Noah has my attention span
Aug 14, 2007 Parenting, The Story of My Life
We’re down here cleaning the basement to make it all ready to host his school computer and supplies (he’ll probably do most of the seat work upstairs at the kitchen table or at the desk in his room) and also to give Madison ample play space. It’s a big old ugly mess and I’m packing away the bulk of the Playmobil until someone is at the right age to enjoy it again. I brought Noah down to help me sort through the morass of tiny plastic things that may or may not be important but aren’t recognizable to me when he spotted his legos, grabbed ‘em and went upstairs. He’d forgotten the fun that is legos until he found the box stacked under other stuff.
I’m like that, too. See? The computer caught my eye in the middle of reshelving books and here I am!
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School orientation
Aug 14, 2007 Homeschooling
We went to the virtual school orientation last night and I left with the same mixed feelings I had before. Brett is all for it — 100%! — and that’s why I’m going along with it. But if it were all my decision, I’d be skipping the virtual school.
I’ve been flipping through the course materials and it’s the same kind of boring stuff that made us not want to do brick and mortar school. It’s a lot of busy-work and pointless activities. Like this: “Paintings are flat. Artists make them by brushing watercolors, tempera, or other types of paint onto paper or canvas. Look through your prints and books. Find a painting.” And then there’s a parents’ guide so that I can know whether or not Noah correctly chose a painting instead of, say, a sculpture.
But I’m going to make it work for us by skipping all that junk. That’s what struck me at the orientation: Most of the parents don’t understand that they don’t have to do everything exactly the way it’s laid out. And it’s not like the orientation leader can say, “You know, you can always skip stuff” or “You can fudge on your hours; it’s not like we’re going to peek in your window and make sure you did five hours of learning every day.” At one point she said that they can add in hours spent doing other learning activities like if the child is reading on her own or the family visits the zoo and watches a presentation at the bird pavilion. See, homeschoolers are already used to thinking this way but lots of people coming from traditional schools aren’t accustomed to thinking about learning in the everyday world being actual learning.
I’m really not happy with the language arts curriculum, which seems below what Noah’s doing on his own. If anything virtual school is making me feel that much more confident that unschooling was working just fine for him. And you know, this will be way more work for the family because we’re not going to hand him the canned curriculum (I’m positive it’ll turn him off of “school” entirely if we do it straight out of the box), which means that I’m going to have to stay ahead of the lessons and figure out how to get him to each unit assessment with entusiasm intact.
But Brett is happy and excited about it
In K12 you work to “mastery.” If you can prove 80% mastery, you get promoted to the next lesson/unit/grade. There aren’t any grades and kids can retake lessons/units/grades as they need to so it’s very customizable. That I like. What I don’t like is that you have to login to the computer every day and you have to record your hours and you have to click the assessments and report scores. I don’t like having someone looking over my shoulder and I’m perfectly willing to outright lie about everything but the scores. But c’mon, it’s nobody’s business how much time we spend on anything or what days we do things. (One woman was very hung up on this — what if the do something school-related on Saturday? Do they need to change their reporting days or can they add that in someplace else?) You’re supposed to report if you take a sick day or take a vacation, which really bothers me. On the other hand some other virtual schools make you login by a certain time each day, which is worse.
My hope is that we do this and prove that Noah’s fine then quit this thing next year but Brett’s hoping to stick with it. Ultimately it’ll be up to what’s working for Noah. He may love this. We just don’t know yet. But I tell you, unschooling is the bees knees. If I wasn’t sure of it before, I sure am after hitting that orientation.
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Tags: homeschool, Noah, unschool, unschooling
I did my interview
Aug 14, 2007 Adoption
The interviewee was fighting laryngitis but valiantly tried to answer my questions. She’s sending me some more information. But the gist of it is: If you’re a placing parent, open adoption agreements — even where legally enforceable — don’t offer much protection. Things vary so much state to state that it’s important — whether you are adopting or considering placement — that you get a very clear idea of what your rights are.
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Tags: open adoption
I owe so many of you emails!
Aug 13, 2007 work work work
I’m sorry. I was mired in a big project yesterday and today and put everything else aside. I’ll be paying for it the rest of the week!! (I’ll tell you what the project is when the people for whom I slaved say I can!) I’m going to try to start working my way through my inbox tomorrow afternoon.
I have a phone interview tomorrow to do about legal open adoption agreements. I have my list of questions but if there’s one you want me to be sure to ask, leave it here. (The interview is in exactly 12.5 hours so if you read this tomorrow it may be too late!)
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Tags: open adoption
BJ asked
Aug 13, 2007 Writing
“can you give examples Dawn of examples of how these queries could be changed to have potential?” She was talking about this entry.
Well, recently I got a (disguised for privacy) essay that basically said this for 1200 words, “I survived a fire. There was a big fire. It was really scary. I ran for help. The help came and put out the fire but I lost everything. I was sad.”
I wanted to feel like I was a part of the experience with a stunning portrayal of what it’s like to survive a fire. I wanted her to write so that I felt like I was there with her. Or else I wanted her to use the fire to give me a glimpse of the way the experience changed her. But this author though the fire itself was so compelling that all she needed to do was say, “There was a big fire.” And that takes us back to this entry where delightful Becca said, “Have you thought about why you feel compelled to write this? Who do you want to read this, and to what end? … [I]f you can figure out why anyone else should care, it might help you get to the core of the essay.”
See, when someone is reading a story they don’t have you there in front of them to humanize it with your voice or your expression so you need to humanize it in the way you write it. It’s one thing to tell a compelling story at the dinner table when your very presence makes the story more real and more terrifying (because it happened in REAL LIFE to someone the person listening has actually met) but when it’s on paper you have to find a way to make that story take the broad leap into someone else’s heart and soul.
But it’s hard to write that rejection with useful criticism without being dismissive. To the woman who survived the fire (that was not a fire but another awful event) I had to say, “The big fire just isn’t that compelling. The thing that devastated you and destroyed your life, it’s not that compelling just standing there on its own.” Sometimes people write me while they’re still pretty raw and to hear that the story is just a, well, a story is hard to hear. When someone emails me a query and they’re saying, “I survived this” it’s hard to say “so what” nicely to explain why it won’t work (as written).
I try very very hard to be nice and encouraging but I sure know how much rejections suck.