IRD First Week: Curbing Loquaciousness

On Wednesday evening, I completed my first week of teaching reading for IRD.

Wednesday is the last day of my teaching week, though I have a break early in the week and then I have a few days off before the new teaching week starts up over the coming weekend. Basically I have two days on, time off, and then Wednesday, when I drive up to Santa Fe to teach there.

Each teaching day is very full, as I have three classes, each of which last anywhere from one hour fifteen minutes to two hours and thirty minutes. There is a 45 minute break between each class, but last week I barely had time to get a bite to eat before I needed to prep for the next class. Part of the reason for that is that there is more to do on "opening day" and also anxious parents show up very early with their children because they have scheduled extra time to find the place and the classroom. In this respect, teaching is no different than teaching in the schools. There I usually ate and prepped at the same time in the first few weeks.

And like the opening week of school, I was also very tired after the first two days of teaching the reading classes. A lot of it stems from getting accustomed to being on my feet for 6 hours at a time again, as well as the incredible energy and focus required to teach a class at any time, but especially when learning new methods and pacing.

One thing that I am learning from the streamlined lesson plans required by IRD is that we teachers, left to our own devices, tend to talk too much. This is partly due to the natural loquacious personalities that teaching attracts, but for me, I suspect it also has to do with a desire to render complete and detailed explanations. This is appropriate to the scientific laboratory, where one is interacting with other Geek Queens and Kings who demand such detail, but it is fatal when one is trying to teach novices in an area. The novice needs to get the basics down and then maybe--maybe--s/he would be interested in the details. And maybe not. A person may just be interested in the skill learned and not the theory behind it!

I do know this about myself, but since my previous teaching evaluations were done by equally talkative teachers (mmmm, nice allititeration), the subject has never come up in a way that was useful to me. I would get comments like "too fast" or "too long" but never "too many words" or "too much detail. "

Well, actually, the above is not quite true. I did get more pointed critiques for PowerPoint presentations in my Neurobiology and Neuroanatomy/Neurophysiology classes. And such critique helped me make a leaner meaner presentation. I have really cut down on the detail put on a PowerPoint slide. However, given the nature of the material, although I needed uncluttered slides, I had to give extremely detailed explanations of those slides.

The point is that I believe this training and using this very scripted curriculum is already making me more conscious of my penchant for supplying too much detail, and that I will come out of this ten-week teaching experience with a classroom style more suited to every kid, not just the gifted ones. (GK's will press for more details and can handle them most of the time, but they can also eat up time better used for practice this way).

By Wednesday in Santa Fe, the scripting seemed more natural and my timing was also more natural. I got everything done that I needed to do without feeling rushed or worried.
Wednesday was really nice.

First, the hour's drive up was beautiful, because it makes more sense for me to cut up the "back way" on NM 14--The Turquoise Trail. A National Scenic Byway, it took me north along the back of the Sandia Mountain Front. It then cuts northwest through the Ortiz Mountains, through Golden, Madrid (pronounced with the short a, accent on the first syllable), and Cerillos. Golden and Madrid are both old mining towns, and Madrid has become quite the arts community. Next week, I will leave early and take my camera!

Santa Fe is also nice, because it has a different cultural feel than Albuquerque.
People tend to be more laid back. It is partially the old Spanish culture. And it is also due to the influx of New-Agers; former hippies, now with money, but who are still under the influence of Crystal Blue Persuasion. (This is the piece of Santa Fe that we, the unenlightened, have taken to calling "Fanta Se." Fanta Se is where you see Shirley McClaine using a crystal plumb bob to choose bread at Wild Oats on Rodeo Road). But if you can accept lateness* with aplomb and grace, the lower intensity of Santa Fe is a welcome change.

*In Albuquerque I had one or two late people out of six classes. Those who were late came in and joined the class quietly, and I sorted out the check-in with very little fuss. In Santa Fe, one-third to one-half of every class was late. Being aware of the Fanta Se element there, though, I expected to state class late and make-up time at the end. That worked very well there--Santa Feans are not in a hurry but neither do they expect you to be.

Personally, I am going to enjoy ending each teaching week experiencing the culture of the Holy "City." (Santa Fe means "Holy Faith." And like Jerusalem, you go up to get there).

All in all, then, it was a successful first week.
And now, I must prepare for Shabbat, and prepare for next week's teaching.

"On to Khartoum!"

Which proves that N. is not the only Aspie in the house with a penchant for quoting movies out of context.

Almost Done with the Road

NEARLY WORDLESS WEDNESDAY

On my first morning walk upon returning from Chicago
I walked around the fence and along the upper entrance to Los Pecos Loop.

The road is flat and almost done.

The contractor has brought in the rollers to flatten the dirt and to compact the asphalt when they surface the road.

The giant pile of rock has been hauled away, except for the smaller stones, broken and placed in the borrow ditch to impede water flow in the places where the grade is steep.

Off into the moonset!

It won't be long now!

I Guess I Ought to Change My Registration...

In honor of today's primary in New Mexico, I took a political quiz.

But before I go on to the results, I can now legitimately tell my sister's joke.

Q: How many libertarians does it take to screw in a light bulb?





I guess I ought to change my voter registration, because it is becoming clear that I am neither left nor right.
I would call myself a small "l" libertarian, meaning that I am not crazy about joining the debating society...oops, I mean the political party.

So, how many libertarians does it take to screw in a lightbulb?

A: None. In a libertarian society, lightbulbs would take responsibility for themselves.

Yeah, I know. No jokes before breakfast.

Sometimes, It Makes You Want to Cry

I decided to take a little while to surf the homeschooling web for a while this morning for the first time in many days. I thought a little fun was in order before buckling down to preparing for tomorrows IRD classes in Santa Fe. The best laid plans....


Instead of enjoying lighthearted talk about summer plans, I can upon this story: Teacher Lets Morningside Students Vote Out Classmate, 5.

Apparently, a little boy in a Florida school who was in the process of being diagnosed with AS was made to stand in the front of the kindergarten (!) class by his teacher, who proceeded to make the other students--also small children--say nasty things about him. She then had the children vote to "take Alex off the island." The teacher did this because she was tired of dealing with Alex's strange behavior.

I had to stop reading at this point and reach for the tissue.

What was worse to read were the comments that supported this state-sanctioned bullying in the name of imposing discipline in school.


Unfortunately, although some of those who commented think otherwise, this kind of story is not rare. Rather, such stories rarely reach the newspapers. Go and sit among parents of children with learning disabilities, ASD, food allergies, and any disability that is not obvious from the appearance of the child, and listen. If you have any compassion or plain old good will towards people, you will need a whole box of tissues.

Every family of a child with disabilities has a story the Teacher from Hell or the School from Hell.

We have ours. And that is part of the reason that we chose homeschooling.

We had the Third Grade Teacher From Hell at a well-regarded school in the Northeast Heights of Albuquerque. Despite numerous requests to have N. removed from her classroom, we were refused until I said the magic words: "We are consulting with a lawyer..." It was amazing how fast the principal determined that the "policy" of never moving a child could be set aside.

And it is ridiculous that parents must threaten legal action to get their children's educational needs met in schools that are funded with their own money taken from them by force. Since that moment when those fateful words came out of my mouth, I have never met a school funding proposal that I liked enough to vote for.

But back to this not-so-unusual story.

The one in which an adult who should have known better not only bullied a child in front of his peers, but taught those peers that bullying is right action. Back to the idea that such behavior is appropriate discipline.

Discipline? The Greek root of this word means "teaching."

So, when confronted with the idea, we should ask ourselves what was this woman teaching?

First, consider what Alex learned.

He learned that teachers are not to be trusted.

He learned that the classroom is not a safe place.

He learned that adults will not help him with the extreme anxiety that comes with being unable to recognize and understand social interactions on an intuitive level.

He learned that his differences make him unworthy of being treated like a human being.

Now consider what the 14 children who voted Alex out of the classroom learned.

They learned that if an authority sanctions an action, it must be right. No matter how nasty the action is, might makes right.

They learned that bullying someone who is smaller, weaker, or different is appropriate action.

They learned that certain differences put another person outside the pale of human regard.


That teacher not only broke the heart of a child who has only walked on this earth for five years, she also taught barbarism to the the other children in her care.
This was teaching of the very worst kind.

Teaching like this happens every day in the public schools across the land.
The schools that children are forced to attend by law.

I think the teacher's unions need to stop worrying about how to control the miniscule percentage of people who homeschool their kids, and address this much greater problem of barbarian education.

This teaching of educational conformity of thought makes me even more proud to call myself an Educational Anarchist.

Carnival of Homeschooling: Playing Catch-Up

The Carnival of Homeschooling for the first week of June is up at Tami's Blog.

Due to Memorial Day and travel, I missed last week's carnival, but I looked it over recently, and it was small but good. It is still available at Walking Therein.

Note: The COH is at a Homeschool Blogger site this week for those to whom it makes a difference. Last week's at is at Jacque's site, where she has moved from Ancient Paths.

Summer Plans and Projects

June is here, and early summer has finally come to our rambling Hobbit-Hole in the Sandias.

The scrub oak turned from brown to green while I was in Chicago, and the flowers are blooming in the meadow.Our plans for this summer's homeschooling are project based, just as last year's were.

N. is taking the first weeks of June as a break--which means doing archery and Kamana, and reading on the porch during the long, summer evenings. Taekwondo and Boy Scouts continue.

In late June, N. will be attending BSA camp with his troop, where he will be working on Riflery, Scuba, Advanced Horsemanship, and First Aid merit badges to add to his collection. Merit Badges have specific, rigorous requirements and when a boy has earned one, he has learned both content and skills related to the particular badge.

At the beginning of July, N. will hop on a plane for a two-week visit with his cousins in Bloomington. This is a pleasure trip, but my sister has several day trips planned that will be educational as well as recreational. One is to visit the Lincoln Museum in Springfield, as well as Lincoln's New Salem. The other is to visit the Illinois-Michigan Canal National Trail, where the boys will learn all about how canals were built, operated for commerce, and how locks work.

During the last two weeks of July, N. will get on another plane and fly from Illinois to New Jersey. In Jersey, he will spend Shabbat with our former cantor, and then go to two Children of the Earth Foundation Camp sessions: The Way of the Woods and the Way of the Gatherer. There he will be learning content and skills related to tracking and being at home in the wilderness.

N's summer learning plans are quite uncoventional. The education is not at all academic. However, I am continually amazed at how much he learns from travel and from camp. These experiences seem to cause quantum leaps in his maturity. He is taking greater and greater responsibility for who he is becoming, intellectually, physically and spiritually, from these less conventional learning opportunities.

I am glad we can continue to widen his horizons through these travel adventures.

And at the same time, I will miss him. Every summer when I send him off, I know I am saying good-bye to another piece of the little boy I knew forever. Every August, when he returns, he has incorporated another part of the man he is becoming.

The pictures above are all from the meadow behind our home. I am amazed at how summer snuck in while I was gone!

Proud to Claim the Title

There has been much discussion in recent months about the California ruling that might have required all homeschooling parents in that state to obtain a teaching license in order to teach their own kids. That ruling was decertified.

However, I just learned over at Corn and Oil that the California Teacher's Association filed an Amicus Brief that claimed, among other things, that allowing homeschooling would cause "educational anarchy" in the old Bear Flag Republic. This assertion is discussed further at Principled Discovery.

Now, I am a certified teacher in my state. I also hold an MA in Special Education, alongside advanced degrees in Biology, and I am currently teaching reading programs for IRD, a private company founded expressly to help people of all ages become absorbed and proficient readers.

However, given the state of public education today, I am proud to claim the title of Educational Anarchist. Public education in the United States has become a political boondoggle in which the interests of those who gain power and treasure through the Educational-Industrial Complex are paramount, and the interests of those being educated counts for very little. As in many other areas of life in these United States, the Federal Government has claimed for itself the power and authority that ought to be held by citizens making decisions for themselves as to what constitutes the good life.

According to dictionary.com, the word anarchy is derived from the Greek word Archon, which means an absolute ruler, a tyrant. I am opposed to tyranny in all forms, and bow to no earthly absolute ruler. I believe that the increasing centralization of power in public education is destructive to the very idea of education, and I have written extensively about that on this blog.

I am a proud educational anarchist!

Long live liberty and the freedom of thought that made this country great!

The Educational Anarchist logo above was designed by Imperceptibility and was found at Principled Discovery.