Creative Learning and Educational Supports

Unschooling Voices #8 Up

Posted on April 1, 2007 | Leave a comment

No, it’s not April Fools . . . LOL! Neither is it April Fools that I’m actually posting. But wanted to let everyone know that Unschooling Voices is up again, and I have my unschooling to college posts there.

Everything goes well here, including it going very well for my oldest son out West as a full-time missionary. In fact, I told my hubby this morning that it is still somewhat unnerving for me that things are going so well for him after two and a half months. Maybe it’s that I miss being his counselor and knowing on a daily basis where his emotional cup is at.
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On the other hand, I’m so excited for him and the life he is carving out for himself on his own two feet in confidence. What more can a mother ask?

What is homeschooling: A Comparitive Between Past and Present

Posted on March 11, 2007 | 3 comments

I’ve been musing about this question since coming on-line to the homeschooling world three years ago after being content with the “in real life” experiences I had always enjoyed. The on-line world of home/unschooling was SO different than my real life experiences. I also saw a considerable shift in the past ten years in real life as well. I’m on a couple e-mail lists that are involved with a similar discussion: politics and homeschooling . . . where are we going?

I’ve not been heavily involved in the politics of homeschooling, but always very interested and supportive in my place to continue the freedoms we all enjoy. I have often been closely associated with those home/unschooler’s whose passion and purpose it was to be a “thumb on the pulse of homeschooling politics”. My particular passion and purpose has leaned toward supporting home/unschoolers in understanding the learning process, learning styles, timeframes, and the such. But, it seems that I’m at a place that I could take another step toward understanding and supporting those who are concerned about protecting our freedoms in homeschooling, both now and for the future.

So, I got to thinking about what has changed in homeschooling since I began, and how does that fit into the legislative and political history of homeschooling, and can it give insights as to where we are now, and where we are meant to go in furthering the cause of freedom for homeschooling. But, first, what is homeschooling to me? I chose homeschooling as an option to not be connected to the auspices of public institution . . . at all. I chose homeschooling as an option that granted me the autonomy to discover what “education” was for me and my family and each individual child. I chose homeschooling as the path that granted me freedom to make our own choices on a path less traveled. I chose homeschooling because of the myriad of resources that I would be able to utilize that was available in the greater world. I chose homeschooling to open up possibilities for more . . . more than the stilted environment, programs, dynamics, and watered-down, systematic spoon-feeding that existed in government institutions. I had very proactive reasons for choosing homeschooling for our lifestyle of learning.

The first five years of home/unschooling obviously became my measuring stick of what I thought homeschooling was not just to me, but for many others. I felt a great cameraderie of working together and sharing resources and gifts with one another as we respected each of our differences that simply added fodder for great homeschooling discussions. The past ten years, I’ve felt as if I have been floating in a time warp, continually looking for what I once had, but thinking it was simply my location, or my family logistics, which it might be, but now wondering if it is more than that. Several experiences have been accumulating that have served as a catalyst for my inner activist to emerge with some definitive thoughts and ideas. I am now beginning to see the connection to what I had, and what I am seeing. I share two differences that actually point to one main element: how we view autonomy and resources. It’s the difference between getting to choose who takes care of you versus wanting to take care of yourself. It’s the difference between believing in the system but wanting more choices versus not believing in the system and wanting to carve out another way.

Choosing Who Takes Care of You vs. Wanting to Take Care of Yourself
The first difference that really had impressed me when I first became part of it was the consensual process involved in the inclusive support groups to which I became a part. There really was no leader! How amazing! Oh, there was someone called a “coordinator”, but that wasn’t about making decisions for the group, but simply, well, coordinating everyone and what they wanted and how they would contribute. There was also another important job: the newsletter person. They simply took in everyone’s offerings and needs and assembled them into a monthly newsletter from which we could all draw as resources for our own individual home/unschooling lives. During our monthly meetings, there was certainly a main focus of encouraging everyone to contribute in some way in providing a resource that could be offered to others. As is usual in our human society, it still often fell on the 20% to manage 80% of what happened, but such it was, and camaraderie prevailed as friendships and respectful interactions were the norm. This seemed to be the modus operandi of the three support groups to which I affiliated in three states the first 5 years.

In 1998, we moved to central Pennsylvania, and then in 2000, we moved to North Carolina. I was to discover a very different mode of operation, particularly prevalent in North Carolina as I had been minimally involved in support groups in central Pennsylvania for personal family reasons that needed more of my attention. There were leaders in these supports groups, even boards! Wow, how organized, was my initial reaction. Another thought was that since this was more of a Christian (non-statement of faith) support group, maybe that’s how they ran things and I hadn’t realized it. (As was typical, I was having a hard time finding an inclusive group – in central PA as well -, so I joined this one to check it out since it didn’t have a statement of faith requirement.) There were funds that were used for activities, they still looked for volunteers for various “programs” that seemed to already be established. It seemed much more like a “well greased wheel”. It was still newsletter-based, and individuals could offer any type of supports and resources to the group as they desired, so I recognized that still.

Since this first exposure to leadership, presidencies, boards, and the such, I have come to realize that most support groups, local and state, operate in this manner. Had this always been the case, or has this been more recent . . . let’s say the past ten years? Within this governmental system, I did witness power struggles, overthrows, and separations occur more consistently. In the consensual support groups I had become accustomed to, I remember people simply being thankful someone was willing to coordinate and do the newsletter. There was no hierarchial power to resist; the individuals within the group were the voice. The coordinator and newsletter person simply carried it out.

Is this a shift in perspective? In the day I began homeschooling, so many stood on the ideal of freedoms and personal choice, so it makes sense that our inclusive groups would operate in order to have that expression realized. Each voice was equal and together we worked things out for all to get their needs met. In the leadership paradigm, there seems to be more of a democratic process. Not that it is bad since our country is founded on that type of government, but then again, protection of the masses is important in that dichotomy. I had chosen homeschooling for individualistic reasons; to be the author of my own path. I definitely felt like “one of the masses” being spoken TO when part of the democratic support groups.

So, what are people looking for today? A resource that supports and empowers their freedom of personal choice through working together to create a resource that can work to meet some of their needs? Or a resource that helps them belong to a group that believes in what they do and will help them get what they want and feel “taken care of”? There’s a shift in focus between the two . . . Am I saying that one is good and one is bad? No. I’m saying that it might be indicative of where the perspective of homeschoolers are today versus where they were fifteen years ago.One undesirable effect of testosterone the cause of gastritis. http://www.daveywavey.tv/viagra-7155.html cialis generika

Believing in the System but Wanting More Choices vs. Not Believing in the System and Wanting to Carve Out Another Way
Now, here’s my biggee that I’ve been working through, and maybe putting a voice to it in this manner might help clarify some things for me. When I chose to homeschool, I automatically chose to find my own resources. I mean, that was the point! I felt there was more out there available to me in the free world in the shape of information, technology, and mankind. I was eager to find meaty, enriching, authentic, appealing, diverse resources from which to sample. I was not disappointed! The children “ate it up” and continued to love to learn and find joy in the process. Searching and discovering resources in various places in our community became treasures to be mined and celebrated. Each of us became expert at finding the resources that would most appeal to us as individuals . . . One of our favorite activities was to go to a bookstore, where each person eagerly uncovered something they desired based on current interests to add to our growing library. We’ve honed mining for the gold down to a science!

This same mindset served me well when I was to discover that my fourth son was struggling with autism. I was given the word “autism” by a friend, and the next day, I was at the library, utilizing the research skills I had developed as a home/unschooler. I zeroed right in on books with the most current dates. I delved into each one, going through a book a day that first week. Within days, I knew my son was living with autism, and that I should seek out a diagnosis. I turned to parents for recommendations, and found a diagnostician who respected the intelligence and insights of the family members. Together we diagnosed my son, is how I viewed it, and how it played out. My diagnostician knew that I was hungry for as much information as she could direct me to, in all venues. It became the first time I ventured into conferences, taking in three in three months. It was through this searching that I found what my son needed to find happiness and joy in the world in which he was placed. As I got his needs filled through using volunteers that I trained and various resources that added elements that combined to give insight as to what to do for this particular child, other parents were amazed that I was so far into the intervention journey within weeks and months of the diagnosis. Most, it was noted, waited for others to show them what to do, and it would take about a year for them to discover no one was going to do that. This was why I was attracted to homeschooling. This is what I saw from other homeschoolers in that day.

So, what of today’s homeschoolers? Ours is a world of experts, specialization, labels, and the over-achiever mentality. Because of the proliferation of choice, the explosion of growth within homeschooling circles may be because so many can hang onto the expert umbrella through things like e-schools and other public school hybrids where they can “be taken care of”, but have a different choice of environment. Another segment of people are coming to homeschooling with a myriad of school-created labels attached to their children who are floundering in the system. The parents recognize that the environment in which their children were being educated doesn’t work for them, so they are seeking other choices under the same paradigm that might work better. These labels become evidence that another choice is needed, so they seek out experts who can help “take care of them” as they work tirelessly to help their child under that expert. Again, someone more qualified than schools have to help “take care of them” because of these so-called specialized problems. Or, there are parents who feel they can do a better job than schools and want to see their child excel (ala over-achiever mentality) and seek out all the best curricula and systems available as another choice “to take care of them” in order to meet the needs of their gifted children.

Again, there is a paradigm shift that shows a totally different perspective for the newer homeschooler. The homeschooler of the past left behind the mentality, the perspective, and the clutches of public institutional thinking, processes, procedures, perspectives and mentalities in belief that there was a more holistic way of viewing learning, particularly outside the confines of an inflexible entity. I believe many of today’s homeschooler’s actually believe in the system, but want more choices within that realm in order to be “taken care of” in a different way because of labels, over-achiever needs, and/or need for specialization. I use all that is available in the world as potential resources from which we can choose. Even in the special needs arena, I sought out and utilized professional opinions and ideas, conferences, and print materials as potential resources to me in finding what my son(s) needed. I used these resources in my journey to mine for the diamonds that I could take and apply to our holistic lives in a way that was individualized to the child.

Again, there is a shift in perspective here. It appears that parents of today are partnering their intelligence and energies with the experts and systems available to create another option for an individualized, but pre-packaged education about which they can get excited about following. Myself and other homeschoolers I started with were using their intelligence and energies to map out their own path to what learning is at a more holistic level that will look different child to child, stage to stage, situation to situation. Again, am I saying one is better than another? No. But, this shift changes what homeschooling is, in my opinion.

So many today are looking for alternative choices to the public school settting, but has an aspect of being taken care of under another system of learning and resources. They rely on experts and support groups and curriculum producers and other homeschooling systems (like HSLDA) created to do just that. There are fewer new homeschoolers, it seems, that are “independent homeschoolers” (is the word I’m hearing that I like, actually) whose perspective is to carve out their own thinking about how learning takes place for their children. It seems so many look out first, to place on; those like me and other older-timers wanted to start looking in first, and then see what was out there that could enhance in the natural world of information.

I can now see how the freedoms of homeschooling as I once understood it can be threatened by the new face of homeschooling. There will have to be a place for both, but how do we accomplish this legally without infringing on the rights of one group for the other?It may be in the name!

3 Comments

Posted in Homeschooling, My Opinions

Catch Up: Birthdays, Conferences, and LWOS Post

Posted on March 3, 2007 | 5 comments

Yes, it’s been almost two months. So much to do, so little time! First, some birthdays came and went. My oldest turned 20 a few weeks ago, which means I have my first child in the twenty-something category. It was also the first birthday I didn’t get to spend with a child, as explained in my last post. But, my daughter and I had fun putting together our first “care package” for him with a few goodies. He e-mailed me telling me he received it and that he didn’t take long to “down the chocolate goods”. He was into Japanese cooking just before he left and had binged on some Japanese products before leaving, so I stuck a last package of udon noodles in the package. He commented that “the udon was a bit random, but appreciated.” Then he went on to put in a few more Japanese food product orders for next time. He continues to flourish on his mission, and is currently serving in his first location: North Salt Lake, UT.

Eli turned 16 yesterday and most of the family went to Cracker Barrel for his dinner outing. It can be hard and sad when your whole family can’t go to these types of things. Adam is just not at a place that he can tolerate that type of outing, so Abbey stayed home with him. She is such a gracious giver! On the other hand, she knows that she has a blessed life in being my traveling companion to conferences as well as much freedom in going wherever she wants when she needs to go. But, it’s still a choice to be amazing . . . and she is. Anyway, Eli wants to buy Rollercoaster Tycoon III – Wild as his gift.

And, speaking of conferences, Abbey, Eli and I just returned from the InHome Conference this past weekend, and we all had a blast! I still vote it as the best organized and most diverse inclusive conference I know of for both adult and children/teen workshops. Plus, we feel like such family among the organizers as we have attended and presented since 2000. I was invigorated and newly enthusiastic about some of my passions as I contemplated various things on my long drive home.

As always, my right-brained learner workshops were well-received. I presented a workshop on my Collaborative Learning Process for the first time that had mostly good reviews, with a few people who didn’t like it at all, which is always expected. It was my largest attended workshop this time, so there will always be someone who came and was expecting something different. Since this process has an unschooling “flavor”, and I didn’t write it up as such, some may have attended that don’t embrace that idea at all.

I became especially empassioned about the special needs arena after serving my second year on a special needs panel. I’m finally beyond frustrated about presenters who espouse the IEP/school process within special needs. I SO want to be a voice that shares another way . . . and, yes, to me, a superior way, than schools can provide our very different children. Around the discussion table after the conference, the organizers were eager to have me present next year at least one special needs workshop specific to autism, but they are open to me throwing in other ideas as well for another workshop.This technique delivers a long-lasting erection levitra 20 mg http://deeprootsmag.org/tag/placide-cappeau/ to make an intercourse satisfactory and happy love-making activity.

On a similar note, I was able to speak to the organizer of Rethinking Education in Texas, Barb, on my way down as a potential speaker at her conference on Labor Day weekend. We are now working out the details, and I shared my enthusiasm about special needs topics that I would love to showcase at her conference, as well as the well-received right-brainer topics, so we’ll see how it all works out . . . Sometimes, passion and purpose hurts

Last, my recent post is up at Life Without School called From Snakes to Unschooling that I had posted here last year. I added some attributes to it based on the comments here at my blog, so go check it out and see what comes to mind for you. I actually should have mentioned two lessons for mom from that story. The one I didn’t mention, and I may add it after it is off the front page, is that children will learn what they are interested in if you supply the materials and resources for them, and be available and attentive to their requests.

I’m going to try to get back on my blog wagon . . . I missed everyone, but I had to prioritize, as you all can understand, I know!

5 Comments

Posted in Autism, Family, Homeschooling, Learning, My 2007 Conferences, Right-Brained/Visual-spatial Learners

Changes Forever?

Posted on January 14, 2007 | 5 comments

My hubby and I are about to leave later today to bring our oldest, firstborn son out West to serve as a full-time missionary for two years in declaring the good news to those in the northern Utah, southern Idaho, and Star Valley, Wyoming areas that the gospel of Jesus Christ has been restored to the earth. He will be a representative of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, and we believe our church is set up in the same manner that Jesus Christ established His church when He was living upon the earth as a mortal. We have the same establishment such as prophets, aspostles, temples, the proper authority to act in God’s name through His Holy Priesthood, the sealing powers (as stated in Matthew), faith and works, baptism by immersion, repentance, the gift of the Holy Ghost by the laying on of hands, etc. We believe that the Lord is the same today, yesterday and forever, which means that He has always had His people record words under His inspiration and that we have been blessed with another testament of Jesus Christ, the Book of Mormon, and that He knows where all His people are. (We believe there is yet additional scripture if and when we are ready to receive it, by living up to what we already have.) The greatest news is that Jesus Christ is our Savior and the Redeemer of the world. Our son is part of the great work in fulfilling the prophecy that every knee shall bow and every tongue confess that Jesus is the Christ. This is one reason why there are missionaries from our church all over the world, including here in our own backyard!

Our son leaving for two years is both an exciting time for our family, and a sad one. I think back when my hubby and I were dating as seniors in high school. Upon graduation and after summer completed, I was to begin college about an hour away as he waited to serve his own mission (he ended up going to the Concepcion, Chile, South America mission). I would stay in the dorms at college Monday through Thursday, and come back for the long weekend until he left. My mother and sister were driving me there that first week, and we went to my future-hubby’s house to say good-bye.

As my mother pulled away with me in the car, my hubby and I began to cry. My mother declared, “Well, my goodness! It’s only four days! It’s as if you won’t see each other again.” My hubby and I locked eyes, and we knew it had nothing to do with the four day separation and everything to do that we both understood, without speaking any words, that our lives were about to change forever. It was time to enter the next phase of our lives. We were both excited and sad, just as we are now with our son. With our first child leaving home, we will no longer be the family that all lives under one roof as a parent/child dynamic. I suspect that it will never go back to that again.

I have such fond memories of our family-growing-up-together times as one whole unit. As a mother, it is easy to flash back to all the stages, some more favored in my mind than others. At the same time, I am eager to see and observe all that my son will learn and grow from this next stage of life for him. Eric is eager to learn how this experience will shape him. I know he has his own mixed feelings of being anxious and being sad, but ready.

It’s ironic that we were able to seal our two little boys, who are adopted, to us as a family in the Raleigh Temple a couple of weeks ago. We believe that the family unit continues into eternity; therefore, we are married for time and all eternity versus till death do you part. As part of this sealing, any children born to us after being sealed together in the temple for eternity as a couple are also automatically sealed to us as a family. If an adoption occurs, you must specifically seal them to us by going to the temple for that opportunity and blessing. So, for five years, we have operated as an “incomplete family”, but now we are once again a forever family. And now, we bid one adieu as he forges his own life away from us. It’s bittersweet, but we, too, are ready for all that it brings our family!
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It looks like it’s snowing, but it’s not, though it was bitter cold. We lost a lot of our pictures, and this is the one I found, and it ended up with splatters on it:

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Posted in Beginnings, Family

The Death of “Show Me Work”

Posted on January 10, 2007 | 14 comments

Over at Thinking Things Through there is a post called Product vs. Process which talks about Christine’s dilemma as a homeschooling parent over feeling a strong need to have a product after every learning experience, whether because of her teacher training or proving to others an education is happening.

This is a battle I’m constantly having with myself. I think it comes partly from my time spent teaching elementary school where of course there always needed to be a product so I could judge how each child was doing and whether learning had taken place and also just because the school system said so. But I also think that it is a more left-brained thing to want to have an end-product to sum up learning done or to put closure on the learning. Maybe not, maybe it’s just me.

An early homeschooling experience quickly came to mind as I read over the post and I wanted to share that with everyone in case it can help someone else at this same juncture.

As I first began to plot out the wonderful experience I would call homeschooling with my then ~~unsuspecting~~ 5 year old firstborn son, I, too, had envisionments of amazing “products” to ~~show off~~ share with any ~~naysayers~~ interested friends or family. I think the focus on these ~~wonderful~~ projects may have stemmed from a three-fold source: The first is the conditioning received while attending school that every learning experience results in a product, as the referenced post agrees. The second is my left-brained learning style, as Christine also mentions in her post, that truly enjoys “show me work”, as I have termed it. When I was in school and you gave me a worksheet full of math problems, I would get all giddy inside! And, third, my external perfectionism (which is different from the internal perfectionism often exhibited by right-brained learners) that shows itself when I am planning out “the perfect experience”.

And so my left-brained systematic ~~perfect~~ plans began for our first semester of schooling, complete with unique and interesting ~~“show-me-work”~~ prospective products to later display with pride for all to see. What’s funny about this is that I had just spent most of the summer reading any and all materials I could get my hands on regarding unschooling. I had latched onto the unschooling style for our homeschooling endeavor because it most reflected how learning had occurred in our home up until that point, and the reason I was considering homeschooling in the first place was that it was working so well for my oldest son. And, yet, because it was such a fun thing to contemplate, I was busy hyper-planning all these great projects and learning moments, all divided by subjects, and even . . . gasp . . . using a timer(!) to indicate when we could move to the next subject.

It began eager enough on the part of my oldest son as he considered homeschooling a great idea since he figured things would continue as usual, but maybe with some fun things thrown in with my involvement. It didn’t take long for his right-brained learning style to reject my left-brained ideas . . . no matter how creative! I remember one project in particular. It was logged under social studies and it was an “All About Me” book that we would take pictures of him indicating various elements about who he is and then he would write a ~~sterile~~ sentence (you know, for handwriting) sharing information about what the picture shows. Now, of course this was a good plan because don’t all kindergartens across the nation do an “all about me” unit? And I would do the same thing, ~~but better~~ 🙂

It all started falling apart with the first picture. My oldest was having nothing to do with these ~~posed~~ pictures to go in my fabulous book about him. After the first picture, I had to resort to ~~bribing~~ encouraging him already! At about the fourth picture, this wasn’t even working. Now, I was having to resort to all out ~~coercion~~ ~~threats~~ ~~force~~ (I give up )

I remember the specific moment that my ah-ha moment entered. I was ~~stubbornly~~ persistently working on the ~~show off~~ fancy cover made from wallpaper samples since my oldest was all out refusing to ~~be convinced of the worth of this project~~ cooperate with the project. I remember ~~mumbling incoherently~~ musing to myself about how quite lovely and noteworthy the project really was and how could he not see the ~~ego booster~~ value in it, and then it struck. I had one of my out-of-body experiences where I could see this ~~insanely driven~~ focused mother hunched over this useless project while simultaneously seeing the joyful intent of my oldest son in the next room pursing his then-dinosaur interest with passion and purpose. What’s wrong with this picture, I realized? And then I remember reading something in one of the unschooling materials that went something like this: If you think something is so wonderful, then do it yourself! And that’s exactly what I found myself doing, by default, and yet, I then looked closely at the project, and it was clear! I didn’t even think this project was worth it; I had created it strictly as fancy show me work.

I was determined that I would not usurp the joy of learning by interjecting prideful pursuits, conditioned thinking, or personal preferences into my son’s learning life. Instead, I would give value to his process, his timeframes, his interests, and how that looks for him. I would put the extra time into having conversations with him about what is on his mind and in his mind, take an interest in his pursuits and show my support through sharing my perspective and wisdom toward additional resources available, and be in awe over what he shows me he knows in the way he wants to share it.

But is it [a product or show me work] really important? Maybe for some learners it is. Maybe for some it isn’t necessary that they do something with what they have learned to have really learned it. Maybe they don’t need to use it or apply it or work with it or display it in order for learning to really have occurred.

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My oldest son showed me what real learning looks like: The joy is in the process; the product is personal. That didn’t mean that products didn’t emerge or get pursued, whether by his initiation or my suggestion. It simply means that those things came as a result of meaningful pursuits, not sanitized procedures that led to an end product. It also meant that I needed to look beyond the valued expression typical of show-me-work to see processes and products worthy of noting as a foundation or skill-builder or work-in-progress for this particular child’s gifts.

My oldest son loves to learn; but resists teaching (very common for a right-brained learner). I was fortunate to have a son who was just as passionate about what he wanted to learn and how and when as I was eager to learn to be a homeschooling parent (which is where I ended up steering my perfectionism . . . on myself to be the best homeschooling support parent in learning about and understanding each child in my care). He has been an excellent and informative teacher to me.

My lesson learned has served us both well. That first attempt at homeschooling my way lasted about two weeks; his way has worked beautifully the last 15 years . . . for him!

Eric in his posed pictures, adding his input to get through it (irritation evident), including the green bucket hat, the first representing his address and the second his favorite things:

Eric playing his favorite things (trains and a dinosaur bone model nearby) and looking at books, just because it all interests him (happiness evident):

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Posted in Beginnings, Homeschooling, Learning, Right-Brained/Visual-spatial Learners

Happy Birthday to my Two Babies!

Posted on December 31, 2006 | 2 comments

Before 2007 comes, I want to acknowledge the birthdays of my two babies in 2006 that just went by during this holiday season.

Today is my first baby’s birthday, Alex, who just turned 12! This is a significant age in our church as he moves up into the youth program now. We celebrated yesterday by bringing him to a restaurant of his choice, and he wanted the waitresses to sing to him. They did and he was asked to stand up on his chair, so he felt that was “special”, although he said he was “a little bit embarrassed.” We were able to select a seat grouping where he sat right under a ceiling fan, which is one of his favorite things. We let him choose who of the siblings he wanted to go out to dinner with him. He chose Eric and Abbey and Eli declined. So, it was just four of us, but he enjoyed himself. The restaurant had “Kraft” macaroni and cheese, so he thought that was special, too. On the way home, he stopped and had me get him two orders of cheese breadsticks from Pizza Hut; one for him and one to share with his brother, Adam. He always remembers his brother 🙂

Alex is hard to buy presents for, so we’ve let him know that we’re planning something after we take his oldest brother out West to start his mission trip. Alex and Eli will then take over the basement area for their rooms/space (which they had also shared with Eric, who tended to be the one who “ruled” the area due to age), and now it will become theirs, so I have some surprises up my sleeve; a type of “extreme make-over bedroom”, as Alex loves that show 🙂 I’ll definitely have to come up with something unique to display his ceiling fan collection!

Happy Birthday, Alex!

Then, on Christmas Day, my other baby, Joseph, turned 6! These two really are like two babies of the family because of where they fall in their birth order within their birth families. I have two firstborns, too 🙂 We celebrated Joseph’s birthday on the Saturday before. He chose the restaurant that we all went to except Eric and Adam: Cracker Barrel. We wanted to have the limelight on Joseph, and Adam is so complex to accommodate right now, as well as his agitation toward his brother, Eric’s voice. So, Eric graciously offered to stay home with him, though Joseph tends to annoy him anyway.They were a part of the first expansion and they were first owned by Frederic McLaughlin who had made his fortune in the devensec.com (buy generic levitra) sales of coffee.

Joseph was pleased to order from a regular menu versus fast food. However, he wasn’t too thrilled with the time it takes sit-down restaurant food to arrive. We let the waitress know that it was his birthday, and they sang for him, and he felt special. After they finished, he ceremoniously said, “Thank you, thank you”, and waved to them. He ate about three bites from the dessert they treated him to, but that way, I got some chocolate out of it 🙂

Joseph tends to get overwhelmed by the limelight at times, so I tried hard to underplay the present opening time earlier in the day. Because I allow the birth parents to give him presents (that I pick up separately prior to the birthdays), he had four presents to open: one from each of them, one from us, and one from one set of grandparents (the other giving money). For birthdays in our family, usually it’s one or two presents for birthdays. Joseph handled the excess well, though, with my careful preparations. It was a good variety (as the birth parents usually ask me what he would like): a remote control Hummer (already left in the rain and waiting to see if it still works), a battery-operated baseball pitching machine (wonderful!), a small acoustic guitar (his favorite, and he holds it so naturally), and a vacuum that really sucks up things.

Happy birthday, Joseph!

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Success or Failure?

Posted on December 29, 2006 | 1 comment

My post is up at Life Without School titled Success or Failure? It continues my story about my son’s decision about his relationship with formal academics as well as his path to adulthood and how that would look. This is where it was supposed to end “happily ever after”, but as he has done all his life,Resveratrol is a compound discount levitra appalachianmagazine.com that comes from the polyphenois family. my son continues to show me that he will take the path less traveled, and figure things out his own way and in his own time. It’s been an interesting journey, and I’m eager to continue walking alongside him as he reaches out for his next goals that serve particular purposes and learning experiences to him.

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Helping vs. Changing

Posted on December 27, 2006 | 4 comments

In a comment on my blog, JoVE referenced this talk by Sir Ken Robinson that was recorded February, 2006. I would like to invite everyone to start by listening to his words with a point-of-reference geared toward the rant I shared here about giving value to our right-brained learners. Here is someone who fully “gets it”.

There were several poignant places in this speech, but one was after he described the process of how Gillian Lynne, the “Cats” choreographer, came to discover her talent. The public school she attended in the 1930s informed her mother that she was not fitting in well there, and maybe she has some problems that need to be checked out. Her mother took Gillian to a psychiatrist, and after a briefing, he asked the mother to leave with him out in the hallway while he left young Gillian in his office after he turned on the radio. They looked back into the room as they saw Gillian dancing around the office, and he looked at her mother and simply stated, “Your daughter is not sick, Mrs. Lynne; she’s a dancer. Put her in dance school.” The rest is history as she is reowned for her talent in dance and choreography.

Our right-brained learners are not sick; they are not broken; they are not a problem. Our right-brained learners are dancers; they are artists; they are musicians; they are actors; they are architects; they are video game programmers. This is who they are. To change that is at best to “squander away their talents”, to borrow the phrasing from Sir Robinson, and worse, to quote my oldest son upon hearing about my discussions here, would be to “psychologically destroy them”. I want neither for my amazing right-brainers!Does that mean they’re perfect the way they are? Of course not, as we all have our weak areas and difficulties. However, because of our conditioning in giving value to left-brained traits, we think the very traits that make them right-brained thinkers ARE the weak areas and difficulties. If we intervened in these areas for the sake that it goes against the grain of conditioned societal thinking, then we are changing who they are. So, how do we differentiate? For me, a loose definition would be that if something is impacting the quality of life for my child from his/her perspective or from my perspective filtered through my de-conditioning lens and based on wisdom or mother’s intuition, then I might seek to help my child develop skills and strategies that will benefit him/her.

From my experience, there is very little in the learning/education department that needed my help. Most of the help needed in this arena fell on my shoulders for myself. I needed to become educated about learning styles. (In my day, In Their Own Way, by Thomas Armstrong was my foundation. Nowadays, there are scads more!) I needed to question my conditioned reactions and responses to various methods and timeframes. (Again, in my day, Growing Without Schooling and the works of John Holt helped tremendously. Today, it’s called deschooling.) I found myself becoming intrigued and excited about what was unfolding before me through my children. (I call it becoming an anthropologist of sorts.) Some of the things I remember letting go of: Why not count on your fingers? Why do “show me work”? Why can’t learning happen orally? Why can’t the child have his core curriculum be dinosaurs? Why can’t he teach himself? Why does writing have to be from the top down?

However, there WERE some places that my children needed my un-conditioned wisdom and perspective. My oldest needed “gentle pushing” from time to time because he is prone to resisting new things . . . even things I was sure he would love. But, my criteria was that I truly felt that he would enjoy it, and I didn’t want him to miss a wonderful opportunity for his own growth and learning. Every time I pushed gently using this criteria, my oldest ended up loving the activity. He also learned to trust in my encouragement as well as learning to be open to new experiences and not reject outright simply because it was new.

This same child also needed my intuitive wisdom in his transition to reading . . . not because he was 8 years old and a non-reader, but because he was showing me that he was ready, but I could see that his perfectionistic need to be able to do it well right away was interfering with his acquisition process. His learning style had always been to observe first, then do, and it wasn’t working for him in the reading department, so he wasn’t going to do it at all . . . another common trait of a right-brained learner (I’ll do it well, or not at all!). I knew enough about how he learned, but I didn’t know what I was looking for, but felt I would know it when I saw it. I knew it wouldn’t have any bells and whistles . . . just get straight to the point, getting to the reading part quickly. Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons was what worked for him, without following the script and skipping at least half the “exercises”. (The manual says you MUST do everything exactly as stated, but I can attest it isn’t true!) We did lessons about three times a week over several months and it was enough to get him off the ground. By lesson 30, I knew he “got it”, so we stopped the formal lessons from the book, and about a year later, he took off in reading.

Another example is that at about 11 years old, I encourage more formal studies if a child hasn’t come to it him/herself. My wisdom intuited that my self-conscious right-brained learners would become hyper-critical of themselves in another few years (as puberty hits and one naturally turns outward) if they were unable to do certain skills that were not pursued of their own volition. So, we would begin with an area they were least interested in up until that point and build from there over the next few years. You can read about this philosophy here.

Here is a random list of things I did NOT help with, because it was only a matter of perspective: drawing was writing, reading “below one’s grade level”, printing from the bottom up, moving as they think, late reading, using expensive equipment like camcorders to share their ideas, sharing what they know orally, not showing their work, not learning cursive, reading comic books, lots of computer games, watching ants for science, building with Legos all day, playing video games all day, tracing, rereading books, drawing or coloring while they listened to me read aloud, invented spelling, etc.
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You notice so far how I am not changing who they are, how they learn, when they are ready to learn, or what should be important to them. I am recognizing when something isn’t working for them and helping them find a way to continue to develop their gifts and talents in a way that allows it to be nurtured and their love of learning to remain ignited. In other words, I was living the adage that Sir Ken Robinson mentioned early in his speech: “. . . creativity is as important in education as literacy, and we should treat it with the same status.” Talents that rest in creativity exhibit differently than the products valued in our public school system; our homeschools have to reflect that if our right-brained children are to flourish.

Now, the temperamental traits of a right-brained learner is the place where I feel I needed to help them the most. This is because these characteristics affect relationships and those are important to understand in order to function in our society. However, even in this arena, there is much work to do in ourselves in order to question our cultural social expectations. For instance, extraverts are more valued in our society than introverts. This does not mean that we should change our introvert right-brainers to an extravert right-brainer. It means we have to come to value what each temperament offers by showing respect for diverse perspectives.

For instance, some of the tough questions I had to ask myself were: Why do you have to bathe every day? Why do you have to like parties? Why can’t you wear soft sweatpants everyday? Why can’t I spend a lot of time alone? Why is competition a good thing? Why is crying for a boy a bad thing? Why can’t a child voice his/her opinion? Somehow, by sheer intuition and viewing each child as an individual of worth, I was able to differentiate between what was important and worth seeking skills and strategies with, and what was not. Now, there are a number of excellent resources that can assist a person, such as The Explosive Child, The Highly Sensitive Child, Raising Your Spirited Child, The Out-of-Sync Child, etc., that can help you understand the perspective of your high maintenance child.

A lot of the skill-building that was utilized in these areas of emotional, social and behavioral domains were about collaborating, compromising, and cooperating in order to achieve a harmonious relationship. So, in promoting unity, it cannot be about changing who the person is, but respecting each other’s differences through understanding each other’s needs and preferences while working out common solutions to live joyfully with one another.

An example would be that my oldest son went through several anger stages. First, one must learn to understand where that stems from and not see it as a “problem”, but as an “unmanaged trait”. Creative right-brained learners feel deeply. That means they feel anger deeply, happiness deeply, sadness deeply . . . this is how feelings emanate from their preferred creative outlet, such as moving dance, stirring music, etc. When an intense person is young, they are learning how to manage these strong feelings. We can help them develop strategies that work with these strong emotions. If we change who they are by medicating the feelings away or stamping out the feelings, we have also taken away an avenue for their best creativity. So, no you don’t get to destroy property, or fling nasty words, or get physical. But it is a process to self-control and I helped him discover the steps to attaining successful self-control.

Another example is my third child right-brainer son had a hard time making decisions for some years. Because of his extreme tender heart, he had a deep need to do the right thing. If there was a choice between a “should” and a “want”, he had a hard time making the choice and would end up in a pool of tears. He wanted the want, but felt a deep need within to do the right thing. I recognized the need to help him on several levels. One was the immediate torment it caused him on a consistent basis. I didn’t want him to become accustomed to anxiety due to the decision-making process. The second was the underlying notion surrounding the choice to either become a martyr (I’ll do it well) or become self-centered (or not at all) . . . see above about my oldest and reading . . . simply because he didn’t have the skills to know how to make an unemotional decision. So, I helped him learn the art of decision-making between a should and a want.

This is what my workshops about the right-brained learner are all about: my sharing with others who are raising right-brained learners the distinction between changing a person into someone he/she is not and helping our intense and creative children prosper in their gifts, talents, and unique perspectives. It is not about applying a person’s theory to our child to “improve them” such as help right-brainers get better by teaching them left-brain thinking. That is disguising changing them with the words helping them improve. It is about observing their lives, seeing the value in their perspective, and truly becoming advocates of their particular life journey and simply help them navigate their own personal and particular pitfalls. I believe our children show us what they need, and if we can screen our motives through our anti-conditioning lens and combine that with our wisdom and experience, I believe the collaborative process that can result will be hundreds and thousands of creative minds released to our world to improve IT!

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Posted in Collaborative Learning, Homeschooling, Learning, My Opinions, Right-Brained/Visual-spatial Learners

Creating Value for the Right-Brained Learner

Posted on December 23, 2006 | 8 comments

Warning: Rant Pending . . . and although I reference Willa’s post, this rant in no way is directed at her but simply an extension of my frustration at society’s educational value system and how hard it is to shift our thinking because of its prolific nature . . .

Willa at Every Waking Hour wrote a post called “Thinking Outside the Box”. I would like to make yet another attempt at sharing my perspective compared to how our culture views the right-brained learner. This societal view is so prevalent and so accepted that even as we parents come to discover that we need to understand it better because one of our children fits the description and are struggling in the typical valued learning environment, it is still filtered through this viewpoint.

Frankly, it frustrates me. Am I the ONLY person who “sees” what I see? And, of course, since I’m a parent, I must wonder if I’m insane to think that the lowliness of who I am can actually think I’m onto something that needs to be investigated. But, upon attending the conference held by Pat Farenga called “Learning In Our Own Way” where he brought in a handful of professionals outside the realm of homeschooling who support the premise that each person is unique with their own learning style and should be valued for it; not negatively labeled for it, I realized there was professional support for my perspective and experience. Pat brought in Thomas Armstrong; John Taylor Gatto was there, of course; and a panel was convened to discuss “learning disabilities” which included Dr. Richard Falzone, Dr. Robert Kay, and Dr. Ken Jacobson who each specialized in their own areas. Each of these people shared eloquently about the value of various learning styles, which included the right-brained learner. During the panel, there was a general consensus that each understood that various learning styles should be honored versus labeled. During the question and answer period, I stood up and asked why it is that these professionals are not being heard about their valid views? Dr. Armstrong frankly didn’t know except that the cog of current acceptance of the status quo is hard to stop and be scrutinized.

I think some professionals totally get it; people like Thomas Armstrong (who was a learning disability specialist and quit because he no longer believed in it), Howard Gardner, Jeffrey Freed, and John Taylor Gatto (a New York Teacher of the Year who doesn’t believe in the system). Then there are professionals who seem to get it, but direct their knowledge toward how to work in the existing system and seem to believe in it as useful; people like Linda Krieger Silverman, Mel Levine, Dana Scott Spears, and apparently the author of the article Willa quoted.

Again, I’m frustrated.

For instance, Willa said these things in response to a document she read from a professional’s point of view:

Of course, you want a VSL to be able to communicate this perceptiveness and order it, so he may need some strategies to cross over to his left hemisphere. But auditory-sequential learners, the article points out, can benefit from some crossing over to the other hemisphere — they can learn to access a more holistic, perceptive way of acquiring knowledge.

How big of the author of the article to include the “crossing over” benefit for the left-brained learner. When you read the excerpt that Willa includes in her post, I “see” something completely different from the conclusions reached by the author. There is always things spoken of regarding the right-brained learner such as there is “confusion” at times or the two hemispheres are “not communicating correctly” or, hey, but the brain is elastic and can form “new pathways” that then create a person who has “unique traits” that cannot be measured, yada yada yada.
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Remember, any person can take any data and any observations and bend it to their perspective. How about there is “confusion” when a right-brained learner is forced to learn in a left-brained fashion? How about there is a lack of communication between hemispheres because this particular person doesn’t need to communicate in the manner in which you desire it to. How about “problems” arise or are noticed because they are not yet ready to learn in that manner or those skills yet because it has not yet hit the timeframe in which this particular brain processes interrelate? Why do we continue to measure everything about a right-brained learner by our left-brained value system?

So, in other words, when a “professional” makes these types of conclusions, it is simply because he/she was looking for a solution to a “problem” that others say exists. What if the problem doesn’t exist, but we created it? How about supporting right-brained learners in a right-brained value system and THEN do some studies and testing to see if that learner’s brain doesn’t work out its own way to interrelate? Oh, but when it does, they simply say, “oh, look how elastic the brain is . . . it ‘fixes itself'”. NO! How about it was never broken!

Alright, so we then are still so conditioned to think in a left-brained fashion that when this author concludes that there are ways to “intervene” with our right-brained children in order to help them “connect to their left-side” because, hey, they will benefit . . . How will they benefit? So they won’t “think outside the box” so much anymore? They will conform a little bit here and there? Why does a right-brainer have to “order” their gifts? Isn’t their gift the very fact that they are random thinkers? This author just finds yet another fancy way to convince parents that “here is a broken piece that I can give you exercises to fix or to improve upon” (i.e., conform to society’s expectations, systems, and educational values).

Right-brainers are not broken! If there are left-brained learners and right-brained learners, why isn’t there a plethora of negative labels for the left-brained learner? Each type of learner should be valued for what it offers. Each learner should be allowed to flourish in the environment that supports their timeframe and process. Just because the left-brained value system is so prolific in our society and culture doesn’t mean it is superior. It means it is accepted, which means the supports are in place, which means it is easier to value what already exists. “The box” isn’t necessarily meant to be a good thing. It means that our culture created a common practice, a “norm”, a stereotype, a mold. So, when the term “thinking outside the box” is used, it means one is outside the norm or the common practice, not that they are weird, eccentric, broken, or disabled.

I feel we are at the place in our society and intellectual freedoms and pursuits to dismantle the box completely and finally recognize each learning style and its inherent optimal timeframes and processes as valid and embraced for what it offers! The intellectual and emotional health that would prevail would be enormous, and these would be the benefits from which I feel our world would prosper!

Rant done . . . does anyone “get” my perspective? I believe with all my heart that it is we parents that can affect real and lasting change in our culture for our right-brained learners! What the professionals are unable to do, our voices, when united, are unstoppable. The parents of children with autism proved that in their realm. We can, too 🙂

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Posted in Learning, My Opinions, Right-Brained/Visual-spatial Learners

Long Division – Eli’s Way

Posted on December 14, 2006 | 3 comments

Someone shared an on-line resource about long division on my Homeschooling Creatively list about right-brained learners. When I went to the site, their “method” immediately reminded me of how Eli figured out how to do long division all by himself, using his own way to understand. (Actually, I think Eli’s way was easier compared to the “steps” the on-line resource is instructing one must do before actually solving the problem . . . I wonder if they stuck in some left-brained thinking anyway: those sequential steps and showing one’s work . . . for the conditioned parents out there checking out the resource. . . LOL!) Here’s a sample page of him working through problems:

For those of you who need a sample pulled from the chaos:

1
80
600
2,000
10,000
5/63,407

-50,000
13,407

-10,000To reduce the companies anxiety, they’ll wash their palms quite a few times inside of a http://amerikabulteni.com/2018/10/29/bati-avrupada-halkin-kamu-televizyonlarina-guveni-yuksek/ purchase levitra online personal day.
3,407

-3,000
407

-400
7

-5
2

Answer: 12,681, R2

Alright, I can’t get the formatting on the blog to have that problem come out nice and neat, but hopefully, you get the idea.

What’s really sad is at the time, I had no clue as to what he was doing or how he was doing it. It’s fairly clear to me now, but what I’m trying to say is that the “way” school taught me was so ingrained as the “only way” to do it, that I couldn’t open my eyes enough to see another way, or at least for it to make sense to me. At first, I tried to teach him the “easier way”, or at least I thought it was easier from my perspective, but luckily, after a brief but ineffective attempt on my part at teaching him, I let him be and said, “If it makes sense to you, go for it!”

The book Eli was working out of at the time showed the “school way” when he was first introduced to long division, but it didn’t make sense to him, so he invented his own way based on the fact that he UNDERSTOOD the concept of long division. That’s kinda huge, because as a left-brained learner and one who “did well in school”, I easily learned long division simply because I was good at short-term memory of plugging in formulas as blindly taught and learned. Thus, that’s probably the reason I didn’t “get” how Eli was doing it his way when I noticed. About a year or two later, Eli adopted the “short cut” way on his own timeframe as I had learned in school because it finally made sense to him and it was faster, according to him. Plus, I think being able to work at it in this visual manner as long as he needed to helped him eventually come to a place that leaving out some of the whole could finally make sense to him.