Angela Shaw

A mini update and a school transition story:



My girls are now 15 and almost 13. (14 next week) They have always been
unschooled. I've been on this list since the inception and on other
unschooling lists since my oldest was 5. I've not read much lately but
I've missed it and hope to begin reading more and participating more.



This last year was the most difficult of my life as my youngest daughter
battled a rare autoimmune disorder that left her completely incapacitated
for 6 months and somewhat incapacitated for many more months. The last year
was really a blur of caring for her and figuring out this rarely diagnosed
disorder and getting her the right treatment. She's doing much better now
and I will write more about it in a future post, but for now I wanted to
write about her transition to school.



She decided this fall to take a couple classes at the high school. She is
taking Creative Writing and Art. Not rocket science, I know, but having
been too ill to even read a book or write anything at all for most of the
last year, I wanted her to transition slowly and to not take on more than
she could handle if her health took a turn for the worse. She got her first
grade yesterday and she did all the work on her own. She got an 86 on a
story outline, character sketch, and first page of her 4 page story. She
has had NO formal writing classes and I did not spend any time before the
class preparing her specifically for this class. She is taking the classes
at the high school and she will be 14 next week, so she is one of the
youngest in her grade. The class is an elective and it's a mixed grade
class. Freshmen through seniors.



Honestly, I don't put a lot of faith in grades as a true reflection of what
is learned but it was nice to see that she could transition so easily and I
know these stories help other's when they are worrying. She is already well
liked by her two teachers and she feels like the kids have been friendly and
kind to her and I have to say that the experience I've had so far in dealing
with the school has been a positive one.



If I had done this a year ago, I might have gone into it feeling stressed
out, worrying about how she would do or how I might be perceived by the
mainstream, but I am just so thankful for her health at this point that I
don't give a flying f*** what anyone thinks and since this is what she wants
to do, I am there to help her do it. (despite the fact that jumping into the
germ pool isn't the best thing for her)



My oldest is still at home. She's taking drivers ed and working at the barn
where she rides a lot. She's happy staying home at this point though she
has become very independent this last year and I know she could do anything
she set her mind to. Through the trials of the last year she has been great
(responsible, kind, patient, etc) despite the fact that her life as she knew
it came to a screeching halt.



We're taking one day at a time. Not sure what the future holds but I have
NO regrets on the unschooling front.



I'm sure I could edit this but if I am ever going to get it sent out, it'll
have to go like it is.



Angela



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Angela Shaw

Typo.My girls are 15 and 13. (14 next week).



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Sandra Dodd

Angela, this is nice:
-=She got her first
grade yesterday and she did all the work on her own. She got an 86 on a
story outline, character sketch, and first page of her 4 page story. She
has had NO formal writing classes and I did not spend any time before
the
class preparing her specifically for this class. .... She is already
well
liked by her two teachers and she feels like the kids have been
friendly and
kind to her-=-

It would be sweet even without the added details that your daughter
has been so ill in the past year.

I'm glad she survived and that she felt strong enough to want to go
out and be with people, and take art and writing classes.

Marty is taking English 101, and he's really enjoying discussions of
whether to call clauses "dependent and independent" or "subordinate
and independent." He's leaning toward "dependent and independent" as
they're opposite, and the opposite of "subordinate" is
"insubordinate." :-) I think few young men will get that interested
in what to call some technicality of grammatical detail. I asked if
the teacher knows Marty hadn't gone to school before and he said no,
it hasn't come up, but that Marty has discovered he can take notes
while he listens. He didn't know that could happen. And he said he's
practicing his handwriting by doing that.

Marty's one frustration about the state of his knowledge is that his
handwriting is teeny little printing, so this is the first time, and
he's 21 now, that he's found time and a reason to practice. And he
sees all that as fun.

It's so illuminating to see how well unschooled kids can do in "formal
learning" situations, and to hear their reactions to it.

Sandra

BRIAN POLIKOWSKY

Yesterday driving home  Gigi, 4 years old. started asking me:
what is 1+1?
What is 3+3?
We  like to play games, that MD ( who is 8 years old) came up. So Gigi started
it.
I had to answer the questions.
Then I started asking MD:
What is 2 X 2?
What is 2 X 10?
He was answering4, 20 and so on. 
Then I asked what was 0 X 2?
and  what was  0X 10?
He got it.
THen I asked what was 10 x10? He said 100
What is 100 X100 ? He said 1000
THen he asked me : what is 1000 x 1000 and I was trying to
think of all those dang ways that you are thought in school about  using the
number of zeros and I was confused.
I said I was not sure I was going to call daddy. He said 1 Million.
Yep he knew it. He was right of course.
I asked him how he knew it and he said that I gave him a hint. I asked what
hint. He said that I asked what 10x10 so it all made sense to him.

MD has never been to school or done formal math but he totally knows  how math
works.

He has been working on it everyday by playing his video game.
It is so amazing to see him learning everyday!
Brian and I love it.

Another funny thing that happened yesterday. He was playing flag football at our
health clubs a part of a boys club he goes to on Fridays
and after they were done  they were supposed to line up and the coach was
telling them to line up perfect just like in school or something like:
" YOu guys can line up right , you all go to school so you can do it"
MD turned to her and said he did not go to school. But he was one of the only
ones lining up to her satisfaction. IT was so silly that she wanted them on a
perfect line ( 13 boys age 6 to  9).  It is no big deal for MD as he is there
because he wants to and he knows he can stop any time he wants.


 
Alex Polikowsky

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Angela Shaw

Sandra wrote:

<It's so illuminating to see how well unschooled kids can do in "formal
learning" situations, and to hear their reactions to it.>



It is illuminating. Dd really likes her writing teacher (he was my favorite
high school teacher!) but she told me the art teacher is immature and she
find her annoying. She said that kids in the class act out and the teacher
doesn't DO anything about it other than yell at them over and over with the
same result. She said she's hard to listen to. I went to the open house
and met her and she talks over you without taking into consideration
anything you say or how you respond to what she says. Very one sided
conversation. She drove me nuts in the 15 minutes I was there. The Into to
Art is a prerequisite for the other art classes though. (not sure how that
would apply to homeschooled kids taking classes, maybe I should ask) My dd
is willing to stick it out so she can take other other classes art classes
though.

Interestingly enough, at the open house in a school of 700 kids, there were
only a few parents there at all. I could count them on one hand and I was
there for over an hour. It was a meet and greet night to meet the teachers.



Angela



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Caroline Gallear

My dd is also 4 and has just started adding things into her endless make
believe games like, " these 3 teddies are colouring 2 pictures each, that's
why there are 6 pictures."

I love watching this happen!

Also just reading John Holt's 'How Children Fail', about children who can
churn out (sometimes) right answers to maths problems, but can't see how and
why it works, or how to use it in the rest of their lives.

Caroline.
Hants, UK.


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k

Karl totally gets the number games that he plays. Brian and I do
double takes when he figures out money. Same thing when Karl figured
out what "plasma" spells the other day. It was in one of his games (I
think it was Spongebob). I don't know how he put PLAZma with the way
it's spelled. He guessed correctly, I guess. Those are recent
examples.

He has been playing with doubling and tripling things since he was
Gigi's age and it's amazing how naturally he just goes with number
flow. I had such a *hard* time with those ideas in school. I remember
my mom trying to help me memorize answers. Torture. I just wanted to
understand them and that held me up because school doesn't give time
to figure stuff out, so it's the old "skip it and memorize" thing.

~Katherine




On 9/18/10, BRIAN POLIKOWSKY <polykowholsteins@...> wrote:
> Yesterday driving home Gigi, 4 years old. started asking me:
> what is 1+1?
> What is 3+3?
> We like to play games, that MD ( who is 8 years old) came up. So Gigi
> started
> it.
> I had to answer the questions.
> Then I started asking MD:
> What is 2 X 2?
> What is 2 X 10?
> He was answering4, 20 and so on.
> Then I asked what was 0 X 2?
> and what was 0X 10?
> He got it.
> THen I asked what was 10 x10? He said 100
> What is 100 X100 ? He said 1000
> THen he asked me : what is 1000 x 1000 and I was trying to
> think of all those dang ways that you are thought in school about using the
> number of zeros and I was confused.
> I said I was not sure I was going to call daddy. He said 1 Million.
> Yep he knew it. He was right of course.
> I asked him how he knew it and he said that I gave him a hint. I asked what
> hint. He said that I asked what 10x10 so it all made sense to him.
>
> MD has never been to school or done formal math but he totally knows how
> math
> works.
>
> He has been working on it everyday by playing his video game.
> It is so amazing to see him learning everyday!
> Brian and I love it.
>
> Another funny thing that happened yesterday. He was playing flag football at
> our
> health clubs a part of a boys club he goes to on Fridays
> and after they were done they were supposed to line up and the coach was
> telling them to line up perfect just like in school or something like:
> " YOu guys can line up right , you all go to school so you can do it"
> MD turned to her and said he did not go to school. But he was one of the
> only
> ones lining up to her satisfaction. IT was so silly that she wanted them on
> a
> perfect line ( 13 boys age 6 to 9). It is no big deal for MD as he is
> there
> because he wants to and he knows he can stop any time he wants.
>
>
>
> Alex Polikowsky
>
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
>
>
>
> ------------------------------------
>
> Yahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>
>

plaidpanties666

k <katherand@...> wrote:
>> He has been playing with doubling and tripling things since he was
> Gigi's age and it's amazing how naturally he just goes with number
> flow. I had such a *hard* time with those ideas in school. I remember
> my mom trying to help me memorize answers. Torture.

Mo enjoys doubling and tripling and also halving and making other fractions, playing with percentages. I didn't have trouble with those in school, but I've tutored people in math, and almost invariably people get "stuck" learning fractions. I was a peer tutor in school and a GED tutor later, so I had decades of hearing "this is hard" and I still feel a sense of amazement when Mo tries to figure out what numbers divide easily in thirds, or fifths, just for the fun of it.

Not all unschooling kids will play with math like that the way not all unschooling kids will want to write a novel. Kids who don't want to write a novel are still learning about writing and literature, though, and kids who don't get a kick out of percentages still learn the principles of mathematics. Sometimes parents get stuck there, though - reading stories like this and thinking "that's not my kid, guess I can't unschool math". It isn't true, but it takes a little more trust and understanding about natural learning.

---Meredith (Mo 9, Ray 16)

k

>>>Sometimes parents get stuck there, though - reading stories like this and
thinking "that's not my kid, guess I can't unschool math". It isn't true,
but it takes a little more trust and understanding about natural
learning.<<<

Not everybody needs to know math beyond arithmetic and children may not find
much use for it until later on. Understanding natural learning means seeing
that children pick up things as they find use for or have interest in them.

"Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a
tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid." ~Albert
Einstein

Each individual can do or be something which, if it doesn't amaze people
academically, is too often seen as worthless. Sometimes that's the ability
to see or hear or say things in a unique or unusually keen or apt way, or to
do kinetic feats with greater and greater skill or for some cool purpose, or
to interact with people or animals or nature or ...

To see children through school eyes is like continually longing for a fish
to climb a tree. It's a view that insists on an improbable future or that
looks mostly for a child's potential, perhaps never able to enjoy the
present moment.

To see children as they are is to have the capability to enjoy them now.
Without that view, I think unschooling is hard or impossible.

When your child isn't good at something academic or something most people in
your family are good at, remember that not all your peers are good at that
either. Which simply means that people are different ...

Some children can use numbers easily but not all children can. Some adults
can use numbers well ...
Some children are good with people but not all children are. Some people are
good with people ...
Some children are adept at making up stuff but not all children. Some adults
are into make-believe ...
Some children adapt well to or love changes and new situations but not all
children do. Some people like anything new ...
Some children take well to swimming; others not as quickly or as well. A few
individuals are even deep sea divers ...
Some children think or read or write or draw or paint a lot. Others do other
things.

~Katherine


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lylaw

Sometimes parents get stuck there, though - reading stories like this and thinking "that's not my kid, guess I can't unschool math". *************************

I have a story opposite to that - my son, now 12, has been unschooling for 3 years. he used to naturally think in fractions, from the time he was 3 or 4. he saw the world geometrically and mathematically - it was really cool. I remember stories of things he said when he was 4, that exemplified this perspective in his real life, with regard to the time it would take me to get back to pick him up, proportional to the total time he was going to be at preschool, etc., but not enough detail to convey them. but when he was 6, and in first grade (this is a story about how school squelches natural mathematical thinking), during perhaps the first week of class, the teacher was doing a "number game" wherein the kids were to call out different "math sentences" that equaled 10. the kids took turns with contributions like "5 plus 5" and "12-2" and my son called out "5 divided by a half"

the teacher thought he was wrong. she thought he meant 5 divided IN half and asked him to explain how he came up with that. it wasn't until the next day that she realized her mistake (after talking to her scientist husband.

anyhow, that was something that my son had NEVER received "instruction" or even explanation about - he just *got it* - because it made sense to him.

fast forward 3.5 years after that day and he was pretty sure he didn't like math. he still has very little interest in "formal" math, although a good ability to add numbers in his head. I am certain that it was the 3 years of boring repetition (even in the "advanced" math group at his contructivist, hands on, alternative school") and lack of opportunity to play with math in a meaningful way, that sucked the joy out of it.

he has attempted to figure out his own statistical method (and asked for some help from me) to create magic card decks, though, and done a few other things using math that had meaning for him in that moment.

lyla

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Sandra Dodd

Katherine wrote this and I like it, but I have a comment after the
quote:

********
When your child isn't good at something academic or something most
people in
your family are good at, remember that not all your peers are good at
that
either. Which simply means that people are different ...

Some children can use numbers easily but not all children can. Some
adults
can use numbers well ...
Some children are good with people but not all children are. Some
people are
good with people ...
Some children are adept at making up stuff but not all children. Some
adults
are into make-believe ...
Some children adapt well to or love changes and new situations but not
all
children do. Some people like anything new ...
Some children take well to swimming; others not as quickly or as well.
A few
individuals are even deep sea divers ...
Some children think or read or write or draw or paint a lot. Others do
other
things.
******************

There is nothing there that isn't true, but as it was in response to
something Meredith wrote, building on something Angela had written, I
want to say this:

Although some kids will never be good at certain things, and no one is
good at everything, there still might come, for Katherine, and for
Meredith, a time when an unschooled child does something impressive
that is also considered "academic," and that happy dance WILL kick in,
and it WILL be worth reporting to a discussion such as this one.
It's not "the goal," but when it happens it's pretty damned cool.

Marty is fully grokking every bit of the style manual they're using
for his English class. Because I was "good at English" and Keith
wasn't, I'm rejoicing inside that there's something Marty might have
gotten from me genetically, and that he's good at something many other
people consider to be horrible, boring and difficult. Keith, Marty
and I went to Applebee's, and Marty was discussing clauses and
punctuation with as much enthusiasm as he tells us about new video
games.

I added Katherine's post here:
http://sandradodd.com/intelligences

Sandra



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Robin Bentley

> Not all unschooling kids will play with math like that the way not
> all unschooling kids will want to write a novel. Kids who don't want
> to write a novel are still learning about writing and literature,
> though, and kids who don't get a kick out of percentages still learn
> the principles of mathematics. Sometimes parents get stuck there,
> though - reading stories like this and thinking "that's not my kid,
> guess I can't unschool math". It isn't true, but it takes a little
> more trust and understanding about natural learning.
>
This is a good point. Seeing only one way to learn math (in school
terms: classes, notation, textbooks, separate from other "subjects")
precludes all the ways anyone can learn mathematical concepts or even
basic arithmetic.

Senna has learned mathematical principles often without knowing what
they are called. From the time she was very little, she was organizing
things. At our local natural foods store, she would check out the hand-
dipped candles hanging by two's by their wicks. She would rearrange
them from small to large, in color families.

She once loved to play a math game on the computer called "Math with
Pooh." I could have jumped on that with plenty of "math" games (and in
fact, I got her a Zoombini's game which she never touched). But she
learned math through playing Zoo Tycoon and even Impossible Creatures.
As she's gotten older, Pokemon DS games and World of Warcraft play
require arithmetic, approximation, some understanding of algebra and
geometry and who knows what else. Without reading music, she
understands the concepts of rhythm, rests, melody, and harmony - these
are mathematical concepts, too. She uses those skills naturally,
without labelling them "math." And she's learned them happily through
her interests.

Robin B.

Karen James

> Sometimes parents get stuck there,
>
though - reading stories like this and thinking "that's not my kid,
> guess I can't unschool math". It isn't true, but it takes a little
> more trust and understanding about natural learning.
>

Before I really started to let go of my ideas of how my son should be
learning math, I thought I was unschooling with math workbooks. Silly, now,
I know. My son hated the workbooks...he really did. We gave them up, but I
felt anxious--like I was failing at introducing math to him. I took some
time (a lot of time) to deschool, watch, listen and learn from my son, and I
discovered that he really does get math concepts. One day he came running
down the hall after his shower. He was seven. He skipped over to where I
was sitting and asked me if I knew that V times V equals XXV. Now, about a
month or two before, we had been driving in the car, and he had asked me
what the letters on a clock were for. I told him what I knew--not a lot,
really. I thought I would look up more when we got home, but I forgot, and
it didn't come up again...until that night. 5 times 5 equals 25. V times V
equals XXV. Letters on a clock math. That was a big a-ha moment for me.
It helped me understand, a little more, how natural learning happens.


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k

>>>Although some kids will never be good at certain things, and no one is
good at everything, there still might come, for Katherine, and for
Meredith, a time when an unschooled child does something impressive
that is also considered "academic," and that happy dance WILL kick in,
and it WILL be worth reporting to a discussion such as this one.
It's not "the goal," but when it happens it's pretty damned cool.<<<

Yes. What I like about Karl's (and other unschoolers') academic abilities is
the organic way that academic knowledge is put with not-so-academic stuff
and enlarged, enriched and connected to areas of life that school doesn't
emphasize (or even mention, in many cases). This is one of the biggest
reasons that I see unschooling as better than schooling. Unschooling can
purposely avoid categorizing things for the children and appreciate what
categorizing the child does. Unschooling simplifies what school does to a
great (huge) degree so that the process of doing is fun and skips
artificially binding up into theories what is worth learning about. It's all
pretty damn cool.

While I'm having fun watching "Ape to Man" a Nova documentary, I'm learning
new ideas to connect to things I already know, such as that things happen
not because people think something happened because of this or that, such as
that the fact alone (that it happened) is cool, and so is the way it
actually came about (as opposed to the way it was originally thought to have
come about). I've heard the parts that went into that documentary before but
I like the way the film was put together in such a way as to emphasize those
things.

School is run on an idea of how people think learning is supposed to happen.
It glosses the fact that learning happens whether it's put with someone's
ideas about it or not. And it continues to push through with theories that
have been shown to be unworkable over decades. Meanwhile, learning actually
happens despite not always being appreciated for what it is.

The good thing about unschooling is that it lets learning happen however it
actually happens, skips trying to fixate on or formulate it, and says all
learning is worthy.

~Katherine


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