Saturday, January 30, 2010

Whose Bright Idea Was This? A Little Bit of History From Home School in Nowhere


My sister, who has tons of professional experience as an educator, and as a lovely, clever person, will often say, "Oh, carry on, you're just at the whose bright idea was this, stage." This comes up when preparations are underway for a trip or party or any event people have been anticipating. It comes at the moment when people are getting discouraged, or frustrated, and are beginning to regret ever having gotten involved. It's the moment when worrying that things might not get done the way people imagined, or on time, accelerates to warp speed.  I'm often thankful that she has taught me to recognize moments of panic as passing breezes in the small storms of daily life.
Recently I watched Margaret Wheatley, in her very soothing voice, explain this change principle in the context of creating healthy communities, as everything is a failure in the middle. To see that this is not just a funny little repeating catastrophe particular to our own family has been very reassuring, since, with our decision to home school, the wbiwt fairy has been a frequent visitor to our home.
When Thing Two replies brightly to the question, "What school do you go to?" with "Oh I'm home schooled," the conversations start. Questions range from "Are you allowed to do that?" to "How will she (fill in one) ... go to college, get a job, be socialized, see her friends, learn anything...." While those questions are being posed, Thing Two has generally floated away on her butterfly wings to socialize with whoever else is where ever we are. In fact, usually people are too polite to ask outright "How will she learn anything?" with the clear subtext being, "with you teaching her." They don't have to put that into words as the Anxious Doubts already have a hit tune with that line in it, ready in the back of my mind. 
All those questions are valid and I spend time thinking and talking about them, and for some of them I have answers. Often for the whose bright idea was this moment, it's important to simply take a deep breath and move on. For the record though, here is how I remember the day Home School in Nowhere went magic. Thing Two and I were standing at our front door, admiring two huge trees which fill, every spring morning, with birds warming themselves in the high branches, where the early sun makes its first stop in our yard. It was April, nearing the end of the Easter break.
We might have been watching a squirrel checking our doorstep for snacks, or small birds dancing on the path. We might have been chatting or simply gazing in bliss, with no big yellow time dragon of a school bus roaring in our direction to eat up hours out of a bright day. Yet the time dragon's shadow visited us just long enough to set us wishing that the break was longer, or that school was over for the year.  Spring is so full outdoors, so much is going on with such excitement and immediacy, that, finally, it just felt wrong to miss it.
Once the idea popped out, there was no stuffing it back in. By May 1st the paperwork was being sent off, the older sibs had volunteered their support and the time dragon went whizzing by without stopping for Thing Two. We were on the loose, without so much as a purchased curriculum in sight and an amazing collection of conflicting expectations piling up on our already chaotic kitchen table. 
Garden season was gearing up and I had a thoroughly unrealistic amount of ground to prepare and seeds to plant. I knew that some of the reasons Thing Two wanted out of school were complicated by having moved to the city in December of 2008 and back to our home the following January. Two school years out of sync with your class is hard. Kid culture in the city was challenging and the school work was on a different track.
Our move home, with fun moments like no hot water, which dragged on for months, the mouse infestation blues, the fact that in winter much of our house is too cold,  a pile of debt from our move and starting a new job, was much tougher on my psyche than I had anticipated; adding a wonderful child to "teach" seemed beyond reason. 
When things seem beyond reason it is best to keep busy. Except for brief interludes trying to work out the technical details of learning online at 7 am with one of the adult sisters leading the class from her busy life far away, I gardened, nagged a bit, and watched Thing Two spend hours and hours and Hours! on the swing. She was happy, I was busy, always a boon for a kid who can make her own fun. My conclusion was, she is exhausted. She needs to swing. Her friend's mother gave the moment voice when she told me Bella's answer to "How do you like home schooling?" was, "I'm studying gravity on the swing."
In contrast to the ambitious curriculum plan I had produced to send in to the Department of Education, my goals were simple. The idea that a ten year old girl would want to spend time with her sixty year old mother seemed reason enough to cherish the moment. Looking at the issues which flowed from school, particularly the comment "does not use time wisely" seemed to point to some basic groundwork we could focus on. How long does it take to get dressed? How much time do you have to allow to get ready to go to your riding lesson? How long does it take for us to drive there, or to the library with the good French language collection? How hard can it be to learn multiplication and division? What goes on here with following directions? May and June, thought I, will be time well spent, if we just unwind a bit and find some routines that work for us. We'll have so much fun, watching the partridge and deer, and hares and all the birds, going for walks, and working in the garden together.  Yes. Believe it. I am that naive! If not, I'd miss so much.

A Two Day Week? What Part of Nowhere Do You Live In?

Thing One, me, reads Thing Two's post below and thinks, "How different and beautifully joyous the world is, seen with her eyes!"

My week seemed to have the usual number of working days, with a notable absence of Sunday, owing to having missed Saturday. I worked outside the home, as the survey writers like to phrase it, on Friday and Saturday. Since my paid job is a small, fairly intermittent bit of fol-de-rol, I don't have a strong routine built to accommodate the time I miss out of this life.

For those days, Thing Two went to visit her dad and got paid to stack wood. They had some laughs together, too. She was thrilled to get paid actual cash, which is not part of the ethos here for work which sustains our home. Paid work is a splendid motivator.  I wish I could find a stand-in for dollars in the "sticking to the school schedule" sweepstakes.

We also went out to a party Friday night and ran our sleep reserves into debt. Thus energy, patience and stick-to-it-ness were in somewhat short supply during the early part of the week. We declared a rain day Monday, in the hopes that trying to insert a second day of weekend into the week would improve us. The success rate on trying to pretend that house/school/life work was not piling up as the hours went by was zero.

For me the week had a downhill roll. That means I was learning a lot. Some of it was quite uncomfortable. Some of my learning had to do with how differently Thing Two and I see the basic outlines of what passes for communication between us. You may have noticed that her posts so far have my ghostly "bossy old woman" presence lurking around the edges, using words like "should" and doing things like reminding.

Meanwhile, I'm yattering on, hoping not to bore you, and knowing that what Thing Two adds has freshness and energy to satisfy our imaginary busy readers' appetites for a taste of our world. If such readers or appetites exist. (Cue music by the house band, Anxious Doubts).  My last post laid out our schedule, which you may notice, did not include writing a blog. The original hand-written copy has a little notation around lunch time that reads "day planner", a shorthand for some unrealized expectations from our first few months together, May and June of 2009.

So, I am eager to get caught up with this blog, give background and get past it, so that our posts are short and snappy and current. Thing Two, thinks I, is not the only Nowhere scholar with an imagination. In my imagination she and I take turns, more or less, recording what we are learning. Enter discomfort.

On the walk Tuesday I told her about her Dad saying she was a hard worker. That led the conversation round to entrepreneurship. Coming down the hill, I  thought we made a plan for Thing Two to write a great segue from the schedule post to the next post I was already mentally composing, by telling folks what the entry on our schedule called EntrePShip means. Sure to be funny, given her view of our current text's title:  Bookkeeping Made Simple.

What she had learned earning and spending money from working at her Dad"s was a great place to start. I even thought we had the first few opening lines of her post written. In my mind the next bit of the day was going to flow like this: while I make breakfast, Thing Two will write this tasty little appetizer and then during Independent Study I can write more about our schedule.


Transitions are vexed. Every parent knows this. Every parent wishes transitions were like the smooth glide of a figure skater from one amazing jump to the next. Even my long standing membership in the class of every parent seems never enough preparation for the transition that goes this way: the person in front of you says "watch out for the ice."  You land flat on your back and realize that seeing stars is not just an expression.


We are in the house. Thing Two is at the computer. I am making breakfast and watching the clock, wanting to be ready to listen to the news en français et commence parler français avec nos petits déjeuner. Thing Two has not sat down at the computer with a rush of enthusiasm. Wriggling and whining is taking place. I am focused on my goal, words are spoken. As I pass by the computer with dishes to ready the table, Thing Two is translating her sigh and grumble into the New Post window this way: "I'm being forced to..."  Awww, no. Hear my head hitting the pavement?

Thursday, January 28, 2010

Yay! Yay! Yay!

Hiya, it's thing two! Mom has reminded me that i should post, so here goes.. Its only been a two day week for us, and we havent got much done in a while. However,  I have been letting my imagination run wild, (not that thats anything new, of course) and my interesting stuff has been:

The amazing idea of going to New Zealand

How nice the weather has been here (no snow, sunny, almost spring like!) which has lead to my summer hopes, basically little snippets of things that seem like fun to do, painting in my oversized t-shirt and bathing suit (yay! warm!) going to the beach while swirling around in my beautiful red dress (yay! beaches!) , having a party, and oh! Oh! ohohohohohohoh!! having a party on the beach! A birthday party on the beach! (I'm turning twelve in June)   In my red dress! and then painting! yay! oh Yay! Yay!

My little robber snake band, sorta like the idea of Redwall, a series by Brian Jacques I'm hooked on.

The idea of walking to Halifax from Cape Breton alone, to raise money for the Red Cross and Haiti ( like a mini Terry Fox sorta thing)

Practicing twirling my stick, and more ideas by the minute!

Also yesterday i found a five leaf clover. No kidding. Its being pressed in an Archie comic book right now.

Monday, January 25, 2010

What? Can't we just do what we want when we want? Isn't that the point of home schooling?

Oh, Thing Two, I remember when I thought that way. I thought the world was just so unfair, because adults obviously did whatever they wanted, whenever they wanted. What they wanted always seemed to interfere with some important project of my own. For years after I was supposedly a grown-up adult I kept trying to pretend that now that I was, well I could.
That was when I lived in Cloud Cuckoo Land, where, first, cue the spooky flashback music, then picture me discovering these surprising details about life as a "grown up".

Not only is there no free lunch, but you make your own. Right after you, oh heck, do those dishes you couldn't be bothered doing after breakfast, which you also didn't bother to do after supper last night. Let's see what's for lunch? Oh right, you had that for supper... so that means there isn't anything for lunch until you go to the store... except that, after supper you decided to go to a movie, and bought popcorn... and now you have no money to go to the store with until after next payday. Which is when? (Looking at calendar): Oh! Gosh! You thought it was Saturday! You were supposed to be at work 4 hours ago! Ouch.

So much for adults getting to do what they want, whenever they want. I try to stay out of Cloud Cuckoo Land now.
Sometime, Thing Two, I'll tell you the story of the big green mold monster that ate my first apartment's tiny kitchen. But right now, I'm going to remind you that, yes we do have a schedule here in HSNowhere. Not only do we have one, but when we made it up last December, on the 14th as you can see right here, I wrote down, "I agreed" and put two lines under that. Do you see? On one of those lines, I signed my name, and on one of those lines you signed yours. So, yes, our schedule is right up here clipped onto the calendar, and yes, we do have to leave on time for the walk at 7:15, because that's when we need to get going to have enough time for all the things we want to do this term, and of course, the things like, ugh, math, that some of us think we don't want to do.
That's just a bit of review of the kind of conversations Thing Two and I had this past week. Happily, Thing Two remembered what she learned last term about the walk routine. Its more fun to enjoy what the walk offers than to whine for an hour while I, to keep my temper in check, rely on a mantra taught to me by my cousin Abby and repeat: "This is a test. This is only a test. This is a test of the emergency kid network parent testing system." Then I laugh.
Here's the schedule, which we did a remarkable job of following this past week, congratulations to us. More detail to follow. Now, I'm off to do those dishes I didn't do over the weekend. On the bright side, I remembered what day it was, and went to work.
                January 10th to April 1st 2010 Schedule


Mon
Tues
Wed
Thurs
Fri
7:15
Walk
Walk
Walk
Psych Walk
Walk
8:15
Breakfast
Breakfast
Breakfast
Breakfast
Breakfast
9:00
French
Riding
French
Independent
French
10:00
Independent
Riding
Independent
Independent
Independent
11:00
MLM&M
Riding
MLM&M
MLM&M
MLM&M
11:30
Lunch
Lunch
Lunch
Lunch
Lunch
12:30
DDM&M
DDM&M
DDM&M
DDM&M
DDM&M
1:00
EntrePship
Woodlot
Psych Read
Woodlot
EntrePship
2:00
Kids Yoga
Diorama
Diorama
Diorama
Diorama
3:00
Kids Yoga
Music
Music
Music
Music
3:15
Kids Yoga
House Elf
House Elf
House Elf
House Elf



Key
Independent = Independent Studies, or prep time.
MLM&M = Make Lunch, Music & Math
DDM&M = Do Dishes, Music & Math
EntrePship = Entrepreneurship
House Elf = Household Tasks

Sunday, January 24, 2010

Thing One? Oh, she's been lost in the land of push button publishing.

Thing Two's view is that in blog land, how our pages look is less important than what we say, and that we say it regularly. This week I've had to disappoint her, while enjoying her enthusiastic and funny contributions.

Since last Monday, I've spent far more time than I expected from the phrase, push button publishing, sitting at the kitchen table learning that intuitive as some of it all is, some things here in blog land, as in other areas of life, are just not simple for me. That's me, the ex-typesetter hoping-to-retire-soon-perfectionist.

Before beginning to torment any of my friends and relatives who have ever said to me "you should write" by inviting them to Nowhere,  I wanted to be at the point where looking at the page gave me a visual thrill. And, of course, to have laid out the rest of our schedule and some of the reasoning behind it.

Instead, I found out a lot about a couple of features of  Picasa, the photo handling application that I use. What became evident to me in the process of trying to turn a particular photo into one I could run in behind the header on the template I finally chose, is that there's a lot I don't know about html, pixels, ratios and the math one uses to resize, not to mention transfer, images between applications.

The fact that I know so little about so many things, math being high on the list, can open the door into a little room marked Worries about Home Schooling with a sudden slam.  One day we'll take a look in there, but at the moment I've barricaded it with the schedule we laid out in December to carry us from January 10th to April 1st. Remember? We had just gotten to the last few moments of Independent Study last Monday when I dashed off, thinking that by the end of the day I'd be back to write a cheerful, funny report on the rest of our exciting first day of winter term.

Thing Two's comment "You know what's weird  about us? We usually judge how well we are doing by how late we are," doesn't really describe how the rest of Monday went. It was a great day. But it does give you a sense of life's learning curves here in Nowhere.

Other things I learned this past week?
  • The notebook worked: en français,"'weird" est Bizarre!.
  • My habits of spelling and punctuation and proofreading are not the same as Thing Two's habits; a reasonable difference given the 50 years difference in our ages.
  • Thing Two thinks she can be "super grouchy without getting detention"? Time to invent the Consequence Clock.
  • Sticking to a schedule is one end of the teeter-totter. The other end is working at something obsessively in hopes of getting it done soon. 
  • Too much time on the obsessive end of the teeter-totter can lead to sleep chaos.
  • If blogging is going to be doable, I have to learn to do it faster and find a place in the day to fit it in.
Time to cook something with the eggplant I was so excited to find Wednesday in our wonderful local grocery store. Eggplant, zucchini, portobello mushrooms, garlic. White sauce or tomatoes? Lentils or not? Polenta or potatoes? With big questions like these who has time to blog?

Tuesday, January 19, 2010

There's a new bug in my bed...

Hey, its Thing Two. So, about two days ago Thing One found a little bug in my bed. I'm also proud to say that I did not freak out as much as I did when I found the mealworm. I've been amusing myself with him since we got home from the walk. The bug, who has recently been dubbed Sir Bucky Omega Apple Veloce Hambriento ( Omega Crunch is something we put on our breakfast which he is fond of, and Apple because he has been stuffing himself with that for twenty minutes now. Veloce is fast in Italian and Hambriento is hungry in Spanish.) Anyway, here's what I've done so far :

Thing One thought he must be getting hungry, so she fed him some cornmeal and water.  Then came my idea to put different food in a line and see which ones he liked. For a while all he was interested in doing was escaping, so I put him in a little bowl.

He still wanted to escape.

After a while he seemed to give up and went around to observe his new territory. Once he figured out he could eat this stuff, in no particular order, he seemed to like:

Apple
Omega crunch
Wet Cornmeal

He took bites out of  dried rose petals, oats, bark and toast (and also pooped on it) but didnt seem to like grass, catnip or potato. Now he's sitting on some bark. I'm going to build him a habitat in his bowl. Maybe it'll turn out that he's a digging bug. As for what I learned today, Sir Bucky Omega Apple Veloce Hambriento has a sweet tooth. And a large appetite. We have so much in common.



Update: We would like to report that Sir Bucky is missing from his habitat, although there was another bug, close in looks to Bucky, found drowned in the bathroom.

Monday, January 18, 2010

BIZARRE!

Hi, Its thing two. I'm the daughter of the operation. thing one is my mother. the day is half over, but its too close to lunch for me too go into depth about it.  Mom says I should include what i've learned so far, even if it was that she is a bossy old woman. when she started to tell me what to do that popped into my mind in the first place so i'll go with that. I'm major read-a-holic, but now i'm homeschooling i get a little more time to do the things that i like rather than the things i'm supposed to, like (ugh) math. (i typed that with as much hatred as i could, did you notice?) not to say that i'm not working. i am.  But i get to paint and read work on my diarama and (yay!) listen music on my new ipod, and be super grouchy without getting detention.

I also played hockey with my walking stick and a clementine i found in the ditch.. and me and thing one found our new favorite word :  

BIZARRE!

If only I would listen, everything would be perfect! The view from Thing One.

First day of the winter term. We have a schedule. Walk at 7:15. French at 9 am. Independent Study 10.

I won't go on, we're not there yet. We were running a half hour late when we left for our walk. It was cold. We had missed the gorgeous sunrise by 25 minutes at least.

The walk was good, high-spirited, a minimum of first day back blues, brought on by Thing One backing out of the offer to walk out the marsh instead of up the road. There was singing, dancing, frozen clementine hockey with walking sticks... not as simple as clementine soccer.

There were tracks in a light dusting of snow. On the return trip we talked about the cultural studies project Thing Two has proposed. She will make dioramas. We talked about marking guidelines or research criteria. I met her "I don't have a clue" with stories of starting a business and feeling the same way while spending days turning over the pages of various forms and thinking "I don't know the answer to that, or that either." Eventually one day I thought, "well this question here, where they ask for my name, I know that, I might as well start there."

So, Ancient Egypt it is, using other sources than Wikipedia, some online and some off... I have an art history book from my first sojourn at NSCAD U and I know there's an Art of Egypt book kicking around the house somewhere. The British Museum and other museum sites will have plenty of info. Time frame is important, scale is important, we got that far and then we were home with fifteen minutes to spare before breakfast and French.

Listened to Radio Canada while we ate and made up some quick exercises to do. To listen live, scroll down, its on the right hand side with a black background... and says "Écoutez le MP3" , but you knew that, of course. I listened for words that I could recognize and wrote them in the notebook as words to write sentences around. We spoke French and when Thing Two used an English word I wrote that down too, so she could find it in French and get it into a sentence. The hour ended before we could start what we intended to do, begin reading L'Odyssée miraculeuse d'Édouard Toulaine with a stack of reference books to hand.

Independent study is almost over, Thing Two is alternating between working on the French exercises and wandering into iPod land. I'm relearning what little I knew about switching between the French and English keyboard settings and being glad we've made a start.


What I learned today so far:

  • Being on time starts last night.
  • I need to have my clothes laid out before I go to bed.
  • Getting up with the alarm set to radio isn't working for Thing Two.
  • My least favourite job is waking anyone, but we already knew that.
  • We are going to be fine. (more on this later.)

Waking me today wasn't the problem, my day started after 4 hours sleep at 1 am. I had my hot milk with caraway and maple sugar and I read, but the book turned out not to be boring enough. Or something, because even after thinking I was drowsy and turning out the light, I was still awake and finally came downstairs and stirred up the fire at 4 am.

Now it's time to do whatever it is I do during Independent Study, there's only 9 minutes left! Drat, its just come back to me... I was going to marinate the tofu for lunch. On to plan B.