What Fiction *IS* Good For

As expected, the English teacher sister picked up on the back to back posts that appear to express opposing views of fiction.  I have to admit that up until a couple of weeks ago, I didn’t quite understand this apparent dichotomy either.  As much as I dislike reading fiction, I very much enjoy writing it.

Past the creative writing assignments in high school, I didn’t really do any creative writing for many years.  Then I started playing an MMORPG (Massive Multi-player Online Role Playing Game) and my character in the game sparked my imagination.  It helped that there were others in the game who also enjoyed thinking of their characters as part of a story, a work of collaborative fiction written through dialogue and actions in the game.

Just for fun, and only for my own benefit, I began actually writing down some of my character’s adventures.  Yes, I know that sounds completely nuts to most folks.   It’s ok, I’m a geek. I’m used to that kinda thing. 

As I shared my stories with a few trusted friends in game, I heard the same things over and over.

“That’s so cool.  I wish I could do that.  But I’m not a writer.  I can’t do that.”

Something I’d always felt, but never really articulated, became clear in my conversations with folks.  In school we’re taught that fiction has a set value.   Whether it’s based on study and critique, popularity, historical or political importance or how many hours you can spend analyzing the themes and symbolism… there’s ‘good’ and ‘bad’ fiction.  Fiction has value or a lack of value based on these external criteria that someone else (always smarter than you) has determined.

It seems to me that a lot of folks come out of school and avoid creative writing because they don’t feel they can produce something of value.   I think they’re missing the point.  The value is in creating.

I’m not a ‘writer’.  Not by a long shot.  Some of my stories are downright corny.  Most wouldn’t be of interest to anyone but a fellow gamer…. and one who liked to roleplay… and probably only one that knew me…. and was very polite.  

But I had so much fun writing those stories!  I still enjoy reading back over them from time to time, remembering when this or that happened to my character.  Those stories may not have any value to anyone else, but they do to me.  And that alone gives them value.

This realization made me much more bold about sharing my silly fiction with others.  I’m not at all shy about encouraging fellow gamers to take the time to write their stories out as well.

“It’s ok if it’s ‘bad’.  Mine is too!  It’s a lot of fun.  Try it!”

Some write a lot, some write just a little.  But I think everyone finds value in the process of creating.  And that’s really the thing I most want the kids in the adventure story class to take way as well.

So how can it be that I enjoy creating fiction but not enjoy reading it so much?  Well, I found an answer recently when a friend challenged me to read The Hobbit…. cause how can I call myself a geek if I haven’t read it?!

I got half way through the book.  It only took that long to realize why I don’t enjoy reading fiction.  It’s not that I wasn’t enjoying the story.  It’s that I feel like I’m wasting time when I’m reading.  I’d just rather be creating than spending gobs of time reading someone else’s creation.

Yes, yes.  I realize that not reading fiction very likely dooms me to being a pretty crappy writer forever more.

But you know what?  Macaroni art is still art… and it’s fun to make!

Literature – What’s It Good For?

Literature has never been my thing.  Ever.

I clearly remember the fight I had with my 5th grade teacher over my lack of desire to take a book out on library day.  I explained I had no interest in fiction.  She was bent on proving me wrong.  If only I found the ‘right’ book(s), I would adore fiction.  Doesn’t everyone?

Well, no.

I’m sure I would have been more inclined to check out a book or two if we had been encouraged, or even allowed, to consider the non-fiction section.  But it seems that part was reserved for serious research… you know, that thing you’d do only when your teacher assigned you one of those serious reports.   No, both the librarian and teachers knew that kids like fiction and so they herded us into those rows with enthusiasm.

That particular misconception carried on straight through high school.   My English teacher had a cabinet full of books.  You picked one of his books and read a certain number pages each week.  You had to pick from his cabinet because those were the books he’d read… and how else could he quiz you on the book so he’d know if you’d actually read it?!

“Don’t you have any non-fiction books?”

He’d look at me with that little smirk.  I’ve no doubt he thought I was simply trying to get out of reading all together.  He suggested book after book from his collection.   If only I could find the ‘right’ book….

So I’ve been quite happy that my children will not suffer my fate.  The are ‘normal’.   They enjoy fiction, they read because they want to.   They choose their own books, they’ve read and enjoyed several classics among their many choices.  Yay!  I don’t have to torture my kids with literature!

But wait.  Here comes the principal (aka my dear husband) and his school-indoctrined ideas.

I’ve been assigning famous works of literature from the time periods we’re looking at in US History.  I usually ask the girls to read several chapters.  If they hate the book, they don’t have to finish.  Again, I don’t see the point of torturing them with literature.  Some they like, some they do not.  Let’s face it, there’s enough literature out there that you can find options in any time period that you find enjoyable (ok, except for someone like me, but then we’ve already been over that).

For our current time period, I put Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle on the list.  My husband handles our virtual library, loaning ebooks from the library and putting them on the girls’ electronic readers.  Upon seeing this book listed, he commented that he hadn’t read that till he was older (by only a year or two at most) and, the kicker for me, that they could not read that book without an adult reviewing it with them, pointing out all the  appropriate themes and symbolism and political ramifications.  It’s a book that must be properly analyzed in order to be read at all.

Now understand, my distaste for this whole analysis of literature goes back a long, long way. And I feel that it’s not solely based on my underlying dislike of fiction pieces in general.  I just think that it’s the right of the reader to decide what, if any, messages, themes, symbolism or politics they wish to draw out of the text the author has presented.   What use is a piece of literature that *requires* a third-party to analyze and explain what they think is the author’s point or purpose?

I get that there are people who love literature.  There’s even a subset who love to study, analyze and discuss these works in-depth.  Heck, my own kids may very well turn out to be among them.   More power to them.

But the idea that a piece of literature is only as good as the guide that explains it to you?  I don’t think so.  Literature is just another art form which can and should be experienced for its own sake, with no obligation on the part of the one who experiences it to make more of it than they wish to.

Go ahead, tell me I’m wrong.  I’m sure my literature loving family and friends will.

Planning for the School Year: US History

This will be the biggie for us this year.  We’ll be inching our way through US history unit-study style.  Covering the birth of our nation through 1960 by looking historical events, period literature, scientific inventions and breakthroughs, the growth of our nation and the role geography played in that, music, art, popular culture, economic and social policies, Presidents, politics, wars and our place in world history.

I’ve been pouring over timelines for weeks now.  Timelines about everything from historical events and literature to scientific inventions and popular culture.   Trying to choose what to cover and what to skip has been the absolute hardest part.  It was, for me, another boom-de-ya-da moment.

What’s a boom-de-ya-da moment, you ask?  Well, you may recall Discovery Channel’s Boom-De-Ya-Da commercials from a while back.  I so totally love those    It captured perfectly something I’d felt since I first began homeschooling.  The world is an awesome place and there is sooooo much to learn about it.  So much to learn that no one can learn it all.  (Phew!  What a relief!)  We all have our own passions, things we love to learn about.  And that’s the way it should be. 

Anytime I get overwhelmed with all the things I *could* be teaching I try to remember…. Boom-da-ya-da, Carol.  Boom-da-ya-da.  There’s always going to be way more to know than I can possibly teach.  I only need to expose them to enough that they can find those things they’re passionate about.   They can take it from there.

Planning for the School Year: 8th Grade Math

I’ve come to a decision on what the girls will be doing for their math this year.  As we live in NY state, we have Regents.  These state-wide tests usually begin in 9th grade and cover most subjects and grade levels throughout high school. 

Back when my husband and I were in school the first math course with a regents was called Course I.   It was followed by Course II and Course III.  Go figure (no math pun intended ).

Advanced math students were sometimes offered Course I in 8th grade.  My husband went this route and was therefore able to round out his high school math years with pre-calc and a college credit calculus course.

I didn’t move to NY till 9th grade so I missed that opportunity.  I eventually caught up, but that’s a story for another day.

When I received my paperwork from the school district this year, it included a letter stating that they would allow my kids to take tests with the schools – including the Regents Exams.

So it suddenly dawned on me that I could just teach them Course I (which now goes by the title ‘Integrated Algebra’) and let them take the regents at the end of the year. We can give them a past exam here at home or let them join the school kids in June.  Either way, they’ll get the Regents experience and it solves my problem of what to teach for Math.

Luckily, not only do they still have the Barron’s Regents Exams and Answer books I remember from back in my day, but now they also have review books that summarize all the topics that will be on the exam, give examples and practice exercises!  And they come in this handy ‘power pack’ which includes both for less than $12 for the set.

Having that choice out of the way, I can now put my time and efforts into sifting through timelines for our main focus this year… can you guess what it is?

 

8th Grade – A Year of Passions

In drawing up the plan for the girls I thought back on my own school career and just what I was learning when I was in 8th grade. 

My favorite subject was, of course, math.  8th grade was awesome because I got to do algebra… officially.   I remember smiling to myself as I first looked over that algebra book.  See, algebra and I were old friends already.  I’d picked up my mother’s college algebra book years ago and learned much of what we were about to cover.  I already knew how much fun it was and the teacher, Mr. Berry, made it even more so.  I not only had a lot of fun in math that year but I learned I was pretty darn good at it too. 

Science was a close second favorite.  The crazy old man who taught life science was actually quite funny once you got past the serious teacher persona he usually put on in class.  I had a chance to get to know him a bit better as my science notebook, worth a major portion of our grade, came up missing part way through the year.  Since I sat front and center and was always clearly interested in his lectures, he knew I’d kept good notes.  But since I didn’t have a notebook to grade, he opted to allow me to do a report for that part of my grade instead.

It was then I learned we had a love of oceanography in common.  I did a report on whales.  Favorite. report. ever.  He apparently enjoyed it too because I earned a grade of 100%.  I’ll always regret not being able to go on his Oceanography Club outings though.    My parents were anti-field trip so I missed the trips to the NJ shore to investigate tidal pools and other such fun.  But it was a great year in science nevertheless.

Still, the thing I remember most about 8th grade in general is that it was a year of discovering passions.  Algebra, oceanography, drama class, computer programming (on our Commodore 64 at home and on the Apple computers at school) and seeing Star Wars for the first time! I so taken by it that I wrote out the whole script – by hand – from a homemade audio tape (well, duh, cause my mother wouldn’t let me sit in front of the video tape for the many hours it took to write the whole thing out )

So many of the things I learned I loved that year have stuck with me right into adulthood. 

That’s really what I most for my girls this year too.  I want them to discover their passions and pursue them with everything they’ve got.  That’s what 8th grade should be about.

Planning for the School Year: Math

I’m deep into planning out next year’s school plan.   Gee’s decided she wants to continue with us rather than go back to public school so we’ll still have two students in 8th and one in 2nd grade come August 1st. 

Math has always been the easiest subject to plan for.  We’ve used Math-U-See for years now.  I’ve always loved the clean, no frills workbooks.  They give plenty of practice sheets for each skill and plenty more that include review problems as well.  It’s always been easy enough to take a moment to teach the topic (or have the girls look it up on their own),  assign the practice work and be done.  Zee will be doing just that with all the materials we already own.

But now we’re into algebra with the girls.  And the books have gotten darn expensive.  We did a portion of the Pre-Algebra last year and I found the girls were having a hard time.  I ordered and will use Algebra Unplugged as well.  It’s a great take on the subject for kids who are more inclined to wordy, less scientific explanations.  Not my thing, but I think the girls might love it.   Problem is,  it’s missing vital practice problems to help them use what they learn. 

I also want to do some geometry with them this year as well.  We’ve been looking at logic puzzles and I can’t wait to share the neat geometry proofs with them too!   In order to use the Math-U-See I’d have to order both the algebra and geometry books at a cost of $170.  That’s too much to spend when I don’t really even want the DVDs or the teacher’s manual.  I just want practice problems and an answer key.

So what was the easiest subject to plan for has now become the one holding up the whole plan.  I’ll have to look around to see how I might be able to get them practice work… with answers to save my own time and sanity.  Hopefully, there’s a cheaper way to get just that.

Motivation

No one does anything without a motive. 

Short term, my girls are very motivated to make my husband and I proud of their efforts.  Long term, they talk about wanting to do well with school things so they can be well-educated adults.  They recognize this will make them better employees, better parents, better people.  All good.

Zee’s really too young yet to think much on a distant future and what learning his math facts has to do with it.  His motivation is all short-term and much more specific. 

Week to week, our kids work for the pleasure of playing games deemed ‘weekend games’.   All games that come into this house are labeled either school-day or weekend.  School day games usually have some redeeming educational quality about them.  Weekend games are everything else.

The kids are all free to play weekend games as soon as their school work for the entire week is complete.  Most of the time that’s sometime on Friday.  If all the work is completed, the girls can play all day Saturday and after noon on Sunday. 

The system works a bit differently for Zee.  Instead, he earns weekend game time for the weekend by completing his work on time each day.  Chores must be done by 2pm, teeth have to be brushed in the morning, daily school work must be done by dinner, etc.  At the end of the week he distributes the game time he earns over Saturday and Sunday.  Done right, he can play nearly as much as his sisters who get the free reign.  Usually though he misses a few things here and there and has to choose which hours he’ll have to find something else to do.

For now I think our system works pretty well.  Since the kids are working for their own motives I don’t have to fight with them over doing their work.  Most of the time everyone puts a good effort in and we all earn the right to kick back and enjoy the weekend relaxing together

Autonomy

Every now and again you can feel the homeschool boat list and you come face to face with the perilless sea on which we journey.  Students and teacher alike were unhappy.  Pouty faces, complaints, exasperated sighs and endless repeating of instructions were rampant.

Being analytically minded, the first thing I do when things go awry is to stop and analyze.  One needs data to do this and my poor family is all too familiar with the homemade questionnaires I construct to obtain that data.

So the girls answered questions about what they liked, what they didn’t like, how they wanted to see things changed, their motivators, their goals, their suggestions and attitudes.  And then we sat down to go over them together.  Though I’ve not made any actually changes yet, it’s amazing how much tension is eased just by sitting down and all recognizing there is a problem.

Now that I’ve heard their side of the story, it’s time for me to figure out how to change things so we can go back to sailing peacefully on our homeschool journey.  Not surprisingly, I’ve got my own challenges to rise to in addition to supporting the girls in theirs.

One of the biggest for me comes from our very different personalities.  Specifically, I’m a hardcore introvert and my children are all extroverts like my husband.  One of the biggest misconceptions about introverts is that they don’t enjoy being around other people.  We actually do enjoy socializing, it’s just that 1- We prefer it in smaller doses and groups and 2- Unlike extroverts, it wears us out and we have a need for quiet time to recover. 

I have a large family of extroverts.  My husband works mostly from home and 3 of the 4 kids homschool…in other words, they’re always around. It’s no surprise then that I often have a problem.  Don’t get me wrong, I love them all and I wouldn’t have my life any other way.  Any lifestyle choice has it’s good and bad and this is simply the one I’ve chosen.

But it’s still a challenge for me. The number one item on the girls’ wish list is ‘do more school work together’.  They would love nothing more than to do every single assignment at my side as a collaborative effort.  Zee still will sit uncomfortably on the floor next to me rather than work at the table 5 feet away.  I swear sometimes they’d all be in my lap 24/7 if I let them.

Besides my own personal need for some space, there’s the matter of autonomy to consider.  This is something we’d very much like our children to value and become. Working together is fine on some things, but overall I want them to own their work – from start to finish.  For the girls this is 7th grade, time for them to do more on their own, not less.

Like everything, I know balance is the key here.  So I’m trying to figure out how to best fit in more activities together without sacrificing autonomy or my own sanity.  Suggestions?

Link Overload

I’ve just finished updating the kids private homepage… for the 5th time this week!

I created the webpage about a year ago to give the kids access to websites we approve of while minimizing the danger of them ending up somewhere they shouldn’t be.  The links are all graphics (most of them the actual logos from the sites) to make it easy for my two non-readers to find what their looking for and to increase interest in what otherwise might be dismissed as just a boring educational site.

Over the past year I’ve added a few sites here and there as I came across them but overall it’s remained pretty much the same.  More recently though, I’ve been finding awesome links everywhere!  Everytime I add a few, I turn around and find a few more.  There were so many new ones I had to start deleting some of the older, less used links to make room.

Even the kids are laughing at me, “Mom! There’s so many new links we can’t even keep up!”   There are now a total of 70+ links on the kids homepage – all ‘educational’ in one way or another.  Once again I’m reminded just how much information is out there (available free of charge) and how many ways there are to learn it all.  Who needs text books?!

Do Homeschoolers Know More?

Just read this article.

“With the popularity of home schooling on the rise, the academic payoff may not be as large as parents think. “

 If you read on you find out that the basis for this statement is test scores.  In Arkansas the homeschoolers have to take the same test that the public school students do.  It’s a simple matter of just seeing who’s score is higher, right? 

The problem is that there are hidden assumptions here.  The first is that this test is able to gauge knowledge.  You don’t have to be an expert to know that these standardized, multiple choice tests are used, not because they’re wonderfully accurate at identifying knowledge, but because logistically, there’s no other way to test so many children across so many subjects.  There are children who have a lot of knowledge but are poor test takers.  There are children who don’t have the knowledge but have the testing skills to be able to guess the right answer.  Which kid is smarter?  Does this test really test knowledge or test taking ability?

The second assumption here is that the test covers what a student has learned.  For public school students, that’s fine.  They’re all using the same curriculum, the same list of skills and knowledge.  Not so for homeschoolers who often, if not always, are learning a things beyond what the public school curriculum offers.  Even the things both public schools and homeschools teach are sometimes taught on different time tables.  

This was the case for us when the girls took a standardized test last year.  Our curriculum had us learning multiple digit multiplication before moving on to division facts.  That’s contrary to most school curriculum.  So on the standardized test there were questions the girls didn’t know the answers to and the test didn’t give them the opportunity to show the more advanced skills they had.  I imagine this happens a lot to homeschoolers.

This would help explain why, as the article states, the top scores changed as the grades progressed.  Public students start out on top, because they’re spending all their time working on exactly what the test will teach.  Homeschoolers end on top because by the time they reach 8th grade they’ve covered everything the pubic school kids have, even if they’ve taken a different path to get there.

Who knows more? Who knows?  My guess is homeschoolers if only because in my limited experience with my girls, they’ve learned (and retained) far more in the past year and a half of homeschooling than in the previous 2 and a half years of public school.  That’s enough proof for me.