this woman’s work

Please note! I’m continuing to share survey information over at Open Adoption Support. I’ve added a link so that you can go straight to those entries (newest post at the top). Please check it out and share with all interested parties!

I’ve started sharing the data over at the Open Adoption Support site. I’m going to share a little bit of it each day and hope that it will encourage discussion. Today I shared the breakdown of respondents. Feel free to pass it on if you passed the survey on! There’s some interesting data and it gives me a better idea of the directions the site needs to go.

Email me and I’ll send you the url where you can see it in web format. None of the nifty dissolves between the slides but who cares about that really and the images aren’t as pretty ‘cuz they’re rendered for the web. Obviously you’re missing the discussion I’m giving in front of the screens — for example, I share two quotes that are critical of the survey and then I’m going to talk in-depth about their criticism to share some of the shortcomings of the survey and to expand on what I would do differently next time. Another example: when I show the respondents graph I’ll be talking about how I went about finding people to take the survey and some specifics about the people who chose to do it.

(You’ll note the lack of adoptee information in the overview — this will be explained in the talk so it won’t be as glaring as it is if you’re looking at the slides cold.)

This is the second-half of my talk — the first half is about the site itself: how it got started, how people are using it, etc. The last slide is where I’ll talk about goals for the future and I didn’t list ‘em because I’m mindful of what y’all said about just reading the slides.

I’m hoping for audience participation. Hell, I’m hoping for an audience.

I did include several quotes — I chose those that illustrate common concerns I’ve heard either from site participants, blog comments (here) or in the survey. One of them makes me cry whenever I read it (I hope I don’t cry during the presentation).

But small Madison knocked it down. Noah was furious (Noah built it) and Madison got a bit of a lecture. She felt terribly guilty when she learned that Noah had built it to show Brett.

“But I’m just a little girl,” she said, crying. “It’s hard to wait sometimes!”

Evidentially Noah told her they could knock it down after Daddy came home and she took it upon herself to tackle it before this happened.

But she did take responsibility by apologizing to Noah and asking for a hug and then she decided to give Daddy a coaster that happened to be sitting on the end table to make up for the loss of seeing the snowman.

Jess asked about how Noah’s school is going. Ummm, it’s kinda going. Whatever. That’s how we feel about it around here. No one is liking K12 anymore, least of all Brett who was originally the most enthusiastic. Although I think it’s been good for us. It helped me see how unschool-y I am at heart. It helped Noah see that he could stretch a little. It helped Brett confront some of his assumptions about education. All good things but I’d quit if I were in charge. Brett is grimly determined to finish the year. And when I see grimly I mean with gritted teeth, furrowed brow and an ulcer.

Not that Noah is doing the work as listed. We’re marking him done on stuff left and right. Listen, the kid is going to flunk fifth grade anyway because we aren’t making him do any of the busy work. We just mark him done on it and don’t mark the answers to the questions, which I think will make them not count. If they don’t count, they can’t mark him as passing, I guess. But WE DON’T CARE. We’re going to back to regular old unschool anyway next year and our teacher supervisor person (for homeschooling) will say Noah’s in whatever grade we say he’s in. Because our teacher supervisor person is an educational anarchist.

Brett wants Noah to take the proficiency exam at the end of the year so he’s got Noah working on the Study Island practice tests every day. I’m against this but not so against it that I feel I need to do anything more than occasionally saying to Brett, “Yeah, I’m against that.”

Here’s what I noticed with Noah and this typical school curriciculum:

• Interest in grades and scores that are outweigh his interest in the material.
• Fascination with his performance compared to other kids (in their virtual lectures where the kids work together).
• A tendency to label segregated learning as more real than learning in his every day life.
• An announcement that “I hate history!” which is a lie. He just hates the stupid history curriculum, which is when Brett and I tossed it. Instead they read a book on the history of comics and lo and behold, Noah ended up being very interested in the Great Depression. So there, k12 curriculum masters!
• To be fair, he did find out he had some interests he didn’t know about. (Taxonomy — but hell, I told him he’d love that two years ago only couldn’t find a curriculum for his age that didn’t emphasize creationism.)

(By the way, Kristen is a K12 drop-out. I’m jealous.)

(108 responses to the survey so far! Has anyone shared it at the Bethany Boards or whatever Soul of Adoption is called now or Adoption Teatime? Pretty please?)