Day two, one week later: time for the drop. THREE... TWO... ONE...
Oh, the suspense...
Success!!Saturday, June 27, 2009
Egg Drop
Egg Drop at the house of George's-former-teacher-who-now-homeschools. Day one (of two): kids utilized materials from the recycling bins, plus tape and glue, to construct a container that would protect an egg from cracking even when dropped out a second-story window.
Day two, one week later: time for the drop. THREE... TWO... ONE...
Oh, the suspense...
Success!!
Day two, one week later: time for the drop. THREE... TWO... ONE...Oh, the suspense...
Success!!
Photos!
Ok, clearly I need to do a Blogger tutorial to learn how to arrange these photos better, but since it has taken me a month to get the photos up here in the first place, who knows how long it'll take me to get around to the tutorial...
The CTY Awards Ceremony at Siena College, held last month
The CTY Awards Ceremony at Siena College, held last month
And a little further down is George's recorder concert, the following day; it was the third thing I was proud of him for but didn't get around to writing about in my Proud Mama post. Held at the Unitarian Universalist Congregation... where, incidentally, his recorder concert for his school-that-closed was held (and also where one of the schools we set up in the aftermath held classes for the 4 days it lasted!). This concert in some ways felt like "coming home", because it reminded me that not everything that we loved about that school had vanished from our lives. Adding to this sense was the fact that several of the kids from that school participated in the concert (they, like George, have continued to take lessons with the recorder teacher from the school). Plus, many of George's new homeschool friends were there, so it was a nice union of past and present for me, and probably for him, too. It was part of a life-goes-on-in-many-wonderful-ways closure that felt kind of therapeutic, and that I knew I would not get from attending the hearing about the school that was held yesterday.
George's favorite part of the concert: running around outside in the labyrinth afterwards, with old and new friends.
I have many, many more pictures to post, but I'm running out of stamina and will have to do it later!
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
Letting Go
This Friday is the retrial for the dissolution of the amazing alternative school that George attended for several glorious months during the last half of first grade and the very beginning of second grade, before the school went under in September of 2007—in a rather spectacularly destructive way—due to financial mismanagement and incompetence. The school's going under was totally devastating for many people, not the least of whom George, and myself. In some ways, we have been trying to regain our balance ever since. Let me explain.
It would be an understatement to say that George has had a difficult time at school since, well, preschool. He has been quite unhappy in most of the classrooms/schools he's been a part of; a discussion of why would take too long but the most major factor is that he’s really, really advanced intellectually, and craves intellectual stimulation, and most of his teachers just didn’t know what to do with him. He loves learning and loves a challenge, and gets very discouraged and acts out in various ways when he’s not being engaged or challenged in school. First grade was truly miserable—he was forced to sit still (“criss-cross applesause” or cross-legged on the floor) for 90-minute blocks while the teacher went over the letter sounds, day in and day out. He was already reading Harry Potter and the New York Times at that point, but the teacher insisted that the fact that he knew how to read didn’t mean that he understood the mechanics of the letter sounds (actually, he truly did understand). The more she insisted he sit through these excruciatingly easy and boring lessons, the more unhappy (and uncooperative) he became. I did everything I could do to work with the teacher and the school to try to find a workable solution, all for naught. If you know me you’ve probably heard the story more than once; if not, you can fill in the blanks. It was abysmal. George was crying and begging me on an almost daily basis not to make him go to school, and had even slipped into a sort of depression.
That’s when I finally listened to some friends of mine who had been telling me how great their daughter’s alternative school was. I must be honest, I didn’t like the sound of “alternative school”. (Don’t ask me why, when I was hating his traditional school at that point.) I thought it sounded lightweight, and all hippy-dippy, like a bunch of kids sitting around making daisy chains or doing whatever they wanted. I wanted rigorous academics. I wanted structure! How else would my kid learn anything? But I was desperate. I figured I might as well at least go visit the school. Was I in for a surprise.
When I got there, in the mid-morning, the director didn’t seem to have much to say—she wanted me to go observe the (multi-age, early elementary) class in action, which she said would speak for itself. When I walked in, they were transitioning from one activity to another, and the teacher had them do a short series of sort of yoga exercises to stretch but also to help them reorient themselves and be ready to focus on the new activity. I was intrigued, to say the least.
Next she had them sit in a circle. They could sit in any position they liked; it didn’t have to be “criss-cross applesauce”—they just had to sit, as she explained, in a way that didn’t block anyone’s view of the center of the circle. It made perfect sense—order was requested, and indeed required, but not for some arbitrary, unarticulated reason. It was so that everyone could participate fully. I was liking this more and more with each passing minute.
Next she put the materials for their new science project in the middle of the circle, and asked them to try to figure out what their next experiment was going to be, and how the materials were going to be used for it. They were really having fun with this, coming up with some interesting guesses and building on each other’s ideas. When they ultimately figured it out, she then asked them to try to guess how the experiment would turn out. After several kids had offered their thoughts, one very precocious girl raised her hand and said, “Why don’t you just tell us what’s going to happen?” I was really wondering how the teacher would respond to that one! I thought she might even get flustered. I was thinking about how much George’s teachers seemed to dislike it when he asked them why they were making him do a particular activity. Ha, did I have a lot to learn—about alternative education in general and this teacher in particular. She actually welcomed the question, and was genuinely glad that the student had asked. Her answer was that she wanted them to learn to think like scientists, and that this is exactly what scientists do—they come up with experiments and then they hypothesize about the results before they carry them out. Brilliant!
The discussion continued for a while longer, until everyone had had his/her say; then the teacher told them to get their writing notebooks, find a seat somewhere, and write down their hypotheses and expectations. Since it was a multi-age and multi-ability room, some kids were able to write a paragraph, while others could really only draw pictures. She went around the room while they were working on this and helped each child individually; the ones who were writing a paragraph got instruction/help on punctuation and sentence structure, while those who were just learning to write got help sounding out and writing down a word or two. Anyone who needed it also got suggestions about handwriting, etc. She also wrote on the board some key concepts relating to the experiment, and made sure everyone knew what they meant. This whole thing was a revelation to me. No handwriting worksheets. No copying down random sentences off the board. No fill-in-the-blanks. No seating charts. And yet, boy, were the kids learning! They were learning scientific concepts, scientific thinking, writing, penmanship… each at his or her own level. They were also learning how to work both together and independently, and were required to be respectful of their classmates and teacher, but weren’t expected to follow any arbitrary or senseless rules. It hit me how much closer this educational approach was to my parenting. I could imagine George really thriving in this environment. At that point, there was pretty much no turning back for me! I brought George in for the afternoon and he loved it as much as I’d hoped and figured he would. He never went back to his public school (except briefly to say goodbye and get his things).
Fast forward to the following September. Two weeks into the school year, a letter went home with the kids, informing us that the school was out of money and was going to have to shut down at the end of the month. WHAT?? We knew the school was in some trouble but the Board had obviously lied to us regarding the extent of the woes. We had been assured explicitly and repeatedly that the school had enough money to stay open for at least one or two years, and that all sorts of things were being done to ensure that it would be around for the duration. We had been asked to pay our tuition for at least half the year in advance, which we did. But the $5500 or so that we lost was nothing compared to the utter devastation we felt at the loss of the school we loved so dearly. (Don’t get me wrong—I could absolutely use that $$ now.)
At that point, when the school closed, I felt like we were thrust into limbo. When I told George the school was closing he burst into tears and begged me not to send him back to public school. The only other private schools in the area are religious, and have a very traditional approach to education; as such they didn't seem like a good fit for him. I didn’t think homeschooling was really an option for us at that point. So we set about doing the logical thing(?), and tried to start a new alternative school. That is a very long story and this story is already getting long enough… let me just say that we ultimately ended up with a Montessori school—which George too quickly outgrew. It's been a real roller coaster ride, and has been exhausting in so many ways. Now here we are, homeschooling. Mostly I love it (though it would be a lot easier if I didn’t also have to work), but I still mourn the loss of that school. I guess I can’t quite explain why it meant so much to me and how much its going under still upsets me if I think about it.
Anyway, they are having a hearing to decide something about the assets of the school—the building hasn’t sold, so the debts have continued to accrue. If the building does ever sell, once the mortgage and the lawyers are all paid off it’s highly doubtful that there will be any money left to reimburse parents who prepaid tuition. This hearing was to have taken place last month but due to some technicality it was postponed until this Friday. I went to the courthouse for it last month, hoping to get some sort of closure (if not at least a small percentage of what is owed to me). But I got no sense of closure—and I don’t think it was because of the postponement. I don’t know if I’ll ever really get a sense of closure on this.
What do I want for closure? I want my $5500 back, yes, though I know I won’t get it. More than that, I want somehow to erase the anguish and heartbreak we went through when we found out the one school that was really right for George was closing in two weeks, and that he wouldn’t even be able to have one full year there (let alone a whole scholastic career). I want to have back the tremendous amount of time and energy I expended working to set up a new school that would take that one’s place. Well, actually, what I really want is to have that amazing school back, but that's clearly not happening.
So, I don’t think I’ll go to the courthouse this Friday. I’ll be busy anyway, as George is in a homeschool production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream that’s being performed at a local Faerie Festival. A truly wonderful experience that he never would have had were that school still in existence. There are many, many things I love about homeschooling, and now that I’m really done with trying to set up schools in the area I am finally beginning to find my rhythm with it. I’d like to think that I can educate my son as well as that school could have, but honestly, I can’t say that I’m certain I can. I’m sure as hell going to keep trying, though.
It would be an understatement to say that George has had a difficult time at school since, well, preschool. He has been quite unhappy in most of the classrooms/schools he's been a part of; a discussion of why would take too long but the most major factor is that he’s really, really advanced intellectually, and craves intellectual stimulation, and most of his teachers just didn’t know what to do with him. He loves learning and loves a challenge, and gets very discouraged and acts out in various ways when he’s not being engaged or challenged in school. First grade was truly miserable—he was forced to sit still (“criss-cross applesause” or cross-legged on the floor) for 90-minute blocks while the teacher went over the letter sounds, day in and day out. He was already reading Harry Potter and the New York Times at that point, but the teacher insisted that the fact that he knew how to read didn’t mean that he understood the mechanics of the letter sounds (actually, he truly did understand). The more she insisted he sit through these excruciatingly easy and boring lessons, the more unhappy (and uncooperative) he became. I did everything I could do to work with the teacher and the school to try to find a workable solution, all for naught. If you know me you’ve probably heard the story more than once; if not, you can fill in the blanks. It was abysmal. George was crying and begging me on an almost daily basis not to make him go to school, and had even slipped into a sort of depression.
That’s when I finally listened to some friends of mine who had been telling me how great their daughter’s alternative school was. I must be honest, I didn’t like the sound of “alternative school”. (Don’t ask me why, when I was hating his traditional school at that point.) I thought it sounded lightweight, and all hippy-dippy, like a bunch of kids sitting around making daisy chains or doing whatever they wanted. I wanted rigorous academics. I wanted structure! How else would my kid learn anything? But I was desperate. I figured I might as well at least go visit the school. Was I in for a surprise.
When I got there, in the mid-morning, the director didn’t seem to have much to say—she wanted me to go observe the (multi-age, early elementary) class in action, which she said would speak for itself. When I walked in, they were transitioning from one activity to another, and the teacher had them do a short series of sort of yoga exercises to stretch but also to help them reorient themselves and be ready to focus on the new activity. I was intrigued, to say the least.
Next she had them sit in a circle. They could sit in any position they liked; it didn’t have to be “criss-cross applesauce”—they just had to sit, as she explained, in a way that didn’t block anyone’s view of the center of the circle. It made perfect sense—order was requested, and indeed required, but not for some arbitrary, unarticulated reason. It was so that everyone could participate fully. I was liking this more and more with each passing minute.
Next she put the materials for their new science project in the middle of the circle, and asked them to try to figure out what their next experiment was going to be, and how the materials were going to be used for it. They were really having fun with this, coming up with some interesting guesses and building on each other’s ideas. When they ultimately figured it out, she then asked them to try to guess how the experiment would turn out. After several kids had offered their thoughts, one very precocious girl raised her hand and said, “Why don’t you just tell us what’s going to happen?” I was really wondering how the teacher would respond to that one! I thought she might even get flustered. I was thinking about how much George’s teachers seemed to dislike it when he asked them why they were making him do a particular activity. Ha, did I have a lot to learn—about alternative education in general and this teacher in particular. She actually welcomed the question, and was genuinely glad that the student had asked. Her answer was that she wanted them to learn to think like scientists, and that this is exactly what scientists do—they come up with experiments and then they hypothesize about the results before they carry them out. Brilliant!
The discussion continued for a while longer, until everyone had had his/her say; then the teacher told them to get their writing notebooks, find a seat somewhere, and write down their hypotheses and expectations. Since it was a multi-age and multi-ability room, some kids were able to write a paragraph, while others could really only draw pictures. She went around the room while they were working on this and helped each child individually; the ones who were writing a paragraph got instruction/help on punctuation and sentence structure, while those who were just learning to write got help sounding out and writing down a word or two. Anyone who needed it also got suggestions about handwriting, etc. She also wrote on the board some key concepts relating to the experiment, and made sure everyone knew what they meant. This whole thing was a revelation to me. No handwriting worksheets. No copying down random sentences off the board. No fill-in-the-blanks. No seating charts. And yet, boy, were the kids learning! They were learning scientific concepts, scientific thinking, writing, penmanship… each at his or her own level. They were also learning how to work both together and independently, and were required to be respectful of their classmates and teacher, but weren’t expected to follow any arbitrary or senseless rules. It hit me how much closer this educational approach was to my parenting. I could imagine George really thriving in this environment. At that point, there was pretty much no turning back for me! I brought George in for the afternoon and he loved it as much as I’d hoped and figured he would. He never went back to his public school (except briefly to say goodbye and get his things).
Fast forward to the following September. Two weeks into the school year, a letter went home with the kids, informing us that the school was out of money and was going to have to shut down at the end of the month. WHAT?? We knew the school was in some trouble but the Board had obviously lied to us regarding the extent of the woes. We had been assured explicitly and repeatedly that the school had enough money to stay open for at least one or two years, and that all sorts of things were being done to ensure that it would be around for the duration. We had been asked to pay our tuition for at least half the year in advance, which we did. But the $5500 or so that we lost was nothing compared to the utter devastation we felt at the loss of the school we loved so dearly. (Don’t get me wrong—I could absolutely use that $$ now.)
At that point, when the school closed, I felt like we were thrust into limbo. When I told George the school was closing he burst into tears and begged me not to send him back to public school. The only other private schools in the area are religious, and have a very traditional approach to education; as such they didn't seem like a good fit for him. I didn’t think homeschooling was really an option for us at that point. So we set about doing the logical thing(?), and tried to start a new alternative school. That is a very long story and this story is already getting long enough… let me just say that we ultimately ended up with a Montessori school—which George too quickly outgrew. It's been a real roller coaster ride, and has been exhausting in so many ways. Now here we are, homeschooling. Mostly I love it (though it would be a lot easier if I didn’t also have to work), but I still mourn the loss of that school. I guess I can’t quite explain why it meant so much to me and how much its going under still upsets me if I think about it.
Anyway, they are having a hearing to decide something about the assets of the school—the building hasn’t sold, so the debts have continued to accrue. If the building does ever sell, once the mortgage and the lawyers are all paid off it’s highly doubtful that there will be any money left to reimburse parents who prepaid tuition. This hearing was to have taken place last month but due to some technicality it was postponed until this Friday. I went to the courthouse for it last month, hoping to get some sort of closure (if not at least a small percentage of what is owed to me). But I got no sense of closure—and I don’t think it was because of the postponement. I don’t know if I’ll ever really get a sense of closure on this.
What do I want for closure? I want my $5500 back, yes, though I know I won’t get it. More than that, I want somehow to erase the anguish and heartbreak we went through when we found out the one school that was really right for George was closing in two weeks, and that he wouldn’t even be able to have one full year there (let alone a whole scholastic career). I want to have back the tremendous amount of time and energy I expended working to set up a new school that would take that one’s place. Well, actually, what I really want is to have that amazing school back, but that's clearly not happening.
So, I don’t think I’ll go to the courthouse this Friday. I’ll be busy anyway, as George is in a homeschool production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream that’s being performed at a local Faerie Festival. A truly wonderful experience that he never would have had were that school still in existence. There are many, many things I love about homeschooling, and now that I’m really done with trying to set up schools in the area I am finally beginning to find my rhythm with it. I’d like to think that I can educate my son as well as that school could have, but honestly, I can’t say that I’m certain I can. I’m sure as hell going to keep trying, though.
Saturday, June 20, 2009
The Spleen
I'm still trying to wrap my mind completely around homeschooling. Heck, I'm still wrapping my mind around parenting, and I've been doing that for nine years now. Just when you think you have things figured out, the kid grows up a little more and you have a whole new set of things to figure out. That's pretty much been happening with homeschooling as well, in these several months that I've been doing it full-time. So I get the feeling that I could be trying to wrap my mind around this homeschooling thing for the foreseeable future.
One of the things I'm constantly weighing in my mind is how unschooly I want to be. In theory, I love the idea of unschooling. In practice, well, actually, I really love it in practice, so I guess it's the theory after all that gives me pause. I should be clear that what I'm thinking about here is what is going to be best for my son–I'm not trying to figure out what the be-all-and-end-all-holy-grail of homeschooling is for everyone. What I'm struggling with is what is the best way to educate my kid. This is a huge, huge question that is way too big for one post, so I'm just going to try to focus on one or two aspects of this right now, spurred by a conversation George and I had yesterday:
George: What does the spleen do, Mom?
Me (distracted, putting away the dishes): Hmm, I don't know.
George: Let me guess–you're going to tell me to take a science class to find out.
Me (glad that he remembered the clever answer that I'd forgotten): Right.
George: What science class would that be? Biology?
Me: Um, yes, biology.
George: But Mom, didn't you take biology?
Me: Yes, I did.
George: Then why don't you know what the spleen does?
Ok, my biology class was a long, long time ago (in what now feels like a galaxy far, far away). But this brought home an interesting point for me. What was the point of my taking biology all those years ago? I knew I wouldn't be a scientist. I didn't like science, in fact. I did well in it (because I was a super-achiever and worked as hard as I needed to in order to do well in everything), but ultimately, what good did it do me? Why did I bother, and unless my son finds it truly interesting, why should he bother? Shouldn't he spend his time pursuing things he's deeply passionate about, since there are so many of them? Isn't this part of the beauty of homeschooling? (Actually, he's the one who asked about the spleen, so he may end up being passionate about biology. Just humor me; I'm trying to work this out.)
On the other hand, I would never argue against learning even just for learning's sake. I think most subjects or disciplines you study do you some good, even if you don't retain much knowledge of the actual material. I think that each discipline requires you to learn how to think in a slightly different way, or to see the world in a different way, and I do believe that that is valuable. Because if you turned it around on me and told me that a kid who was interested only in science shouldn't have to study the humanities at all, I'd disagree with you very strongly. I think that an education should be well rounded; I really do. And I do want to make sure that George is exposed to science in case it turns out that he loves it as much as he loves literature and history. But if he doesn't really love it all that much, does he truly need a full course in biology? Might it not be just as good or even better for him to learn some philosophy of science, some history of science, and to learn something about how scientists approach problems? And of course, to learn where to go to find answers to questions such as "What does the spleen do"? (If I hadn't been distracted by putting the dishes away, I would have jumped right on that. Note to self: have George research the spleen next week.)
Anyway, as time goes by, I'm feeling my mental pendulum swing back toward more unschooling. Fortunately, I will never have to worry about George's reading skills–he's already reading at pretty much an adult level, currently working his way through The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series and several Shakespeare plays (the original texts with a facing-page modern-day adaptation) though of course he also reads plenty of kids' books. I have seen that with the tremendous amount of reading he does across such a wide variety of topics, he is educating himself more than adequately in most subjects--for example, he spent an afternoon in my husband's fifth-grade classroom recently and carried out a fifth-grade American history project perfectly well without even having to consult a book. (This was actually a great relief to me, because I have not been consciously focusing on social studies with him at all, but it seems to be getting learned anyway.) And with his passion for science fiction, he's actually learning something about some branches of science (mostly astronomy, I guess, which he'll also get a dose of this summer at camp at the local planetarium). What is really left is math–something I don't think he's going to pick up by reading or osmosis, and something that I do consider to be fundamental, as a sort of basic "language" of the sciences.
So what I've come up with as my new plan for the next few years (um, until I change my mind again!) is that I need to make sure he keeps on reading in, and writing about, a wide variety of subjects, and that he keeps learning math. And while I will certainly always encourage him to broaden his horizons in all sorts of directions, beyond that, I may kind of leave it up to him.
One of the things I'm constantly weighing in my mind is how unschooly I want to be. In theory, I love the idea of unschooling. In practice, well, actually, I really love it in practice, so I guess it's the theory after all that gives me pause. I should be clear that what I'm thinking about here is what is going to be best for my son–I'm not trying to figure out what the be-all-and-end-all-holy-grail of homeschooling is for everyone. What I'm struggling with is what is the best way to educate my kid. This is a huge, huge question that is way too big for one post, so I'm just going to try to focus on one or two aspects of this right now, spurred by a conversation George and I had yesterday:
George: What does the spleen do, Mom?
Me (distracted, putting away the dishes): Hmm, I don't know.
George: Let me guess–you're going to tell me to take a science class to find out.
Me (glad that he remembered the clever answer that I'd forgotten): Right.
George: What science class would that be? Biology?
Me: Um, yes, biology.
George: But Mom, didn't you take biology?
Me: Yes, I did.
George: Then why don't you know what the spleen does?
Ok, my biology class was a long, long time ago (in what now feels like a galaxy far, far away). But this brought home an interesting point for me. What was the point of my taking biology all those years ago? I knew I wouldn't be a scientist. I didn't like science, in fact. I did well in it (because I was a super-achiever and worked as hard as I needed to in order to do well in everything), but ultimately, what good did it do me? Why did I bother, and unless my son finds it truly interesting, why should he bother? Shouldn't he spend his time pursuing things he's deeply passionate about, since there are so many of them? Isn't this part of the beauty of homeschooling? (Actually, he's the one who asked about the spleen, so he may end up being passionate about biology. Just humor me; I'm trying to work this out.)
On the other hand, I would never argue against learning even just for learning's sake. I think most subjects or disciplines you study do you some good, even if you don't retain much knowledge of the actual material. I think that each discipline requires you to learn how to think in a slightly different way, or to see the world in a different way, and I do believe that that is valuable. Because if you turned it around on me and told me that a kid who was interested only in science shouldn't have to study the humanities at all, I'd disagree with you very strongly. I think that an education should be well rounded; I really do. And I do want to make sure that George is exposed to science in case it turns out that he loves it as much as he loves literature and history. But if he doesn't really love it all that much, does he truly need a full course in biology? Might it not be just as good or even better for him to learn some philosophy of science, some history of science, and to learn something about how scientists approach problems? And of course, to learn where to go to find answers to questions such as "What does the spleen do"? (If I hadn't been distracted by putting the dishes away, I would have jumped right on that. Note to self: have George research the spleen next week.)
Anyway, as time goes by, I'm feeling my mental pendulum swing back toward more unschooling. Fortunately, I will never have to worry about George's reading skills–he's already reading at pretty much an adult level, currently working his way through The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series and several Shakespeare plays (the original texts with a facing-page modern-day adaptation) though of course he also reads plenty of kids' books. I have seen that with the tremendous amount of reading he does across such a wide variety of topics, he is educating himself more than adequately in most subjects--for example, he spent an afternoon in my husband's fifth-grade classroom recently and carried out a fifth-grade American history project perfectly well without even having to consult a book. (This was actually a great relief to me, because I have not been consciously focusing on social studies with him at all, but it seems to be getting learned anyway.) And with his passion for science fiction, he's actually learning something about some branches of science (mostly astronomy, I guess, which he'll also get a dose of this summer at camp at the local planetarium). What is really left is math–something I don't think he's going to pick up by reading or osmosis, and something that I do consider to be fundamental, as a sort of basic "language" of the sciences.
So what I've come up with as my new plan for the next few years (um, until I change my mind again!) is that I need to make sure he keeps on reading in, and writing about, a wide variety of subjects, and that he keeps learning math. And while I will certainly always encourage him to broaden his horizons in all sorts of directions, beyond that, I may kind of leave it up to him.
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