FWIW, they did a study here and as I recall the takeaway for the majority of the kids was negative. They generally felt that the father didn't have enough time for all the kids, there was sibling rivalry between different mothers' kids, etc. But again, that is in one specific geographic area -- the norm here is for there to be completely separate households for each woman. I'll see if I can find the published report, if interested. I don't know that it is particularly germaine to the American experience with polygamy; from what little I have read or heard about it there is much more integration of the families involved.

We are using Singapore's Discovering Mathematics in high school, I have put it on his transcript as "Integrated Math 1," etc. I did not devote a lot of thought to the integrated aspect -- we have simply always used Singapore materials with success and wanted to continue with that. I did feel some responsibility, however, in that if we chose this route we could well be making a years-long commitment, as I'm not sure how easy it would be to switch between an integrated math situation to a non-integrated one.

I would expand on this slightly, to say that I think that the "romance/friendship" marriage is more a modern, culture-specific concept. Perhaps an offshoot of arranged marriage but overall in the cultural landscape in general here, talking about marriages with local women does not usually involve a lot of romance or the level of togetherness that we expect in our own culture. I think there are some "outsiders" who look down on that -- as if there is no love nor success in that kind of marriage -- but my hard-earned experience (having worked through plenty of preconceptions and misconceptions in my own mind on this over the years) is that there is no one meaning of "success" or road to happiness vis a vis marriage.

I have quite a few friends who are either in a polygamous marriage or are children in a polygamous family. It's more common over here than some might think. But it's not my cup of tea (Tea? :001_cool: ).

Where I live, this is the first part of your "kunya," kind of an honorific name. It is common here to be called by "Mother of [your oldest child]" or "Father of [your oldest child]". They don't use Mr. and Mrs, if your name was Mrs. Jane Smith and your oldest child was Mark, here they wouldn't call you Mrs. Smith they'd call you Umm Mark. Perhaps relatedly, when women get married here they don't take their husband's last name, so there really isn't a term for Mrs. -- you can call someone a girl, a woman or an older woman, but there isn't really a term like that for a married woman, kwim? Where it gets fun (to me) is when people play around with kunyas, so for example there is a famous figure in Islamic history called "Abu Hurayrah" which means "father of a kitten," because he liked cats. Most people don't even know his real name, they just know his kunya. Or a name for centipede in Arabic, which is "um arba' wa arba'een," literally "the mother of 44."

I haven't commented on this thread, because living overseas I find that a lot of these circumstances are just not the same here, I don't know that my experiences are terribly germaine - for example there are a lot of women here who wear niqab. I have several women who wear niqab in my English classes, and I have many women in my extended in-law family and many close friends who wear it. I don't wear it myself, but I don't have any automatic associations with it either -- I know women who have been pushed to wear it and some who have insisted on wearing it despite pressure to do the opposite. For the vast majority it's just a personal choice without much/any pressure for or against. But I do see in general a lot of judgment within and without the Muslim community over it -- people who wear it are such-and-such, people who don't wear it are such-and-such. I guess I've gotten to the point I'm so jaded, it just seems like in every culture there is always this all-permeating judgementalism over what women wear that I ultimately find depressing, I guess.

I went through the same thing last November. They wanted a reference from a former supervisor -- I hadn't had a supervisor in 20-odd years! Luckily I had done some tutoring through a friend's tutoring center more recently and she agreed to write a letter. I also listed myself as an instructor for all the years homeschooling - I have done a lot of instructing, lol, not to mention the rather large amount of lesson planning, etc. etc. I wasn't sure how to sell myself on that point, but it worked! I also started simple -- looking for something to get a toe back into the workforce...

It's a niggle in the back of my mind as well. It will sit back there, probably, until the kids start making concrete decisions about university. My oldest wants to go to the US for school, so it may work itself out. In any case, once he finishes high school he will have to either get a work/student visa here or leave, so that will be another consideration.

This is what we used for biology last year. I also had *excellent* customer service from Robert Bruce Thompson (Illustrated Guide) -- (I had issues being an overseas buyer and fretted with how to manage transport of chemicals overseas, etc.). The Guide did have some parts that seemed to go beyond our abilities/interests, but I did not feel compelled to finish every part, kwim? As I recall they provide a correlation to Miller-Levine so you can match up experiments to chapters. There were a few chapters with no associated lab, so I found alternatives online -- for example for dissection. It was straightforward. I have personal/political issues with Kolbe, unrelated to their products, so I will not use them again. That said, their materials were well laid-out and it was super-easy to adjust/ignore the religious comments -- which to my recollection were only in the teacher scheduling pages and not in any materials that were to be given to the student. (Someone please correct me if I'm wrong.)

It's of course difficult to know an individual's motivations and experiences, or maybe they had just had an argument in the car, or were worried/nervous about their appointment, or anything. I have had many, many little kids make comments about me over the years, usually I try to engage or at least smile and make an innocuous comment; but even then I'm not always "in the mood," it can be draining, kwim? Like the time I was in a fabric store with my mother (not a fan of hijab) and a little kid loudly said to his mom -- "Why is she wearing a witch's costume?" Lol. I can smile about it now, but at the time - with all the other things going on in my life, well, I just ignored it. I would have tried to catch the woman's eye to gauge the response. Nine times out of ten, in that situation, I'll glance at the mom and we'll share a smile or something; that leaves an opening for a discussion if wanted. Absent that, I think I would leave it at what you did.

We have something similar on and off. What really worked for me, you can search it online, was to mix borax with some honey or syrup and fill little caps like from plastic water bottles. I set these out around where I saw ants -- some in the kitchen, but elsewhere as well. The first day there was a huge crowd at the caps, but over the course of 2-3 days this reduced drastically and I was virtually ant free for a long time. I am about due to do it again -- I think in our case unfortunately the nest (or nests) is under the house somewhere. I have tried following the trails, and they always end in this super-tiny hole in the grout between tiles in the kitchen, etc. There is just no way to simply plug up a hole and call it a day, they find entrances in the most miniscule openings. hth!

Is this introductory Arabic you're considering here? I don't have experience with online instruction, but I've looked at a range of first-year curricula, if you're looking for opinions I'd be happy to discuss.

I'm obviously not in the US, but I teach one course section of English at a local university in their continuing education program. Last session it was six hours a week in class, they upped it to eight hours a week this session. They had asked me to sign a contract agreeing to sixteen hours a week (!), but that was just not possible for me. I like being an adjunct, I am working because I wanted a little time for myself more than to make money (although I don't mind that, of course). Seventeen hours sounds like a really full load, to me, when you count in the prep work and grading/evaluation. I'm lucky that this time I am basically repeating what I taught last session, so my prep time is less. Last session, which was my first, the prep time was significant.

Thanks for your comments, cricket, it doesn't really make sense to me logically but that doesn't mean anything, does it? lol I wonder if it's a state-by-state thing, there are so many possible variables coming into play now that we are in the high school years...

Not speaking just to you, but anyone... I don't really understand how this works (practically and "morally"). I assume it works. We file taxes every year, but claim foreign residency and are therefore under different rules. If someone wanted to claim (pretend?) they were residing in a specific state, wouldn't they then lose the foreign residency status? And because of how it works out, none of our paycheck actually goes into the state tax revenue, is it "fair" then for us to get in-state tuition? I am a "super rule follower", so have a hard time getting my mind around claiming one thing federally, but then trying to get around that in order to get in-state tuition. Does everybody do this? If my ds, for example, applies for in-state tuition, how is that going to work if he's living overseas up until he goes? Doesn't anybody actually check, or am I being stupid? A lot of people have talked to me about ways around this, but the little voice inside me just keeps saying a) it's not "right" and b ) something will go wrong. Going about it this way is so against my nature, lol. I'm the one sitting at a red light for ten minutes at 3 o-clock in the morning at a completely deserted intersection, waiting for the light to turn green...

From what little I've been able to find out about it, the lawmakers were intending it to be an "encouragement" towards breastfeeding. :/ According to one quote I read it was also meant to encourage mother-child bonding and discourage new mothers from relying so much on nannies and maids. :/ Again, this hasn't been signed into law, I have hope that the law will be amended. There's a lot of soul-searching going on over here, in a country where the locals are a small minority of the population, and a rise in the number of people who are using (over-using?) maids or nannies. I think there is a fear that they are gradually losing their heritage.

One of the pushes behind this law was a truly horrible case where an 8 yr old was tortured to death by her father and allegedly his girlfriend. Before this law there was no clear, official law for things like mandatory reporting, removing a child from a home if he/she is in imminent danger, etc. I don't know or understand why the breast feeding bit was included, I don't know how it would be enforced at all. Historically a lot of things here were kept in the dark because of "family honor", or the culture of minding your own business. Regarding child marriage, I teach English to local ladies in my emirate, which is smaller and more conservative. We had a discussion some months back on this issue, there was an editorial in the local paper written by a local woman on how much has changed in the traditions of marriage -- a big one being the average age of marriage for women, which as someone mentioned earlier is somewhere near 25 yrs now. I took a poll of how old the married ladies in my class were when they got married, virtually all were in their 20s, except for one woman about my age who said she was 14. She said that to this day she regrets it, she was actually in tears in the class (she is now divorced). Of course, for me growing up in KY, we had girls in my school who got married at 14-15 but that was due to pregnancy and not an arranged marriage.. The biggest change my students saw in marriage here, other than the later age, is that now they feel they can say no to an arranged marriage, whereas before women were under a lot of societal pressure to agree. Fwiw, there are laws here that I disagree with -- for example abortion is illegal -- and practices that are allowed to go on even though it is officially in violation of the law -- like the work and housing conditions of laborers.

The structure is different. The bank is still going to make money, as they should, but the reason behind it is different. There are a few different ways you can structure it -- like they can buy the home and then sell it to you at a higher price, and you make set monthly payments until it's yours; or you and the bank become "partners" and buy it together, then you pay monthly rent in addition to "buying out" your partner (the bank) over time; etc. In the end, as far as I've been able to tell, you end up spending around the same amount as you would in a "traditional" mortgage, it's deemed Islamic because you are not technically paying money for the use of money, you are paying rent, or you are paying off on a house, etc. It is different, but I don't think anyone should look on it as an opportunity to save a bunch of money, kwim? When we were living in the US we participated in some financial assistance groups, but those were smaller-scale and within a known community. I was able to use that to pay off my student loans quickly, I think someone else in the group did it to make a down payment on a house or buy a car, but it wasn't enough to make a much bigger lump sum payment. I think it's interesting to explore alternatives in financing, I don't think we have to be permanently married to one system, but there needs to be some caution.

It is the correspondence school. They will send you all the books, etc. With Clonlara, you will have to select whatever books you want to use, and in fact design the courses you want your high schooler to take. From what you're saying here, I think the American School would be a better fit. If you search the board you should find a number of threads talking about it. I'm pretty sure there are several people here who are currently using their program.

Removed, because the more I thought about it, my comment was more about expat schooling experiences than home school experiences...

I will need to check through the paperwork, but I do recall there was something mentioned in there about transferring in during high school, I can't remember offhand if it was a time requirement (like you had to do something different if you were transferring in senior year? or maybe it was different calendar dates? I need to refresh my memory). Actually, if you're looking for the most straightforward way, I would consider the American School. My sister-in-law transferred there as a sophomore and the procedure was pretty seamless. The remaining coursework she had was basic, you could obviously add more on the side as you wished, but she was just interested in finishing up and getting her diploma. She then went on to undergrad and ultimately got a graduate degree, so it worked for her. hth!

Most of my Indian inlaws are afraid of dogs and even cats. I think they are looked on more as feral animals than as pets, and several people I have talked to about it have related personal stories of bad experiences with feral dogs or cats when they were little. My kids and I were volunteering at our local animal shelter and there was a construction crew on site with workers from India and the greater region. I saw a redback spider in one of the kennels, I was afraid to go in there because of the spider and asked one of the men to help me. He was fine with the spider but afraid of the dog that was in there -- we made quite a pair, lol.

That they would complain without consideration of my competency, or be belligerent or argumentative on the point. Or, not be open minded or give me a fair chance. I tend to think in worst case scenarios, not one of my better traits. I suppose if it came to that I would direct them to take it up with the administration. My original question is more, if you attended a class that was a beginner class and not knowing anything about the instructor in advance, would you start out with a negative feeling if that teacher wasn't native or fluent. Should I expect that as a possible or likely reaction. Maybe it wouldn't even come up, I mean unless directly asked I wouldn't start out the class saying, "by the way, I'm not fluent" lol. Virtually every ad I've seen requesting a teacher or tutor over here has specified "native speaker", so I'm wondering about the general expectation. Edited to add: It doesn't necessarily have to be anything dire.. I also don't like the idea of being a disappointment right out of the gate, kwim?

By not fluent, I mean I can conduct virtually any daily conversation on a general level, and in depth depending on the topic. But not in complete depth on any random topic. I can watch tv or read the newspaper and understand most -- but not all. Same with general reading, I can read fairly well but like to keep a dictionary at hand. I'm not sure what my students would want. I believe in this current course they are expats living here long term, I would want to take a poll of them at the beginning to see what they're really hoping for.. but, of course, in a total beginner 8-week course they would not get much beyond the alphabet and common phrases/conversations regardless of their ultimate goals. This course as I have seen it, focuses on both MSA and colloquial and as mentioned is for students with absolutely no knowledge of Arabic. A conversational course would likely focus only on colloquial, and the one being offered here is intended for students with some knowledge of Arabic already. It's not really a question, to me, of whether I am capable of teaching it. I know that I am. What I am unsure of is what the reaction of the students would be.

None of my Arabic professors in the US were native or fluent speakers. In fact, in retrospect I'd say that most of them were really poor speakers, at least pronunciation-wise. but they were respected scholars in specializations such as medieval Arabic rhetoric, or pre-Islamic poetry, kwim? And I credit them with giving me the much-needed core knowledge of Arabic that I have relied on over the years. Now that I think about it, my first three years of Arabic none of my instructors -- neither the professors nor the teaching assistants -- were native or fluent speakers. According to the institution, the reason they thought to offer me this position is they overheard me speaking with some of my students in Arabic (my English students are all locals). In my smaller groups where I taught Arabic most people have been happy to have someone who is a native English speaker because I think some look at Arabic as a particularly daunting challenge (I don't know that I agree with that) and frankly the quality of instructional material for Arabic is not... ummm... what it could be, lol. But that was much more informal, this is a bit different. But I don't want to belabor the point. Surely the institution has kept all these concerns in mind. I have made this point -- repeatedly -- from when they first brought up the topic. I guess it reaches the point where I should just make my choice and go on... they can't say I didn't warn them, right?