01.30.07
Posted in Kids, Life in general, Parenting at 11:23 am by Christina
Every once in a while I have a day like today, where I resent the demands that the kids make on me. I think these days always have two things in common: not enough sleep, and no Jeff around to spell me (because even a half hour of total separation is enough to let the resentment bleed off). Jamie was up yesterday morning at 5am and didn’t go back to sleep until 8:30, at which time of course I had to be getting ready for the day’s activities. Last night, Jeff picked up the girls at the airport after their stay in Spokane (for the U.S. figure skating championships), and I dropped Jamie off with Jeff’s parents for a couple of hours while I had a music rehearsal. Jamie wanted his bottle in the car on the way home (it’s only a 20 minute trip) and was mostly asleep when we got home.
Unfortunately, he didn’t transfer successfully, and then I spent another hour rocking and singing him back to sleep. AGAIN unsuccessfully, since after I put him down asleep and I went FINALLY to say hello to my returned girls (who were in the guest room with Jeff trying to fall asleep) we discovered him sitting up in bed three minutes later when the girls and I came in to the bedroom to go to sleep. (Emma sleeps with us, and Katie sometimes does.) Jeff took Jamie, and the girls were in bed, but when I was in the bathroom changing into my pajamas I decided to bang the hell out of a door to let out some of my frustrations, and it turned out that the particular door I chose was rather loose and so made a heckuva racket and scared the girls. 
So I snuggled them, and it took Jeff all of ten minutes to get Jamie to sleep. Which in itself irritates me like fleas on a schnauzer; I worked for more than an hour, singing on a tired voice (had two ensemble rehearsals during the day), getting pinched and kicked and scratched by Mr. Wiggles, and Jeff gets the glory of the successful lay-down… The girls were exhausted from their slumber-party-ish last night in Spokane and all the excitement and bad food of a week spent in an arena. Jamie didn’t have a very good night’s sleep, which was infinitely predictable given the difficulty of the bedtime (plus he’s been seeming a bit hoarse the last couple of days, so likely immune-challenged right now), but which meant I had a fragmented night’s sleep on top of the sunrise wakeup.
Now, today, Jeff left before seven for an all-day client kickoff meeting, “all-day” meaning “including dinner”. (If he values his epidermal layer, it won’t mean “after bedtime”.) The day itself is unstructured, but I need to have the kids back to Jeff’s parents at 6pm, where they’ll have dinner and spend the evening while I have more ensemble rehearsals from 7-9. (Auditions are this weekend and next.) Which means I need to have all their bedtime stuff along so they’ll be ready for bed when I pick them up…
Pbbbbbttttt…..
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01.20.07
Posted in Commentary, Homeschooling at 4:19 pm by Christina
Christine over at The Thinking Mother has written a post about whether homeschoolers should monitor other homeschoolers, perhaps as an alternative to the government doing the same. She’s asking for feedback about it and I decided my thoughts were too long for a comment; I’ll comment with a link to my own post instead.
In general, the lack of community monitoring, or the abdication of it, is a factor that has led to increased government monitoring on various levels. There didn’t used to be a Department of Child Protective Services (or whatever it’s called in your area), or a Department of Education or a Department of Welfare either. These and other government offices were created and took over what used to be the community’s role in “policing” on this front. In the time when communities provided the safety net, we need to remember that “the community” was almost certainly a geographically-limited, homogenous group that held common values. It also had a de facto structure of leadership, based on position in the values hierarchy (most commonly, the religious community) and by meritorious position as well (i.e., those who were respected as leaders).
The U.S. population has undergone such a dramatic shift in the 20th century from this homogenous local community to a heterogeneous diaspora that the foundations of the community—primarily the shared values—cannot be relied upon to assist us in supporting others in our area. The community values that inform my choices—white, middle class, Judeochristian—will not necessarily serve me well in working with the families who surround me in neighboring houses; we are all upper middle class, but my neighbors are Muslim, Latino, Asian and have extraordinarily different culture bases from my own.
The same holds true for non-geographical communities like the homeschooling one. I cannot be assured of sharing fundamental homeschooling values with those around me. The one thing we have in common is that we do not send our children off to school where their education would be directed by a teacher. The very core of what The Thinking Mother is questioning—that we assist those whose children are being neglected in their learning—requires some judgment about whether those children are in fact being neglected. This requires agreement upon some standard—like the offered World Book Typical Course of Study. I don’t think it’s possible to find that standard, given the many philosophical differences within the homeschooling community.
I know without question that my children are seriously behind World Book, and seriously ahead of World Book. I embraced homeschooling precisely because it allowed for that asynchronicity. I actively reject the generalist approach of modern education because it denies the right of children to have and to follow their interests, which in turn leads to an adult population that is impaired in the ability to have and to follow interests. The end result is adults working in fields that are not tied at all to themselves, fields that do not sustain them, fields that they may have technical competence for but not the personal competence that leads to real success, as well as to peace and contentment.
Have some adults found their way into their interests despite a generalist education? Of course. I would rather not depend on transient luck where my kids’ lives are concerned, though. And so I choose an educational path that does not resemble or correlate with traditional scope-and-sequences, that cannot be evaluated with a standardized test, that even to other knowledgeable homeschoolers may very well appear to be educational neglect. I believe I have the force not only of my own intuition on this matter, but also that of evidence historical, anecdotal and empirical.
Historically speaking, if one looks at great personalities throughout the ages, it is apparent that they hold two factors in common. First, from an early age they found and pursued the path driven by their interests. Second, they allowed themselves, and were permitted by others, to limit their pursuits to their interest areas. No one looks to Mozart or Churchill with demands about their level of scientific knowledge; Bill Gates is not expected to be bilingual or musical (though he very well may be). Throughout history there are truly exceptional people, like Benjamin Franklin or Leonardo da Vinci, who excel across disciplines. But among more run-of-the-mill stand-outs, they found their path early and pursued it with a passion that generally speaking limited them in other areas.
Educational research provides both anecdotal and empirical support for the non-standardized path as well. Histories recorded about students at various Sudbury “free schools” offer the evidence that students are able to pick up quickly information that they need, at the time they need it. Students who declined to pursue math skills throughout their early and middle school years cover years of information—algebra, geometry, trigonometry, even calculus—in a compressed time frame when they want the proficiency to succeed at a standardized test necessary for their path. Organized research by the Moore Foundation, Jean Piaget and others demonstrated that much of early education is wasted on children, whose intellectual development has not progressed to a point where structured teaching has much effect. (Do and can children learn if taught at early ages? Of course they can—but I believe the overall impact is detrimental.)
The Thinking Mother argues that it behooves homeschoolers to watch their own in order to prevent more intrusive and widespread supervision by the government. This slippery slope makes us fearful, but I don’t believe it justifies more active intra-homeschooler monitoring. Should someone take me aside at park day and say, “Katie can’t recite the times tables in the fifth grade; that’s really a third grade skill, I think you should work on that gap”? Should I go to someone and say, “Suzie-Q knows the times tables right on schedule, but I’ve noticed that you’re both unhappy a lot of the time at park day and perhaps the rigorous academics is fomenting conflict”?
What we as homeschoolers can do is to guard our support networks as safe places to support each other in a non-critical, non-judgmental, non-standardized way. Families who are experiencing difficulties are always happy to find someone willing to listen to them, to answer their questions, to share knowledge of other options. Families where parents and children are happy—no matter the academic ranking of the kids—don’t need others to try and rebalance their lives. My personal experience of more than seven years supporting homeschoolers in my community, as a local contact and as a support group leader, supports this. Families that are happy are following a path that works for them. Guarding our support networks is especially vital in this time of instability within the homeschooling community; the trends toward diversity of homeschooling options (public school programs, public charter programs, private school programs in addition to the original independent approach) threatens to factionalize homeschoolers into public and private camps, with a no-man’s-land between that prevents communication and understanding.
I encourage homeschoolers to mentor each other—not to monitor.
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01.14.07
Posted in Commentary, Homeschooling, Kids at 9:38 pm by Christina
The New York Times had an article out this week about a new theory of design for the city’s playgrounds: New York Tries to Think Outside the Sandbox. There are two primary aspects to the new approach, both of which are disturbing: a focus on intellectual creativity as opposed to physical play; and supervision in the form of “play workers”.
Intellectual creativity is of course a wonderful thing and we want to foster it in children, no question. However, you can’t do that with occasional exposure to trendy playgrounds; it needs to be attended continuously from birth. The most important change New York City can make to promote intellectual creativity in its kids would be to move away from all the creativity-squashing that is standard in the vast majority of American educational settings, from daycares through preschools and on up the ladder. The U.S. education system is designed to move in lockstep, and what could be further from creativity than being hamstrung to a particular curriculum, lesson, concept, etc.? Even in the creative arts – performing, visual, crafts, etc. – children are generally given an assigment to follow or a technique to master. There’s no time to spend noodling with an instrument or a medium, or a math problem or a history book or a science experiment, to create something entirely out of their own brain.
Further, time and space for physical activity is in serious decline in the U.S., with recess being reduced and eliminated around the country and schools and districts forced to shift to private funding for their P.E. programs. (My brother was an independent contractor for the PTA in Thousand Oaks for the last five or six years running the P.E. department at a public elementary school there.) Is intellectual creativity more important than physical activity? I think they’re at least equal.
As for “play workers”, kids need supervision at playgrounds; sometimes they even need active assistance and mentoring to navigate a situation, be it interpersonal, physical, problem-solving, etc. But active supervision is the death knell of creativity – it almost always involves interference: “do it this way”, “try this”, etc. Creativity flourishes within independence.
I see two other problems with the “play worker” approach, although they pale in comparison and to a certain extent are made irrelevant by my point above. First, it is just another removal of parents from their role as mentors and participants in the lives of their kids. A “play worker” doesn’t know the child, doesn’t know their personality, doesn’t know what might mentor their creativity and what will simply interfere with the child’s process. And second, who believes that these “play workers” are going to be well-skilled and -experienced? I don’t; they’ll certainly be low-income employees with very little training.
Judith Warner blogged about this article and she makes a very good point. The kids who have been well-grounded can go into any regular playground and turn it into a creative space for themselves. Kids who have been drained of both creative and physical drives will go to a playground and ask to go home.
I’m not sure I ever read an article about children these days that doesn’t make me think, “Thank goodness for homeschooling!”
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01.07.07
Posted in Singing at 8:42 pm by Christina
It’s that time of year for me – happens three times annually – time to prepare for auditions for my community chorus! A lot of rehearsals get crunched into a 4-6 week period; this time it’s only four, as the director is going out of the country for 2.5 weeks in February and the auditions need to be accomplished before that time. This spring’s concert is “Pops”. The chorus is doing pieces almost exclusively from stage and screen: West Side Story medley; Steam Heat (from Pajama Game); an MGM medley with songs from Singin’ in the Rain and other films; Lady’s Maid from the musical Titanic; Climb Every Mountain (from Sound of Music); Bridal Chorus from Lohengrin (Wagner, the famous wedding march); Anvil Chorus from Verdi’s Il Travatore, another widely recognizable classical piece; and one non-entertainment piece, Worthy to be Praised (gospel).
I try to manage an ensemble piece myself each time; I greatly enjoy doing it, it hones my musicianship, and the sociable angle is nice too. This time I chose Handful of Keys from the musical about Fats Waller and ragtime, Ain’t Misbehavin’. I just finished preparing the piece using PrintMusic 2007 to creat mp3 files of each part and of the accompaniment. PrintMusic has added an awesome scan recognition feature that made my job much easier, though I suppose I could just become a better piano player… Anyway, this is an SATB piece with a nice piano part (our director doesn’t like to be bored while he’s playing…), and I think I’ve got a solid group of folks to bring it together.
I was invited to participate in two other pieces as well, that others are managing. One is Put on a Happy Face from Bye Bye Birdie, an SAB arrangement; the other is a big band arrangment of Chattanooga Choo Choo. Our director said that although he chose a choral program from primarily stage and screen, we should feel free to bring in pieces from other genres that are widely known. I’d already built my ragtime group at that point and I did consider whether the piece might be too far outside “pops”, but I decided that while the title is not going to be widely recognized, Fats Waller and ragtime certainly are and it could fill a niche that way. The director is generally open to considering pieces of all types as long as they are well-performed!
It looks like I’ll also be doing a duet with Bill – we were selected for last month’s concert with our duet about Ebeneezer Scrooge from the eponymous musical – probably High Hopes if the arrangement is good (it’s not here yet). And I’m kicking around a solo audition this time; I ordered Que Sera Sera (performed by Doris Day in the Hitchcock film The Man Who Knew Too Much) and Don’t Rain on My Parade (Barbra Streisand in Funny Girl).
The next four weeks are going to be busy!!
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01.04.07
Posted in Kids, Life in general, Travel at 12:19 am by Christina
2007 is upon us – it doesn’t seem like it should be already though… Our 2006 was incredibly packed with many medical appointments for Jamie’s nursing dysfunction, more pumping than I can count, selling a house, moving… We are hoping to achieve a higher level of peace and tranquility in 2007!
We are back from the holidays in Washington State. This year we hit the road, having bought a new minivan with some of the proceeds from our house sale. We bought a large cargo box for the roof and we used pretty much every square inch of both it and the car. This was complicated by needing to bring along Jeff’s computers (two towers, a monitor and peripherals) because his business laptop was delayed more than a week, past our departure date, and those took up most of a seat. We added the laptop shipment on the way back, which we had rerouted to Spokane. Travelling in the winter means lots of bulk in terms of parkas, snowpants, etc., plus being on the road meant we added in a couple of sleeping bags, blankets and pillows for the kids, two cases of water, two bags of groceries, and a cooler bag for a week’s supply of milk for Jamie. Cloth diapers for our eight days in Spokane, all the gifts, and a generous stock of car entertainment for all three kids…
The travel was fun, though. We left very late in the day and broke our travel in Redding/Red Bluff, CA and Vancouver, WA in both directions. Our first destination was Issaquah (Seattle) where we met up with Jeff’s parents at his sister’s home. Our departure north was delayed by an health insurance snafu; Jeff’s old company went bankrupt just when we left, and although we had been seeing that train coming down the tracks for quite a while, it never connected for either of us that when it finally happened we would lose our health insurance! So we had to move quickly over Friday and Monday to get both a short term and long term policy in place. As a result we didn’t arrive in Seattle until Thursday afternoon, and so we only got a short 48 hours with Jeff’s family.
We saw Bodies: The Exhibition in Seattle, and it was spectacular. I wanted to see a larynx in particular, being a dedicated singer. Katie became an expert at kidney spotting, and we all agreed that one of the most spectacular exhibits was a mirror-image pose of a man: one side was the entire skeleton, reassembled with glue or whatnot, and the other side was all the other parts of the body, reassembled with steel bars, etc. They had a fetal development room which was impressive; I think of the larger presentations, I liked the circulation and nervous system rooms best. More information here: Bodies The Exhibition.
My sister-in-law’s family had experienced almost three days without power the weekend before we got there due to the windstorm that affected much of the area. Regardless, we all had a fun time visiting and celebrating a pre-holiday with Jeff’s side of the family. The girls got some fun things they’d been wanting; my MIL quilted Emma a nine-block “doll bed” quilt, complete with little rag dolls for each bed, and Katie got a dictionary and writing materials so that she could play the Dictionary game, a fun game we enjoy playing with them.
We had my brother shuttled in from Sea-Tac on the 23rd (he got the best fare that way) and we immediately made for Spokane, as the weather was reported to be gathering for trouble on the roads. We installed our chains to go over Snoqualamie Pass, as we have very little snow driving experience and that’s what was recommended, but I didn’t find the roads to warrant them. It was nice to have practiced with my FIL in the driveway in Issaquah though! We made it to Spokane without incident in time for a nice macaroni and cheese dinner. For what was probably the first time, we were the last contingent to arrive, although I anticipate that will continue as we continue to make the drive rather than fly…
Also for the first time, I had to do some shopping on the 24th as by total coincidence my SIL’s family had given Emma what was our primary gift, a lap loom. Boy is that hectic! I’m glad I almost never have to do it… My cousins are always shopping that day; being at home means we get our wrapping done during the day, having first dibs on the fabric gift bags we made, and being able to help more in the kitchen and relaxing in the evening…
Jeff and I both got our top items – Star Trek Deep Space Nine DVDs for him (he got the entire set!) and I got a three-month cello rental so I can see if I’d like to pursue that. (I already play the violin, but with the girls doing violin as well I’m interested in adding cello to the mix.) I also got some homeschooling books that I felt warranted ownership rather than library access, and we all got new fiction to read, too.
Somehow, I’m always happier when Christmas Day and all the gifting is over, a bit because there are so many of us gathered there that it is a very long process even with restrained giving, but mostly because it means that we all shift from that part of the holiday into the being together, sharing good times part of the holiday. We always play games, with Scrooge (the group solitaire card game) being a mainstay and Scrabble as well for quieter times. This year we got Snorta which was an excellent multi-age game, and my brother was incredibly creative with his gifts – he did a bunch of research and tracked down excellent games from ages past, like PIT, Blockhead, Go to the Head of the Class, etc. and bought them on eBay as his gifts to the family. That was fun! We also played Encore! which is one of my favorite games, a two-team singing competition where you go back and forth singing songs around a common word or theme until one team can’t find another one.
Most of the family departed on the 29th, leaving us with my parents for a couple of days. We have always stayed through New Year’s before, doing the First Night celebrations downtown as well as traditions of our own – NYE dinner at Luigi’s, crab legs on NY Day, etc. We shifted what we could to the 30th, including playing Mystery of the Abbey which is a more complex Clue style game that all of us enjoy (from Emma at 7 on up). We needed to leave on the 31st to get home for rehearsals…
The drive home was uneventful. As soon as we got back and unloaded the car, I took it for a nice bath inside and out – boy was it filthy! But it was very comfortable and we never once felt anything was missing. We passed lots of cars along the way with the installed DVD systems playing away; the dealer certainly wanted us to buy that model, not that he was pushy after we declined. But we spent almost 40 hours in the car and didn’t once feel the need. The girls had plenty of books, music, they had their little dollhouse people, felt cutouts, drawing stuff… I guess if the kids are used to being plugged in to videos and games at home, that’s what they need on the road. Our kids are used to all that other stuff! Even Jamie, who is obviously too young for the girls’ entertainment, was able to go for a two-hour stretch with his favorite toys, like the lockbox, jack in the box, board books, etc. He would snack and have his bottle (this is really the biggest advantage of the bottle; breastfeeding requires stopping, and just as important, getting the baby out of the carseat which they then don’t want to get back into!). We drove nonstop through his naps, and found places to get out and let him run around (like a mall on the way up, a vacant parking lot on the way back). I’m looking forward to more travelling like this, not only our other trip to Spokane in July, but also to Colorado in February, and we’re trying to pick a location for some fun camping as well.
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