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May 29 "But how do you KNOW?!"I get one particular question a lot, when I open my big mouth to gleefully announce that not only do we homeschool, we don't even use a curriculum or do state testing! The one question that follows from people is: "But how do you know they're learning anything?"
It wasn't too long ago that I wondered the same thing...if I take my kids out of public school, then how can I make sure they are learning what they need to know? If I can't compare them with what other kids are doing at their age, in their grade, then how do I know they are learning up to par with everyone else?! It caused no fair amount of stress and anxiety in my psyche, I can tell you.
But here's what Brooke taught me: Kids learn best at their own speed and in their own time. And comparing their progress against one another with standardized tests negates any unique strengths and pigeonholes kids into 'smart', 'average', or 'dumb'. Brooke tested average/below average on state tests--and I believed it for a while. The teachers believed it. They didn't expect any more from her because of it, and denied her any services for her dyslexia/LD because she was performing according to the results. Imagine my surprise that in the battery of tests the neuropsychologist did, Brooke showed as very gifted. When I brought the results to the school, they told me I had an average child who performed average on tests. End of story. She didn't spell well, but that was to be expected from an average kid. They never once considered her aptitude--state testing is all about comparing and ranking. Nevermind she can name dozens of birds native to Colorado and whistle their calls. That's not on any test. Nevermind that she couldn't spell or do math to save her life and broke down into anxiety filled fits when she had to do either...she did well enough on the tests to be within average range for a 3rd grader. Nevermind that she spends hours pouring over a Nature Encyclopedia, even though the dyslexia made it difficult to make sense of the words. Nevermind that her visual perception/short term memory were in the 2%. None of this made any difference because to the school district, she was an 'average kid' with 'average scores' (the quotes are theirs). They had defined her in a box that didn't fit her. So, standardized tests lost their cache with me.
Here's how I 'know' that my kids are learning, and what they know: I listen to them. When Brooke and Carter were cleaning the kitchen after dinner, and Brooke accused Carter of being "Pope Julius" and then fumed that now she "knows how Michelangelo felt while painting the Sistine Chapel" because Carter kept pointing out all the dirty areas to clean...I learned what she knew.
When Carter wanted Blackberry Izze, and I only had Pomegranite left so gave it to him hoping he would go by color and not by the label, and he totally called me out and said, "Hey, this says Pomegranite!" then I learned what he knew.
When Brooke announced to me that "people didn't have to be married to have babies"--which is how we had previously described procreation--"in fact, mom, they don't even have to LIKE each other to get pregnant!"...well, I learned a lot then, and even more about her new friend's family.
When I offer to share 1/4 of a piece of cake, and keep 3/4 for myself, I learn just how well they know fractions by their reaction. When I give them back $1 in change when they should really get $5.75, I learn a lot about their money skills if they notice or not.
Kids are an open book--it's not hard to figure out what they know or don't know by what they talk about and notice. It's easy to become focused on test results instead of the child...all I've done by homeschooling is take out the public school middle man--who was w-r-o-n-g wrong about my daughter anyways--and go directly to the source. May 24 Somewhere Out There...Somewhere, there is a 10 year old girl on a farm/ranch. Brown hair, blue or brown eyes, a little bit tall for her age. She likes to sleep in, go out to eat at restaurants, wear cute clothes that she doesn't like to get dirty, and brushes her hair more than a few times a week. She probably doesn't like farm animals all that much and gets freaked if a horse or cow looks sideways at her. She is an anomaly in the community and people marvel that such a strange girl comes from such hardy farm stock.
If you know of a girl like this, or have one in your midst, email me. I think our daughters were switched at birth and I have your real child.
Brooke was supposed to be born on a farm/ranch (what is the difference?!). She wakes up before dawn, antsy to get outside and DO something. If we had eggs to collect or cows to milk she would happily do that. Instead, she moons around my bed, looking at me and waiting for her lazy mom to wake up. Actually, now she goes in to watch Animal Planet and live a vicarious life through other people who live in Texas.
Horses are her passion, and if she could ride all day to wrangle up cattle she'd be in heaven. Last summer I enrolled her in a 'horse camp' where I paid an obscene amount of money so Brooke could hang out at a farm all day and do 'horse work'. I realized they were having her do all the dirty work like mucking the stalls, filling the troughs, redistributing hay, and brushing the horses. My first thought was...'Shouldn't they be paying HER rather than the other way around?' followed quickly by my second thought which was, "I've never seen Brooke happier". She was surrounded by horses, farm dogs, chickens, pigs, and cute little lambs; working her tail off from sun up till sun down without a complaint. It was one of the best weeks of her life.
She also is an explorer. It's hard to have an idealic 'Daniel Boone' upbringing when you only live on 1/4 of an acre, in the middle of a subdivision. However, she makes the best of it and has found an oasis of nature in a creek that runs on the outskirts of the houses here. I think that if we actually lived on some land, Brooke would hitch up her horse, pack a sleeping bag and ride off to explore the far corners. I probably would only see her again when she ran out of food.
When I started bawling in "March of the Penguins" because all those penguin babies were being picked off by the seagulls, it was Brooke who comforted me by explaining that "that's just the way of nature". When I walked blindly through a sidewalk full of earthworms that had become stranded in the sun after a downpour, it was Brooke who stopped long enough to pick each one up and place it gently in the grass. "They are important to the energy cycle, Mom! They may be little, but they do a lot!" she gently scolded me.
So, you see, she obviously is not my child. I mean, I think cows are adorable and they make me all melty inside, but that's only when I'm standing on the other side of a fence from them. I am horribly allergic to most animals, and really REALLY like to sleep in. If you have a child that fits that description, then we may need to make a trade. May 22 Does a watched garden grow?It's that time of year again, when the danger of frost passes by and the kids and I look longingly at our barren garden box. Last year we planted corn, squash, cucumbers, peppers, celery, & strawberries. The best producers were our cucumbers & squash...the celery grew OK but ended up with a horrible taste that I can't account for. (A hot July?) The stawberries sent runners all over the place, bloomed prettily, but only produced a few puny fruits. The corn was ruined by a freak hailstorm, darn it....they took up half the space in our box, and we didn't get to enjoy any of them!!!
This year shows promise for the berries--they're already in the early stages of bushels of strawberries. We're skipping the corn and Brooke has staked out what veggies she wants on her side. Onions, peppers & carrots. I'm growing cukes, tomatoes & more peppers.
We spent Mother's Day out measuring & planting....is it too early to expect green shoots? We watch for them every day. I don't have the greenest thumb, and just the fact that I bought the seeds almost dooms them to die a tragic veggie death under some dry dirt that I forgot to water properly.
May 07 "Unusual Learners""One of the great unrecognized dramas of childhood has been the struggle throughout history...of the unusual learner to find his best place in life. What has gone unrecognized for centuries is that this unusual learner is not stupid, neither is he bad. Indeed he may be gifted. He carries within his mind the cognitive equivalents of genetic mutations, the ability to recombine elements of experience in new ways. For centuries, the word stupid, combined with various internsifiers like bad, lazy, wilfull, or weak has been used to create a moral 'diagnosis'. That moral diagnosis has ruined millions of lives. It turns out these kids have a lot to offer. At last we are beginning to understand."
--Dr. Hallowell, in the forward to "Learning Outside the Lines" by Jonathan Mooney & David Cole.
I'm just beginning to read the book I've quoted above--so far it has been a worthwhile read. The tagline is "two Ivy League students with learning disabilities and ADHD give you the tools for Academic success and educational revolution". And you all know what a sucker I am for anything having to do with an educational revolution! The two authors--one with dyslexia, the other with ADHD--first give their own personal accounts of enduring elementary, middle, & high school with learning differences, and then devote the rest of the book to helping kids succeed by 'learning outside the lines'.
I have come a long way since Brooke entered kindergarten. Like the stages of grief, I think there are stages to acknowleging a LD. Confusion, denial, anger, more confusion, self doubt, anger, shame, denial with self doubt....this cycle can endlessly repeat for both the parent and the child. Some never recover, and it becomes a shameful thing that defines them (or their children) negatively for a lifetime. But a lucky few find support through online support groups, a timely book, through someone who has already been through it, or an intuitive teacher. It only takes one person believing that a LD kid is capable and important to change that child's life for the better.
At the beginning of 4th grade, Brooke would often refer to herself and stupid. She encountered every problem with defeat and resignation. She developed panic attacks when thinking about going into a group of her peers. Not knowing much about LD, I had personal fears that Brooke was broken mentally somehow. However, I pushed these doubts to the backburner and chose to actively trust in Brooke--trust that all kids are learners if they can be reached in the right way. The story of Helen Keller became my source of hope...and then I added more stories to my list. Edison, Einstein, DaVinci, Charles Schwab, Richard Branson, and countless others.
Learning differences do NOT mean that a child is not a capable learner. It means that a child is an unusual learner, and that is a big difference.
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