:lol:

I don't. Yesterday was a "crazy" day for me. It involved fussy babies, DH having to work two hours late, and our oven smoking (something must have gotten underneath it). That's about as crazy as things get around here.

I've seen it argued here over and over that people don't need to be degreed experts in a subject in order to teach it. I tend to agree. I really don't think that an elementary-school teacher needs to have advanced knowledge in math or language or anything like that; I just think they need to know the basics well, and then know how to teach them to a diverse group of learners. I think the larger issue, as I mentioned on the other thread, is how to encourage better students to go into teaching. I really don't think the problem is that ed courses aren't rigorous enough or that elementary school teachers don't have enough training, but that really good students are actively discouraged from going into K-12 education (I wasn't the only person I know who had numerous professors in my major talk me out of pursuing a teaching cert. and instead going into a doctoral program--which is absolutely horrible advice given both the academic job market and the needs of K-12 schools) and that they are particularly discouraged from going into elementary ed. Elementary ed, at this point, is seen as almost a vocational career path, rather than an academic one. Good students are often discouraged from going that route. So I think we need to figure out how to encourage really academically talented students to pursue a career in K-12 ed, and particularly in elementary ed and secondary math/science (you'll sometimes get really good English and history students going into secondary ed, because the pay is comparable to what they might make otherwise, but you'll rarely see really great math and science students pursing a teaching career). I think that would make a much larger impact on schools than changing curriculum. And, something needs to be done about the financial disincentives. Most people aren't able or willing to go tens of thousands of dollars into debt to get a master's degree in ed and their certification, especially when teaching isn't a high-paying field, especially at first. I think there should be more subsidies for master's and certification programs, especially for students who've shown academic aptitude. But, given the current climate, I'm not sure why anybody would go into teaching. My public school teacher friends are dealing with pay cuts, being made into the bad guys by politicians, interference from administrators, absurd demands and complaints from parents, and uncertainty nearly ever year about whether they'll even have a job the following school year. If people can make a living some other way, I don't think they can be blamed for doing so.

I took graduate education courses (I spent two years in an English and education grad program, transferring from an English literature grad program, but the ed component wasn't a certification or terminal master's program). I found them theoretically interesting and useful, but not particularly practical. They weren't really designed to be, though.

It varies wildly. Ideally I like to go to bed between 9 and 10. But, with the new baby, it's really dependent on him. Some nights, if he seems like he's going to sleep a long stretch early, I go to bed around 8 and then am up with him for a couple of hours around midnight. Other nights, he'll have his before-bed feeding around 11, and then we sleep for a while and he gets up around 3.

Around here, charter schools require teacher certification. Private schools will take you without one, but the pay is so bad that, if you have a graduate degree, you're better off just adjuncting part-time. And that's saying something!

I'm really happy with how things are going, but a few of the things we're using are the result of a lot of trial-and-error the last couple of years.

I've noticed a huge change in my DS's pace and effort since we started back up. He's much more willing to sit down and do work, and we're moving much faster because he's not resisting. He's 7 and in second grade.

My DD is 17mo and flatly rejects anything but a bottle. I weaned her at 10mo because I was pregnant and my supply was very low and it was getting very painful. We really haven't made much of an effort to get her off the bottle, though. We figured that, if we did get her to use sippies, when the baby came (he was born about a month ago), she might regress anyway and want to go back to bottles. And, we figure that a new baby is a big change for somebody her age, and confusing, and if the bottle brings her comfort right now, that's fine. We figure that, in a few months, when things are more settled and she's used to her brother, we'll work on moving to a cup again.

My dollar store has it pretty often. Not the biggest selection, but sometimes you find something nice.

This is why I don't like Pollan. Basically, it boils down to "If poor people eat it, it's not food." There is so much knee-jerk class bias in his work, that goes totally unexamined and even celebrated by people who read him, that it's very, very hard for me to not have my own knee-jerk negative reaction to him. I know he makes some good points, but they get lost in his arrogance for me.

We usually finish around 11:30 or 12:00. After that we clean up and eat lunch. From 1-3 the babies nap and I rest. DS has quiet reading time from 1-2, and then from 2-3 he has computer time. Then, once the babies are up, we usually try to go outside for a couple of hours, to take a walk or play with friends in the neighborhood.

Just to add, one thing I've noticed is that ed students are, in general, good students. I don't mean by that that they are all the brightest students--I've had some really smart ed students, but many have just been average--but that they are usually good at being students. They tend to hand in their work on time, follow directions, participate in class, and just generally be personable, pleasant, nice people. I don't think we can underestimate how far that can go when it comes to doing well academically. And, honestly, that doesn't bother me. The whole idea that students should be graded solely on the quality of their work has always struck me as kind of silly. People say, "But that's how things work in the real world," but in fact it's not. The only place where people really believe that all that should matter is how you perform is schools and sports. In the real world of work, things like the time you put in, how you respond to authority, how well you get along with others, and things like that absolutely determine your success, just as much if not more than your actual performance. I know that a big part of the reason why I always get teaching sections at the school where I work is not that I'm one of the best teachers or that I get some of the best student reviews--I'm pretty average--but that the woman who does the scheduling really likes me because I'm friendly and personable and always stop to ask her how her grandkids are doing (because I like her and her grandkids are cute, not because I want more teaching). Plus, most ed teachers are people who like teaching and like students, unlike professors in other fields, who often don't particularly enjoy teaching or like students, and may see their teaching work as something they just have to tolerate. So, ed professors might be more likely than many other professors to invest in their students, to think favorably of them, to spend time with them making sure they succeed, and to give them the benefit of the doubt when grading. But, that said, I still think it's a significant problem that the system seems set up to discourage the best students and those with more content knowledge from going into education. I was in a doctoral program, and many of my cohort who finished couldn't find jobs. A number toyed with the idea of going into secondary ed, but they couldn't. Even though they had a Ph.D. and had been teaching at the university-level (at a well-respected university) for years, they would have had to pay for a master's program in order to be certified, and in many cases would have had to have taken a semester or more of undergrad courses just to be able to start the ed program. I think it's ridiculous that a person with a doctorate in English who wants to teach high school English classes should be told that first they need to take a biology class and a course on the history of Michigan in order to be accepted into the teacher certification program. Those kinds of requirements just don't make a whole lot of sense, and I think they create an environment where K-12 teaching becomes impractical or unappealing to people who have advanced degrees in their field.

Chocolate peanut butter ice cream. Although my DH, being a good husband, brings some home for me on a semi-regular basis.

In some ways, though, I think that's a problem. IME, better (more rigorous, more selective) universities and colleges tend not to offer an undergrad teaching certification program. And, while there may be the benefits you mention, the downside is that, if students at those schools want to go into teaching, they have to get a master's, which they need to pay for. I've got a friend who went to a very good university in my state, and then spent $60K to spend two years in grad school getting her master's in education and teaching certification. On the other hand, students who went to less challenging colleges and universities were able to come out certified. I think the current way things are structured discourages better students from going into education while making it very easy for poorer students to do so. That's not a good system for anybody. I'd love to see either better universities institution more programs to allow undergrads to come out with a teaching certificate or more programs covering the cost of a master's degree for students who did very well as undergrads looking to teach at the K-12 level. The AFT magazine last month was about improving the quality of teacher education.

That makes sense to me. Many times, teachers in "failing" schools are dealing with parents who are uninvolved if not downright hostile to their kids' education. After years of dealing with that, I can understand why they'd be a bit skeptical of the ability of most parents to educate their children. Plus, I think there's sometimes a sense of resentment that the smart, dedicated parents are pulling their kids from the schools, because they would have an easier time if there were more of those kids in their classrooms. Teachers from better schools have more positive interactions with parents, and see more parental involvement and support, and so it makes perfect sense to me that they'd be more positive about homeschooling.

Yup. Around 1998, the weights at which people became "overweight" and "obese" were lowered, so that, overnight, millions of people who were formerly "normal-weight" were overweight without gaining a pound, and millions of people went from overweight to obese without any weight gain. And then, surprise surprise, since the late 1990s, obesity rates have levelled off. It's almost as if the enormous spike in obesity in the 1990s could be due largely to the change in definition, rather than in people suddenly becoming enormously fat. But, that doesn't sell magazines or get people to buy diet products.

I'm a big fan of the work of Ellyn Sater and Linda Bacon. Very solid, non-faddish stuff with the focus on lifelong health and good eating habits, rather than weight.

I'm pretty sure my 7yo would have no idea what a busy signal was, either. He used to love going to my parents' old house, because they had a phone with a cord. He'd never seen one of those.

Ideally, I like to have time to exercise. Really ideally, I like to have time to exercise, some quiet time, and some time to get a little work done on the computer before the kids get up. But, right now that's not happening too often, with a three-week-old at home. But, I do try to get basic chores done--breakfast dishes, made beds, bathroom wiped down, and laundry in the washer if it needs to go in--and to have everybody showered and dressed before we start school.

One issue to consider is that, despite the images used in the media when illustrating stories of the "childhood obesity epidemic"--which tend to be of children who are very, very, very large--most overweight and obese kids look exactly like normal kids. Yes, there are a few kids out there who are like twice their "ideal" weight. But, most overweight/obese kids don't weigh much more than their "normal-weight" peers, and studies have found that even most doctors can't, by sight, tell which kids are "normal" and which are "obese" most of the time. Which makes sense, if you think about how it works in adults (since, in kids, a far smaller number of pounds is required to move you from "normal" to "obese.") This is a normal-weight woman, this is an overweight woman, and this is an obese woman. I'm sure some people will say that "Oh, I can tell that the overweight/obese women are too big and unhealthy," but, seriously, most people could not tell which of those women was which. The same holds true for kids. The line between normal, overweight, and obese is much, much smaller than the media reports, illustrated with images of 200 lb. children and 400 lb. adults, would have us believe. Most overweight and obese kids are no less capable of being active than their normal-weight peers. The rate of childhood obesity hasn't risen since the late 1990s, so if people are seeing more fat children today than they did 10 years ago, that's confirmation bias at work, not reality.

I'm not sure what using a first name has to do with being friends in any universal or inherent way. Plenty of people use my first name who are not my friends: acquaintances, coworkers, my husband's coworkers, doctors, my parents' friends, the people at the library who call me to tell me a book's being held, etc. And, growing up, my teachers called me by my first name, but that didn't mean we were friends. So I don't think "friend" or even "peer" is implied by using a first name. It's all cultural associations. If a child grows up in an environment where it's the norm to call adults by their first name, they aren't going to somehow not understand distinctions between children and adults, and they won't see using first names as something you only do with peers/"equals"; to them, it will just be how you refer to people. It's like the "Miss First Name" thing. Sure, it's not somehow inherently more respectful to put "Miss" in front of a first name than to just use the first name. But, in cultural contexts where that's the form that's used, it is seen as more respectful (at least by a good number of people).

Personally, I think the rules are nonsense--if it's about safety, make sure the kid is healthy and is put in a position where they won't be tackling really small kids (and put smaller kids in a position where they won't be tackled by larger kids), rather than using weight as a determiner of health or just not letting kids who are seen as too much larger or smaller than average play at all--but if those are the rules, then that's that.

Personally, I think it's a mistake to frame this as an issue of respect, rather than as one of cultural convention and personal preference, which is what I think it really comes down to. I don't think there's anything more inherently respectful about using one form of address over another. My take on it is that it's generally respectful to go by cultural conventions (which vary from area to area, from places where it's the norm to call adults by their first names to places where it's the norm to use "Mrs. Last Name") and that it's always respectful to refer to somebody in the way they prefer to be referred to. If somebody wants to be called by their first name, then it is just as disrespectful to have your child call them "Mrs. Last Name" as it is when a child calls an adult who prefers "Mrs. Last Name" by her first name. I think people often want to turn the cultural conventions they grew up with or, less often, their own personal preferences into the benchmark for what's respectful, but I just don't think that's the case at all. There's nothing wrong with abiding by cultural conventions and certainly it is respectful to abide by somebody's personal preference, but I really don't think we can say that certain modes of address are just more respectful, period.

I homeschool in a small space in a city. We moved to our home (a small rented two-bedroom flat in a duplex) six years ago, when we decided to "try out" living in the city. Our DS was 1-1/2 at the time, and our only. After about two years, I completely fell in love with it here, so the trial became at least somewhat permanent. It was great when we just had DS. Then we had DD, and it was a squeeze, but doable. Then we had DS2, and it's fine while he's an infant, but we think we're going to need something bigger. I had made a lot of friends in our neighborhood, and really love the neighborhood, so didn't want to leave, but three-bedrooms are really hard to find here. So at this point we're either holding out for a three bedroom (if we rented, I wouldn't want bigger than that) or deciding if we want to buy a house. While we're figuring that out, we're making due with three kids in about 750 sq. ft. Honestly, it's not that bad. It gets a little crazy when DS has friends over. And, it can sometimes be an issue with homeschooling, but mostly just with my own state of mind. I have trouble focusing when things are chaotic, but we do everything in our living area. We have a medium-sized living area, and it's where the computer/home office area, the living area, the kids play area, and the dining area all are. We do school at the table, and sometimes the entire living area is in completely disarray when we're trying to do school, and that drives me a little nuts. But, the upsides are that a city can be an awesome place to homeschool (we've got a branch library just blocks from our house, a major university, a couple of parks, and several museums in walking distance, and other kids who live really close who DS can play with when they get home from school), a small home is really easy to clean (we were considering moving to a much bigger apartment in the spring, but we decided that the extra space was more than we needed and so not worth both the extra expense and the extra effort it would take to keep clean), and it's really easy to keep my eye on all the kids at once. Plus, a small place is a really good excuse to kick DS and his friends outside to play. ;)