Our life is just a rollercoaster, hold on tight because falling off is not an option.
I just thought I pass on that the Chronicle of Higher Education (a weekly journal for professors and administrators connected to colleges) just ran a long article (October 12) about homeschoolers being courted and accepted more and more into colleges.
Edited later - The Chronicle only allows open access to articles for a short time frame. If you are coming to this after that window closes, you can find the article here.
Indiana University has a wonderful theater dept. They put on top quality shows and usually bring in an outside talent (sometimes actor, other times director…) to work on their productions. When I look at their programs, what usually hits me is unless you happen to have that ’something’ that a role needs, don’t expect to be cast in one of their shows until you are a senior. The seniors and grad. students get the plum roles.
Last year they got funding to start doing ’school’ performances. Only two shows get funded, but then they put on a full length production (unlike the rep. theater in Indianapolis that gives you a 90 min. piece) with a discussion period afterwards. And it’s FREE!
Some of us took advantage of the shows last year (Crucible and 12th Night) and came back raving about them. They are marketing these special shows for public school high schools, but they don’t mind our mixed age group.
So this year they got funding to do it again and the fall show is Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure. And I asked the people in our local group to let me know how many tickets they wanted. We ended up requesting 60 tickets. (for our group, that’s huge.) Nearly everyone wanted to go and people came out of the woodwork asking for tickets.
So far, so good.
But some of those families are planning on bringing their littlest kids - as young as 3 - to the show. So I post a link to the wikipedia description of the show and mention that its target audience is high school students and that it’s 2.5 hours long and there is NO food or drink allowed in the theater. (The show is at 10 AM) I also mention that people might want to read the synopsis so they are aware to the content.
And get no response.
And then I get a letter from the IU coordinator to the teachers who are bringing kids. They want to make sure people are aware of their ‘approach’ to the play. The note described how they aren’t doing the opening scene nude, but it will express the debauchery of Vienna. They would rate it a soft PG-13 by today’s movie standards.
So I forwarded the note on to the group.
And some of the people are dropping out. (Though not the 3 year old’s family.)
Do homeschoolers have blinders on when it comes to Shakespeare?
Do they just assume that since he’s so great and a ‘classic’ it must be appropriate for anyone, even if they’d restrict access to anything modern dealing with these topics?
Do they space on the fact that Shakespeare wrote about mature themes and played up some aspects to appeal to the groundlings?
And I’m still dealing with how to explain to the mother of the 3 yo. that I’m concerned that she won’t sit for the play. She won’t get most of the ‘mature’ aspects, but will she stay in her seat?
For anyone looking for a chuckle, you might enjoy reading this little book about homeschooling.
I read it when Deb first self-published it, but just recently had a reminder about it. Deb is a friend from our state discussion list.
It’s been a busy week and finding time to talk about it has not been happening. So while I wait for the dryer to finish up so I’ll have enough clean clothes to pack for our trip tomorrow, I thought I’d play catch-up.
First off, we finally have a date for Boy’s make-up AP exam. The local high school called on Thursday and asked, finally, ‘when would he like to take it?’ So keep your fingers crossed on the 24th. It will be nice to get it over with.
And second off, while the issue that I spoke about in BANG, isn’t fully resolved; everyone (but the woman hassled for ’swatting’) is moving on and putting it behind them. The swatter has rejoined the list, but hasn’t shown up at anything yet.
And that’s too bad. We all had a great time on our fall pumpkin farm trip
. There’s a few places in the area to go, but the kids like Hog Wallow because of the HUGE climbing structure they have. I think some of the kids never really went into the mazes because they were having so much fun. 
We got there at noon, in time for lunch,
then the kids (and some moms) loaded into the wagon for a ride 
and a chance to go pick pumpkins. After that we all just hung out and enjoyed the nearly perfect fall weather. 
This trip is also a lot of fun for the moms (and a dad this time). Even the families with little ones had chances to sit and chat because we set ourselves where we could keep an eye on the play structure. 
We did get a little silly when B ripped her pants and went off for S to duck tape her decent and then had to come back and show everyone. 
We ended up not leaving until about 4 PM.
Earlier this week the kids went on a local government field trip. Some of the older kids are doing a government workshop this year. Neither of our two were interested, but we decide to join the field trip.
They started at city hall and got a description of how our city government works (complete with a visit from the Mayor) - who couldn’t stop commenting on Girl’s blue hair.
Mayor: “Hey, I was going to do that this morning, but I didn’t have enough time!”
Girl: ” Are you sure that you didn’t have enough time? I would have thought that you didn’t have enough hair!”
From there we went to sit in on the county’s criminal court. I stayed outside with another mom who was holding her son’s pocket knife, so I missed this stop. I’m told Boy didn’t want to leave.
And from there, we went to the county office building and first met a local judge
(who wasn’t sitting in court and so could answer questions.) and then the county commissioners. 
After the kids were done asking their questions the commissioners spent another 10 mins asking the kids questions about homeschooling. It was interesting hearing the kids speak comfortably about their families’ choices and their own long range goals. The commissioners seem to come away with a very positive view of the kids.
And with that, I’m off to sleep and then we’re taking off tomorrow for the weekend. You’ll have to wait until I return to hear about what we are up to..
Right now I’m feeling very frustrated with our local group. It’s imploding. A bunch of newbies joined this year and we’re dealing with a problem.
The problem that is actually making me sick to my stomach is dealing with Mom’s interacting with kids that aren’t their own. One of the newbies (whom we have been trying to find a way to gently deal with the way she scolds her own kids in public - calling them stupid, barely dealing with the little ones’ tears….) was trying to help another newbie mom (but very young) get their names entered in the bowling machine. Younger newbie mom had a little, little girl who was trying to tap buttons while older newbie mom was entering data. Older newbie mom slapped the little girl’s hand away. Never saying anything to the younger newbie mom who was standing right behind her.
Younger newbie mom left in tears, though some of us talked to her that we didn’t find older newbie mom’s behavior acceptable. It was suggested to older newbie mom that she might apologize to younger newbie mom. She didn’t.
End of story? NO
The next day the founder of our group (older woman, raised 7 kids of her own, took on 2 more, been doing homeschooling for 25 or so years) posted on our list a loooong note about what is abuse and that moms shouldn’t reprimand other people’s kid’s but should take it to the child’s mom. (something that’s always been the norm in our group - you sit the troubling child down and find the parent to deal with the issue.)
She also slammed yelling at your own children as not respectful and on and on and on and on. It’s the way she talks and most of it’s hot air, not all, but a fair amount. Those of us that know B say okay, and move on.
And now most of the newbies are in an uproar and talking about dropping out……. even though they weren’t there and don’t know B to put what she said in prospective.
I’m torn between wanting to be the peace maker and telling them all to go to hell, no one’s making them stay.
But I’m still sick to my stomach.
I thought I’d update Boy’s AP status for anyone who was around in the Summer.
Back in July they gave us 4 options. Cancel it and get our money back, Retake the complete test next May, Accept the score from the part not lost (the harder part of the exam) and have it marked on the report as such, or retake the missing part as soon as possible.
We opted to retake the missing part. When I spoke to Collegeboard at the end of July, I was concerned that they would want to reschedule it sometime in August. Needless to say, I asked to consider the end of September as the earliest dates.
Well, I finally heard back from the high school.
They told me that Collegeboard set the date and it’s December 20. Excuse me?
Yep, December 20, take it or leave it.
Then I called Collegeboard and they are telling me that the high school set the date. So we are going around new circles trying to get a workable date. Grrrr.
There’s an opinion piece in the NYTimes that fits a lot of what I tell people that come looking for information on homeschooling.
What’s needed is a wholesale transformation of the public school system from the broken-down postwar model of the past 50 or 60 years.
Prior to WWII, more than 50% of the kids in this country were educated in one room school houses (I actually got that fact out of an architecture book about one room schoolhouses that my b-i-l had) Ever since we started driving toward more and more unified schools there has been more and more need to find a better system.
Homeschooling as a formal option has grown out of that need.
Unified schools link academics with socialization. Any child not in the ‘norm’ on both, will be stressed out and will not do their optimum. Some will handle it better than others, but studies show that neither social promotion nor holding kids back to relearn missing skills has any impact on the drop-out rates. (I have a link around here somewhere supporting that, but it’s not handy)
Homeschooling has natural socialization that isn’t connected to academics. Much like the old one room school model where each child tracked through his/her work separately and then could ’socialize’ as they wanted to.
Now the author of this article goes off on what to do with teachers to fix the pubic schools, but I certainly like his ‘take’ on the problem.
With Boy off to college next year, college applications and sources of financial aid have been on everyone’s mind (except maybe Girl, she’s just trying to come up with plans for what to do with his room.)
So reading this article out of the Boston Globe was a little shocking.
College officials define middle class as families who make $100,000 and more per year.
WHAT!! When did that happen?
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