Archive for the ‘Tips for Teen Writers’ Category

Delay Grades as Long as You Can

Brave Writer Delay Grades

Homeschool is no place for grades (unless you are making a transcript for college applications).

That’s a strong absolute statement—the sort I refrain from making on this page. If you are using a grading system for a reason that makes sense in your family, please don’t take this post as an indictment of that practice. You do you!

For the rest of us—for homeschoolers who ask me regularly about how to “grade” writing—I offer you the following thoughts.

Thoughts on Grading

Letter grades (scores) in years K-8 are irrelevant to your children. We parents are used to the hang-over of traditional school where our parents were able to determine if we were performing adequately by the report card at the end of the semester.

You live with your children as they learn. You know if they know how to read, how to spell, and how to calculate. You know where they get stuck on the times tables and when they surge ahead to mastery.

The goal isn’t to measure and label the achievements of your child with a value judgment (grade). Rather, your job is to identify the areas of growth and to establish a trajectory for continued skill acquisition. If you become concerned that your child is struggling specifically in an area (you see little change in the course of an entire year of consistent, kindly supported effort), you may want to ask your peers or an expert if they would “worry yet” about a learning disability or some other impediment to natural growth.

I still wouldn’t grade that child. Grades forge an “outside-in” identity—either “I’m not as good as others,” or “I’m way better than others.” Each of those identities is flawed and unhelpful to your child’s unique educational path. The child is not evaluating self based on his or her own curiosity and skill strength from within. Rather, grades drive the child to either feel discouraged (I can’t learn this) or sometimes to feel overly self-confident (I already know this; Why do I have to keep reading/growing/studying?).

The Best Feature of Home Education

Curiosity about a subject area is the best feature of a homeschool education. A child can go as far as they like. There isn’t an arbitrary end when a grade has been assigned, as though the study of the subject is confined to a school term and is now complete. Rather, topics and skills blend together, weaving in and out of each other, informing one another, for the duration of the home education lifestyle.

This is why it is difficult to explain to other friends and family how homeschooling works. Your children don’t identify with “going up a grade level” or “finishing math” in the same way traditionally schooled children do. The end markers aren’t there in the same ways.

But this is all to the good! You really can let Ancient Rome take over your homeschool for 18 months because in it, you’ll discover math, science, literature, spelling, grammar, foreign language, mythology, art, religion, and (obviously) history! There’s no “discreet unit” about Ancient Rome that lasts 16 pre-planned weeks with objectives to cover and tests to prove you are finished. There is only learning and exploring as long as Ancient Rome fascinates and gets the job done (leading your children into a glorious “science of relations” between all subject areas).

As long as those connections are happening, you are in the homeschool zone where learning is experienced and validated by how engaged your children are in interesting subject matter.

High school is a time when you may assign grades. But let me throw out a word of caution here. Most colleges/universities have little regard for the grades of a homeschooling parent. They are focused much more on the standardized tests (ACT, SAT) that either validate or invalidate the homemade transcript.

That should reassure you.

You don’t have to suddenly become a scrupulous parent-teacher where you give unnecessarily harsh grades to your child to “prove” you weren’t biased.

Nor should you become the mom who overlooks a child’s performance in order to give all “As.”

What you want to do is give As for completion of work and mastery of the material insofar as you can measure that. Don’t labor over it. Bs are fine too.

Then make a transcript that has both grades (GPA) and course descriptions. The transcript should match the SAT/ACT score. In other words, don’t pretend your child did Honor’s level work and is a 4.5 GPA student if the SAT and ACT score are average (in the 50-70%).

Your child has had an avant-garde education. Focus on that in the application. Don’t try to make your kids look like they went to public school. Major on the unique experiences, reading, and areas of expertise they have cultivated while home educated. THAT’S their ticket to college.

And the essay: make sure it’s a winner!

Bottom line: grades are school’s domain. Homeschool is built from different bricks. Focus on the strengths of homeschool and let go of the tools of traditional school. You’ll be glad you did.

Brave Writer

Posted in BW and public school, Homeschool Advice, Tips for Teen Writers | 1 Comment »

Emerging Writers in the Rhetoric Phase

paper&penImage by David Merz

Brave Writer mom, Cindy, writes:

Hi Julie,

We’ve been using Brave Writer in our house for about a year now. My oldest (now entering 9th grade) took two of your courses last year, one working independently with Christine Gable, and I was floored by his maturity and growth in just a short time, and after having been so resistant to expressing himself through writing for so many years. We are attempting to switch to year round schooling this summer. Been a big shock for all of us! My son, was asked to read Around the World in 80 Days for social studies — like a geography lesson through fiction. Part of the suggested curriculum was a travel log, discussing what countries and cultures were visited and then looking up more information on those places. About halfway into the book, I received this unsolicited free write from Andrew:

Now, I know I should be doing travel logs for this book that I’m reading…

But it doesn’t give me time to think about the places I read about. It throws all this nonsense at me about how the gardens are lush with roses and papayas and whatever, and it doesn’t let me think about the place just described. The book could tell me that people living there have mushrooms growing out of their butts, but it would mash it together with some other information, so that I wouldn’t really notice, unless I dig into the book again to find that 1 fact. Let me put it this way, if your piece of gum runs out of flavor, you spit it out, right? This is a book where you shove ALL of the gum from that pack into your mouth at once, creating an enormous ball of information that you can barely analyze. Chewing this wad of gum is nearly impossible, and digging back through that ball of gum in order to find the one piece that was a different flavor is extremely time consuming, and difficult. It’s not that I don’t want to do these logs, because I would do them for most other books. But trying to do this for “Around the World in 80 Days”, is a time dump, that is unnecessarily hard.

Sorry if this sounds like another one of my famous rants to you, but it’s just my opinion on the matter. The book is confusing me with a pestilence of information, that I can’t really swat in order to put into my brain. It’s just all buzzing around my head annoying me.

For the first time, I got a glimpse of the writer he could one day be, of the one he is becoming, as his mind starts to work in abstractions. Just for that gum metaphor alone, I told him, just read the book, forget the log! I wanted to share because I think these subtle changes are coming from his experiences with free writing and your classes. I can’t wait to see what he can accomplish this year!

Cindy

Cindy, what a delightful sample of the emerging rhetorical thinker your son is becoming! The early to mid-teens are when the brain takes a big leap forward in cognitive power. By 25, the prefrontal cortex will have completed its development, but in the interim, the brain is slowly developing new wiring. The complexity of that neurological growth leads to a variety of brand new thinking skills! One of those is the capacity for imagining multiple perspectives simultaneously, as well as the enhanced ability to articulate one’s own posture (while challenging someone else’s).

Remember when your child was younger and he would simply assume if assigned a lesson, the lesson must be completed. When a child read a book, the author was considered to be an authority, an expert. Children may have personal preferences that they articulate prior to the teen years, but they are not as likely to question the fundamental authority with which adults express their opinions. They may not like what the authority intends, but they don’t question its right to assert power.

By the teen years, then, emerging adults begin to question the source of authority of any given speaker or writer. They wonder on what basis that point of view is valid. They recognize that even their much loved parents are not always operating from dispassionate clarity, but from personal bias or inadequate experience.

Andrew is challenging two authorities in this scenario. First, he is questioning the lesson (lesson-maker). He is not just saying, “I don’t want to do this assignment” like a child might. He’s analyzing the reasonableness of the assignment. He is using his own analysis of the contents of the book to bolster his reaction to the way the lesson-maker wrote the assignment. He even goes further to say that he’d happily complete logs for any number of books (proving that it is not childish will or lethargy that drives him), but this one novel, this specific book is not conducive to that assignment as constructed.

Second, Andrew is challenging you—your authority to require him to do an assignment he finds unreasonable. He is asking you to hear the reasonableness of his argument and to overturn your good judgment by honoring his! What’s wonderful is that you see all this amazing mind-growth, and are in awe of him, rather than put off by his unwillingness to complete the logs.

Too often we get side-tracked by content and miss the amazing development happening in front of our eyes. If I could say one thing to parents of teens (and to a younger version of myself), it’s this: “Notice what the argumentativeness or inquisitiveness means about teen brain growth in your child. Ignore your reaction to the content.”

So when your teen tells you that it’s reasonable to stay up all night for the third night running playing video games, listen to the construction of the argument. Listen to the way he appeals to you. Is he providing reasons? Is he considering the possible reasons you might say ‘no’? Is he exploring the possible repercussions to his own health to reassure you? Is he finding his own sources of authority to back his argument (even if those sources at first glance seem unduly biased or insufficient from your point of view)?

If he’s doing these things, you can be thrilled for his brain development no matter how much you worry about his getting too little sleep. Start with the brain. Start with enthusiasm for this new burst of argumentative challenge—where what you say doesn’t automatically go. This is how you grow critical thinkers. Your kids’ thoughts may be revised 100 times in the next 5-10 years. But it’s the fact of that revising process that you want to celebrate and foster. And notice!

Well done Cindy! You’ve given us a great example of the teen brain in full flower!

Posted in Email, Natural Stages of Growth in Writing, Tips for Teen Writers | 1 Comment »

The “Now it All Counts” Moment

The Now It All Counts MomentThe following note was sent to me after I posted about the ideal curriculum for a six year old:

Julie,

I loved the post today. How would you answer the same question (more or less), to the homeschooling parent of a 13 and 14 year old……the 14 year old with learning challenges and the 13 year old, bright in some areas, yet rather unmotivated if anything challenges him. When I say to my kids, “if you aren’t happy pursuing learning this way, we can look at schools” neither is particularly interested. However, it seems as if they know one is not “supposed” to like “school” and that has transferred to not liking most things that challenges them or looks like learning. On top of it all, I try to fit schooling between one’s major commitment to a sports team and the other’s need for physical therapy and a few classes — so it’s not like we are hanging out at home all day, whatsoever.

Anxious about preparing my kids for HS and College, but still having fun.

I call the crisis Melinda describes: The “now it all counts” moment.

Rather than continuing the joy of learning through experience, encounter, and exploration, most of us (me included!) suddenly panic and whip out the textbooks and quizzes, thinking there’s some better preparation for college than the one we’ve been creating all along!

Let me put it this way: The academic preparation for college can be as experience drenched and exploratory as the early years. It can include encounter with new instructors and new opportunities for involvement in the local community and abroad.

There’s just one primary difference.

Whereas the early years are marked by kinesthetic learning practices, the teen years are marked by risky thinking and a headlong dive into abstraction. Your job with an older child is to ensure that that teen is getting a thorough introduction to the wide world of ideas, particularly ideas they can encounter firsthand in other people, places, and writings.

What to do? Try this list.

Read a diverse authorship: men, women, young, old, white, black, Hispanic, Asian, western modern writers, western ancient writers, non-western writers – both modern and ancient, immigrants and natives, all religious points of view and non-religious, diverse political points of view, including the ones that frighten you.

Read a wide variety of writing genres: prose, poetry, political rhetoric, rants, speeches, novels, popular non-fiction, not-so-popular ancient non-fiction, newspapers, magazines, blogs, websites, cartoons, scientific treatises, credible research, propaganda, biased reporting, “objective” reporting—which doesn’t exist, but there are at least some contexts with that aim.

Watch a wide variety of films and television: Get caught up in a big series like The West Wing or Mad Men. Watch Pride and Prejudice in all its versions. Work through the Criterion list of classic films, one at a time. Write movie reviews for Rotten Tomatoes as you do.

Be a patron of the arts: Go to musicals, art shows (local and national), specialize in one artist and learn all you can about him or her, expand your horizons with opera, the symphony, folk dance, ballet, serious drama, a rock concert. Listen to their CDs, ask them to tell you about the lyrics and music and why they love it. Be curious, not judgmental. Share back what you love, same way.

Get into nature: Hikes, trips to see the National Parks, camping, backpacking, outdoor rock climbing, bird watching in a new place with real birders, identifying all the flora and fauna of your part of the world, photographing it and cataloguing it. Go to the beach, go to the plains, go to the mountains.

Encounter real human beings: at your place of worship, at someone else’s place of worship, actors and actresses, engineers and musicians, lawyers and doctors, mechanics and plumbers, artists and athletes, coaches and tutors, the elderly, the physically challenged, the mentally disadvantaged, politicians, activists, your next door neighbors, people in foreign countries (go there).

Converse about all of these: over dinner, in the car, through email, in online discussion, in a youth group, at a discussion group hosted at your house, through an online class, in an in-person class at a local high school or JC.

Write about it: autobiographical narrative essay, expository essay, exploratory essay, journals, Facebook status updates, Twitter tweets, texts, letters to supporters or family when you travel abroad, essays for college admissions, timed essays for the college admissions tests, blogs, Tumblr, fan fiction sites, online gaming discussion groups, Reddit…

Advance in math and science: Yes, you must! Find someone who knows these subjects that can give them the life they deserve—co-ops where dissections are done in groups, junior college, high school, your house if you’re the science person! Tutors for math—go as far in math as you possibly can. Totally matters—take it seriously, pay for it if you have to.

Take Advanced Placement course and exams: These are tests for subject matter that will allow your kids to be in college with credits already stacked up. The AP courses can be done in small groups, or in schools, or independently with materials. Optional, but excellent for any kid wanting to be an honor’s student in college.

Have Big Juicy Experiences: That’s right! Send your kids abroad, send them to Habitat for Humanity so they can build houses for the disadvantaged, take them to Italy, visit the elderly (make a friend), put them on an elite sports team (ultimate frisbee, lacrosse, golf – not just soccer and baseball), enroll them in a theater or dance company, put them in a marching band, send them to culinary school, apply to a foreign exchange program like AFS, let them apprentice in graphic design or car mechanics, help them build sustainable domiciles in your backyard or cross-breed fish in your pond. Teach your teens everything you know about gardening or hanging drywall or painting sunsets or photography or your heart language of Latvian. This is the time for your kids to be all that they can be!

SPEND TIME with your teens! Most of all—talk to them, ask questions, get them talking. Don’t tell them what to think or believe, ask them what they think of believe. Ask them more, ask them why, ask them to show you how they got to that viewpoint (sources, conversations, readings). Be their mirror, not a sledge-hammer of fact.

Do all of this while you drink tea, read poetry, give bear hugs, check up on each other online, send silly texts, and hand them $20 bills as they head out the door…because you love them and you want them to have what they need to explore the big, wonderful world they are about to take over and shape.

If you need help with special needs—get it! That’s the key! Get them the help they need, ask for their feedback about what is and isn’t working.

Remember: they decide if they are going to have an education or not as teens. You can’t make it happen. All you can do is offer—”Have you read this?” “Did you think about this?” “What do you think about this?” “Want to go here, with me?” “I’d love to go there with you.”

Like that. Dialog, friendly, open, energetic!

Our teens: the future of our planet.

Be good to them. Enjoy them! They are so amazing. Truly. It’s going to be okay.

Brave Writer Online Classes

Image by Willeecole | Dreamstime.com

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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 »

I wish you could grade college papers

like I do…

Posted in Brave Writer Philosophy, Help for High School, Tips for Teen Writers | Comments Off on I wish you could grade college papers