School Journal 2023-24

snippets, slices, slabs of moments and doings with 11th, 8th, 1st and pre-K.

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.

May 2024

15 Wednesday

Two taking state Science tests in the a.m. Two playing with a trillion toys instead of doing Maths with me at the moment. What can I teach them right now that would more beneficial for their development in life, at ages 4 and 7, then the joy of Playing?

APril 2024

General

An 8th grader works his way through angle measurements and plotting equations on graphs. I have been so proud of him - or to use the phrase I’ve adopted of my mom which is much stronger - he should be so proud of himself. Proud for the dedication, resilience, and time he’s invested to learning and working his way through difficult problems. Seriously. It’s not the easy stuff you do well that matter most. It’s the tough stuff that you keep working on. He’s done that.

23 Tuesday, the flashlights we shine and sometimes turn off

I have to admit: I was a little…sensitive? Irritated? Hurt feelings? Why? He came back from an 8th grade class with an assignment: to choose a poem and focus on finding descriptive language. Poetry! Yay! We’ve been breaking down, deconstructing, memorizing, absorbing poetry together for years, especially the last three. He’s got a big bag of memorized Emily Dickinson, Shakespeare, Donne, Dylan Thomas works, others to choose from…and he wasn’t interesting in my having any part of this assignment.

This is one of the hard parts for me. I admit it. When to jump in, when to back off, when to nudge and push and prod and provide advice or tips…and when to let the course be plotted independently…

…I guess I thought that “independent” would still mean I’d always at least be in the loop of being informed and engaged. He distanced himself from all the poems he already knew, and had no interest in conversing with me about potential ideas for the giant vats of pieces we still haven’t covered, and…I’m trying to be okay with that. I’m not saying I am okay with it, but I’m trying to be okay and to understand. He ended up going with William Wordsworth’s I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud from 1807. Great choice.

For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.

I never did really get a good…description of account of his experience discussing this with classmates, and I’m pretty adept at sustaining conversations and not accepting terse explanations of things that happened.

So how did it go?
-Good.
Umm…tell me more!

It’s okay. I am an adult, and I still get my feelings bruised a little, but it’s also not a teen’s job to ensure I am always in the educational orbit I’d like to be in. Again, it’s not so much that I’m okay with it, but I am learning and getting better about being okay with it. I am trying to understand and navigate boundaries and phases and needs of kids at different points. Even when I know I could help them, and it would be fun, and they could get something from me, and…ad nauseam. :)

Strong relationships mean you can be apart and still be together. And that is often how you become stronger: by being able to be apart, to be both needed and to need others; the evolution of students into teachers, teens into adults, boys into men, proteges into mentors, and all of us, ideally and forever, into learners everlasting.

I am grateful for the other trusted guides, mentors, teachers, friends in our children's lives that enrich and illuminate. Sometimes it’s not my flashlight to hold.

22 Monday

We spent a little time talking about the concepts of vertical, horizontal, and the prefix “tri,” as they relate to the French flag. We discussed (1st, pre-K) the French ideals of liberty, equality, and fraternity. The older asked, with a big grin after having watched the Inside Out 2 movie trailer recently, “…and anxiety is probably one of them too?” They drew their own renditions of the flag as we rehearsed the French words and phrases we’ve been working on. Their illustrations turned out nice-ish.

March 2024

25 Monday

There was a bunch of building and story making with wood blocks and DUPLO characters, interposed with some found-material forts, drawing, and reading. We started a new activity book focused on the skeletal system, and discussed the the city of St. Petersburg, the country of Russia, the continent of Asia, and the emergence of Communism in the late 1910s, leading to migration of scientists and others to other countries. They designed their own (two-dimensional for now) Matryoshka nesting dolls and practiced saying “Welcome” in Russian : Dobro pozhalovat. Also, two boys pranced and danced with their sister, after she completed Maths and Human Geography test reviews, to a wide variety of songs, one hundred percent of which were either from the Lin-Manuel musical Hamilton or the Lin-Manuel musical In the Heights. Also, I proofed an 8th grader’s paper on factory farms. Spoiler alert: they’re awful. Later, we continued watching the 7th episode in the Star Wars canon: The Force Awakens. I haven’t seen it since 2015 and honestly…I think it holds up well. On a second watch, it’s one of my favorites. Certainly, I think, the strongest dialog of any Star Wars film previous, and probably the strongest overall performances. Han Solo and that one scene…I’m an SW fan and have good things to say about the first six, but this one has me caring about characters to a deeper degree, I think, than before. That’s a big compliment.

06 Wednesday

Maths. A 4-year old goes over triangles, circles, and squares, carefully coloring each a different color. He wearies of it quickly. Although he enjoys math and numbers, he does not enjoy that aspect of it greatly: coloring in shapes and colors he already knows. I catch him not enjoying himself and have him end early, choosing to review counting and addition instead. Later, we return to the concepts of shapes and 2D versus 3D, and he is much more excited about drawing and creating his own renditions of these shapes, complete with detailed patterns inside, then he was at simply filling in cute little triangles with primary colors to prove his proficiency. There’s a place for both.

February 2024

27 Tuesday

Maths. He can’t keep the gleam out of his eye as he starts on today’s assignment: 1) draw something that is long, 2) draw something that is heavy, and 3) draw something that is short. He goes for a sea snake, a house, and an adorable little bug.

23 Friday

Maths. A 1st grader practices writing numbers 11-19 using tens and ones (e.g. 10 ones and 5 ones equals 15).

20 Tuesday

Environmental Science. The topic today is Biodiversity and Conservation. She guides the class through different types of biodiversity loss: habitat change and loss, invasive species, pollution, and over harvesting. We do not lack for real life examples to use. We watch a short video on the Siberian tiger and and what has led to its endangerment, then move on to a worksheet and small group discussion. I am thoroughly enjoying, but have promised an 8th grade math teacher I will help the latter half of her class. I quietly leave my table, after a brief discussion with Mrs W——— about the science textbooks and moving away from the National Geographic one - “…not enough teacher support for the curriculum and materials yet. It took me three hours to put together one lesson.”

She also talks about the wild passes that have been built on I-90 east of Seattle for animals to safely cross. It is fascinating, and I reluctantly exit class.

On a non-linear note: Becca and I switch off being in various classes different weeks. It’s often hard to know the best way to support a particular class; it gets increasingly challenging with each passing grade. But here’s the thing: I’m there because our children are there, but when I am there, I am there to support the learning experience in the classroom I am in, period. I am certain I’m a familiar face in some classrooms where many students still have no idea who I’m actually there for…because I’m not huddled by my child’s desk, there to support just them. I am there to support a teacher, a classroom, a group of students, a student. That is the investment I can make in our children and it is the paradox: sometimes the best way I can invest in our children is by investing in the ecosystem around them and helping make it as strong, as vibrant, and as healthy as possible.

Onto math. Oh, 8th grade math. There is so much to say. This class is led by a very patient, very capable, very fine teacher who finds it - and this is my observation and my words, not hers - enormously challenging, if not impossible, to guide an entire class forward. There are more reasons than one, but I will, after many hours in the class myself, offer two:

1 - Many students come to class unprepared. The program we have been a part of for years is at a HomeLink school. What that means is that it is an alternative public school. The program we are part of meets two days a week. That means that our kids are in class for forty percent of their formal education. Not five days. Two. That means that the remaining 60% - also known as the lion’s share - falls on parents. Thus, the home part of HomeLink. That means that teachers on campus are consistently instructing and covering material and addressing individual students’ needs with 40% of the in-class time that “normal” teachers do. What that means is that students need to come prepared. They need to come having spent time before and after time in the physical classroom actually working, studying, doing homework, and again, “doing school” at home. At home. The whole purpose of a HomeLink program is to connect learning at home with learning at an accredited school. If students are not learning at home, they are most definitively falling behind once they show up, because there is no way that any student or teacher will effectively get through what they need to without investment put in outside of actual class time. But that has to happen. Except this class in particular has a particular grouping of students, galvanized by an alpha, who consistently come in not prepared, and not only not prepared, but almost proud of that fact. There is an attitude that it is the teacher’s fault for not making sure that they - the student - understands it immediately, quickly, fully. But again and again and again, I have watched this one individual come in with what almost seems to be a proud sense of having spent no time preparing.

2 - What happens when a student comes aggressively unprepared to class is that everyone who is trying to learn and move forward suffers. It means that the teacher’s time and resources end up marshaled into helping this one person; a person who is mumbling throughout the class about having no help and it doesn’t make sense and interrupting when the teacher actually is explaining and spending considerable amounts of time individually helping them.

So with five minutes to go, the teacher asks for everybody’s attention and goes through a problem review on the whiteboard. This particular student begins talking over her and moving toward the door, pulling out their phone, and rebuffing the teacher’s request for attention. I could take it no more. I spoke up. Loudly.

“Mrs ________ is still teaching,” I said firmly, loudly, emphatically. “It is extremely disrespectful to be interrupting, talking, and trying to leave while she is still talking. Give her your attention.”

The teacher concurred and told the student to wait, to stay, and to close the classroom door they had opened.

Did this student do that? No. They walked out in a willful act of defiance that included not only leaving in violation of the teacher’s directive, but of mine as a parent with responsibility and authority on campus, and an intentional leaving of the door open, directly and specifically contravening what the teacher had just said in multiple ways.

I will not include a discussion of my conversation with the teacher afterwards, except to say that it was her wish I not go further to administration. She will deal with the parents involved, and there are other variables involved; some of which I know and some of which I don’t. But at the end of the excuses and reasons and defenses given, what is the reality? The reality is that we have to choose, as parents and educators, whether to hold those in our charge accountable and responsible and respect them enough to believe in them, to have confidence they can grow and to do so by holding them accountable.

An 8th grader was lingering afterwards; a part of the previous student’s entourage. She stepped up and looked at me firmly. It must have taken a lot for her to say what she said next:

“Thank you,” she said. “Thank you for saying what you said. I’m friends with ___ but I don’t know what to do. I mean she has been so disrespectful to Mrs _______ and we don’t really know what to do so I’m really glad you spoke up, she needs to know that’s not okay but I don’t really know what I can do, so thank you.” She paused and looked around. “You’re J———-‘s dad, right?”

I am, I said.

“Oh,” she said. “You’ve done a really good job raising him. He is a really good person.”

Thank you, I said, and tried not to break down then and there. Thank you.

19 Monday of Presidents

There was more LEGO building than I planned on. The creations, the creations this 7yo is coming up with. I am loving. We took some breaks for Dr Seuss reading - 1st time getting through Green Eggs and Ham on his own!

Maths (time, addition to 10, multiplication 2s and 3s), President review, a little forest exploring, chores.

Later: an 11th and 8th grader stumble through The Road Not Taken; they surefootedly recite Hope is the Thing with Feathers and Invictus. Later, we watch a bit more of Maestro, as Bradley Cooper disappears into his role as Leonard Bernstein and eloquently dishes forth on the differences between conducting and composing. And what of his family around him; the cost of being next to a visionary?

Also, we talked about John the Baptist. Head on a platter. What a visual. What a banquet.

16 Friday

There was a math quiz in which the exultation could not be contained. 10/10 for both the 1st grader and 4-year old. The exultation was great enough that they demanded a second exam; on this point I conceded and the results were similar.

We discussed Mars, tulips, sharing, and French. We added three words to our vocabulary: Mal, tres, bien. We reviewed Presidents up through Lincoln, studied a world map, and added patella and femur to their skeletal studies.

09 Friday

Handwriting. A 7-year old works U, u, A, a. A 4-year old painstakingly scrawls out U, u, D, and d.

Miscellaneous.
Earlier this year, I had them start an ABC book of drawings. Specifically of animals. The first grader chose U for Unicorn. The pre-K guy chose P for Pip, which is the name of…

…well, was the name of his beloved cousin’s pet a while back. What was this pet? This is how our 4-year old described the deceased pet bunny: “I’m drawing P for Pip. It’s the name of the puppy that Z—-* used to have. It died.”

Puppies and bunnies. They’re both adorable. And sometimes confusing in our memories.

*his cousin

We reviewed Geography: continents, oceans, part of Europe (northern), and ten U.S. States. The easy ones to find - West Coast, Alaska, Texas, Florida, Hawaii, plus adding in some of the adjacent ones - Arizona, Utah, Montana, Vermont, etc.

We reviewed Presidents and continued on our drawing project that involves rendering one Prez at a time, in Sharpie, on 4x6 photo paper in whatever colors we feel like.

We talked about the prophet Elisha in the Bible, and I refrained somewhat from going down the rabbit hole of discussing, with a 4- and 7-year old, the many “prophets” that have somehow emerged in modern times to warn of important things, virtually all of which have a common denominator: if the world is to not collapse imminently, then Donald Trump must be reelected. This is generally stated either explicitly, or eventually found buried amidst the other warnings as an accepted fact. I somewhat refrain from expressing my anger and emphatic rejection of DJT being favorably compared to the figures of Cyrus, David, Moses, or even Nebuchadnezzar. No, Herod Antipas or King Ahab would be much closer to his Biblical doppelgänger. Anyway I refrained, somewhat. Somewhat.

For Health, we continued adding to our study of the skeletal system, adding vertebrae and patella into the mix.

I asked our 16-year old what she thought I should dress up as for the opening of their High School Musical play. “I’m thinking of going as a nerd,” I said, “they’re called Brainiacs, right? I think I’ll dress up as that.”

“You mean,” she said, smiling, “you’re not going to dress up?”

Touche.

Later, they watched an episode of WildKratts together in the afternoon while I did some work. Later in the evening, we watched an episode of Wild Russia on National Geographic together. We are very much enjoying.

07 Wednesday

Maths. A 1st grader reviews numbers that are greater and lesser, basic addition with numbers less than 10, and different ways of combining two numbers to make one (e.g. 2 + 2, 3 + 1 both equal 4). I have him begin a full page on his own, but make the mistake of leaving him unattended. Next thing I know, he’s finishing up page number three. Rascal.

06 Tuesday

I sat in the passenger seat while she drove, son in back seat with booted foot bound up, still recovering from foot injury. We chatted on speaker with Becca about the ludicrous, yet normalized hypocrisy of Trump’s assertion that he is immune from prosecution from, from…well, from really anything he did, under the banner of his heavenly Presidential heaven. We spoke of Nikki Haley and I commented on the respect I have for her. Not a respect of many of her policy positions, not agreement with much of her platform, not even admiration for her accomplishments and (at least minimal) standing up to Trump. No, more a respect that she, on some level, is a viable candidate. Period. She has an intellect, she has a somewhat consistent standard of ethics, whether you agree with her or not - and I do not, in many cases. She has accomplishments and experience within the scope of governance, administration, politics. She’s stood up to Trump, which makes her a Javan rhino; a rare and almost-extinct member of the species known as Republicans who don’t kiss the ring of His Lord Most Bleak. This is what we’ve got to get back to people: the understanding, the willingness to fully embrace conflict and differences in healthy ways. We have got to be able to respect those with whom we have differences, again.

And there is one man, more than any other, who has enabled and driven hatred, discord, and othering in this country. Anybody who stands up to him needs at least a small level of support and respect, in my opinion.

Then we were almost in an accident. But we weren’t. And there was a beautiful opportunity to learn a life lesson the best way possible: as a non-event where nobody and nothing is hurt and all is good. But do you grow from it? That is the choice each of has with reflecting on what we have done and what we do.

Other:
A 4-year old pre-K-er draws with all his might, and then painstakingly sounds out the letters so he can spell them next to his pictures: “How do you spell ‘carrot?’ How do you spell ‘orange?’ How do you spell ____?” Again and again and again.

A 1st grader draws designs for the shop he wants to start. Art to sell. “I want to make money,” he said. “What are you raising money for?” I asked. “I want to earn money,” he said, “to go to LegoLand. And if there’s any left over, I’ll use it for nature stuff.”

I roam around a middle school art class and do little to help, aside from offering positive commentary on the pieces they’re working on; a mix of embroidery, mono printing with sharpies and crayons, and drawing/illustration.

I walk around a 7-8 classroom finding ways to help students fine-tune their research papers; looking for easy things to catch and fix quickly, like formatting. A boy is resistant to changing his center-justified paper to MLA-mandated left-aligned. “Why? That’s dumb.” I try to offer a brief explanation but he’s already moved onto talking to his classmate, a boy who successfully formatted his and therefore didn’t need my incalculably valuable feedback. :) I catch a few things here and there, mostly involving spacing, indenting, alignment. The fun and easy stuff fix fast.

The teacher, Mrs B————, says something I have not heard in a classroom before. It is something my mom, a therapist, said to me a few years ago and has stuck:

Instead of saying “I’m proud of you,” try saying “you should be proud of yourself.” It removes you from providing a statement that can be more about you, the person saying it, and the hierarchy or dynamic between you, then the person you are complimenting. It’s a simple thing, but powerful. I like that. I’ve tried to shift my mindset and verbiage to that, and have become more aware of the ways in which people compliment or praise others.

So when I heard this teacher say to the class: “I just want to praise you for how well you’ve been doing on your research papers. You’ve put in a lot of work, and you should be proud of yourselves,” I appreciated that. I’m not judging when people say what we all usually say - “I’m proud of you” - but it was neat to hear in this context from her.

January 2024

31 Wednesday - Economic Literacy

An 8th grader reviews U.S. currency and the relevant agencies responsible for manufacturing and minting, as well as economic oversight, including Department of the Treasury, the Mint, the Federal Reserve, and the Bureau of Engraving and Printing.

I work with him on the research paper he’s doing on the invention of the telephone. We go over the correct process for in-text citations. His attitude is positive. I appreciate this immensely.

Handwriting. A 4- and 7-year old spend some on Q, 8, and 4; the latter number is consistently inverted the other direction, as are uppercase Es and 3s. I am fascinated by the ways different people translate a symbol they see into their own output.

I administer a spelling test to the above students. Their concentration is complete and their grins are total as they labor through their respective exams; pencils moving carefully to inscribe just the right sounds they hear onto paper.

26 Friday

A Theater parent meeting, during which my (non-parent) 7- and 4-year olds ate blueberry muffins and drew Star Wars pictures. I drank coffee and somehow ended up volunteering to help run some basketball drill training in conjunction with the dance choreography. May the fates be with me. A 16- and 13-year old followed up with a four-hour rehearsal, then separated to prepare for a formal event this evening. Two of my students and I returned to our mountaintop learning palace and practiced handwriting, maths, skeletal system review, and read as many pages as I could of Ramona the Brave until my eyes drooped and I put up the white flag for a 15-minute power snooze. I made it nine minutes before an anonymous student needed help with certain matters in the bathroom. Later, and after all hands were washed well, we made grilled cheese-pickle-and-tomato sandwiches, FaceTimed their pregnant aunt and non-pregnant Grandma, and watched part of a documentary on animal life in northeast Russia - Kamatsk, I believe? Oh, and previous to that, we started, just for fun, The Lego Batman Movie. I was going to let them watch it to close out the week, in part so I could get a little work completed, but found myself caught up in the very funny opening, so watched with them for fifteen minutes.

24 Wednesday

Driving with a 13-year old 8th grader for a high school prep meeting. We listen to an NPR piece on dechurching - the increasing number of American Christians who are no longer connected or involved with a formal church. He gets a big grin as we park: Ah! I wanted to finish listening to that! I love that. The classroom meeting is packed; we stand. Here we are again: the precipice of high school for the second child. It’ll be a blast. Help us to enjoy it all and be an effective support system.

23 Tuesday

Environmental Science. Mrs W———- leads a class discussion on Ecological Footprints, shortened to EF. I sit at a table with some energetic students comparing results. They plug in various aspects of their lifestyles, including commuting, diet, shopping, and general consumption to determine their multiplier. The highest is 6.9, and there are some hilarious interchanges as people keep asking her why hers is high. “I drive an old truck!” She says. “And I have different campuses I have to be at!” There is a good energy at this table and I appreciate the discussion. My daughter - moves from across the room to join our table. I don’t think anybody knows she’s my daughter. Hers is the lowest and people want to know why. Turns out being vegetarian is good for keeping an EF down.

A junior shakes his head: “My mom came back from IKEA this weekend with like seven things. My EF woulda been better otherwise. Thanks Mom.”

I keep my laughter inside. I love that Mrs W———- has them thinking and discussing these things.

In Math 8: Mrs B———- leads everyone through examples - or rather review - of solving algebraic expressions with single variables. Somehow, inevitably, there comes a discussion point concerning the importance and relevance of math. She reminds them of the company one of her sons just got hired by, and of the ways math is relevant to his problem-solving. “Elon Musk cares about showing the work,” she says.

22

He’s done. The math workbook we got him for Christmas is…finished. With a sigh of satisfaction and closure, he folds in the pages and plops it down. Ready for the next thing. Which is…gotta figure that out.

19

A four-year old and math. Slowly getting Time figured out - little hand, big hand, and moving back to money. Pennies, dimes, and nickels.

18 Thursday, a snippet of Vocabulary

Five 8th grade vocab words today: incongruous, prevaricate, ensconced, corpulent, infallible.

A four-year old needs help reading the story problems in order to solve the…math. Addition, with answers written out in steady scrawl. He still transposes his Es and 3s. He’s trying to understand Time, but it’s a stretch. One of the hard things is finding the right amount to push - he doesn’t want to quit sometimes, but when he keeps going, he can get frustrated too.

17

A four-year old does math. Onto subtraction. I can’t keep up anymore.

16 Tuesday - Health & Fitness

An 8th grader summarizes his present levels of fitness and some goals he’d like to achieve. One goal is to build up to being able to do 50 pushups in a row. His plan is to aim for 100 a day total, in groups of ten at first, then building up to 20, and so forth. It’s really neat to see the ways in which he’s become interested in fitness, exercise, and setting physical goals for himself. He is a boy morphing to man; our wrestling and boxing jousts and battles are becoming increasingly…challenging for me. As his mom/my wife pointed out recently, in very funny, yet accurate and endearing-ish fashion: “My boys…my boys; one heading into his physical prime, and the other going in the other direction.” Or something like that. It was true and it was funny and I know she loves me. Onward we go.

A four-year old does a lot of math.

15

This is the problem: we got our 4-year old a Kindergarten math book for Christmas (another one). He is…almost done. He wakes up and goes at it, attacks it, buries himself in it with the vigor of a gladiator roaring to blows. Missing numbers, patterns, what comes next, follow the path, number tracing and writing, counting by tens…he knocks them off one by one, one by one, ten by ten. The end is approaching.

11

The 4-year old is buried in math. Adding things like 4 + 2 and 3 + 4. Never was a mathematician more focused.

Our first grader practices writing numbers 1-20, draws illustrations to depict various numbers (three hearts, 17 circles, 13 flowers, etc.), and matches various numbers to the number of objects. He does each with careful precision, paying special attention to the flowers. When does math become not fun, and how do we keep that point at bay and still move forward?

09

The 4-year old is buried in math. Today: matching, shapes, patterns, which number comes next? More, less, or equal?

January 2024 above

December 2023 below

A brief and incomplete summary of a few 11th grade learnings the last few months:

Environmental Science.

Prehistoric landmasses. Explanations of Wegener and Du Toit’s theories and ideas on continental drift. How might the prehistoric continent of Gondwanaland have looked long ago, including the modern countries and continents of India, Madagascar, Australia, Africa, Antarctica, and South America?

I am appreciative for the teacher our daughter has for these topics. So much of teaching is having a balance of confidence and humility to present complicated ideas in simple ways without harmful reductionism and with respect and sensitivity for subject matter. This teacher, Mrs W———-, does an effective job of conveying the data and the stories; a presentation of ideas, theories, and evidence-based understandings that are rooted in science and methodology and done so in ways that - to me anyway - come across as effectively teaching; bringing students to doorways of understanding so they are armed well to go further if they wish.

Life cycles of stars. How do you not kneel, humbled, by the scale, immensity, enormity of the universe and the solemn cycles of birth, death, rebirth that stars undertake, by the billions and billions and billions?

Layers and composition of the atmosphere. Troposphere, stratosphere, mesosphere, thermosphere. I am not equating my ability to teach these topics with that of the very competent and intelligent teacher our daughter is learning these subjects from now; it does provide a shot of nostalgia and smile to think about different conversations with my daughter, years ago, when I first introduced some of these concepts. How much did she remember going into this class? Probably, possibly little, yet I still retain hope in some value in introducing, in providing gateways of exploration in core ideas early on. I carry some of those conversations and learnings together close to my heart, always.

Great transitions / evolution of four-limbed creatures / transitional forms / the progression of anatomy changes from fossil skeletons. You know, the easy and completely controversy-free contemporary topics in education today.

What I am not afraid of is conversation, of learning, of trying to understand and compassionately exist with others despite differing opinions on core beliefs or convictions. There’s so much in science, in the world, of how humans treat each other, that I don’t understand. I don’t understand. What I do know is that I am not interested, as a Christian with a confident, yet tenuous balance of reason, intellect, and faith, is that I will not willingly withhold knowledge or learning - from experts or authorities in the scope of their fields - from teaching our children. That is a choice we make when we choose to trust our children and our relationship with our children by letting go; by letting them hear and learn viewpoints and ideas that I may not always like or understand.

But what can get us through these things? Conversation. Compassion. Questioning. A willingness to learn and to listen and to practice humility. A desire to avoid knee-jerk reactions to ‘protecting’ our children from volatile topics - or rather, topics that have been determined to be volatile.

There’s so much I don’t know or understand about the origins of the universe or how humans came to be what we are today. As I read that last sentence, I’m thinking…that’s a pretty good one. To what have we progressed, when I look at the ways we treat each other with the technology we’ve built for ourselves?

Anyway. It’s also becoming interesting to see the ways in which two of her classes overlap in fascinating ways: Environmental Science and AP Human Geography. Understanding: how can we better understand both the natural world and the nature of humans living in it?

NOVEMBER 2023

28 Tuesday

Driving, we talked about Artificial Intelligence and how it is becoming integrated into so much of our everyday lives. I talked about its use in Adobe Lightroom and how it’s, for better or for worse, made certain repetitive tasks (such as image sharpening) not only faster and easier…but better. It’s hard to admit. We have so many choices ahead of what we want to gain and what we want to give up.

Second day of Tech Week, pre-show. They felt good about yesterday. “It kind of scares me that it went so well,” our daughter laughed. Today: costumes.

I called the security officer and the crossing guard the wrong names. Note: their names are not Dean or Chandra. I hold myself accountable. Later, I had to step out and the new security door had to be opened for me. Magic words, L—— at the front quizzed me. Umm, please…open sesame? I asked. Nope. She said. Gotta do a dance. Macarena, electric slide…

How about I practice at home? I begged, and she finally clicked me through.

I helped in Math 8. First: sharpening 30 pencils. This is what multiple college degrees get you, kids.

“Distinguishing between proportional and non-proportional situations using a table.” I helped two groups at the whiteboard; one of which included my son. “If you plug the numbers in and the answer is the same for every one, it’s proportional. If even one is different, it’s not.”

I congratulated the teacher on her one-week and change new granddaughter, and her good time with three other grandkids at Zoo Lights over Thanksgiving Break.

24 Friday

November is such a great Math Month for our family. Honestly, it should be for families in general. Why? Because…post-Halloween! Candy to sort, to organize, to use for statistical analyses, for addition and subtraction and multiplication and square root factoring and…maybe even to eat once in a while. Once in a while.

21 Tuesday

I drove with our Olders, and my son quizzed his sister on an intense Human Geography test she has this morning. He manages to make the process an entertaining affair. But he gets her prepared.

Later, I tromped to the woods with our Youngers, where we started building a fire and hauling brush and wood I’d previously cut. Trying to clear a swath to a spring bubbling from underground. They helped, and then I gave them their last quiz before Thanksgiving, in field, by a fire, adjacent to a forest. Ten questions each, consisting of math, spelling, geography, and Presidents. The 6yo has been taking off with numbers recently; diving into multiplication and regrouping with three-digit numbers. The 4yo is proud of his skills at adding sums such as 5+2. We laughed and thought hard and my heart was warm, though the temperature was not.

20 Monday

I’ve noticed something recently. It has to do with learning, repetition, and frequency. This is a very incomplete thought, but I’ve been processing the ways in which our 6- and 4-year olds learn, and there’s an interesting thing currently: they seem to retain and make larger leaps forward right now when I’m not coming back to the same things every day. In other words, they seem to do better every 2-3 days, currently, when I’m introducing new ideas, such as regrouping in math, or reading and sounding out words. It’s like…when it has the right amount of time to settle…

15 Wednesday; a sampling of Economic Literacy

An 8th grader examines the reasons the federal government does not allow individual states to issue their own currencies. In this era of intense partisanship and philosophical verbal - at this point - warring over the relationship between states’ rights and federal rights…is the notion of currency-issuing one that will become an issue at some point? He explained the historic reason well:

“Since many people travel between states, many currencies would not work for other areas and everybody would have to get certain money for certain states. It would be more like countries than states.”

Well said. Are we a unified grouping of diverse states? Or are we a confederation of loosely-connected geo-political entities? The answer is contained in our country’s name. It will be interesting to see where things go over the coming years - year, singular, in particular - as some states flex populist muscles and assert authority and autonomy from federal messaging or mandate.

13 Monday; a sampling

Language Review. An 8th grader proofs sentences and corrects them to the proper case, spelling and syntax. Is this important in an age of casual, informal, fluid communication? Yes. Emphatic yes. We still, we still still still use words and language to communicate; to convey our feelings and thoughts and analyses of the visual. A decimal and a comma still matter on your tax return. Periods and spellings and using the right word for the right situation still matter. These things still matter. People dim and diminish and dilute the important of words and language and syntax in everyday usage, because much of the time we limp along - or stride along - just fine, being sloppy with our written communication. It doesn’t matter until it matters. And then, and then…sometimes it really matters.

I’m not a language purist. I’m not a stickler for proper syntax in every situation. I’m a relativist, a contextualist. Use the appropriate language and appropriate type of communication for your audience or the intended receiver. I leave all kinds of prepositions hanging. I flip back and forth on using the Oxford comma or not. I rely way too much on adjectives and adverbs and semi-colons sometimes. A lot of times. I start many sentences broken, fragmented, in media res. Like that?

But that old cliche about the rules applies. You gotta know them first. Then, then you can start having your way with them.

So an 8th grader dutifully works his way through a handful of sentences to deconstruct and then put back together. All under the hypocritic purview of his dad - me - a frequent word slaughterer and language annihilator. :)

Geography. The same 8th grader reviews population and area in the Eastern Hemisphere. It still blows my mind to look at the combined populations of China and India. And then to start looking at the city size? I’ve lived in some metro areas, but I was born and raised in a small town; my experiences in massive, concentrated cities is limited. Look at the numbers:

32 million and change live in Tokyo. 21 million in Seoul. Mumbai? 19 million, same as Jakarta. The list goes on and on.

07 Tuesday

Mrs W———- talks about the distance from Earth to Sun. I fight down the impulse to raise my hand and blurt out me me me! 93 million miles! Also known as one AU (astronautical unit). Things I learned during my pandemic review dives into various disciplines, including Astronomy.

But I kept my mouth shut. She continued: “we use geometry to calculate distance - triangle geometry.” She used an example: pick an object in the distance, hold your thumb out, close one eye, then switch.

Trippy.

I also tried, in our 8th grader’s class, to nail down the names of more classmates, as well as parents. It makes a big difference to be able to use people’s names. In this class, I helped several 7th and 8th graders rehearse for the upcoming play. It’s about Egypt, and we worked on the correct pronunciation of words and names, including: extravagant, hieroglyphs, hierarchy, deities, Abydos, signify, reigned, Amenhotep, Akhenaten, Aden, stagnant, and Maritmut. You know, everyday conversation types of words.

03 Friday, in which we blur the lines between scientific research and data analysis

We rated Halloween candy. Normally, we use these, post-Halloween, as mathematical macguffins in the pursuit of learning. But today…today…today seemed like the right day to do some taste tests: we cut up and rated on a scale of 0-5, with 0 being awful and 5 being heavenly, a sampling of the four trillion candies collected last month.

There are some interesting takeaways; not just regarding taste preferences, but the outliers and the ways each researcher formed a baseline.

sni

Also on this Friday, and in a different classroom and in a manner disconnected to the above experiment, an 11th grader studied star spectra and such subtopics as binary stars, Cepheid variables, emission spectrums, and the difference between blue and redshifts.

02 Vocabulary

A sampling of 8th grade vocabulary words today: pernicious, bereft, ubiquitous, salient, contrition.

October 2023

31 Tuesday, U.S. History & Environmental Science

Civil War to Reconstruction overview. Role of Constitutional Amendments in post-Civil War, including 13th, 14th, and 15th (abolishment, citizenship, voting rights). Ways the South tried - and did - restrict African Americans from voting. Plessy vs. Ferguson court decisions, sharecropping, Jim Crow laws, Compromise of 1877, KKK, reformers such as Booker T. Washington, W.E.B. Dubois, Ida Wells.

Plate tectonics!

24 Tuesday, Math 8

She reviewed, again, scientific notation. “Everybody’s struggling,” she announced.

23 Monday

I continue to remain so convicted about the following: our job as parents, whether our children are in homeschool, traditional five-day school, public, private, whatever…at some point there will be - there must be, should be - others in their life who help with their education.

It is a huge part of our job as parents to prepare them for learning elsewhere.

That means first: character stuff like kindness, the ability to give attention, self-confidence, respect, etc. It means second: at least helping with the fundamentals required for learning a discipline. Whether they are formally learning elsewhere - math, for example - they must learn to be articulate in the fundamental vocabulary of that discipline. Even if we are not formally, specifically teaching it, we can and should reinforce, check in, review, and ensure that they are able to understand these things, so when they’re in a classroom, they are prepared to ask good questions, speak up when they’re not understanding, be resilient when things are challenging and stay up, more or less, with the actual content that a teacher is trying to present. Tangible example: if my child is in, say, 8th grade, I may not be specifically teaching how to solve pre-algebraic equations. But, I can do three things:

1. Check in regularly to simply know what they’re learning and try to provide support. That means communicating with the teacher if necessary, asking questions, and again, simply knowing what’s going on.

2. Hold them accountable to complete assignments and communicate with the teacher if necessary. That means not grumbling about how math is being taught so much differently these days and how dumb it is. It means not making self-deprecating remarks about being bad at math. Don't create a convenient excuse mindset for them to self-identify as a ‘bad at math person.’

3. Quiz them on the stuff they do know. Things like basic addition and subtraction. If you’re in 8th grade, you have to know the times tables well enough to quickly solve more complicated equations - and thing is, the further your education goes, the more that fundamental knowledge - such as times tables - becomes a part of the process. It’s no longer the final answer, it’s part of the problem-solving process, and if you have to stop and figure out or look up these types of fundamental information constantly…you’re likely to continue having trouble processing more complicated concepts.

Tune in. Stay tuned in. If you’re not in tune, find the right tune.

19 Thursday

A morning spent in a small coastal town, working on accounts receivable with me mum at their business. Racing two hours back to swap with me wife and daughter, who had engagements elsewhere. The afternoon helping a 13-year old get set up with a Wacom tablet as he learns Photoshop, then outside to read books in the sunlight with a 6- and 4-year old. Eventually we meandered to the woods and field for plotting our next fire pit, and then hide and seek in a forested grove. Later, I worked with an 8th grader on scientific notation and multiplying/dividing exponents.

17 Tuesday

They are furiously creating art, drawing, writing, dancing, playing; these are the bookmarks for the morning so far. The middle was the forest: the forest, the woods, the open field beyond our house yonder, where we roamed, played hide and seek, invented new games. They found themselves in dense thickets of blackberries, perilously balancing on giant nurse logs over poisonous mushrooms while a wild-ish goat lurked in proximity. They encouraged each other throughout: “we are going to FINISH this path because we DON’T QUIT!” And other similar sports and life aphorisms that seemed just perfect for a dangerous day in the dangerous dark wood.

How could I - or anyone - do anything for their development or education than this? Leading a short ways to the gateway for new places and new things and new ideas…and then stepping aside.

Sometimes the best thing I do is coaching briefly, then stepping to the sidelines and just being a cheerleader. And sometimes player.

11 Wednesday

Wet, dumping, wet wet wet, Taylor Swift, on the phone trying to figure out 50th anniversary stuff for parents, an 11th grader working on functions, helping a 7th grader with science, discussing the recent Hamas attack on Israel and the underlying history going back to British occupation and the complexity, the complexity of trying to understand and make any kind of sense or find any kind of hope for all the peoples involved…

…three boys making cookies in the afternoon, poetry, drawing Taylor Swift illustrations, talking with a 13-year old about the importance of paying attention and following the process for learning something, anything new.

“Mama, it’s time for Daddy’s speech. I just want to get it over with.” - a 13-year old in response to the above

10 Tuesday

We drove in the rain and they were gifted to a lecture, delivered by me, about the importance of acknowledging those who help you. I think they really loved it and wished the trip could have been longer.

There is a new parking protocol, starting this week, and it is confusing people. One of my friends, and a teacher, almost got run over by a woman. I am not happy about that. Slow down, people.

I sat in on consult with my 11th grader and we discussed her schedule, Occupational Ed credits for next year, PSAT, college plans, career ideas, and humanitarian work. She then went on to class, and I spoke with a teacher about the performing arts and certain upcoming events that may relevance to our family; she relayed some of the difficulties of this particular production and spoke of how funny, how funny, our son is in her class.

Someone called my name in the hallway and I turned. An old college classmate. I’d run into a few years ago, Becca ran into several months ago. She just started a position here, though her boys, 8 and 10, attend a private school elsewhere in the area.

I jumped into my son’s classroom and helped grade papers while the math teacher tried to lead a class forward. It is helpful, in leading a class forward, to have students join an 8th grade math class with certain grains of knowledge, such as what times what equals 9?

I segued to my son’s other classroom and returned papers. This is a new bunch, as the days we engage with this school formally changed for the first time in eight years. He is in a classroom with approximately eighteen girls and a couple other boys. I’m still learning kids’ names.

I went to my daughter’s history class and listened in on a lecture about the Civil War. Previous though, he spoke of the war just started by Hamas and attempted to give context and history. Or at least context. Or at least geographic context. Not so much historical.

Helped do some prop painting for theater and then finally headed home in the rain, stopping to show my daughter how to pay and pump for gas. Then we talked about the various approaches of teachers in providing context and background for important discussions, such as Hamas and Israel and current affairs.

September 2023

11th, 8th, 1st and Pre-K

27 - Economic Literacy on a Monday

An 8th grader studies the concept of bartering and the role it played in colonial America. In this era of interest in DeFi (decentralized finance), blockchain technology, and cryptocurrencies, as well as ongoing use of marketplaces like Etsy, eBay, and virtual neighborhood service and product exchanges, is there relevance and value in examining these historic systems and foundations of barter?

22

I sat in (11th grade) Environmental Science as Mrs W——— led a lecture and discussion the age of the earth and segued into plate tectonics, fossils, rocks, and landforms.

She gave a refresher on what the equator and prime meridian are and the distribution of volcanos mapped out, according to latitude and longitude. Different regions have different distributions of rock, silica, basalt, rhyolite, and andesite (think: Cascade Range versus Hawaii).

It was fascinating. Some thought so, some did not, were I to surmise based on body language and other non-verbal clues. One classmate announced, with 20 ounces as proof by her elbow, that “…this is my third one of the morning.”

21

An 8th grader reviews Vocabulary. Samples: cognizance, soiree, denizen, domicile, penultimate.
One of my not-so-secret hopes is that our children will grow up loving, their whole lives, stories and language and words; the beauty of how worlds are created with deft maneuvering of imaginings in the head translated to characters on paper (or screen); to develop a lifelong appreciation for narrative, for poetry, for the power of language to move, to empower, to bring forth beauty.

20

Language Review. An 8th grader reviews roots, prefixes, and suffixes. Today:

an - not, without
aesth / esth - feeling, perception, sensation
meter - measure
esia - action, process
ete - one who
ic - like related to
ist - one who
ology - the study of

18

An 8th grader reviews Eastern Hemisphere political geography. Quick: which countries are a part of more than one continent?

A 1st grader practices counting by 10s and continuing sequences of numbers (“what three numbers come after 47…”)

12 “Day 7 out of 180,” is what the Math Teacher said.

There are probably easier things in the world to do than teach 8th grade math. It’s a hunch, just a hunch.

A) She told the class how talking is okay for the moment, but how she’ll be cracking down soon.
B) She talked about the importance of working on basic math facts every period so that the harder stuff later on will be easier.
C) She went over strategies for easily adding and subtracting, such as using hands, double bar, and number lines; strategies that can help to provide a clear mental picture.
D) She announced we would be using the app and website Clever.
E) She foreshadowed how 8th grade will lean more and more into expressing integers as variables.
F) She stressed the importance of taking notes and of doing it the way she is showing.
G) She reviewed rational and irrational numbers and now to convert between decimals and fractions. She asked the class for help. “How would you express 3/4 as a decimal?” Answer, I vigorously willed my 12-year old, you know this, answer!
His thoughts or desire to respond publicly were not sufficient to entice his hand to shoot upward.
H) She reviewed the acronym for order of operations when dividing:

DMSB
Dad - Divide
Mom - Multiply
Sister - Subtract
Brother - Bring down

“Remember,” she said, “a rational number may terminate or repeat.”

“I have no idea still how to do long division,” announced an 8th grader.

The teacher patiently responded: “Okay, good question…it’s important to make sense of it now…” and went on to patiently work with this student, and others, on math fundamentals. Fundamentals, to my remembrance, were fundamental considerably earlier than 8th grade.

11

Maths. Two boys, grade 1 and pre-K, embark on numbers-calculations. Adjacent but not together; the first grader wants to ensure the autonomous integrity of his learning when it comes to Mathematics, a subject he is becoming increasingly confident about. I give them a quiz. They are wholly unprepared for and thoroughly upset about. They show their disgust by providing the answers loudly: “Three plus four equals…seven. Is that correct?” We go through this ritual - “is that correct?” - multiple times, as they stand tall and proud on our dining table/school bench and bellow out their responses.

To be clear: they love this. And I love that they love it, and I love their faux-disgust at “having” to “do math.” It is beautiful. Then I have them start on “About Me” posters, a ritual that goes back years to our Olders. Guess what: I make them do one too.

07

Geography. An 8th grader reviews Eastern Hemisphere countries, which include (at least parts of) Asia, Africa, Australia, and Europe. What’s the big deal about knowing where things are in the world? I mean, you can just Google it if you need to find a place, right?

I hear this idea expressed a great deal these days in various classrooms. Not just Geography, in general. The idea that you can just look something up when you need it. I’m not saying we need to be memorizing our friends’ phone numbers again, but…what happened to making fundamental understandings of basic knowledge a priority? Knowing the way our geography defines so much of our identity, and in turn our relationship with other humans, strikes me as being of fundamental importance.

Word Roots. An 8th grader reviews prefixes, roots, and suffixes. Sampling: appendage

Appendage:
ap + pend + age (prefix, root, suffix)
ap - to, toward, against
pend - hang, weigh
age - state, quality, act

August 2023

31 Orientation : and thus it begins, again : 11th, 8th, 1st and Pre-K

Rain. Space-suit suited boys wearing crocs. Whoops.

We sat in orientations and filled out forms such as “why are you here?”

Things one teacher, Mrs D——— emphasized:
show up for advising
an increased emphasis on character strong: social-emotional learning
pivot to CommonLit 360. no more book reading logs
a lot of critical and creative thinking

07

These are the things I want you to do today, I said:

1. Play with balls.

2. Play memory game.

3. Do some painting.

4. Do some reading.

5. Draw a picture of a composer you like while listening to music.

Those were some of the things we did today.

July 2023

Sometime in early July.

These are some things we’re aiming to do every day this summer, I said to the younger boys (3, 6):

1. Read together just for fun

2. Continue learning to read

3. Practice letters and spelling

4. Geography - identify the major oceans, continents, and a handful of states

5. Maths - find something fun to count, add, and subtract

6. Typing - perhaps even practice writing some words besides “toot” and “poop”

7. “Schoolwork on the computer,” otherwise known as reading and strategy games on PBS Kids.org

8. Play in the forest

9. Memory game

June 2023

Sometime in June.

Welcome to summer! I said. These are a few things that need to be done before 8.30pm every day, six days a week, while you’re out of formal school:

1. Music practice

2. German

3. Latin review 5-10 minutes

4. 45 minutes reading

5. Math review

6. Poetry - review two poems

7. Journal

8. And, of course, chores

9. And, of course, help with meals and cleanup

10. And, of course, additional cheerful assistance with projects that come along over the course of most days

It is summer. Ain’t I a sunshiny kick in the pants on a cool day?