July 2014 - A Brave Writer's Life in Brief A Brave Writer's Life in Brief
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A Brave Writer's Life in Brief

Thoughts from my home to yours

Archive for July, 2014

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Home Not School—The “Re-Upping Moment”

The "Re-Upping Moment"

Remember when you decided to homeschool? Remember what you felt about “school” as a concept? As a notion?

You rejected “school.” You said to yourself, “I think I can do a better job, or at least, a more loving job, or possibly a more attentive-to-my-child job, at home, than they can provide at school.”

With that burst of bravery, you stood up to “the man” and said with your actions, “I can do this!”

You swiftly researched education, products, learning styles—a crash course in teaching or facilitating or disciplining or modeling or partnering—whatever method you chose—and marched forward with conviction and uneasy confidence.

The first fledgling steps into homeschooling sometimes mirror school (What else do you know?). But usually it doesn’t take long to see that you can relax—pay attention to a child’s interest, not do every page, switch routines mid-week, play with play-doh for an entire morning, and so on.

Somewhere, along the way, however, you go through your first bout of wavering confidence.

  •  She didn’t read at 7 years of age.
  • His handwriting is illegible at 10.
  • She can’t skip count.
  • He isn’t writing full paragraphs like his cousins in school.

That moment shakes you. Your brain flips into reverse. Just like a new tired language learner reverts to grunting in her native tongue, you return to the only educational model you understand: school.

  • You buckle down.
  • You buy new books.
  • You enforce a schedule.
  • You require more work.
  • You follow traditional strategies.

The life’s blood of your cozy home slips from view; apples, rulers, yellow school buses, and workbooks crowd your field of vision.

The net effect?

  • Not progress.
  • Not joy.
  • Not home.
  • School.

School—with its culture of pressure, evaluation, critique, grading, measuring, comparing, forcing a pace, testing, requiring, and shaming—comes flooding past your front door and right into your living room.

The choice to follow a school model for writing leads to stifled voice and plodding progress. Your child’s work may mirror the samples, but it doesn’t sing. You may finish the assignments, but none are memorable beyond the feeling of “getting it done.”

Is this what you wanted? This plodding, replication of school at home?

At some point, you may think to yourself, “I miss cozy. I miss natural. I miss the originality of this family.”

To start again—to screw up the courage to make homeschool more about “home” than “school”—requires a second commitment. It’s what I like to call the “re-upping moment.”

That moment is critical to long term home education.

My products and online classes are all about reinforcing that re-upping moment. You are supported in paying attention to your child’s person, his or her interests, pacing yourself, deep diving into subject areas, less is more, writing that expresses self (imperfectly, a bit like a banging drum initially), doing one invested thing at a time, using your real life as primary teacher rather than canned curriculum.

You can do this, just like you did when you started. In fact, it takes less courage than the first time. You already know you want to! You remember the feeling of joy and freedom of the initial months and years of home education.

Take heart. Your instincts are good.

Be home with your kids. Lead them into short lessons, big juicy conversations, writing voice, curiosity, and interest-led study. Your support and partnership make education a joyful exploration of LIFE not subjects for school.

You can do this!


Brave Learner Home

Posted in Homeschool Advice | Comments Off on Home Not School—The “Re-Upping Moment”

Movie Wednesday: Epic

Movie Wednesday  Robin

Brave Writer mom, Robin, writes:

I don’t know if this is done all over the US, but our local theater has a Summer Movie program for kids each year. For $5 per person you get tickets for 10 kids’ movies, one a week for 10 weeks. For the most part they are old movies, ones we’ve seen before at home, but when temperatures soar over 105°F all summer long any A/C’d activity is appreciated.

Your Movie Wednesday blog post last week inspired me to make more of our Friday morning moving watching, and I incorporated it for the very next movie we saw, Epic. The 20 minute drive to the theater, plus the 10 minutes to pump gas, allowed us plenty of time for discussing character, plot, foreshadowing, and flashback, pulling lots of examples from recent books we’ve read and movies we watched. Since we had seen this movie before, I challenged my kids to be on the lookout for the things we had discussed so that we could talk about them on the way home.

It was such a success! Can you believe my “attention span of a gnat” 7 year old identified the flashback scene while her 11 and 9 year old brothers were still frowning in thought?

All of the kids could identify the protagonist and antagonist, although only my 11 year old remembered how to say the words. They got into a nice discussion over whether Mandrake was a dynamic or static character too. Did he change at all or was how he acted and what he wanted the same throughout the movie regardless of what happened around him?

The concept of plot was equally easy for them to grasp, although this particular movie didn’t lend itself easily to discussing sub-plots so that didn’t come up.

None of the kids could identify the instances of foreshadowing in Epic, but I really didn’t expect it; foreshadowing is subtle. So I told them about how the narration at the beginning told of “needing help” and how the father said something along the line of, “Just because you can’t see something doesn’t mean it’s not there.” These weren’t the greatest examples of foreshadowing, so we ended up referring to the book Johnny Tremain that we have been reading aloud.

All in all, our first foray into mindful movie discussion was a huge success. We will be doing it again, although we may skip this week’s Summer Movie (Smurfs 2, uh) and watch Mulan or Prince of Egypt or something.

Attached is a photo of my three younger kids waiting for Epic to start (my two teens weren’t interested in the Summer Movie program, so they have been staying home each week).

Thank you,
Robin

Image (cc)

Need help commenting meaningfully on plot, characterization, make-up and costumes, acting, setting and even film editing? Check out our eleven page guide, Brave Writer Goes to the Movies. Also, tell us about a film you and your kids watched together (along with a pic if you have one) and if we share it on the blog you’ll receive a free copy!

Posted in Wednesday Movies | 1 Comment »

Poetry Teatime: Diamante Poems!

How to Write Diamante Poems

Hi Julie!

We had such fun with our tea time and poetry share today! We have been talking about diamante poems, so the kids shared some of their creations while we enjoyed herbal tea and snacks.

My oldest two wrote synonym poems, using the following format:

Noun
Adjective, Adjective
Verb, Verb, Verb
Noun, Noun, Noun, Noun
Verb, Verb, Verb
Adjective, Adjective
Noun

Poetry Teatime

The kids started by brainstorming adjectives, nouns and verbs for their poems, which I jotted down for them grouped by word type. Then they went through their lists, chose the words they liked best, and wrote their poems. It was so much fun! Here’s what they came up with:

Minecraft, by Eamonn (9 yrs)

Minecraft
fun, exhilarating
learning, thinking, bonding
mods, stones, houses, blocks
building, exploring, playing
challenging, peaceful
Minecraft

Books, by Fallon (11 yrs)

Books
exciting, hilarious
reading, thinking, imagining
mysteries, fantasy, sci-fi, reference
wishing, laughing, hypothesizing
different, fast-paced
Novels

I’ve also included a photo of my four kidlets as they sipped tea while big sis read out some favourite poems.

Thanks for always inspiring us with fun ways to create and explore with words!

Warmly,
Melanie


Visit our Poetry Teatime Website!

Posted in Poetry Teatime | 1 Comment »

ONE week left before Fall Registration opens for Online Writing Classes!

http://www.dreamstime.com/stock-photo-boy-using-computer-image13607940

We’re really excited about Fall!

We have such a great line up this year and more offerings than ever. Don’t forget to consider classes like Nature Journaling, Photography and Writing, and Just So Stories.

We are not your usual writing company offering a school-like program that creates stress and performance anxiety.

We are all about HOME, convenience, personal attention, opportunity for un-graded risk and exploration in writing, support, affirmation, process, and satisfying progress.

Check out our line up of classes!

Also, if you need help with online class decisions, do contact me. I’ve got work to do at my desk and I’ll answer the phone or call you back. If you email me, I try to respond as quickly as possible (within 24 hours max, but often within the same day).

Image © Robert Byron | Dreamstime.com

Posted in Online Classes | Comments Off on ONE week left before Fall Registration opens for Online Writing Classes!

No shortcuts to good education

Caitrin High School Graduation 2014Caitrin’s High School Graduation, 2014

Whether you are homeschooling, unschooling, or even supervising a traditional brick and mortar education, you are critical to your children’s success.

There are no shortcuts.

There shouldn’t be.

Study after study proves that involved adults (particularly parents) produce smarter, better educated kids. The goal isn’t independence from you. The goal isn’t for kids to be so self-taught, you become unnecessary.

The goal is singular and true for every educational model:

Prepare children to be capable adults.

Adult-life is an interdependent system of self-reliance and bartering/purchasing services you need. Adults read, learn, attempt, do it themselves, take classes, and then either ask friends for help or hire others to work for them. I don’t provide my own medical care—a doctor does it for me. I pay. I do make my own meals and shop for my own food. I know adults who hire chefs or eat pre-packaged foods. Both work. No one is self sufficient in every area.

This notion that kids have to be “independent” is an illusion.

Adulthood is about becoming responsible for yourself—knowing your strengths, respecting your limits, evaluating options, making quality choices.

Parents/adults model the activities of responsible adulthood (or irresponsible adulthood) every day they are with children. The invested, active parents seamlessly participate in their children’s educations. They aren’t “pushing for independence” as much as they are supporting their children in discovering what it is they need, and then in finding (and sometimes paying for) resources that meet their kids’ needs.

A concrete example helps.

Public school students may give the appearance of independence; they go to school, do homework, study for and take tests away from their parents. But they are not independent of adult interaction around the subjects they study.

A literature class will include 25-30 other students reading the same book with a teacher guiding the discussion, providing context, using literary vocabulary, and issuing instructions for activities that help the students understand the book on multiple layers. The classroom context is designed to facilitate a student’s investigation of the topic so that he or she develops a literary vocabulary.

A homeschooled high school student does not have that opportunity (to sit with an instructor who has prepared a lesson, to listen to the commentary of peers). The homeschooled high school student has parents. The discussion necessary to grow the mental agility to analyze literature must come from somewhere—must be provided. Short of online classes or co-ops, there is one person who can provide that richer context for learning—the parent.

Unschoolers do this naturally (the good ones). The conversations, interactions, and shared learning opportunities may not be on a calendar, but they are happening. Isolation is not good for education. Even if a student shows the ability to read thoroughly and deeply, a child will not glean the subtle layers or the vocabulary of analysis alone with the book. The child cannot see his or her own limited thinking without a dialog partner. These are modeled to the student through reading additional materials, online discussion with others who’ve read, and especially with parents (if possible).

If you can’t provide your teen (or any child) with that level of support—being available to help that student make the cognitive connections necessary for development—it’s your job to ensure that someone is.

Students can learn a lot online in conversation with other adults and teens (discussion boards, blogs, gaming, MOOCs, Kahn Academy, our Boomerang Book Club, etc.). If you aren’t available, turn teens loose to find dialog partners.

Consider rethinking the idea that independence is the highest good for teens. Quality interaction with invested participating adults is the best curricula for high school. The aim? To help teens become well informed, rhetorical thinkers who take increasing responsibility for their own lives.

Cross-posted on facebook. Shared on Hip Homeschool Moms!

Posted in Homeschool Advice | Comments Off on No shortcuts to good education

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