Archive for October, 2013

Poetry Teatime: Every Sunday

Tuesday Teatime Annie

I saw this idea of Poetry Tea time sometime in April this year and thought it was such a great idea. We started the very next Sunday morning and have been doing it ever since. It has become part of our Sunday morning where we all sit down together and eat, drink and read. My 5 year old son is particularly fond of it and would have one every day if he could. Although there was only one Sunday that we did not do it, he makes sure that we know that it is happening each week.

A fabulous idea and I have even told our book store manager friend of mine about this and he is thinking of how it may be incorporated into the bookstore too!!

Thanks for the great idea…
Annie!

Visit our Poetry Teatime website!

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What Is Enough for High School?

On a pink, green, and white cloud, two young women reading a book at Greenlake, with a daisy chain in a field of flowers, Seattle, Washington, USA

Can you keep having tea parties and going to art museums when your kids hit the age where “it all counts”? Will your college-bound teen be prepared enough if you continue to use the Brave Writer Lifestyle as your guide for language arts and writing instruction?

Or as one parent asked me, “I’ve loved Brave Writer for my child’s younger years, but what writing program would you recommend now that my student needs to get ‘serious’ about writing?” Ouch!

The foundation you lay in your child’s younger years is critical to who your child writers will be in their teens and beyond. There’s no “un-bridgeable chasm” between limericks, lists, and letters, and the academic formats like the expository essay and research paper. Literally, the writing your kids do now (or when young) IS the training for the writing they do as teens and beyond.

Let’s look at speech again. You don’t expect a fluent five year old to lead a business sales meeting, to give a speech or to make a Power Point presentation. On the other hand, all that talking and expressing, the poems recited, the manners learned for introductions and the telephone, the oral reports done in a co-op class—these do all lead the child to eventually have the capacity to learn how to teach or present or speech-ify.

As you head into the white water rapids of high school, remind yourself that the strategies you’ve used up until then will be your best aids for growth in the college-prep years. What are those strategies? Let me remind you, so you can affirm them to yourself.

Reading quality writing. In high school, reading should include non-fiction titles, essays, editorials, reviews, poetry, short stories, both American and British lit, classic and popular novels, and the whole world of online options (discussion forums, chat rooms, blogs, news sites, etc.).

Freewriting. Use freewriting techniques to explore the developing rhetorical imagination of your student. Rather than writing about any old thing, introduce your kids to freewriting about ideas—how they form their ideas, what those ideas mean to them, what the “other side” thinks about those ideas, and how your students react to the opposing point of view.

Brave Writer Lifestyle Items. Keep art, music, novels, movies, nature, and poetry going. In their teens, though, students will find specialties (their favorites), and will be able to delve deeply into the ones they love. Your teens ought to become “obsessive fans” of LOTR or Korean pop music or Chihuly blown glass or spoken word poetry or Scott Orson novels or birding expert Pete Dunne or Shakespeare plays. Let them! This is how teenagers discover the other layer of the subject area – the critics, the fans, the influences from other artists/scientists in the field. This is how they discover the academic task: bringing their perspective to bear on the established field as they develop intimacy with the topic and its field of experts. This is what they will do in college, in fact! But they will apply this skill set to sociology, anthropology, mathematics, and political science.

What will you add to this mix in high school?

Some intentionality is necessary. Good news. Your teens are ready for it! They need two things from you in high school: Freedom to risk, opportunities for adventure.

Risk and adventure can be experienced in both activity (taking a trip to Mexico to work in an orphanage) and thought (examining theories of gaming). Both are necessary. Teens want to prove to themselves that they will be adults one day. They can’t know it on the inside until they have evidence on the outside. They don’t know it by staying in the same living room they’ve been in since birth, with the same people, reading parent-selected material, following a routine of workbooks and text books.

They discover that they are capable of leaving home and family when they have some experiences that test them—that require them to act independently, and that encourage them to think “new-to-them” thoughts.

In writing, that means that they will need preparation for academic writing. They will want to understand how the writing they’ve done in the previous years relates to this new standard in writing. (Some programs treat writing from the younger years as though it has no relevance to the next level of writing, which is tragic.)

Teens should be encouraged to sign up for the local Shakespeare Company as actors (something my kids did), join a marching band, travel with a show choir, play high level sports, or take classes in local high schools or community colleges. They need to get out into the community in their areas of interest so that they can find out that they have what it takes to stand on their own two feet, to prove to themselves that they are growing up.

In Brave Writer, we’ve designed Help for High School and all of our online writing classes for teens with this goal in mind—showing teens how what they’ve been doing relates to what they are being called on to do now. These classes help them to learn how to think rhetorically, how to examine argument, and how to select credible support for their thesis statements. They also learn the vocabulary of expository writing—terminology for analysis, how to form substantive opinions, and how to manage their biases and blind spots. They learn the formats so they have practice using them.

Between specific instruction in academic writing and exploration of a variety of subjects (fashion, linguistics, music, role playing games, nutrition, animation, computer programming, sports, organic gardening…whatever your kids find interesting), your teens will become prepared for life beyond homeschool. For example, college is a depth experience in specific liberal arts and sciences fields. Deep diving IS the right preparation for that world. That’s why homeschoolers do well in college! They already understand how to teach themselves, how to read critically, how to develop and form a legitimate opinion (as long as they have the chance to do those things as teens).

So keep doing what you’re doing, and add a little intentionality in high school, and your kids will be fine!

Image by Wonderlane

Posted in Help for High School, Homeschool Advice, Tips for Teen Writers | 1 Comment »

The Ghost of Public School Past

The Ghost of Public School Past


You know her voice. She whispers in your left ear. Her wispy form hovers on your left shoulder. Her name? Mrs. Cox. In her hand? The red pen.

“You haven’t done enough writing with your kids this year.”

“What about grammar? If you don’t teach your children how to diagram sentences, they won’t get into college.”

“Your kids are behind their public schooled peers. Better admit it: the schools are better at creating writers than you are. Give up.”

“Why haven’t you had your children write essays yet? You are so behind.”

“You still don’t know how to use a semicolon and you call yourself a home educator?”

“What about structure and assignments? What about year-end testing? You can’t get there just by freewriting every week.”

“Your children are terrible spellers. If they had a spelling program like you had as a child, they’d be better spellers.”

And of course, the worst of all:

“You aren’t good at writing. How can you possibly teach it?”

These whispers come from a memory—a teacher, a schooled lifetime. While you’ve chosen to home educate your children, you yourself (probably) were not homeschooled. So when your confidence flags, the disembodied voice of “official education” pipes up to fill the empty, lonely space of self-doubt.

Here’s what you need to do:

First, with your right hand, bring your right thumb up and over the top of your right middle finger (in a circle). Then raise it to your left shoulder. Now: Flick that ghost right off your shoulder with two flicks! Bam! Be gone!

Mrs. Cox is not invited to your poetry teatimes. She doesn’t get to correct your kids’ freewrites. She can no longer judge your child’s spelling while ignoring the content of the original writing.

She’s not allowed to judge your writing any more. Her red pen is dry. Her reach is a ghostly memory. She is no longer real.

Mrs. Cox doesn’t decide for you. You decide for you and your children. Remind the ghastly ghost that you chose to home educate because you didn’t like the rubric of public education—the very whispers she uses to trap and badger you.

The next time you hear her voice, flick the Ghost of Public School Past (Mrs. Cox) right off that shoulder, and say out loud, “School voices are not allowed in my homeschool.”

Strengthen your own voice—your core, that lives inside, making choices, and loving your children.

Feel free to adopt the following messages (or your version of them) to buoy yourself when your doubt swells:

  • I have chosen to home educate my children because I believe in the values of homeschooling.
  • I am a fluent English speaker, and read professionally copy edited writing every day. I know enough English to read it with comprehension and to write it with competence. Therefore, I can lead and guide my children in the art of writing.
  • My lack (in grammar or spelling or punctuation or academic format) is not insurmountable. I’m an adult. I can learn alongside my children. I am capable of remembering the difference between ‘affect’ and ‘effect,’ how to use a colon or em dash, how to spell ‘accommodate,’ and how to structure a five paragraph essay.
  • I choose not to use a red pen because the red pen has created untold damage in the lives of my peers (and my life). I’m happy that I never have to use one, if I don’t want to.
  • My goal is to promote and support the natural growth in writing in my individual child, not to hit school scope and sequence for all children.
  • I am smart. I am kind. I am important.

You chose not to listen to The Ghost of Public School Past when you chose to homeschool. When she says, “Boo!” then flick her off your shoulder!

Then carry on.

Image by alamosbasement (cc text added)

7-Day Writing Blitz

Posted in BW and public school, Homeschool Advice | 4 Comments »

Friday Freewrite: Perfect day

Down the slide!Image by Martin Howard

A perfect day would be…

New to freewriting? Check out our online guide.

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Make a Mess

I received an email from a mom whose daughter struggles with perfectionism and anxiety (maybe spectrum issues too). She writes:

“When my little girl gets stuck, she gets stuuuuuuck. Because she continues to inadvertently invert the letter S, the entire page of copywork is “ruined”…and so is the rest of the day.”

Do you have a child like that? Won’t write unless every word is perfectly spelled or masterfully handwritten? If he detects a single mistake, he gives up or throws a tantrum or cries?

Maybe you have a daughter who is so careful, that she writes really slowly and loses track of what she was trying to say and so wilts into tears because she finds writing so tedious, so laborious, so hard.

What do we do?

Often, in the face of reading or writing failure, we homeschool parents scour the Internet, badger our friends, and consult specialists for a better method to ensure successful results. We want to protect our children from feeling like failures so we try to find a way to help them never fail—to get the right spellings every time, or to guarantee that they never forget which way the “b” goes.

In other words, we inadvertently reinforce the perfectionism!

When those programs don’t work (since no child or adult can achieve perfect writing every time they write), we change our story and tell our kids that it’s okay to make mistakes. But by then, our sweet children have internalized the perfectionist standard and made it their own. They won’t be okay while mistakes are on their papers, no matter what you say to them.

Conversations about progress and growth rarely impact kids. They need concrete experiences to change how they see reality.

So my advice to the mom of the girl of the backwards ‘s’? This is what I wrote to her. Maybe it will help you too.

“So do a whole page of backwards s’s. Deliberately have your daughter make big mistakes. Tell her you want a whole page where nothing is right—where she tries to trick you with her outrageous spellings and handwriting gaffes. Ask her to see how many letters she can do upside down or backwards. PLAY with writing. Take away the zero sum game. Help her to get into play.”

There are all kinds of ways to get out of the perfectionist rut, and trying harder to be perfect isn’t one of them. See if any of these will help you and your stressed out kids.

  • How about using alphabet tiles to spell rather than handwriting? What if you play a game? You trade turns picking letter tiles: you pick “C” and she picks “A” and you pick “T” and then say the word. Then…
  • What if you make words that don’t work? “C” followed by a “T” followed by a “W” followed by a “U.” Try to pronounce it. Why doesn’t it work? What is the mouth doing? Create nonsense words that can be pronounced and those that can’t. What’s the difference? Talk about it, while pushing tiles around.
  • For writing: wrinkle the page. Scrunch it up into a ball, smooth it out. Now do copywork or freewriting.
  • Use the back side of a flyer for writing. (Unconscious message: can’t be perfect – paper is already not perfect.)
  • Write with markers. Or paintbrushes. Or crayons.
  • Make an entirely writing-unrelated mess before writing. Get really dirty (play in the mud), or make muffins and let your hands messy. Then write.
  • Write about messes. Tell your kids they have to make the writing messy, too. Put out a variety of pens and highlighters. Write with them and show them the mess you are making in copywork or freewriting. Make it a weekly writing practice for a bit.
  • Crowd the table with so much stuff, there’s nowhere to write. Tell your kids they have to find some hidey hole place in the house to write (a cramped tight space).
  • Write in the dark. Turn out the lights and write on the page without seeing your handwriting.
  • Write really really tiny. Scrunch it all down. Now write on the next several lines, REALLY REALLY BIG! Take up several lines with each letter.

Are you getting the idea? Stop feeding perfectionism. Play. Do all of these alongside your kids. You write. You make mistakes. You make a big sanctioned mess along with your kids. Laugh at your mistakes!

Be more exploratory and less focused on ‘right’ and ‘wrong.” Help your kids to play with phonetics and handwriting, rather than helping them “get them right” all the time.

There’s obviously room for growing and learning correct spellings. Original writing is not that time. Ever. Original writing is about thought, content, ideas—dictated to a parent who writes them down, or handwritten in whatever way seems right to the child in the moment. As that child ages and grows in mechanics using someone else’s writing, some of those skills will show up in original writing.

The worst thing you can do is expect mastery of mechanics and spelling in original writing. That requirement erases content like acetone on a painted nail. Who can possibly have fun thinking thoughts if worried about which direction the letter ‘s’ goes? Seriously!

If your child is stressed by copywork and its demand for accuracy and perfection, why can’t you take those shackles off for a month? How about subverting that expectation with freedom to explore? Freedom to try different handwritings? Can you slope your alphabet the other way? Can you make it big, small, really squiggly, really straight?

I remember when I was getting married that I tried 50 different signatures to find the one I liked best. Why can’t our kids try 10 different handwriting styles and 10 different spellings and 10 different sizes for their work?

Let it all go. Declare this month as “getting it all wrong on purpose” month and then really go for it. Push the boundaries and break the rules. Make messes on paper. Play with handwriting. Open the space for creativity, not just accuracy.

If you can minister in the opposite spirit, if you can let yourself go, your kids may have a chance to find their internal freedom and permission-giver as well. They will discover that they are free—that nothing existentially bad happens to them when they explore language in writing. That’s when learning can happen. That’s when breakthroughs can occur.

All the teaching you want to do is possible when your children know the space is emotionally safe for risk-taking.

Posted in Homeschool Advice, Writing about Writing | 2 Comments »