lifeinflux

A Question of Values

// January 2nd, 2012 // No Comments » // Educating the Chaotic Mind

One of the many reasons we decided to homeschool was to cover a lot of the basics we feel education is lacking these days.   A benefit of bringing her home is that we’ve had an amazing opportunity to reinforce our values as a family and to encourage her to find friends who share those values.  Being locked away in a school for eight hours each day is akin to being tossed into an emotional lion’s den and my sensitive child was emotionally destroyed daily only to be revived each evening and sent back in the fray.  Sadly, she picked up some not-so-charming habits that she felt – and rightly so – were critical for her social survival.    In many ways, having young parents were a further detriment as Jason and I had Drue before we were fully formed adults.   So, she’s watched us struggle with our own values and beliefs during her childhood.  Rather than teach her our beliefs, we’ve vacillated between what we want verses what is right verses what we believe and Drue was left with a decent sense of right and wrong but no strong foundation to support her as she grappled with the “mean” kids.    Add to that a sweet nature, a sensitive heart and a determination to mature at her pace rather than society’s and you have a child walking around figuratively carrying a “Yes, please bully me!” sign.   And while I am pleased in some ways that Drue stood up to the little bitches mean girls for herself and her friends, I was not thrilled that the standing up process involved hitting someone.

Since bringing Drue home, we’ve had many occasions to discuss our values at a micro level aka who we are or want to be as people as well as at a macro level including how we can contribute to those areas or things we feel passionate about.  It is one thing to say we practice environmentally friendly habits or that we want to reduce waste in the oceans and save our fish and marine mammal friends and something else entirely to do something about what we believe in.  Having a child in school plus the so-called “normal” suburbia afternoon and weekend activities leaves little time for quiet thought, discussion and reflection much less time to actually put all those thoughts and decisions into action.   I get that.  However, now that we homeschool  Drue, we actually have a lot of control over Drue’s time (and ours) and, with permission to walk off the beaten path, Drue has found friends who nurture and support her as a person and respect her values, even if they don’t share them.   And Jason and I have the freedom over the course of an entire day to spend the time with Drue to help her meet her goals as well as further define our values as individuals and as a family and put those values into action instead of trying to jam them down her throat for a few hours each night and in-between rounds of soccer games each weekend.   It’s very win-win.

Now don’t get me wrong, this is a process and I certainly am not the absolute authority on defining and living your values.   But I relish the time I have with Drue to get to know her as this amazing, evolving young person and for her to see me as what I am – a functioning adult, grappling with my own evolving thoughts, ideals, goals and values – and having the time, energy and inclination to put those thoughts, ideas, goals and values into practice.  And I am so thankful we have the time and energy to live the life we want as opposed to cramming it in around the time  schedule dictated by living a s0-called “normal life”.    Early in the homeschool process, I rolled my eyes at the thought of someone homeschooling for religious reasons.  But really, is that any different than what we are doing here?   Sure, instead of promoting bible studies and ensuring Drue has additional time for church and fellowship, we promote marine internships, additional study in science and math and ensure Drue has additional time to be in and on the water but regardless of where we place our time value, are we really different from any other family who decides to homeschool, regardless of the reason or religious intent?

I think it is merely a question of values and for our family, we value our time, our passions and Drue’s education too much to confine her or ourselves to the standards of the norm.    Our biggest challenge this year is to recognize that homeschool is merely one smart step on the long journey of our lives and not the be-all, end all goal and to ensure the process of homeschooling grows and evolves in an organic way that ensures that Drue continues working towards her goals (as opposed to the goals defined by the California Department of Education) and that we support her as best we can.   Additionally, we need to foster the same environment of learning and living our passions for ourselves and not just Drue.   Because sometimes the hardest thing is not identifying your values but living them and incorporating them into a busy, daily life.  And I think that’s something we all share as human beings, regardless of how we live and what we believe.

Finding Our Way Through the Maze – Of Curriculum and Lesson Plans

// October 13th, 2011 // No Comments » // Educating the Chaotic Mind

Occasionally my Type O personality gets me in trouble but when it comes to Drue’s schooling, I think we’ve found enough justification for my OCD.   I’ve been on the edge of education for over a decade now and have seen second and third hand what teachers experience but it is nothing like being responsible for developing and planning my own curriculum for the first time.  I am so grateful for my job experience with a wonderful organization whose ongoing mission is to support teachers with best practices in K-12 education and then shares all that good knowledge with the educators and allows them a forum to share with each other.   Because while it was doing all of that for educators in North Carolina and surrounding states, it gave me a peek into things like the Standard Course of Study and aligning curriculum with that standard course of study and then building lesson plans to support the goals of that curriculum.   It also introduced me in a very high level way to the ongoing struggle to teach verses teaching to standards.   During my short tenure working for this organization, if someone had told me I would eventually take these things I was learning about – and not involved with at all since my particular job for this organization had everything to do with keeping their website up and nothing to do with teaching itself – and apply them as a teacher to my own child I would have written them off as crazy.

12 plus years later, here I am teaching.  And I don’t just teach Drue.  I also have the pleasure of working with a lot of very legal-minded people to <strike>train</strike> teach adults as well.  But while I think in terms of programs, job roles, competencies and compliance with my adult learner population, I can’t classify Drue.   Well okay, I could classify Drue. I could easily fall into the public education mentality, toss her into a learning box marked gifted and then bring on World War III.   The reality is that I brought Drue home to learn because she is incredibly gifted and because public education has NO idea of what to do with her or kids like her.   And honestly, neither do I.  If I had all the answers, life would be so much simpler, no?   It would be boring for sure, but way simpler.   So this summer, in designing Drue’s curriculum I went with what I know.  I downloaded all the standards for sixth and seventh grade.  I planned tests for the first few weeks to ensure she remembered enough from last year to excel this year.  I wrote curriculum and goals and aligned everything to the seventh grade standard.  Then I wrote lesson plans filling our days with activities, discussions, and interesting things to do.   I planned to begin everything the second week of September.  I had A PLAN.   And then reality hit and boy did it smack my right upside the head.

First, we got into Ocean Grove, an independent charter school that allows me to homeschool my way but still covers things like curriculum reviews, portfolio building, grades, an official transcript and YES, standardized testing.  We also get money from the state each semester which is incredibly helpful because our chosen path of homeschooling is expensive.   All of this is a Good Thing™ but moved our school start date from September 7th to August 15th. PANIC!  So I went from an organized three weeks to put together lesson plans to needing lesson plans developed right now, this very instant!

Second, we tested Drue and all that lovely seventh grade curriculum I prepared went right out the window the moment we got her results back.  Now we were looking at ninth grade math (Algebra I and Geometry) curriculum and 11th grade reading!!! We also found out I needed to formalize Drue’s Science curriculum more and we needed books, lots and lots of books. So we ordered Algebra I books, Life Science books, teacher guides, and formal lab materials.  And we started the long wait.   I read new standards and drafted new curriculum and waited for the books.  And as August slipped into September and  September moved relentlessly towards October, I started to panic and wonder when I would receive the books.   To add to my unrelenting stress,  my Education Specialist emailed me and let me know that since Drue is working on honors level high school work, California requires her to follow the a-g curriculum requirements. Huh? It seems that the state of California has formal requirements outside of its standard course of study for students planning to apply to University of California schools. Normal public high schools cover a-g requirements but Drue is not in a normal high school. Another option was to send her to community college, a move I was not ready for given Drue is only 12 years old. Or we could pay for an a-g Specialist to review Drue’s curriculum and portfolio and test her a few times each semester to ensure she was meeting all standards.  We went with option 3.

As September moved into October, I started receiving standards requirements, practice tests and other information for Drue for Algebra I. I downloaded Life Science requirements from California’s Department of Education website. We received free books for Geometry and Life Science but still needed all our lab tools, assessment sheets, lab books, practicum and other Science materials. We were also missing our Algebra I books and as October 1st came and went, I went from panic mode to HOLY CRAP WHAT WILL I DO NOW?? mode! Luckily, we have an excellent ES who calmed me down, and worked her magic to get Drue’s midterms waived which were set for mid-October. So now instead of cramming 2 months of work into 2 weeks, I need to figure out how to cram 4 months of work into 9 weeks. And while this still feels daunting and leaves a dull ache in the pit of my stomach, I am no longer carrying a paper bag to breathe into. So for now, we are focusing on Geometry (10th grade level so we have two years to get her through this 655 page book…whew!) and using Khan Academy to review material on Algebra I. Drue is also attending Russian Math for 2 and 1/2 hours per week to supplement her Algebra I learning but they don’t pace according to a-g requirements (which require the kids to master 2-3 objectives per week).

Along with the anxiety of trying to stay on the same page as “on task”, work has picked up for my little company which is great… and not great at the same time.  You see, as work picks up for me, we struggle with getting in the discussion time we both want (and occasionally Drue needs) to ensure she gets her questions answered and to make sure she stays on task. Like me, she gets obsessed with certain subjects or topics and would spend days on that ONE THING instead of ensuring she meets her daily rounds of reading, writing and ‘rithmatic. So scheduled discussions are anchors for us and allow me to transition her back onto plan, as loose and non-formed and out of control the plan may currently be.  It’s definitely a challenge and something we were not prepared for when determining her curriculum flow.   And my OCD is creating a physical stress presence in my body that I carry in my upper back, shoulders, and neck.  I literally feel like I am tipping under the weight of it.   It was so bad that last week I melted down when Drue was 10 minutes late leaving her lab, adding to my overall drive time from my home office to San Jose and back and making me late to a meeting.  I just hit that wall where I could not TAKE one more thing.  So we backed off the work for a few days and gave Drue some independent projects to buy me some time to relax, and figure out a plan to meet our requirements without the tools in hand that we need.   Receiving the Science supplies on Friday helped relieve my stress levels as well.  AS a family we had an honest conversation about what is working and what is not and came up with this list:

What works:

1. Independent learning where Drue takes control of her school work and comes to me with questions
2. Daily tasks on the board
3. Weekly and monthly projects posted to the Google calendar
4. Online, self directed learning with feedback from other teachers aka dedicated experts to the subject (like writing)
5. Social interaction via Russian Math, Rock-It Science and Academic Antics
6. Collegiate style of learning – 1.5 to 2 hours twice a week on specific subjects with independent, week long homework projects with daily check-ins to ensure understanding

What isn’t working:

1. Lengthy discussions during the day
2. Too many Academic Antics extra-curriculars where Drue loses a day and a half each week between commuting to class and actual class time
3. Covering all subjects every day for a short amount of time

Our reality is that I have 1-2 hours per day to really focus on Drue and her learning as her teacher. My struggle is letting go of the shame in not being able to do it all and just accept that I am busy doing work I love and outsourcing some of the teaching to others who are WAY more qualified than I to ensure she learns, stays challenged and stays on task.  So this week we are highlighting what works, identifying areas of heavy focus (Algebra I, Geometry, Science and History), carving out time on the weekends to have lengthy discussions and working towards semester goals instead of daily tasks.  I have decided that next semester we are focusing on finding creative ways to bring subject matter experts into Drue’s learning experience so the bulk of her day-to-day learning is not my sole responsibility. Instead of teaching, I will be more of a curriculum expert, making sure Drue meets her short and long term goals, and as her parent, I help her meet those goals without the additional burden of having her teach her EVERYTHING. And while that makes our homeschool experience a lot more expensive than others, it works for us.

Sure you could argue that I brought Drue home to be with me and to teach her myself, adhering to our values and our goals. And that is a very valid point. But our goals and values don’t limit us to a particular way of schooling or force me lose sleep and my sanity to try to teach her everything myself.  Our goals are a happy medium between standardized testing and grades and a more relaxed way of schooling that occasionally feels, acts and appears to be our own flavor of unschooling.   And I feel no shame in bringing in experts to teach subjects to Drue that aren’t my particular area of expertise or something that, frankly, impacts my relationship with Drue. Because sometimes paying someone else to come in and teach Drue is worth every penny if it means we aren’t at each other’s throats arguing about how we’re going to tackle this particular subject. To me, that freedom to delegate areas of learning is priceless.

I finally feel like we’ve acquired enough experience in the last six months to accept what does and doesn’t work. And I am looking forward to finding a place of real peace regarding her school work and meeting the standards.  I’m sure once we finish our curriculum assessment and update her lesson plans for the rest of October, November and December through finals, the peaceful, easy feeling I have today won’t last. But then that’s what my little glass of wine is for!  Right?

Like chickens with our heads cut off…

// September 12th, 2011 // 6 Comments » // Educating the Chaotic Mind

I have unschool homeschool envy. There. I admitted it. I am so jealous of families who take off for a week to go camping with 20 other homeschool families and call that “schoolwork”. I feel a physical yearning to throw my lesson plans out my window and turn today’s math lesson into 2 hours of baking. I would love to be able to watch Drue spend her entire day reading about goblin sharks and not bite my nails wondering how this is going to lead to a fight this weekend when Drue wants to go out on the water but instead has 3 hours of history and an hour of Japanese to finish before the fun can begin. Everything I read about homeschool plays up how you can be as unstructured as you want and how it provides your child the ability to delve deeply into subjects that interest him. I have read success story after success story of young adults now living their dreams of being carpenters on movie sets, doctors in Africa or traveling to China to teach English as a second language, all because of homeschool. I also talk to college admissions officers who tell me for every homeschooler who shows up with the most amazing portfolio, three others show up without the basic a-g credits needed to get into a state university. Part of me wants to get work and schoolwork done early every single day, allowing for hours of time in and on the water each and every day. But my work ethic does not allow me to cut out every day at 2 PM to go swimming in the ocean and Drue’s own biology works against her and the kind of free time she, and I, want for her that would allow her to spend hours each day in and on the ocean.

Part of the problem, if you can call it that, is my need to ensure any and every option is available to Drue. If she wants to go to Stanford, by golly I’ll be right there driving her to every volleyball tournament, mathlete competition, internship, tutoring whatsit in the great state of California and points north and east to ensure she gets her shot. If she wakes up tomorrow and decides she wants to be a surf bum, I guess we’ll move to Santa Cruz and drop her down to a more normal math/science schedule in order to give her valuable surf time during the day. My point is, I have an ambitious child who wants it all. She is crushing math and science and wants to spend every waking hour on or in the water. And I get that. I respect it. And we’ve met some wonderful folks who are helping make her dream a reality a few times a week (thank you MSI!). I’m willing to put in the driving time (and water time) to ensure she gets what she wants and needs. But the other reality of our lives and her goals is making sure she has a well rounded (and well documented) formal education so if she does decide to apply to Stanford (of U Cal-Santa Cruz or any other school of her choosing) she has a decent shot of getting in. And sometimes, most times actually, those two goals collide in a spectacular, horrible way.

As the family planner it is my job to make sure that Drue has a good mix of formal education that allows her to meet her long term goals AND down time to spend in and on the water doing what she loves most. Add in a heaping dash of volleyball and social activities and well, we’re insanely busy folks. And we like it that way… until we don’t. And usually the issue comes about when there are a million things to do and Drue’s ADHD decides to kick into overdrive. Or as she says, “the BFBS (Brain Fog Bullshit) is back!” It’s like something out of a horror film for everyone, especially Drue, and it can turn a perfectly great but busy day into sheer unrelenting hell. Drue can go from zooming through math problems or whipping out a 2 page paper on Literary Sub-genres to staring blankly at her toes for 3 hours and alternately whispering and yelling “I don’t KNOW!” when I ask her why she cannot focus and get back into the groove. Typically we can draw a direct line back to her diet (carbs are the absolute killer) and Drue’s inability to walk away from a soda, piece of bread or tower of pasta to save her own life. And honestly it drives me NUTS because it turns any and every social situation into a tense situation. She wants to eat like a normal kid and I hesitate to call attention to what she’s eating because in so many ways she feels like a square peg in a circular social hole. A lot of time she abstains from eating whatever carby items are around but then is angry with me regardless of what I do or don’t say because that ADHD comes from well.. me. And that whole square peg, brain thing she has going on? Granted there are a LOT of brainiacs from all sides of Drue’s family tree but the social awkwardness? The inability to communicate effectively? Those Aspie moments? Yeah that gets a direct line back to me as well. Or, worse, she eats the food because she wants to fit in and she wants that awesome, amazing sugar YUM moment and then she suffers from brain fog for the next 24-48 hours and is furious with herself for making the same mistake yet again. Win-win, no?

So between that not-so-little issue coupled with Drue’s high reaching goals for her (which I highly approve of… people, even kids!!, need lofty goals to aspire and work towards) and a nice dash of ADHD and all the self-anger issues that can come with it means that we need a schedule and we require a plan that includes easy to snag meals that provide Drue with on-the-go, healthy, non-starchy carb foods she needs. And finding on-the-go and healthy non-processed foods is NOT easy folks unless we have a plan in place to ensure the time, energy and effort to accommodate those eating needs. And it’s not just on Drue – I need the same kinds of foods as well to continue to get healthy and to work towards my own health and fitness goals. When we met with her therapist to acquire behavior modification tools we were given the two rules of managing ADHD:
Rule number 1: Provide structure.
Rule number 2: Create a workable schedule.

Thanks to my amazing (hush, you) organizational abilities, I can provide her all the structure and schedules in the world. Its providing her the time and freedom to spend 2 hours researching random kelp beds floating off some random island in the Indian Ocean due to rising acidification levels due to a hole in the ozone or some such that I struggle with. (Yes I made that factoid up but you get my point.) I know I feel random and useless and irritable and dispirited and even get down right mean and angsty when too much time has passed and I haven’t painted or played the piano or sketched or canned something. So I completely understand when Drue has slogged through two weeks of math, science, writing and history without having time to read her marine biology books or godforbid, be in the ocean, and she is downright ornery. I GET IT! I’d blame her medulla oblongata but I know better (sorry, had to throw in a Waterboy reference there). But I feel like it is my job as her parent AND as her primary educator to stress the importance of learning as HER JOB first. She has to get her three R’s done and to the best of her ability and then the unstructured learning and fun can come. I’m a HUGE advocate of the “work hard, play hard” mentality. Remember that one Generation Xers? We had that down to a fine science before everyone caught all caught up in contributing to overpopulation, worrying about mortgages and continuing our parent’s legacy of conspicuous consumerism. I believe that with rights come responsibilities (I know… I am SO OLD SCHOOL!) and feel like these two lessons (along with treat others as you want to be treated so if I’m not treating you well, I really don’t want you around) are the three golden rules and if Drue adheres to them, she’s going to crush life, mold it into what she wants and know how to handle herself and any situation that comes her way. That said, I really wish we could find a happy medium between the structure and schedule without having her ADHD go haywire and instead of working on her awesome diorama, find out she’s spent half the day contemplating a leaf, desperately trying to focus on anything OTHER than that leaf. And yes, I could put her on medication but 1) too many qualified doctors have talked of the evils of medicating ADHD kids and 2) I don’t think she needs them. More importantly, she doesn’t want to take them because a lot of her acquaintances who take ADD meds act like zombies on them.

So what’s a mom to do? Do I have a schedule and throw it out the window trusting we can catch up come summer time and hope we have enough time in between for a few fun trips during the months of June, July and August? Or do I struggle to keep us on task, sometimes keeping Drue from the things she LOVES doing in order to ensure she gets the things done she HAS TO DO in order to keep moving towards her own goals? The answer would be easy if these were MY goals and not hers. I wouldn’t be so worried if she came to me and said, “Mom I need you to back off”. But she’s not. Instead she’s coming to me in tears about the brain fog, upset that she’s going to lose her weekend time to school work she did not finish over the week but knowing if she doesn’t give up weekend time, next week will be harder. She asks me to support her behavior modification plan which means I have to say no so many times I feel cast in the role of “Perpetual Meaniehead Funsucker”. And I hate it. I know this is part of it – this hard job of parenting. But no one told me homeschooling would add to that. I guess I naively thought we would have control of our own lives… but now I find instead of just worrying about what kind of person Drue will grow up to be, I’m worried about what kind of student she’s becoming as well. And while I wouldn’t trade this time with Drue to anyone or for anything, like so many other parenting duties, no one tells you how gosh darn hard it is. Hopefully, like all the other hard parts of parenting, the rewards will be great for Drue and for me. Hopefully we can get into some kind of rhythm in the next few weeks that allows us to find a way to achieve our school goals AND find time for spontaneous fun. If not, I might have to throw the schedule out the window and just wing it before it drives me and Drue crazy.

Stay tuned…

The next BIG STEP

// August 17th, 2011 // 2 Comments » // Educating the Chaotic Mind

In the last five months, we have run the gamut as far as schooling goes. We started out the year in our local public school, left our public school in March and allowed Drue to “deschool” for six weeks where she lolled about in her pajamas, read a lot of books, spent a few hours a week with her therapist, chased puppies all over the backyard, and watched an unimaginable number of documentaries on marine life and World War II. No wait. That last part about WWII was me. Then came the testing and the observing and the research and discussions about all the different kinds of homeschooling methods and philosophies. Somewhere in all of this, I fell in with this great group of unschoolers who accept me even though I am Type A and write curriculum and lesson plans and align everything to the California Standard Course of Study. They just smile at me and whisper “OCD!” to each other and accept that I am strange in my own way and like me regardless.

And for the most part, Drue has thrived. The sad note is that she seems to have lost most of her friends from public school. Jason and I also lost our “parent base” either because we were out of sight/out of mind, we are “the parents of that girl who slapped that kid” (never mind that Drue got slapped as well) or we’re just weirdos who homeschool in “the best public school system in the country!” Or it might be our stance on protecting the oceans – we’re kind of marine fanatics in this house. We’re hoping the homeschool group we created will bear some friendly fruit and are looking forward to this school year more so than last year. Go figure.  We paid a fortune to move into one of the best school districts and found out that the US public education system let us down.  Good to know it wasn’t just a Virginia thing!

So after a series of BIG steps in the last few months, we just took another and applied to and was accepted in a Charter School. Regardless of what you know or think you know about charter schools, this one supports independent learning (aka homeschooling) but provides you with an Education Specialist who guides you to ensure your child is meeting state curriculum standards, provides state testing, report cards and transcripts and funding. Yes, you read that correctly. We are getting state funds to pay for some of Drue’s homeschool classes.

Now before you FREAK OUT think about this… I pay 38% of my income into the system. We pay into the school district even though Drue no longer attends. Our property and local taxes pay into the school district too – even though Drue no longer attends public school!  So am I comfortable with the fact that I am getting back a tiny fraction of what other children CONSUME in my tax dollars to attend public school here to pay for a small piece of my child’s education? Darn tootin’ I am! But even if I didn’t receive a dime, we are really excited about belonging to this particular charter program. We have a fantastic education specialist who has already proven indispensable in educating me on California’s a-g standards. a-g requirements are usually something a parent concerns themselves with in high school. But it seems my “emotionally immature, math-deficient” child blew threw her review of 4th through 6th grade math in a few months, dominated Advanced Pre-Algebra this summer and qualified for Algebra I and Geometry this fall and spring. What this means, for those of you who don’t remember the math progression through high school,  is that while my kid is sitting in Advanced Algebra II or Trig in 9th grade, those “emotionally mature” kids will  just have completed some form of Algebra I.   I can draw you a chart if you’re confused or just point you here if you need a picture to figure out how this high school math thing works. It might be a little different in your school district but I think you get the general idea.

Since Drue qualifies for Algebra I and Geometry as a 7th grader, we need to find a-g curriculum outside of a normal classroom setting. Usually homeschoolers hit up their local community college to ensure they are taking a-g courses, but Drue does not feel ready to sit in a classroom with 16-30 plus year olds. And frankly, I’m not ready for her to sit in that class either. Luckily, the San Jose School of Russian Mathematics teaches Algebra I and Geometry to kids as early as 7th grade provided they qualify (aka test in and have the necessary grade point average) for the classes. Unfortunately, this particular school is not an “a-g” school. That is where our Education Specialist comes in and we’re looking forward to her help in working around this little problem. Had it been me on my own, I have no idea what I would have done. I do know it would have taken hours of my own research, a lot of stress, time away from my 30 days of fun (yes, that is still going on!) and countless sleepless nights until I figured out a solution. But thanks to our charter school, I have a partner in this who is looking for options and solutions for me. That is complete and total happiness!

Over the summer, I worked for an hour or two (or five or six) each day on this year’s Fall and Spring curriculum and am really happy with it. Not only does Drue have a fast-track science curriculum that includes labs at home and at Rock It Science but she is taking 7th and 8th grade California Science Curriculum this year. It seems when I was not paying attention, Drue downloaded and completed 90% of the California required science curriculum for 7th graders this summer and managed to get perfect scores on every test I could fling at her. Go figure… She also found an ongoing science project to join, a nature studies class to take (plants, birds, and other fun things!), and we have curriculum from friends at the Monterey Bay and Birch Aquarium just in case she gets bored (or just in case she decides that this week, it is a moral imperative for her to concentrate her every waking hour on something pertaining to ocean life). I’ve created her history and societal studies curriculum (more on that later) and ensured we have fun projects, documentaries, museum trips and field trips to show Drue how fun and exciting learning about our past can be! Drue starts Japanese lessons in a few weeks (more on that later) and piano lessons next week. Drue joined a computer class – Introduction to Java Programming – that meets once a week and volleyball begins in September and ends in November whereupon Drue is trying out for Club Volleyball, hoping to get into one of the elite teams. So keep your fingers crossed for her!

All in all, it’s a busy and exciting time. School started for us for the fall on Monday the 15th so we are quickly integrating the new curriculum into our day while Drue attends volleyball clinics.  And because we homeschool, we have trips to the lake house and Irish Beach scheduled. We’re so excited for this fall and all our new adventures, both planned and those that might creep up on us, and I am so thankful that we took this big step into the charter school program.  I’ll post more soon on Drue’s entire curriculum for fall!  Feedback, particularly from my amazing friends who happened to major in history, journalism and linguistics, is most welcome.

Happy learning!

When All Else Fails…

// August 1st, 2011 // No Comments » // Educating the Chaotic Mind

After giving Drue a good month off to decompress or, as many homeschoolers call it, to “deschool” I realized I had three challenges ahead of me. The first challenge was that I had no idea what Drue actually learned after 7 years of public education. Second, I had no idea how she learns. And finally, my biggest challenge of all was I had no idea how I was going to homeschool her, run a company, take care of my employee, take care of my clients and somewhere in all of this, take care of me. My friend, TerriAnn (of Cookies and Clogs) recommended I join a few Yahoo groups, read a few books and most of all NOT STRESS. It was very good advice. But to be honest, for a few months, every molecule of my Type A personality was stressed. I did not need a plan but by golly, I wanted one so badly that it was almost punishing not to have one. I was also pretty torn amongst friends and family who are educators. In one corner I had the “Unschool” and Montessori advocates who have successful, happy young adults who flouted conventional schooling, did very well for themselves and currently lead happy, productive lives. In the other corner, were friends and family who live and breathe the tenets of public education asking me what my plan was, how was I going to ensure Drue did not fall behind the standard course of study and how was I going to teach her everything she needed to know when I had my own scholastic struggles growing up? There was also the fact that, while Drue and I adore each other, we’ve never spent this much time together. Being the type of social beings who require our own separate Gal Caves to retreat to with little to no notice, how would we respect each others space while smooshed together in a 1200 sq foot space day in and day out?

I’ve never backed down from a challenge and I realized one thing I did have was a little time on my side. So while Drue relaxed and deschooled, I downloaded the entire California Standard Course of Study, mapped out the entire thing in a spreadsheet, removed redundancies and then downloaded a slew of standardized tests and aligned it to the standard course of study starting in grade 1 and moving through grade 8. After a few weeks of R&R, I started testing Drue every morning, leaving afternoons open for Drue to focus on her passions, read good books, and spend time outside in the sunshine. This also ensured I would have the time, energy and space to get my WORK work done as well as start investigate educational options and opportunities for Drue. I was advised that we would have a few months to figure out what classes and extracurricular activities we wanted for Drue because we pulled Drue from her public school towards the end of this school year. However, we lucked into finding a fantastic science lab class called Rock It Science and was able to enroll Drue in a once-a-week science lab that started a few weeks after she left traditional school. Rock It Science and testing kept us busy through May. Testing helped determine where Drue’s strengths and weaknesses lie, and allowed me to observe Drue in a home school setting. We quickly determined what her distractions would be, what times of the day were better for certain subjects and I was able to gauge how she handles various elements of standardized tests. As a reward for her hard work and efforts, I gave her a week off for her birthday and put together an educational plan of attack. Immediately I realized my plan might receive some resistance from my child… because the only way we were going to get all of her required attendance days in by the end of the year was to pad her summer schedule with school time. And that would not fly with my child who, to date, spends her summers at camps, sleeping, shopping, watching Discovery channel, hanging with her friends at the pool and reading.   So, I approached her at a time of weakness… meaning I came at her after three days with her Uncle Erich, relaxing in front of the television with a red velvet cupcake in her hand.  The child could not have been more comatose if I had smacked her upside the head.   So naturally she agreed that yes, school over the summer was the way to go.  Absolutely, travel in the fall more than made up for the missed weeks of hanging out poolside with her friends.  And sure, some school work while she was at camp was understandable and oh, by the way, would I turn up the fan and pass her another cupcake?  Best Mom ever!!

Flash forward a month and all that agreeableness was lost somewhere between snorkeling in the Coronado Islands and her first two hours sitting in a warm classroom learning advanced Pre-Algebra.   Flash forward another month where a backlog of writing assignments, science assessments, and reading logs turned Drue from a generally pleasant person to a snarling,  sullen, zombie-like tween who decided the entire universe is out to get her and surely no one, NO ONE! on the planet has as much work as she has and you’ve got a pretty good idea of what my late June through mid-July has been like.  Oh, and add a Justin Bieber soundtrack running perpetually in the background.  Is it any wonder I don’t have much of my mind left from time to time?

By the last week in August I’d had enough.  So I did what any self-respecting Mom of a 12 year old who doesn’t mind being grounded, scoffs at losing any and every technical device in her room and can thrive on her imagination alone for days on end.  I gave her sentences.   Not 10, not 100 not 200 but an UNKNOWN number of sentences.   And she wrote sentences about how she would either do her work and do it on time and to the best of her ability or write sentences (yes, I gave her sentences about writing sentences) from the time she woke up until the time she went to bed.  And it took 2 DAYS of endless sentence writing, punctuated by loud sobs and muffled sniffles, but by the end of day 2, after contemplating the blister on her thumb, Drue decided that she would be right and ready to assume her school work the next day.   The next morning Drue was up with her alarm, diligently plodding through her backlog of work, asking questions and turning in item after item on time, and done well.   And we haven’t had a peep, whine, or complaint yet!

Man, I wish I’d had that sentence idea a couple of weeks ago, if only to lose the perpetual drone of Beiber in the background.   Granted, those sentences might not have been the most educational thing she did all summer, but by golly it was the biggest lesson learned for her in a long time.

The slap heard round the world…

// April 1st, 2011 // 1 Comment » // Educating the Chaotic Mind

For every well thought out reason a parent chooses to homeschool their child, I’d like to believe that for another, it’s a catalyst.  At least, that’s how my adventures in homeschooling began.  The irony of it all is that a few weeks before, an old pal – you know the kind, the person you talked to 10 years ago and are kind of interested in what’s going on in their life but not enough to actually renew a friendship – posted on Facebook that she was homeschooling her three boys. I remember posting on her wall “why?…”  Well, she never let me know why and really her family’s reasoning is not my business but I was curious.  Then the family got overwhelmed in Puppy Madness 2011 and I forgot all about the fact that someone I knew dipped her proverbial toe into teaching her kids at home. To be completely honest, my mental picture of homeschooled kids used to be of  under socialized weirdos who could not adapt to the norms of regular school or were being raised by total religious freaks who wanted their curriculum steeped in the Father, the Son with a nice dash of the Holy Spirit, snakes and strychnine not included.  The only real world examples I had of homeschooled kids growing up was a child from my grandparents’ church who ate her own snot in public and an autistic kid who took ballet at age 15 with the five year olds at my ballet school.     So when Drue slapped a kid and asked to be homeschooled, I figured I needed more and better information than childhood memories to make an educated decision.  And luckily, a lovely couple, who homeschool their equally lovely and incredibly smart and social daughter, happened into our lives by way of adopting one of our puppies.   But, first, I better back up and explain a little more about Drue’s situation.

First off, yes, it’s true.  Drue slapped a fellow sixth grade girl.  Like, OMG right?  But before you judge her – and me – think back to middle school.  Think back to the torture and hell that comes with middle school if you’re not into the cool music, wearing the right clothes, sneaking blue eyeshadow and pink lipstick behind your parents’ back and abandoning any individuality you have.  And god forbid if you’re actually passionate about something that does not involve “dating” boys and holding hands with boys and kissing boys and talking about boys.  Well, Drue is quirky. She’ll wear the same t-shirt two days in a row if it’s clean.  She is not into boys yet.  They kind of fascinate her but she still finds them a little repulsive and smelly.   She’s into all kinds of music which means that while she occasionally indulges in a five hour marathon of Lady Gaga and Katy Perry, she’ll also hit the music server and pull down some early Genesis, Foo Fighters and maybe a dash of the Eagles, too.  And she hates Justin Bieber which in middle school is the magical kiss of death, it seems. She loves lip gloss, mostly for the flavor.  However, like her mother, she doesn’t see the point in makeup.  Drue’s big passion in life is sharks.  She wants to study marine life and save sharks.  This has been her life’s passion since she was three.  She has a master plan.  This master plan does not include hanging out at the local strip mall or kissing a boy before she’s ready.  In Mom terms, I think that deserves a huge “YOU GO, GIRL!”

However, because of this, a lot of well-meaning educators in Virginia and California have labeled Drue “socially immature”.  Frankly, I label it “being on the right road to ensure you’re not pregnant and a total loser by 16″ but we’ll go with their label because it’s shorter.   I’ve heard this label twice now when approaching schools about bullying issues.  In Virginia I came in at the eleventh hour because I did not hear about the bullying until we were almost ready to leave the state.  So neither I nor the school district were particularly motivated to do anything about the little terrors.  The reality is that both Drue and I were circles trying to fit into square pegs in Fairfax so I dismissed the bullying as a “Virginia thing” and thought we were moving onward and upward.  And for a time, we did.

When we got to California, it was the land of promise.  And honestly, it still is.  Drue fell into a group of geeky, cool girls just like her – who are thankfully still her friends – and for the first time in a long time, I breathed a sigh of relief thinking Drue had found her niche.  But then Drue also fell into a popular crowd.  Actually that’s not true – she courted the popular crowd and, because she’s a pretty girl, they let her into their ranks.  The problem with popularity is that you don’t just become popular and automagically stay popular.  You have to work at it.  You have to make compromises.  You have to lose your identity and become one with whatever is “IT” and “IN” today.  And God help you if you don’t manage to walk that tightrope each and every single day because you quickly go from popular to tormented if you don’t.  The easiest way to stay popular is to make everyone who isn’t “you” the object of contempt and scorn and no one does this better than a pack of tween girls.  And after two years of being bullied during elementary school by a pack of girls and her fourth grade math teacher, Drue was at the end of her rope with the whole “mean girl” thing. So after months of displaying some pretty fierce anger issues at home that everyone assured us was “normal for this age” but actually stemmed from feeling compromised as a human being at school, she acted out against one of them.  She stood up for what she believed in and let one of the girls have it.

Now when I was in middle school, a slap in the courtyard would have been dismissed and gone unreported.  Or, maybe the parents would have been called and hell would have been paid at home. Maybe.  But, with the plethora of no tolerance for violence campaigns everywhere – you know the ones that don’t actually work which is why our tax dollars go towards police presence and airport type security scanners in schools – we were called, Drue got detention, the counselors were brought in and Drue was immediately labeled “a problem”.    While we were dealing with the school, Drue was dealing with harassment and bullying at school, on her way home and online.  But this was a secondary line item after the fact since Drue was “obviously socially immature” and “kind of asked for the bullying” by slapping a socially superior girl.   Needless to say, this attitude, sentiments confined to one knuckle-dragging harpy of a counselor from the Stone Age that was not, thankfully, shared by the school or the other counselor, started the process of our looking for other educational alternatives outside public education.

Before I go on though, I want it on record that we have no issues with the last elementary school Drue attended in Virginia or the middle school Drue attended here.   The principals at both schools and one of the counselors from her middle school stepped up, addressed the entire problem including the bullying and harassment, and did everything they could within the confines of the districts’ policies.  However, it is an unfortunate fact that a social pecking order does exist and that the average person conforms to fit into a social niche they are comfortable with as opposed to embracing exactly who they are and then finding people who accept them as is.  This is not only tolerated but expected and encouraged in all walks of life.  It is also a fact that middle school is really where the need to conform hits its peak. For a kid like Drue – a quirky, fantastic kid who does not fit the norm and who, at the tender age of 11, does not have the self esteem yet to be okay with herself exactly as she is – middle school is hell on earth.
So in the midst of meeting with counselors, trying to get meetings with the principal, finding Drue a therapist to help her deal with the stress of all the harassment, trying to help her find ways to sleep, taking her to school and back again to try to make her feel safe, monitoring her phone calls and emails to track down the harassers, calling my lawyer and the police when Drue received a death threat, checking the budget to see if private school was a viable option, and trying to send the message to Drue that standing up for herself was good but hitting people was not, Drue threw a “Hail Mary”.  She asked me to consider homeschooling her for the rest of the school year.  My immediate thought was “huh?” but since we promote a culture of tolerance, respect and fairness in my home, I decided it was only fair to properly consider Drue’s request and to really educate myself about homeschooling so we could have a real conversation around it.  So while the school was trying to figure out how to support Drue there and keep her in the district, I started reading up on homeschooling at a local, state and national level.

And it all moved forward from there…