overseeing the installation of safety devices in homes, including smoke alarms, stair gates, hot water temperature restrictors, oven guards and window and door locks.
The draft guidance by a committee at the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (Nice) has been criticised as intrusive and further evidence of the “creeping nanny state”.
Where are the safety devices for the "creeping nanny" who keeps sticking her nose into our personal lives?
Why homeschoolers support this bill or President Obama is beyond my understanding.
I am creating… another flannel petticoat. I think this winter is gonna be cold!
I am praying… to be faithful in the small things, daily, hourly, and minute-by minute; for the big things are often just small things compounded.
Around the house… I'm finished with fall cleaning except for a few light fixtures. I hope to do those this week.
One of my favorite things… a cup of tea, a good book, a quiet evening and a gently glowing candle. (Ok, that wasn't one thing, but I like them all together.)
A few plans for the rest of the week… Ken's off this week and next. This week is a family work-week, next week is play!
• Nov. 16, 2009 - State Mandated Parental Interference
Posted By Gena Suarez, The Old Schoolhouse Magazine
Mike Huckabee, Chuck Norris, and Michael Farris talk about how the new health care bill that will allow the government to enter our homes and tell us how to parent our own children.
You can read Chuck Norris' article about the bill on World Net Daily.
Huckabee, Norris, and Farris also discuss how international law may be used to judge a case on juvenile heinous crimes instead of American law. This is important for homeschoolers to know because because the international law that may be used is from Europe and Europe has made the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child. So Europe is telling us how we have to judge our juvenile criminals and that can lead to telling us how we have to raise our children as well.
All my children are a bit prone to careless mistakes in their school work, but Kendra won the prize yesterday for the most extreme absent-minded error to date.
I'd just started to grade her math drill when I noticed she'd gotten the first question on the page wrong. Not the frist math problem, but rather the frist question on the page; the blank marked, "Name______________".
I would have understood if she'd forgotten to fill it in, but she answered--incorrectly. In hasty Kendra-scrawl, she'd written, "Kaira."
She was surprised and bemused at herself when I pointed it out. The only explanation she could think of was, "Well, it is a timed test, so I was in a hurry." She must have been hurried indeed to have forgotten her name!
Throughout the day I've been sneaking up on her and giving a pop quiz, "Quick, what's your name?" She usually even gets it right--at least when she can stop giggling long enough to answer.
Posted By Gena Suarez, The Old Schoolhouse Magazine
Recently I was introduced to an article that piqued my interest. I read the article carefully to make sure I was understanding it, and to make sure I wasn't skipping any clues that the author might be a crack-pot. Plenty of people think I'm one, so I suppose I should be able to recognize one when I see it.
Now, I admit that I know next to nothing about dyslexia. So I thought I'd do a little research on what dyslexia is. Interestingly, it isn't just about seeing and writing letters backwards or upside down, that is only one symptom, and someone with dyslexia may not have that symptom at all. Basically, it's anyone who struggles with reading. Not necessarily a dislike of reading, but someone who truly struggles with decoding and comprehension. That is not a medical description, but the sum of what I read from several dyslexia help websites. All of them agreed, however, that dyslexia is always either inherited or neurological in nature.
Mr. Blumenfeld and Mr. Miller disagree with the above theory. They believe that the cause of this artificially induced dyslexia is caused by the sight word reading method and they offer evidence that backs their theory. Read the article, it's very fascinating! (Note: There was one "bad" word in the article but not so bad that I didn't want to write this post and link you to the article. Just be aware that's it's there and I know that it's there.)
Now one of the things mentioned in the article are the Dr. Seuss books. Dr. Seuss himself apparently thought sight word reading was a lot of twaddle. Still, he wrote the books and made tons of money. Why this interested me is because two of my children went to bed one night with Green Eggs and Ham and the next day they could read nearly anything I put before them. Wallah! The mystery of decoding words was revealed! So if sight reading can cause dyslexia why could my daughters read anything and with a voracious appetite? The simple reason is that I had been teaching them phonics, not how to sight read. They didn't memorize the words in the book, they sounded them out.
My youngest daughter didn't learn to read until the end of her third grade year. She struggled with reading until that point. All of her symptoms pointed to dyslexia. After reading the linked to article, I began to think more about the change. If what the article says is true, then my youngest daughter should still be dyslexic, and yet three months after she started learning to read she was reading The Hobbit. It struck me that what I had been using to teach my daughter to read prior to the few months before her night with Green Eggs and Ham had been sight word books like Dick and Jane, and Rod and Staff Pathway readers. The books themselves don't teach using phonics, but I was still trying to use them to do just that and supplementing with phonics because I knew phonics was the best way to teach reading. My daughter was caught in that limbo state mentioned in the article.
Because my daughter struggled with reading, I kept reading her schoolwork to her knowing that when she was ready to read, she would. We never made a big deal out of it. Then in the middle of her third grade year I switched to just a phonics reading program. The night my daughter went to bed with Green Eggs and Ham she read the words by sound, not sight. She then took off with her reading, the method of reading set. Praise the Lord it was phonics and not sight reading! By fourth grade many of the students reading method is set, and for many of those it was set before then. I think my daughter wasn't set before that because we weren't forcing her to learn to read like they would have in the public school.
All I can say is that the article totally fit the pattern that my family experienced. I know that it was teaching reading by sight that caused my niece in public school no end of struggle and tears for many years. The public school system still believes that sight word reading is a valuable tool and it refuses to look at the evidence that shows the dangers of it. I won't say that sight reading is bad for all students, it is used to teach the deaf, but we are talking about a handful of students who need to learn to read this way. If the schools would quit pushing students to learn to read before they are even ready, and use phonics to teach reading in the mean time, they would have a much better success rate at making children literate.
This is an audience participation post. (Actually all my blog posts are!) I have a practical question at the end, but I can never simply and directly get to the point. I've got to ramble first and show pictures.
Speaking of pictures--have you ever noticed that photo negatives are rather disturbing? They have a disquieting way of turning familiar people and animalsinto freakish creatures with black cavernous mouths and spooky white eyes.
These particular shots were eerily fascinating to me in negative form:
(Fun tip for Photoshop users--converting a normal image to a photo-negative effect is as easy as pressing the "Control" key and "i" simultaneously. Just think "i" for invert.)
The "positive" of these pictures are less otherworldly and marine. (I live in Wyoming; marine life is otherworldly.) In fact the photos are commonplace, flat and the lighting was awful. These pictures were taken in the loft of our barn, not because I think they'd be interesting photographic subjects, but because I'm hopeful that others can help me identify them.
We are cautious going up to the barn loft these days, choosing cool days when the wasps will be sluggish. Attached to the door of the loft are the following homes.
Ok, so here's my question: what inhabits these dwellings? I'm pretty sure at least one of the types is a wasp nest. We'd like to evict our unwelcome waspish tenants, but we don't want to mistakenly vanquish any little honey bee friends.
