ThatHomeschoolDad
-
Posts
1,515 -
Joined
-
Last visited
Content Type
Profiles
Forums
Events
Blogs
Classifieds
Store
Posts posted by ThatHomeschoolDad
-
-
No bricks here. I'm impressed!
Did the company you work for test you or did you sign up and take it as an adult test taker?
I'm even more interested in being a SAT or ACT tutor now. I used to love taking standardized tests and I always did well on them.
In my neck of the woods, I don't think I'd get $60/hour because the economy isn't as strong as where you are. I'd be happy with half that.
Thanks for the info! I appreciate the help!
I signed up and took it at the local high school, which freaked out the proctor in the room. Afterward she asked if I worked for ETS - she thought I was sent to observe her! The kids didn't seem to care.
I had already been tutoring for a couple years, which helped, and let me play around with some things. For instance, I prep the essay with specific methods, but I wanted to see what would happen if you just wing it, so I winged it. Very hard to do, as it turns out, but now I tell kids that from experience.
2015/16 is the claimed deadline for the SAT to get itself more inline with Common Core. I suspect that means it will look more like the ACT, which just beat them in market share this year. We shall see if it wrecks the prep biz. I used to prep ACT, but found it wasn't any more effective than the kid just reading the guide.
-
Anything by David Sedaris, read by the author.
-
I say go to fairtest.org and find an enlightned school that has seen fit to move beyond the SAT madness.
-
I am not ThatHomeSchoolDad, but if I were hiring an SAT tutor, I would want to know his adult score since the test has changed significantly from the time when the potential tutor was a child (unless I am talking to a very young tutor whose high school score is only a few years back).
(And, needless to say, I'd only take advice from somebody whose score shows that they have a firm handle on the test.)
Sorry. I didn't read up-thread enough. I can blame that on just getting home from a student, right? Ok, no brick-throwing...
1982: 1210
2008: 2240
-
When you advised people about becoming an SAT tutor, you mentioned telling your potential clients your score, as a tutor.
Did you mean your childhood score or your adult score?
Both, then I point out just how diffefent the test is now, AND, more importantly (and depressing), is how much the admissions game has changed for the worse. There are about 2000 four year schools in America. About 36 of them reject more applicants than they accept, thus earning the title "highly competitive." Yet here in the insane micro-bubble that is the Northeast, it tends to be only those 36 that count in too many parents' eyes. It's nuts.
-
Wait....7 tests and she didn't crack 600 math? Something smells funny. I'll check out the book, but hmmm....
-
I'm hoping someone else will chime in and tell you how to do this because I don't know. Rather than embedding a video, could you just include a link?
I could, but half the stuff I use is from our Discovery Streaming membership, so I don't think it would work without a login, which is why I download clips and keep them in the same directory as the ppt.
Edit -- then again, I'm still using Powerpoint 2007. Maybe if I upgraded...
-
So how do we get a copy of your power points? :D
That's what I haven't figured out -- 'cause I'm not a powerpoint pro...at....all.
If I embed graphics, those stay with the ppt file, but if I embed a video, I think that has to stay in the same directory as the ppt, but is NOT included in the file. Is there are way to publish the whole thing as one file, or do I have to just zip it all?
Otherwise, I don't care who sees them, complete with my bad puns and probable misspellings. I suppose I haven't busted TOO many copyright laws if I'm not actually selling them (yet).
:huh:
-
I bang out each lesson as a powerpoint so I can put in video and graphics, and yes, it's a ton of work, and yes, it took me a few years to figure that out, since I only started doing that in book 3! I don't see why Nebel couldn't occupy some shelf space as a reference guide of sorts -- a spine off which you build your own lessons eventually. Maybe just use him for the additional reading links and google vid ideas.
I've toyed with the idea of putting the whole 3 volumes into some sort of online or CD set in my spare time...when DD goes to college, although I strongly suspect that by then I will have found another hobby.
-
Well...as I was just saying to the professor here......Oooooo! Loookeee! Beyonce's wearing....ugh! White shoes? It might be as warm as Memorial Day in your state, baby, but the rest of us are still chipping ice. I must go retweet this.
If I knew how to tweet.
-
No, no...it's ok. We NEED Bieber. You see, the American electorate has a limited agtention span. We're good for maybe 1-2 news cycles for something really substantive before we have to return to our regular diet of E! and Kardashians. Bieber will get us back into that comfort zone before our heads get all puffy like Ahhhnold trying to breathe on Mars in Total Recall.
Now, vote the bums out...except my bum, 'cause he's just plain awesome.
-
Big emergency fund. Like the hundred year flood takes out your first floor sort of big. 5 figures. It's 16 months post-Sandy, and some people in NJ are still not home because of red tape.
-
Oddly, pancreatitis re-introduced me to rice cakes, which I used to loathe. Now I git me my crunch, salt, and a teeny bit of fat, but not enough to cause trouble. Go figure.
-
I always smile when I hear someone say this. It's apparent that people forget just where medicine comes from: molds, plants, bacteria, etc. You know nature.
Explains the looks I got when I used to gnaw on trees at the park. My bad.
-
Clinical trials are nasty and information can be, in my opinion, complete lies. My mother was involves in a trial on some medication for psoriasis. Over 100 of the people who were involved in the trial who showed no positive results were not included in the data because their results were "untrustworthy". This meant that the medication was a success and is now going to market. One woman had a seizure for the first time in her life, but since she dropped the trial it's not in the final documents. I don't know what this medication is called, but this was in the last few months. It almost seems as if they tried 1,500 people and picked the 1,000 they liked best. I know that sounds extreme, but that's what it seems like.
My second reason has to do with my own experience involving Ibuprofen. My husband came home from work about 4 years ago to find me unconscious with a fever. We couldn't figure out the cause. We knew it was the first time I had taken Ibuprofen, but that was clearly not the problem, as it is not listed on the side effects, and the doctors told me that couldn't have been it. A few months later I used it again, but while my husband was home. After landing myself in the hospital that night I decided to never use it again. There were complications with my C section a year ago and I wasn't allowed narcotics (I'm still unclear as to why). The doctor assured me that I couldn't react to Ibuprofen that way and that it was the only medicine I was allowed to take in the hospital. They gave me medication for a fever not too long after that. A few weeks later I called the pharmaceutical company (motrin?) and found out that while this was did occur during the trials it wasn't listed, and won't be, because it isn't believed to be caused by the drug.
It would seem we have two distinct episodes here.
Your mom was on a trial -- what phase was it? Phase I dose-escalating? Phase II? III? The distinction is important. With only 100 people, that sounds like a small Phase I, which would be many years before larger studies required for actual marketability. Even the 1500 you cite sounds too small for a pre-release Phase III, multi-center trial. Something is a bit off.
Clinical trials can be nasty. Clinical trials can also prolong life and increase the quality of that life. I know first hand. I also agree that the FDA is maddeningly slow, esp compared to regulatory agencies in other parts of the world. However, to dismiss the methodology wholesale is a bit like saying you got bad treatment for a broken arm once, so you won't seek medical attention for your broken leg because all medicine just can't be trusted.
As for the Motrin/Tylenol thing. There are LOTS of side effects from LOTS of drugs that are very unique, and thus only published in the bowels of the clinical data. I just had two from a drug I had a full year ago. In trials, 1% of patients had the first reaction, and 0.2% had the second, all within several months of treatment, NOT 12 months out, one after another, as I experienced. Am I angry at the company? Uh, no. I have a rare cancer and treatment I'm getting is waaaaay out on the bleeding edge of new science. I'm an informed, proactive patient, working with the best clinical professions in the world for my particular bug. That's all any one can shoot for, and sometimes it's enough.
-
My son is actually doing a science project on this very topic so just give him some time and you'll have all the science you could want. Kidding. But we will have a rocking trifold. He is focusing on just a few oils. We've found you can find much more reliable science if you search on individual oils or blends. I recommend you start with oregano, tea tree and thieves. There is actual science on those...some of it in my own home. :)
Based on this thread, I did a quick search on essential oils curing cancer and came up with some hits. This seems to be the study that many of them reference. I didn't find any other studies, just sites referring to this one study. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22171782
It's a worthy science project, for sure. I'd just be sure your DS know the differences laid out in the last paragraph of that study. This was an in-vitro (test tube / petri dish thing) study recommending further in-vivo (in animals) studies.
Only a dinky percentage of things that work in the dish go on to work in mice, and only a percentage of those work in primates and humans. It's not a bash, but in fact could be a really great extension to his project, showing how long the research road can actually be, with lots of dead ends. That kind of payback puts me in even greater awe of the researchers I know.
-
I should have said "could", not "can".
True, if it's taken in the same vein as "not wearing a seat belt could allow you to be thrown from a burning car wreck, thus sparing your life." Of course, I doubt that's a strategy many state troopers would report as having been effective in the cases they see, but if there is comfort in that little slice of wiggle room, then it can have a certain value, especially for the newly-diagnosed, or yet-to-be diagnosed.
You don't understand where I'm coming from. I don't trust the clinical trials. I know you think that's ignorant. That's fine.
There's quite a bit of mis-information floating around out there. What part(s) of clinical trials seem troubling to you?
-
I can totally believe that essential oils can cure cancer. Cancer treatment is a multibillion dollar industry that can only thrive if there is no cure. Considering that money controls the media you wouldn't hear about it, just like you don't hear about the millions of people being cured with vitamin therapy.
LOL. As a patient who's had Stage IV cancer for three years, I understand both the longing for a cure-all, and the ease with which conspiracy theories can be embraced.
However....
You're wrong on all counts.
-
I am concerned about children of teachers who pour out all their patience and concern on their students and have nothing left for their own children after school. Children can have many teachers but they only get one mother.
The educators I know run the range from awesome to not-so-much parents, just as in any other profession.
-
There is nothing new about this. When I started college in 1983, planning to be a teacher, this was one of the reasons - because the good teachers were fleeing in droves. (I also dropped the education program when I experienced the limitations that are placed on young, creative, idealistic teachers.) This is another reason to really appreciate those good teachers who continue to drag their butts in early each morning to face a roomful of diverse challenges.
It could also be regional phenomenons finally swirling together into a larger perfect storm, with Common Core leading the they way through the ashes of NCLB. DW started in 1987, and the sea changes seemed to kick in roughly 10-15ish years ago, more or less (it's a bit fuzzy). She's in a mostly white, upper middle class suburban district, and that, too perhaps slowed the assault of the political policy do-gooders, who, because of the nature of media attention, tend to try to FIX urban districts first.
Either way, it sure isn't the profession it was just two decades ago. Not even close.
-
Here's my take-away line:
Teachers, the good ones, the ones who care? We're going extinct. We're leaving the classrooms in droves. And that should terrify the hell out of you.
Yes. This is happening -- the leaving part. I don't think parents are even remotely clued into the trend, and are thus not terrified...at all. DD has 7 years to early retirement, assuming the pension fund is still solvent, or 14 to full retirement, which just looks like a crushing span of time.
-
Nah. We would have seen the Four Homonyms of the Apostroclypse if it were real. People are just lazy...and grammar instruction is not on the state tests after middle school.
-
Ice ice, baby...and no salt in the state, although I hear a barge was sent up to Maine to get some....although there is a ship that could come down, but it's non a US-flagged ship, and because of a 140 year old state matitime law, it can not dock in NJ. Meanwhile, the state is using pickle juice on the roads. It will hit 50 this week, tho, so...yeah.
I'm thinking a worthy science experiment would be to mix nontoxic paint with water and spray it on mh driveway to see if I can speed up the melting if the ice is black. That would be sciencey, right?
-
School House Rock. Complete DVD set. DD still sings them.
article about new book about SAT prep and testing
in High School and Self-Education Board
Posted
You're right -- now I can't find the link to that 36 out of 2000 quote, which I thought was from an author on NPR-- gotta drop that from my "talk the parent back from the ledge" speech until I can get hard evidence.
Meanwhile, I found this Time article that puts a whole 'nother spin on things. The argument is that the Common App has made it too easy for kids to apply to oodles of schools, some of which they probably have no business applying to -- those infamous "reach" schools. With some cut-n-paste and a credit card, assuming they can get some schools' supplementary essays cranked out, then yeah, that would all add up to a huge uptick in number of applications at any school. Assuming selection percentage remains sort of steady, just that can really skew the competitiveness numbers touted in US News, et. al.
It's also global, so you can't discount a flood of applicants from nations that, by comparison, only recently have anything resembling a middle class.
It's still a game...a huge, stressful, profitable game.