School & WORK Journal 2020-21

8th, 5th, 3.5 year old, 1 year old : snippets, slices, slabs of moments and doings

irregular, infrequent, and incomplete thoughts & lists on learning, education, play. or sometimes just snippets of conversation with our kids amidst life, which is one of the most beautiful and wonderful ways of learning. I will possibly include older snippets and slices involving work of the past; many of which now degree hold some level of humor or eye-rolling, as many examinations or remembrances of the past tend to do.

April 2021

29 - A 5th grader plots out areas of rectangles. There is much discussion of parallelograms, trapezoids, rhombi, and other such shapes these days.

Notes on Math 5 this year. Volume: length, width, height. One of our hopes has been to make Math an experience that’s…if not exciting or alluring, at least an experience that’s not negative. Largely we’ve done okay, thanks in large part to a) the patience and consistent time invested by my wife, b) the stubbornness and resolve gifted from me in ensuring fundamentals are met, and c) the caring manner in which our kids’ other math instructors have helped demystify the world of numbers. That being said, what is the far-off horizon, as regards a relationship between our progeny and the world of mathematics? I don’t know. The probability that they will embark on careers that are math-heavy is not zero and it’s not one hundred; I suspect, based on the many, many doodling and drawings on the backside of their math papers, that the probability might not be equidistant between those two extremes. We shall see. But the point remains: math is important, it’s necessary, it’s relevant, and it’s buried all around us, so ignoring it, rejecting it, dismissing it, or giving it anything less than the full onslaught of our ability to learn would be unwise choice. So there.

The curriculum is partially built around something called Zearn, which is also used as a verb; a cutesy stylistic choice I have opinions about which are likely difficult to determine. I have not yet decided how effective it is in helping students learn math. Our 5th grader has decided. He will probably not be sitting on the Zearn Board of Directors anytime soon.

March 2021

28 - Math. As I peruse our 5th grader’s Zearn workbook on multiplying and dividing fractions and decimals, I notice the curious companions to each page: his scrawling and sketches and doodles skimming and weaving throughout the problems and assignments; drawing a journey through the head of an 11-year old as he trudges through numerical worlds and brings them to life with his own characters and visual musings. For some reason it makes me think of Norton Juster’s The Phantom Tollbooth.