Regarding the absence of heroics in quiet circumstances.

One of the hardest things for me sometimes - most of the time - a lot of the time! - is to let go of my ego and let go of whether or not I receive credit.

Or acknowledgment.

It’s tricky sometimes - a lot of the time - most of the time. Tricky in a particular way when you’re in a home-based educational program where you’re heavily involved and invested in their day-to-day education. For example - and I understand this is petty, but it’s honest and sincere and ideally at some point will be…helpful or illuminating to someone, perhaps my future self, perhaps my kids if and when they have their own children. Ignoring the terrible syntax contained in this paragraph so far, there are a number of things that I’ve spent many, many hours with them learning, often in fun and interesting ways, long before they were introduced to them in someone else’s formal classroom.

This is particularly true in the areas of history, social sciences, writing, literature, art, poetry, and…Greek and Latin.

So many things in life are non-events: the people who did things that prevented terrible things from happening.

The things a child doesn’t struggle with. Oftentimes these non-events and non-happenings and non-issues are because of conscious, specific, deliberate choices made by people instrumental in their development and support ecosystem at some point life. So I’m happy that our 7th grader zips through quizzes and assignments, in a formal classroom, involving Greek and Latin roots…and there’s also a part of me that wants to say things like: “Hey, did you tell Mrs D——— that you’ve been learning about those since you were five?” Pointless, eh? Yes. Possibly I’m writing this here out of a sense of venting or finding a healthy, quiet outlet to pat myself on the back. “Hey you, you did real good, your kid is rocking that one thing!” A little ridiculous. But, we’re all captive to our ego to some extent. I’m owning it. And trying to do the right thing at the right time, whether it’s illuminated or in the gray-ish murky blur between night and dawn.

Miscellaneous learnings:

A 7th grader worked on spelling. Specifically, consonant changes - the way consonants can change in a pair of words.
Sample words: remit/remission, emit/emission, omit/omission, commit/commission, recede/recession, concede/concession, succeed/succession.

and homophones - words that are pronounced the same.
Examples: aisle/isle, cite/site/sight, chord/cord, faze/phase, stationary/stationery.

and absorbed prefixes - Greek roots that change their final letter to match the beginning sound of the base word, such as ad- and con-
Example: accumulate, apparent, collaborate, communication.