Clemsondana
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Posts posted by Clemsondana
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In some ways, syllabi are less useful in a canvas class since assignments have deadlines, instructions, and rubrics attached when they are posted. If an instructor lists a general course flow somewhere (number of tests, half of points come from projects, etc) then students can just do the next thing, especially if the class has a weekly schedule (homework posted Monday, quiz Friday). Some instructors use announcements or messages and some just post things.
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That's a little weird. But, like I said, online DE has been pretty disorganized at times. We've always had a syllabus, but it hasn't always been followed.
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Is it uploaded as a file? I usually have my syllabus as the first document in the first module, for instance. Online DE classes vary a lot in how organized they are and how responsive the instructor is. Have they started yet? I wouldn't be concerned if the class hasn't started (ours start on the 16th).
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You can buy a deodorant eraser - my kid uses the Spa Sisters one from Amazon for a black karate uniform shirt.
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I've got lettuce still in the greenhouse, and got a bit of parsley and chive this week. But, despite not being crazy cold, it's been so cloudy that nothing is really growing much. I can see sprouts from some other herb plants - cilantro and dill - and some microgreens, that would likely do OK but they just can't get going. I have a tiny hydroponic kit that I started some herb seeds in this week. Last year it was new and came with 6 pre-seeded pods. This year I got new foam inserts and used my own seeds - basil, parsley, dill. I'm hoping that they sprout before I get an algae bloom. They grow quickly with the light, and I'm hoping to be able to get them big enough to transplant to pots and then plant 6 lettuce plants. I keep green onions grown from leftovers - I buy a bunch to cook with, use the green tops, and then resprout the bottoms and put in a pot. I can usually cut from a bunch for a year or 2. I use them a lot but probably only buy 2-3 times a year.
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Our community college has sometimes had only one section of a class that my kid needs. There are plenty of potential 200-level lit classes, but only one section of Physics with Calculus I, for instance. So, kid has chosen to do asynchronous versions of some classes (both homeschool classes and DE classes). to make it work. Kid has done asynch DE while taking live classes at our co-op, and kid has done a couple of asynch homeschool classes over the years.
I would be the first to say that this will not work for every kid in every class, though. Taking DE Intro to Psych online was fine. Taking Physics and Calc 3 online was brutal, and if kid wasn't so accustomed to self-teaching it would have been ugly. But, depending on the class, it might help avoid some potential conflict.
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Sometimes you can find clips of Brain Games showing something similar.
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I think that a lot of this is specific to each location and time period. I never saw snow until we moved when I was a teen. In Florida, where I lived during elementary and middle school, it was hot all summer. We played outside anyway, but people now would be more likely to say that kids shouldn't be out in the heat. But, one summer it rained all day for 2 straight weeks. We were bored out of our minds. Many other summers had multi-day stretches of rain, or daily afternoon storms. We lived in a neighborhood but weren't allowed to free range when we were younger - with Ted Bundy as a local news story, parents were skittish. But, the area had a skate rink that middle schooler were frequently dropped off at on Friday nights. The guy who owned it ran a tight ship. Then I moved to another state. The skate rink was full of cigarette smoke and fairly sketchy. But, teens ran all over the neighborhood and my group had a couple of hangout houses.
I do think that there is a lack of spaces for teens to be, but this has been an ongoing problem. I remember visiting my grandparents and watching the news and people were trying to shut down a place that was a teen hangout. I don't remember if it had dancing or a soda shop vibe, but something reasonable. My grandfather was so irritated - he felt like kids were better off being someplace that had adults around and that keeping teens out of sight could lead to trouble.
But, I do remember rereading books over and over and trips to the library being awesome and mom getting a summer package so that we went to the movies once a week and it being a big deal when parents would arrange get-togethers since we couldn't drive and friends from school weren't walkable. looking back, I probably took up basketball because it was something to do, and I remember playing with my younger sibling. A teen across the street would teach us new skills and then play 2 on 1 against us, saying that it made us all better. It's true, but it's also the kind of fun that you come up with when there's nothing to do. Otherwise it's kind of rare to have a high schooler, a middle schooler, and an elementary schooler hanging out together.
Edited to add: I just looked up the skate place from my childhood. It closed in 2017. The replacement, under new management, requires an adult for everybody under 17. I understand why businesses wouldn't want the liability these days, but I'm saddened by the loss of autonomy for younger kids. Locally, I drop my young teen off to skate sometimes - I'm not sure what the age cutoff is, but kid and various friends seemed to enjoy spending an afternoon skating whenever I took them over the summer. Our area may be a little outside of current norms, though.
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I've got kids who play sports, so they usually do 2 hours a day (and sometimes 4 hours, if both sports practice) although there are some days off. I've got a boy who will go running if practice is just a workout or any day that doesn't have practice, and usually do some weights too. When he was a tween he'd go out and shoot baskets for 30 minutes before starting school because he said it helped him focus. He also seems to go running if exasperated with something. He doesn't like to sit for too long, so will sometimes do some squats or burpees if we've been sitting, like on a road trip or a family gathering that involves a lot of lounging around while talking. After road-tripping to where we ate Thanksgiving dinner, kid went out and ran some sprints while the rest of us were visiting. When I was a teen, we came home from school, did our homework, and then played basketball until it got dark so it seems normal to me. He says that he feels better when he exercises, and I know that he enjoys playing ball, running, and weightlifting so it seems like a good thing.
I'll add that practices and workouts are often social. This kid also sometimes plays pickup games of another sport at church or, if a friend asks, at the park. Those are just fun and social, although technically they are exercise, too.
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Not knowing what kind of sick he is, masking may make no sense. He could have food poisoning or gout or some other type of illness besides an airborne respiratory virus. And, while I understand not wanting to get sick, I'd be hesitant to ask somebody to do physical labor (like move heavy appliances) in a mask. I have rarely been in the room when people are doing work at my house, so I'd avoid the space and be busy elsewhere in the house. If he just needs to be paid, could somebody in your family who isn't immunocompromised give him the payment, or could you ask how much it will be and just leave a check? Most airborne viruses don't stay infectious for a long time on surfaces, so I might avoid the room for a few hours and run an air purifyer. The last time we had something like this done - I think it was a fridge - they were in and out in under 30 minutes, and if the appliance is already in the right room then it might be even less.
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All of those terms (BFE, SNAFU, FUBAR, netflix and chill) are familiar and the first 3 have been familiar for as long as I can remember - at least 30 years. I read a lot of my dad's military fiction as a tween/teen, so that may have influenced it. I had never associated the BFE with being gay or anything else - more of an 'you are so far from anything that you are screwed'. I wouldn't attribute anything cultural to it, any more than putting f*!*! in a phrase implies that a sexual act is implied or going to take place. We also use 'in the boonies' but BFE has more of a negative connotation, I think.
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3 hours ago, cintinative said:
We have found the same with ours. Today's Miami admit included the freshman scholarship offer. They still have to let us know about honors. The other schools are all over the place. Some had a separate scholarship app once you were accepted, some included it in the application. Some have a separate honors app, some included that in the application. It's a lot of moving pieces. The worst is we probably won't hear from the school I expect to be our best fit until February. That's going to feel like forever away! But also my son doesn't want to visit schools he can't afford, so we haven't even visited two of the colleges yet. 🤪 I suspect our spring is going to be insane.
Kid did like that Clemson uses the same application for honors and for scholarships. So, it was all done back in October, even if the wait to find out each thing is later (honors college in Jan, money later). And the essays were common app essays so they could be used elsewhere. Kids applying for engineering are definitely the type to appreciate an efficient system. 🙂 The ones that seem to have never-ending paperwork - first apply to college, then do separate essays for honors college and scholarships - are frustrating. If the separate things are short (list your activities, click some boxes) then it's fine, but multiple essays for each, all of them unique...it is not generating good feelings about some schools!
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Before today, we had acceptances at UAH, Auburn, and TN Tech.
Today we got yesses from Clemson and Rose-Hulman.
The scheduling of all of this is so crazy. Clemson doesn't announce financial aid until March, but the paperwork was part of the regular application or the honors application that were turned in back in October. Rose announced admission and aid at the same time (as a private, it's as expensive with aid as some of the others are without). Huntsville has a lot of automatic merit that we know about and had a separate application for more that took under an hour to do, and if kid chooses to attend and do honors it's due in March and likewise looks short. Auburn had some automatic that we know about but you have to apply for more with essays, and honors also involves separate essays. It is so time consuming - if they were all up front, kid would have applied to fewer school and both we and the admissions officials would have less work to do! Virginia Tech doesn't announce EA acceptances until February, which would likely have eliminated it except that we won't know $ from most others until later so...
Even if they don't wind up being the top choice, kid appreciates the directness of UAH and Rose.
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I teach a Bio 2 class that is kind of a 'learn cool things about biology' class. The last time I taught it the students were very into books, so we read a lot of popular science books (Gut, The Brain, Why We Sleep, etc). For a student who just needs a credit and isn't going into science, you could put together something like this and include non-biology fields that would be of interest to your student. There are books about making the atomic bomb, books by Matt Ridley about the philosophy of science, and a host of other topics that you could probably get recommendations for here. They could write papers or discuss or whatever would be a good fit. I don't know if this type of class would work for your student - one of mine would love it and the other probably wouldn't. People seem to do more of this kind of thing when their kids are younger, but there are great books written for adults, too. I don't think it's ideal to do an entire high school career this way, but my older has had at least one course like this in science, English, and history that allowed time to just learn cool things.
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It wouldn't bother me, but I know that it would bother some others. One of my teens has asked that I share nothing on social media because of data mining, but is fine with anything that is printed and sent to people that we know. I do a yearly Christmas card with a letter and the teens are fine with that, and would even be OK if I sent out quarterly update cards, but don't want anything posted on social media that has a name and picture unless it's already in the public domain (a team picture, press release, something from the church website, etc). So, from that perspective, snagging a picture from social media and including it as a small image in a letter would be fine with them, while sharing on social media would not be. Just a different perspective...
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Fajitas? if you try the salsa chicken, you can probably substitute other salsas (like peach salsa) - I know I made it once with some sort of green salsa and it was fine. My chicken casserole recipe is 6-8 shredded chicken breasts, 3 c cooked rice, 3 cans cream-of-something soup, 1 c mayo, 1 s sour cream - mix, top with cracker crumbs and dot with butter, bake. I have several people in my orbit who love it, whose wives or moms say to not tell them what is in it. Funny enough, it's basically the salsa chicken recipe, with may subbed for salsa. Chicken and dumplings is also good, and there are lots of chicken pie variations so you might be able to find something that your family will eat. I am blessed with 2 kiddos and a spouse who will eat almost anything, with the difficulty being that they could easily eat 8 pounds of chicken in 2 days.
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I would cook part of it to use for lunches in whatever way your family will eat it - chicken salad, roasted and sliced for salads, shredded BBQ chicken that can easily be reheated. Cooked chicken is fine to chop or shred and freeze for casseroles, or BBQ chicken portions that can be reheated quickly for sandwiches.
Last week I bought a bunch of chicken and made http://chefmommy-brandao.blogspot.com/search?q=Salsa+chicken with a few pounds, made chicken salad with some more, and then made a big pot of white chicken chili https://www.tasteofhome.com/recipes/white-turkey-chili/ . I have sporty teens so we go through a lot of food, but when they were younger I would have done this and then cooked some to freeze.
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Many of the older people in my orbit - my parents, our choir and women's groups at church - have had it this fall and it's been minor. Some have been sicker than others, but it's ranged from a mild cold to a 24 hour virus to 'not as bad as the flu' to 'a sinus infection'. I hope that their case is likewise mild.
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Your talk looks great. You might also mention something along the lines of 'just because a kid is good at something, even exceptionally good, does not mean that they love it and want to do it for fun'. My older was crazy good at math, but didn't want to do puzzle problems. Kid used a combo of AoPS, my old college textbook, Life of Fred Calculus, Calculus Made Easy, and AP prep videos to self-teach AP calc to a 5 on the AP BC exam (kid just finished online DE Calc 3, which also required a ton of self-teaching, and ended with a high A) and has a more thorough grasp of the math than my spouse, who has a math minor...but still sees math as a tool and would never have wanted to join a math circle or work challenging word problems for fun or move through an AoPS book quickly by doing 2 chapters a day and every challenge problem. So, if your kid loves that sort of thing, fantastic! Give them that opportunity! If your kid wants to do their class work using a regular program and then spend their spare time reading or drawing or at sports/music practice or trying new things, that is also fantastic! Spouse and I both have STEM PhDs and neither of us did anything career-focused as teens - we took the most advanced classes that our schools offered, which wasn't anything unusual, and I took an extra science elective in high school, but a lack of passion for doing something for fun doesn't mean that they aren't really interested. I read science because it's interesting, but I also read cozy mysteries because my brain likes to take breaks. 🙂 I sometimes see a perception that if kids aren't doing academics all the time or for fun then they aren't really gifted, but most of the gifted folks that I know enjoy normal stuff and don't do work for fun (although some do, and that's great!). I know that you know this, but it might be helpful to state it explicitly with examples. The one time I bought into the lie and pushed kid a little, it turned kid against the subject for a few months...
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My spouse loves sleeping and I've never understood it. I sleep because I have to, but I'd rather be doing anything else. I'm usually up between 6 and 7, although if I have several late nights or do physically tiring work I might sleep until 8:30 once to catch up. I rarely sleep more than 8 hours,, and usually wake up after 7.
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Christmas Eve we usually do a meal with my parents - often a bunch of finger foods that Mom fixes, or something on the grill. We usually have church in the early evening and then come home, but since Christmas Eve is on Sunday I think the service that my kid usually plays music at will be at 11 am, with no 5 pm service, so we may come home or go with my parents to their church, I'm not sure. We usually put on PJs and I make something like chili or goulash.
Christmas Day breakfast my parents and sibling come over. Mom brings hash brown casserole. My family always had 'green ham' so I usually put some sort of pork in the crock pot to cook overnight and in the morning I slice or shred and fry until crisp. I usually make biscuits, but one kiddo might want to make scones this year. I either make fried apples or applesauce to go with it.
We eat a late breakfast and then anybody who is hungry can have sweets, stocking treats, or leftover chili or breakfast food.
My inlaws used to come for dinner but can no longer travel. But, we have grilled or baked salmon, homemade Sally Lunn bread, a cherry-banana gelatin, 7-layer salad, and then whatever other sides the kids want - peas, corn, roasted broccoli or asparagus, or whatever they ask for. We like this meal because everybody has favorites on the table and much of it can be done ahead of time or is quick, so I'm not in the kitchen all day.
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My kid was also young when we started AoPS pre-A. This kid is good at math but isn't the type to do math for fun. We spent 1.5 (3 semesters, with summers off) on it. We did the same with algebra, and then kid worked through other books at a more typical pace (1 semester for classes like number theory, 1 year for geometry). What I found is that kid became frustrated if we rushed. So, we did AoPS 3 days/week and then did Life of Fred 1 day and had another day for enrichment classes. So, not a traditional model, but it was the right plan for us. You really can't plan the whole thing assuming that you'll move at a constant pace. We were slow moving through the first 2 and then moved much more quickly. Pre-A is incredibly tedious, and trying to move more quickly through it is one of my biggest education regrets because it left kid frustrated when there was really no reason for it and turned kid off of math for a while (hence the switch to including Life of Fred). We also made different decisions around doing all of the challenge problems at different points. We came to just do a selection of them, because that fit better with our learning goals. It turns out that, while my kid likes academic competitions, they didn't want to do competition math because they see math as a tool...which is a valid approach. But, they really enjoyed the math in Number Theory and think the second probability book, which they are finishing next semester, is intriguing, so for us making it possible to explore those other fields is more important than working all challenge problems in other books. But, that's going to be specific to each kid.
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4 hours ago, Heartstrings said:
A complete unrealistic, pie in the sky solution would be foster care for the whole family, in a home or in a well supervised group homes for the whole family. It would be expensive for the first generation, but it would likely save enough money to pay for itself in the second and third generations because it would break the cycle for so many of the kids. But we don’t make generational investments in our country, it’s quarter by quarter.
There are situations where this sort of thing happens, and it's challenging. I was involved in a program that worked with homeless families, and there are all sorts of guidelines. But, you can only advise adults- you can't force them to do what you think is best. The program was set up to help the families get jobs, and then save money for housing. My mom remembers working with a family where the mom came in showing off a mani-pedi, which she had gotten to celebrate getting her first paycheck...while homeless. They tried to teach that a $2 bottle of nail polish is a better celebration when trying to save money. We would routinely see families stop for fast food after deciding that it sounded better than the meal that had been prepared. The food was fixed and shared by host families at the facility - when we did it, we ate there so we brought good food that we were happy to eat.
I always felt like there was, of course, a ton of stress in a family living in one room while having no money, but also there were usually 2-3 families being housed in different rooms (they stayed in churches for a week at a time) and there were host families around at all times. I wondered how that translated when the families were moved to housing and there was nobody to help entertain the kids or take them out to the playground while the parents rested or fix the meals and clean up afterwards. Some families had clearly just had a catastrophe and needed housing while they saved money, but others clearly had much more dysfunctional patterns, and these were families that had been screened so that the families that were admitted to the program had a reasonable chance of succeeding. It was not unheard of to have adults who got mad and quit their job, or who got aggressive with the hosts, or routinely not get back by the time the church doors were locked (at 11 pm, with exceptions made for people who worked odd hours).
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9 minutes ago, SKL said:
I don't believe there are caring homeschoolers who honestly believe their children are better off never being seen in public. How hard is it to get homeschooled kids into some social activity outside the home, to take them to a doctor and dentist at reasonable intervals? Or for kids who have severe disabilities making social activities unrealistic, then therapy sessions?
This is true, but what is being proposed is that somebody somewhere keep track of this and figure out what are acceptable levels of being seen, and who is an acceptable see-er. That's a lot of monitoring and record keeping. My own kids are seen almost daily by somebody - our homeschool group, our science olympiad team, our church, various ball coaches and martial arts instructors and a music teacher and a scout leader and a yearly sports physical. But who is going to check with those people to ensure that my kids were seen? Who decides who is trustworthy? Or are we saying that I also need to take them to be seen by somebody else? Who would that be, and how often would I need to do it?
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Time estimate for DE courses
in High School and Self-Education Board
Posted · Edited by Clemsondana
My kid took Calc 3 and Physics with Calc I DE last semester and said that they were told that between 17-20 hours was expected for each. Kid said that some weeks didn't take that long, but some weeks did. Those are both challenging classes, and taking them online was brutal despite kid being a very capable student who is used to self-teaching. Kid is taking the next physics class this semester in person so we'll see what they are told next week when classes start. On the other hand, DE psych, lit, etc were nowhere near that many hours.
I do wonder if instructors are having to be more explicit about the time commitment because more students are expecting to put in little work. I've been teaching at the same homeschool co-op for over a decade and I've always had a mix of average students, overachievers, and slackers - generally lovely kids with different attitudes towards academics. But, this year several teachers, including me, are struggling with students who seem shocked that they have to work. I was repeatedly asked in the first few weeks if they needed to write down everything that I wrote on the board. I've had several student comment that the class is really hard because they don't know the information after coming to class. They don't think it's reasonable that I present the information and often provide ways to model or use the information, but the work of actually incorporating it into their memory is going to take work outside of the 2 hours that I spend with them each week. Almost 1/2 of the class doesn't take notes, they just take pictures of the board. They are really nice kids. We are not in an area that had schools that were closed for an extended time. The students have a mix of public school and homeschool background. The kids that I had last year were not like this. It could just be an unusual group - the group that is graduating has an inordinate number of overachievers, and this group could be equally atypical. But, based on what my senior reports from public school kids on the ball team, this is widespread and far more common than in years past. I could imagine that college instructors are having to shock kids into understanding that these classes are going to take a lot of work.