You seriously can’t argue with this:

Because all holidays have been created by humans and are, therefore, made up, our family decided that we not only could but should make up our own winter holiday. We haven’t finished figuring out just what our holiday will be, but we do seem to have agreed that any quality holiday should at the very least include:

• chocolate
• comic books
• family
• food
• music

Those items aren’t listed in order of importance, although I would argue that chocolate does, indeed, rank first.

Happy winter holidays, no matter how/if/why you celebrate.

Tags: winter holiday, holidays, chocolate, family

I‘m somewhat new to the medium of comics in general and graphic novels in particular, which is odd because for 15 years I’ve been married to a guy who owns hundreds, if not thousands, of comic books. They’re all bagged, boarded, and stored away where the kids can’t get their sticky little fingers on them — unless they ask first. I admit I’ve been a bit of a book snob, looking down on comics as a lesser form of storytelling, as genre unworthy of my precious little free time, rather than as a legitimate storytelling medium or format that works well for many genres. Until recently, I not only had no interest in comics, but I actively stayed away from them. I mean, really, aren’t comic books for kids?

Why, yes they are! Some of them, anyway. (But many, if not most, are not.) And miraculously one day my kids started reaching the age where they could appreciate comic books. And poof! I was seeing comic books lying around the house. Turns out, comic books are a fantastic medium for my son because he’s still learning to read. He can follow the basic storyline of a decent comic book even if he can’t read the text. And comic books don’t make him feel like he’s reading a “baby book,” as some of the cute-little-bunny-laden early readers make him feel. Plus, even after he’s read a comic book to himself, he still wants me or my husband to read him the book from cover to cover, so he eventually understands the entire story.
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Tags: graphic novels, comic books, comics, book snob, learning to read

That is the question.

But it shouldn’t be.

Check out the discussion at Joanne Jacobs’ blog about bathroom breaks in school. Here’s the USA Today article that prompted the blog post.

Bathroom bullying and vandalism are real problems that schools must obviously address, but that doesn’t mean kids shouldn’t be allowed to use the restroom when they need to. Want to get rid of bullying and vandalism in the bathrooms? Keep a limited number of bathrooms open at any time (depending upon the size of the school and the age range of the kids) and have an adult sit in the hallway nearby to check hall passes and to make sure nobody’s doing something they shouldn’t be doing in the bathroom. Problem solved.

Unfortunately, the tone of some of the quotes in the article and the blog comments make my head spin. Not only do some teachers not care that students are waiting too long to use the bathroom because of idiotic teacher and/or school policies, but some teachers (and I emphasize “some”) just really don’t like their students.

One commenter at Jacobs’ site brags about telling students that if they want to use the bathroom during his class period, they have to stay after school for ten minutes. He claims he never really makes them stay, but that doesn’t make his blatant power play and humiliation of the students any less despicable.

It’s official: after ~3 years of research (a.k.a. obsessive blog reading and lurking on mailing lists) and 2 years of alternative schooling (for one of my children), we’re saying “goodbye” to school and “hello” to home learning. My kids will be finished with school by June 15.

Yeehaw!

In September we hope to attend our first not-back-to-school-picnic, as we also start to figure out exactly what home learning will look like for us. I have some ideas, but since the kids haven’t really had a chance to just do it, we’re going to have to wait to see how it turns out.

But I’m also truly thrilled to finally have taken the plunge, so I must take a moment to give a hearty and heartfelt thanks to all the homeschoolers who write or frequent homeschool-related blogs and to the homeschoolers with whom I have spoken or corresponded via email. All of you speak so eloquently of the joys, challenges, and benefits of home learning with your children — you have helped my family understand that homeschooling is more about the way you live your life than it is about how you educate your children. Thank you for sharing your insights and your passion for your — to coin an oft mis-used phrase — lifestyle choice.

Heh.

My daughter marked her last day of school on her calendar as “School Vacation.” The other night we talked about the fact that it’s going to be a really long one. My kids are both excited and nervous about not going back to school in the fall. Their primary concern seems to be who their friends will be — they won’t have classmates for a built-in supply of candidates. So we have feelers out into nearby communities so that we can connect with other homeschoolers in the area. It’s important to me that my kids feel like they belong to a community of people who also opt to learn at home.

Our decision to homeschool has been a long time coming, and it’s a relief to have finally made it. I have the usual concerns about my soon-to-be missing income and whether or not I’ll be any good at my “new job,” but I know we’ve made the right choice for our kids. I don’t know how long the journey will last — we’ve told the kids we’ll take it year by year — but honestly, I hope it lasts a long, long time.

Wish us luck!

Over at Blogcritics, where I sometimes cross-post my blog entries, Diana Hartman has written an article about fairness and what it does and doesn’t mean. Or maybe it’s about what it should and shouldn’t mean.

Hartman rails against scholastic relay races that either let all the kids compete regardless of skill level or that don’t have winners and losers, against the way school awards are given out to students, and against making tests easier in response to complaints that the tests aren’t fair.

She makes a good point with her last example, one from “real life”: the driving test U.S. military and their dependents have to pass in order to obtain a driver’s license when they’re stationed in Germany. Upwards of 45% have been failing the test — leaving military family cars in the holding lot for months at a time — so the military has decided to make the test easier. (Or at least that’s how Hartman sees it. I don’t know anything about the test.)

The problem — and I agree with Hartman on this — is one of safety. If she’s right and the test is being made easier, we now will have a bunch of U.S. drivers over there who don’t have as much knowledge and skill as the German citizenry. How dangerous will those drivers be on the German roads? How smart was it to make the test easier as a matter of convenience for U.S. military families new to Germany? Time will tell.

Generally speaking, it’s a bad idea to lower standards on tests that measure a minimum competency in a skill or a field that impacts someone’s safety or health. I wouldn’t be happy if the state medical board exams suddenly got easier just so more medical school graduates could become licensed doctors, for example. Making tests like these easier does not necessarily make them any more fair, anyway.

The rest of Hartman’s examples come from her family’s K-12 school experiences. She’s apparently drawing a connection between lowered standards in American schools with the lowered driving test standard. “Why should we expect the adult graduates of American schools to work hard to pass a driver’s test when their school experience taught them that everyone should pass life’s tests?” she seems to be asking.

Unfortunately, these school stories don’t help her argument. First, K-12 schools are not “real” life and shouldn’t operate as if they were. And second, the specific anecdotes Hartman relates are cautionary tales about creating competition between students more than they are about lowered standards.
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Tags: competition in school, teamwork, fairness, bad teaching

What should we do with high school students who skip classes and don’t do the coursework? Fail them? Or let them get credit for the course by completing a study pack provided by an outside vendor?

I say hell yeah to option #2.

The takeaway message from students who say things like, “I want to get done with school the easiest way possible,” is not that the students are lazy or too smart and bored to be bothered with the work. The message is that many high school students don’t see any relevance to their lives and interests in their coursework. They don’t have much, if any, choice in which courses they take, and they certainly don’t have any input into how the school is run. They go to school because they’re compelled to by state law (at least until they’re 16 in most states) and not because they want to.

They’ve lost the desire to learn because the schools aren’t interested in students’ desire to learn. Schools are interested in pushing as many kids through the same program as efficiently as possible, no matter how diverse those kids’ interests may be. For the most part, students are treated the same way and must take the same basic coursework. If you don’t expect some students to be completely uninterested in schools like that, you’re deluding yourself.

In the corporate training world, a basic premise is that whatever training program you’re building had better be relevant to the target audience because that audience seeks out skills and information that are relevant to their careers. They’re extremely tactical in their approach to training, and they don’t suffer foolish training programs gladly.

For some reason, educational theorists assign this premise specifically to “adult learners,” as if relevance and purpose don’t matter to “child learners.” Nothing could be further from the truth. Anyone who has ever watched a child try new things — like learning to walk or learning to read — knows that children approach everything they do with a purpose. Unfortunately, traditional schools don’t allow children to pursue purposeful activities; all activities are selected by the adults for the children. By the time high school rolls around, who can blame them for wanting to get out of that environment with the least effort required?

Tags: public schools,student choice,course credit,educational theory,purposeful learning,compulsory attendance