Weekly Links: Language, Nerds, History, and more!

My weekly round-up of interesting reading from around the web:

-When my babies were still actually babies, I remember noticing that "ma" meant "mama", "milk", and "more", and that all of those things were pretty much the same thing in their little minds . . . if you've noticed the same thing, you'll probably enjoy this article: "Why the Words for 'Mom' and 'Dad' Sound So Similar in So Many Languages".

-I've heard people talk about "pastor theologians" a lot recently; here's the flip-side: "Pastoral Theologians".

-"We Have Met the Nerds, and They Are Us: Fandom, Fanfic, and the Landscape of Desire". This article goes from cultural phenomena to a Christian insight. I appreciated that, but I think my favorite part was this very clear description of the current zeitgeist:

In the West, and in America especially, we have grown up into a system that prizes desire above all. We all, nerd and non-nerd alike, live in our separate landscapes of desire. And we all have stories to tell, stories of scars and damage. It’s a hallmark of the contemporary West that we all feel like victims, we all feel broken. And we arebroken, but we also want what we want, and who the hell are you to tell me I’m wrong?

-Author Brandon Sanderson is in the middle of a very ambitious writing project - one that spans most of his published work - and I enjoyed reading his thoughts about what he's doing here: "Shadows of Self and the Mistborn Mega-Series".

-Finally, this is a great article that knocks down some old fables about a misunderstood period of history: "How the Middle Ages Really Were".

Weekly Links: Public School, Sex, the Fantastic Four, and more!

My weekly round-up of good reading from around the Web:


"The Public School Parent's Guide to Learning at Home":

Many families do all that we can to foster and nurture learning in the earliest years of a child’s life, as well we should. But when our children begin spending their days in the classroom, we aren’t off the hook! Continuing to build a home where learning is nurtured and valued is one of the best ways we can equip our children for life after graduation.

"We're All Sadists Now": Such an important point:

Yet there is another force at play today ... The belief that our sexual desires determine who we are at the deepest level.  This is somewhat ironic: The age which denies any real significance to sex also wants to argue that sexual desires are of paramount importance to personal identity and fulfillment.  

"The Most Important Scenes from Fantastic Four (As I Remember Them)".  Snort.  A sample from this hilarity:

Ben Grimm: Hey. Anyone else think it’s weird that a high school is doing a science fair, but every single exhibit looks like an elementary school science fair project?
Reed Richards: So basically, science science science. Here, let me steal a toy plane from a kid so I can teleport it for you.
Ben Grimm: Wait a second. Why is there an elementary school kid with an exhibit next to Reed? Is this an all-ages science fair?
Reed Richards: (presses button, plane is teleported). See? Science!
Teacher: Even though I am apparently judging this science fair, I know nothing about science and thus have to assume you used magic to make that kid’s toy disappear. I have to disqualify you, because you are obviously a witch.

Finally, I really, really, really liked Family Life Today's interview series with Rosaria Butterfield. You can listen to the whole thing free. Here are the links:
1) A Train Wreck Conversion
2) What Is Hospitality?
3) What Is Truth?
I've rarely heard anyone so thoughtful, so open and considerate, and yet so thoroughly Christian. Really worth the listen.



Peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell

on children and homework

You know those moments when you have a realization, a brilliant moment of clarity, and then immediately afterward you have an additional realization of "and boy, it shouldn't have taken me so long to figure that out"?

And then you feel sheepish for being thick-headed and not realizing it before, but still grateful anyway, because at least now you get it?

Okay, this is one of those.


So, here's my brilliant (and slow-in-coming) realization:

My job at homework time is to help my children get their homework done.

Obvious, yeah? True. But here's where I went wrong before: I used to think: My job is to make sure my children's homework is done. And when I thought that, I got frustrated so very, very quickly.

Because if my job were to make sure my children's homework is done, you know what would be the fastest way to accomplish that?

Yep! To do it myself.


The thing is "children's homework" is an item on my to-do list, and so my instinct towards it is the same as my instinct towards all the other items on my to-do list: work hard and get it done.  Cross that sucker off!

But that's not how this one gets done. Because my children haven't been doing math for thirty years. They haven't been writing for thirty years. They haven't been reading for thirty years. Their homework isn't easy for them.

My job here is not to do the work. My job is to help the kids.


Obvious? Yes. World of difference? Oh, yes.

Peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell

Weekend links!

Just a few this weekend, but I hope you enjoy them!

"10 Lessons from 10 Years of Public Schooling":

The third lesson is this: You do not send your children to public school—you send your family. What I mean is that public schooling requires the participation of the parents which, in our experience, is something the school values just as much as we do. 

This video is funny and informative:

Links: Giveaway, Hiking Blind, Castle, and more!

First off, Michelle over at Liturgical Time is giving away a copy of Matt Redmond's The God of the Mundane. My review is here (TL;DR: I liked it), and you can go here to enter the giveaway!

The Blind Hiker: How one man used technology to conquer the 2,000-mile Appalachian Trail.

Throw Us a Curve, Castle:

I am told that the viewership of Castle skews right to the political right, so here is an idea: Let Beckett have a renewal of her (let’s say) childhood Catholic faith. Let her be the one person on television who is normal, but decides to obey the teachings of the Church. Let Castle wrestle with it . . . and decide she is worth a mass. Let them get married.

A meditation on the shocking idea that maybe we’re actually not just lazy whiners:

There is truth to the accusations that I’m ungrateful, spoiled, and lazy. No false humility here — I really do posses all those attributes to some degree or another. But it was simply not true to say that those faults alone were the cause of my suffering. I was struggling against a terribly difficult physical condition, and my body was running in the red zone for all of my waking hours. In those weeks when I was unaware of the reality of my situation, I worked under the incorrect assumption that my circumstances were normal, and that therefore the problems must come down to spiritual and mental character defects on my part. Not surprisingly, this caused me to be in a state of constant inner turmoil. In fact, it was reminiscent of the hidden angst that simmered silently within me when I was an atheist: whenever you live under false assumptions about reality, you will live in anguish. It may be buried and only pop up occasionally, or it may burst to the surface in explosions of acute despair, but whenever you try to jam a square peg of your perception of reality into the round hole of actual reality, there will always be friction.

The Early Education Racket:

If you are reading this article, your kid probably doesn’t need preschool.

Watching the Star Wars Prequels on Mute: An Experiment:

. . . . George Lucas has never really cared about dialogue; Paglia points out that he has been known to call it “a sound effect, a rhythm, a vocal chorus in the overall soundtrack,” of a film. The script is “a sketchbook” and he’s “not really interested in plots.” And to most of us that surely sounds like madness. But to George Lucas, who considers film to be an entirely visual medium, it’s exactly right.

 By that notion, one could eliminate the most problematic aspect of the prequels and watch them all over again for that visual experience. With the soundtrack playing, preferably, as the appointment of John Williams as the composer of these films was a very deliberate choice on Lucas’ part.

So, what do they look like? Well, here are some impressions from my own viewing….

Creating a Sub-Genre by Accident: Georgette Heyer’s The Corinthian:

Georgette Heyer wrote The Corinthian a few months after the tragic death of her brother-in-law, a close friend, in one of the early battles of World War II, and under the terrible fear that her husband would soon be following his brother into battle, and that her own brothers would not survive the war. She worried, too, about other family friends, and feared that the war (with its paper rationing, which limited book sales) would make her finances, always straitened, worse than ever. She could not focus, she told her agent, on the book she was supposed to finish (a detective story that would eventually turn into Envious Casca) and for once, she avoided a professional commitment that would earn her money, for a book she could turn to for pure escape. Partly to avoid the need of doing extensive research, and partly to use a historical period that also faced the prospect of war on the European continent, she turned to a period she had already researched in depth for three previous novels: The Regency.

In the process, she accidentally created a genre: The Corinthian, a piece of improbable froth, is the first of her classic Regency romances, the one that would set the tone for her later works, which in turn would spark multiple other works from authors eager to work in the world she created.

Daybook for 9/13/11

outside my window . . . a nice, cool, end-of-summer day. The clouds this morning were glorious, covering half the sky, but in little cotton-ball puffs, the edges of each all a-shining.

I am listening to . . . Mumford and Sons' "Home" and Brooke Fraser's "Something in the Water". One is mournful and longing, the other is upbeat and triumphant, and I like them both so very, very much.

I am wearing . . . shorts, a grey t-shirt, Celtic knot earrings from a dear friend, and my hair up and off my neck (of course!).

I am so grateful for . . . a good school experience, so far, for the two oldest.

I'm pondering . . . how I want my writing life to look, now that Adam's gift is finished and I'm back to ordinary times. I think that I always want to be editing/querying a book (so one finished), be writing a book (in process), and be plotting/researching a book (prospective). That way I can move smoothly from one project to another. Ideally, when I finish writing one book, I want another one waited for me: plot outlined and research complete.

We'll see how that goes.

I am reading . . . Ghost Ship, by Lee and Miller. And I'm sadly almost done. Write faster, guys!

I am creating . . . I just finished a tiny vest for a new little boy due soon at our church, and I'm about to cast on a cardigan for Adam's cousin's new baby, also due soon. Oh! And I'm starting my next novel - my first contemporary romance! The research on that one is finally done. Exciting times.

around the house . . . everything's actually pretty clean and calm, now that the rowdy summer days are gone. I'm enjoying the peace.

from the kitchen . . . I have chicken baked; I'm going to shred it and put it on bagels tonight with some marinara sauce and cheese to make mini-pizzas. Strawberries are waiting to be washed for our side dish.

real education in our home . . . spending time each day listening to the kids talk about school, reading books, helping with homework. Doing some popcorn reading of the Psalms with my eldest.

the church year in our home . . . today is the feast day of Cornelius the Centurion and of St. John Chrysostom. I find myself wanting to pray, "May God give us both faithfulness and golden words."

recent milestones . . . the two eldest started school! They both like it, and I'm very grateful. For my part, I'm enjoying having more one-on-one time with the youngest two in the mornings, and with the oldest two in the afternoons, while their little sisters are napping.

the week ahead. . . hoping to get a handle on the new rhythm of our days, now that we've got two in school.

picture thought . . . We had the pleasure of spending a long Labor Day weekend with some dear friends who live a bit north of us, and one of the things we got to do was to help with the bee harvest. It was so cool!

Peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell

I Stand Relieved

We've decided to send our kids to our little local elementary school next year.

I spent several months this spring holding the options - homeschooling and public schooling - in either hand, weighing one and then the other, and finding nothing to tip the scales in either direction. We've never felt either the obligation to homeschool or the obligation to public school. I think it's largely like being an omnivore vs. being a vegetarian: you can do both well and you can do both badly. There's no moral imperative either way, at least not for us.

So I spent a long time undecided, just because neither the advantages nor the disadvantages of either side were compelling to me. Eventually I started feeling more frustrated at my indecision than anything else.

But my mom pointed me towards the Ignatian discernment process: basically, a way of praying for guidance when you're faced with two licit options, i.e., how to pray for wisdom when it isn't a moral issue, when you're really free to follow either course. And my husband gave me a few hours by myself to quietly pray through the decision. And I came out of that feeling very free to send our kids to school next year; indeed, it seemed best.

So, we're starting something new in the fall, and we're all looking forward to it. I think, given how I was raised (public school and loved it), I'm better equipped naturally to be a public schooling mom than a homeschooling mom.

A big part of the reason we started homeschooling was because I didn't think I could be a good public school mom with twin infants. I still think that was true, and I don't regret these past two years. But now that Anna and Lucy are so much older, and I'm not nursing two babies and not getting enough sleep, I think I can be the sort of public school mom I'd want to be: involved and available to help.

The thing that really made me feel okay with the decision was when I realized what my real question was. It was: is it okay to delegate my children's education?

When I put it that way, and then thought of the homeschooling mothers I most admire in real life - the ones that are doing a really awesome job - I realized that all of them delegated parts of their children's educations. The music lessons, the co-ops, the online classes, the charter schools, the clubs, the P. E. lessons, Classical Conversations, the play dates . . .

And the second thing I realized that it was exactly these areas of delegation that were the parts of homeschooling that drove me nuts. The unstructured social interaction, the something-different-every-day, the money, the spotty scheduling . . . basically, it's the frugal introvert's nightmare.

So, the question wasn't, is it okay to delegate? - all the parents I admire do - it was, is it okay to delegate to our local elementary? So I toured our local elementary again, and was really happy with what I saw. Instead of listening to the hyper principal give a sales speech (the hyper principal is gone now), I talked to a kindergarten teacher who's been there for almost twenty years, and I feel like I got a much better picture of day-to-day life in the classrooms, and what I saw looked good. Not perfect, but pretty good.

And as someone who went to pretty good public schools and is pretty happy with her education, I'm okay with that.

But we have the good luck to live in a nice city that is, frankly, full of 1) young Christian families and 2) retirees. Which makes for a public school environment that beats most.

So . . . we'll see how it goes. And if it goes badly, well I know now that I can homeschool, and so we'll just pull them out if it goes badly.

But I think it'll go well.

Peace of Christ to you,

Jessica Snell

Homeschooling is School, II

Thanks so much for all the comments, ladies!

Here's some further information on the trend I'm noticing: it is specifically that character training is a subject, like math or reading, and that it is the most important subject. That is what I'm disagreeing with, because I don't think character can be taught as a subject. At least, I can see that it can, and maybe that should be a minor part of forming a child's character (after all, it's easier to try to be patient if you've been given a definition of "patience"), but I don't think it fits under the umbrella of "school" nearly as well as under "parenting" for the simple reason that most of our character development comes from what we see, do, and imitate.

School will be part of that, just because it's part of our day, but I don't think that character development is more particular to school than it is to, say, chores.

I suppose, when I look at school, I would say that the primary duty of a Christian teacher is good academics, just as the primary duty of a Christian carpenter is producing a good table (thank you Miss Sayers!).  In other words, if you let the academics slack because you're more concerned about a nebulous "character issue", you're actually having the opposite of your intended effect: you're producing a lazy, ignorant student.

But . . . I can certainly see viewing homeschooling as a weapon in your parenting arsenal. Much as you might use a chore chart to help produce diligence, you can use your schooling method to produce, well, diligence. :) And family closeness, and opportunities for Bible study, and on and on. That does make a lot of sense to me. What doesn't make sense to me is seeing the primary purpose of homeschooling as character development. I should think that the primary purpose of homeschooling is education - the primary purpose of any form of schooling is education. Now, the reason you most value education could well be character development. And you could certainly think that homeschooling, properly pursued, is more conducive to good character development than other forms of education. But I think if your schooling aims at a good character, you're not going to get it. But if your schooling aims at a good education, you will get that, and likely get a good character thrown in (if all the other necessities are in place, of course).

That said, as Kelly and Elena both pointed out, you can homeschool for developmental reasons, especially in the early years. I'd put my family in this group; we first started looking into homeschooling when we realized that public school would mean our five-year old would be out of the house for about the same amount of time my husband was at work! We honestly think homeschooling is better for our family dynamics (less stressed mom and kids!) right now. And that is connected to character - stress can lead to growth, but too much stress can stunt growth. But again, I would say that was a parenting decision . . . homeschooling was the right tool for the job (sometimes you want a Phillips screwdriver instead of a flat head screwdriver). 

But it was also what you might call an economic decision: I didn't think what we'd be getting would be worth what we'd be paying for it. I don't think that eight hours a day of my child's life is worth the return of an education that lacks history, foreign language and religion.  So the fact that my child would be unduly stressed was part of it, but also that she'd be unduly stressed and uneducated. Not worth it. Because, again, school should produced educated children.

Amie, I appreciate your point too, that Christians can educate better because we have the truth. I agree, actually. But I don't think that this is something that's impossible for Christian public school parents to do (I don't assume you do either!); there can be a lot of benefit from having teachers who disagree with you and then coming home and discussing it all with your parents, and having them help you form good arguments to support your own beliefs. Those parents are also educating Christianly, they're just doing it in a different manner.

So, in this particular case, it was literally the idea that the character issues I'm working on with my child (honesty, kindness, etc.) should be written down in my lesson plan book along with her math assignments. I just think it's miscategorization. I think those things exist alongside schooling, but if I had to categorize them, I'd certainly put them under parenting, and not schooling. I think that including them in schooling (perhaps unknowingly) assumes that public school parents couldn't possibly be discipling their children too, because it assumes that school is primarily about character growth, and not about education. (Again, if I'm cooking, I should be a good person while I'm cooking, sure, but when it comes to the job itself, what matters is not my character but how the chicken tastes!)

So, education certainly impacts character, and visa versa. But nothing in life is really unconnected to anything else, and just the fact that they're connected doesn't mean that they're in the same category. Huh. I suppose when it comes down to it, my frustration is really that I'm using the Dewey decimal system and they're using Library of Congress! 

(I.e., you're right, Amie, I should just ask more questions.)

Thanks again for the discussion; I'm very open to hearing yet more thoughts on the subject.

Peace of Christ to you,

Jessica Snell

Homeschooling Year One

We are close to finished with our first year of homeschooling, and we are planning to continue next year. I thought I’d do a little post about what we did, what worked and what didn’t, and what we’re planning on doing next year.

What Worked

Not having to get all the kids out of the house by seven! :)  I kid, but with four kids five and under, this is not an insignificant consideration!

 The Ordinary Parent’s Guide to Teaching Reading. I’m very impressed with this book. We’re about halfway through it. It’s very easy to use and very, very thorough. My daughter’s learning to read well, and I’m learning things I never knew about my own language!

            For handwriting practice, I have my daughter choose a sentence from her reading lesson every day and copy it.

Math U See, Primer. This book makes me unafraid to teach math. I love how the concepts are illustrated visually and in a tactile manner with the manipulative blocks. For example, in teaching time, the book has you make a clock out of the five-unit blocks, one block between each number on the clock, so that the student has a visual illustration of the number of minutes between each number on the clock. It then uses the skill of skip-counting-by-five (taught in an earlier lesson) to teach the child how to read what is indicated by minute hand. Very clever, very effective.

More Mudpies to Magnets. We’ve been doing experiments out of this book, and every one of them has been a huge hit.

Bible story narration. We’re slowly reading through a Bible story book. I read Bess a story, and then she narrates back a two-to-three sentence version to me, which I copy down for her. Then she illustrates it. Thus, she’s slowly making her very own Bible story book. I got this idea from Berquist’s Designing Your Own Classical Curriculum, and I’m very happy with it.

Scripture memorization. We’re using Well-Versed Kids, and we got a fair way through it this year. (I'm lucky, and my mom is lending me the copy she used with us when we were kids. It's pretty hard to find now.) We’re also memorizing the verses off of the fliers the kids bring home from Sunday school.

Poetry memorization. Bess has memorized several poems this year. She gets to pick them. Once she’s memorized them, we copy them down into her poetry journal. This is another idea from Berquist’s book.

Art lessons with Grandpa. My dad’s been coming over to do art with Bess. She’s learned some basic drawing skills, and been introduced to tools like charcoal, and done lots of other fun projects, like using construction paper cut-outs to make a big scene on poster board and like lighting candles and then drawing the flames. This has been very cool. 

Spanish Lessons with Aunt L. My sister has come and done Spanish with the kids (Bess and her little brother). These have been really neat too, and have included writing her own stories in Spanish and illustrating them, and having snacks and talking about them in Spanish, and even visiting with my sister's classroom hamster and talking about it in Spanish.

Lots and lots and lots of read-alouds. We’ve read a lot of age-appropriate science books and history books and fairy tales and Spanish children’s books.

Homeschooling P. E. class. Our local university offers a P. E. class for homeschoolers – it’s how they give their elementary ed. students a practicum in how to each P. E. This was a blast – Bess got to do all the fun P. E. stuff like playing with parachutes and running relay races and bean bag tosses and all that jazz.

What Didn’t Work

A formal Spanish program. I’ve got one I want to use next year, but this year we ended up doing conversation days with my sister (as mentioned above) and lots and lots of Spanish picture books and some Spanish music.  It was informal, which I didn’t expect, but it was good. My kids were really resistant to speaking something other than English at the beginning of this year, but now they’re getting used to it. They’re even excited about it (when it involves music they like or stories they like). My daughter’s even tried using Spanish when the occasion called for it, and that’s a huge step forward!

A science experiment a week. It just didn’t happen that way. They were there, but less frequent than I hoped.

What We’re Doing Next Year

Friday school. This is the biggest change. Next year the plan is to enroll Bess in a private school satellite program. This means that technically, Bess will be enrolled in private school (which, among other things, simplifies our paperwork), though she will only have school on campus once a week. The rest of her lessons will be at home, taught by me. The bigger benefits are that she gets to go to classes once a week, and will get music lessons (they do choir and a musical every semester) and P. E. and some extra history and science classes and FIELD TRIPS. Basically, it fills in all the gaps – all the stuff that’s hard to do on our own. And it lets her continue to get used to classes with other kids and to other people teaching her, but without the uber-long public school day.

I’m glad we did the first year on our own, because I got to find my feet without anyone looking over my shoulder. But for this next year, now that I know what I want and need, I’m excited to have a bit of support and a little more structure.

First Language Lessons and Writing with Ease. This is what we’re moving to for Language Arts once we finish OPGTTR (which should be within the first month or so of school, as it’s the one thing we’re planning to keep up with over the summer). I don’t think I’d be homeschooling if I hadn’t read The Well-Trained Mind, and so I’m cheerfully going ahead and following most of Bauer’s suggestions, including using her curricula where they exist. We’ll also be using Spelling Workout A.

 Bible stories and Scripture memorization. Just continuing with what we did this year.

 Handwriting . . . um. Of some kind. I’m leaning Zaner-Bloser, but I’m also thinking about Handwriting Without Tears.

El Espanol Facil (forgive the lack of accent). It was hard to find a Spanish curriculum that wasn’t aimed at high-schoolers, and that also wasn’t crafts-based, and that also wasn't just memorizing odd bits of vocabulary, but this one looks good. I'll try to report back. :)

       In addition, I’m hoping to have at least one time a day (probably a meal) where we only speak Spanish. I’m working really hard to get my Spanish to the place where I can facilitate this!

Biology WTM-style. We’ll be using the suggestions in WTM, and studying plant life, animal life and the human body.

Story of the World I: Ancient Times. I’m looking forward to this!

 

I think that’s the bulk of it. There are a few things I still need to figure out, but this is the plan going forward. Of course, the very fact that I’m homeschooling – when I never ever expected to do that – makes me know that I can’t count on everything working out just as I plan!

 

Anyone else more-or-less know what you're doing next year?

Peace of Christ to you,

Jessica Snell

we might grow up, but we don't really change

I'm home sick today, having finally succumbed to the crud the rest of the family has had for the past two weeks, and so I'm going through a bunch of old schoolwork my mom passed onto me awhile ago.

And I'm looking at some notes my third-grade teacher made on my report cards (I remember this teacher as the one who gave me stress headaches - yes, when I was about nine!), and I'm thinking, Gee, that doesn't sound like me at all . . . ;)

Here you go:

"Jessica is capable of very high quality work in all areas of Language Arts. She is not very concerned about spelling words correctly in her work and only corrects words when the work is going to be published."

The current me thinks, "Duh. To bother one must have a reason to bother."

"She is able to write in different styles for different audiences."

Yes, one must always be aware of one's audiences. For instance, I'm currently aware that no one but me might find this interesting.

"Jessica is sometimes a little over-confident. This attitude tends to intimidate others and makes it difficult for her to admit to any mistakes or need for improvement."

Really? Hee. Actually, my sister helped to beat this one out of me - at least a little - in high school

This next one I think might have been wishful thinking on my teacher's part:

"Jessica is learning the important skill of respecting alternate points of view. She is beginning to realize that there is sometimes more than one 'correct' way of doing something."

Hmm. Current me says, "'correct', maybe. More than one 'best'? Nah."

:D

Anyone else ever been amused by reading old report cards? I'm telling you, if you haven't looked over them, you might want to. It's weirdly enlightening.

Peace of Christ to you,

Jessica Snell