Picasso was very opinionated, and he even had opinions on teaching, (which I found via Daring Greatly).
Each second we live is a new and unique moment of the universe, a moment that will never be again. And what do we teach our children? Read more
There are stories of what kids did in order to achieve incredibly unlikely goals. Taylor Swift had her whole family relocate to Nashville. Gymnast Gabby Douglas left her Virginia family to go live with her Iowa coach. The pianist Conrad Tao‘s family moved from southern Illinois to northern Illinois for a piano teacher and then they relocated to New York City, where the grand piano took up the second bedroom in the apartment. Read more
Philip Roth just announced his retirement. I’m not a huge fan of Philip Roth. I gave myself a Ph.D in 20th century literature in my 20’s, when, finally, no one was telling me what to read. I played volleyball during the day (it was my job) and I read a book every night. Read more
What strikes me about the conversation on my post about Cave of the Mounds is how all conversations about homeschooling seem to lead back to the argument over the well-rounded kid.
Just because your kids like to play video games doesn’t mean they should learn to program. You drive all the time. Does this mean you should be a car mechanic? Probably not. Very few kids should learn to write code. Read more
My older son loves going to Cave of the Mounds. Maybe you would like it, too. It’s one of the largest caves in the United States, and geologists love it because it has one of the most diverse groupings of stone in the world. Or something like that. I don’t really know. I hate going there. It’s claustophobic and boring and I take a Xanax every time and then I am so out of it at the end of the tour that I always let the kids buy too much at the gift shop. Read more
I have a box of all the stuff my kids brought home from their time in traditional school that made me want to homeschool them. I wish I had known that I was going to have a blog about homeschooling, because when the box was nearly full, I started throwing stuff out. I worried that I’d become a bitter, depressed, and ineffective parent if I allowed myself to have a box full of stuff that makes me angry about school. Read more
We had a funeral for our goat. The goat was our favorite goat. For those of you who don’t know, in the goat cheese industry, which is very prominent in our area, the goat farmers kill the baby boy goats when they are born. The US imports goat meat, so there is no market for the farmers to raise boy goats for a profit. The boys are left to freeze in January. Read more
Most of us were not raised to think kids can learn on their own. But even if you were raised to think kids can teach themselves, you will be shocked to hear about the kids in Ethiopia. MIT chose a remote, illiterate community to send some first-graders a box of iPads. Unopened. One person in the community was taught how to recharge the iPads. That’s all anyone knew about the iPads. Within a month, the kids could read English and within three months, the kids had hacked the iPad to make the camera work even though someone at MIT had disabled the cameras. Read more
Here’s an email I received last week:
I began homeschooling in the 8th grade.
Right now, it’s my junior year (I’m 15), and I realize that I’m doing something severely wrong. I’m doing the college shuffle now (I still want to go to college), and it’s stressful and not how I want to learn. It’s frustrating. I’m a homeschooler, people who are known for being unique and different, and my application is starting to look like every other kid in public school who does the SAT’s, AP’s (I take AP online courses), and whatnot. Read more