ebunny
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Posts posted by ebunny
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I hear what you are saying Ebunny, and my first reaction was similar to yours. However, I came to understand that he expects he'll need to reach out to everyone regardless of whether they seem to be a good fit immediately.
DS actually gives them more of a chance than my DD, who would say that she's accepting of everyone. He knows full well that they would not have chosen him, the outlier as Heigh Ho mentions, and furthermore he sees qualities in others that I don't always see. I think he was reassuring himself that although many of those attempts at friendship were going to be failures, he could still have some kind of relationship with them, even on a superficial level. But he also understood at a very young age that the onus was on him to create a bridge because his age peers sure weren't going to. That is a lot of responsibility to own.
Honestly, I really liked the bus stop analogy--that everywhere you go (or stop), you want to have a friend, even if it's not a best friend. I've at times been more the burn the bridge kind of person. And it can get kind of lonely. Now I realize that keeping friends is important, although I still find it difficult as an introvert to make them. I like the kid's attitude of seeing everyone as a potential friend.
Sometimes those bus stops friends can turn into really close ones. There was one person I met through my husband who I really didn't have anything in common with at all. But now that she and I both have kids, I find that we have more in common on many issues than my husband has with either of us. You just never know. :)
Thank you for sharing your perspectives. I understand better now.
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Just to be clear, it wasn't my quote, but a reply...
That said, kids are kids. They say things in funny and often inappropriate ways. PG 5 year olds are still 5 year olds whose lives revolve around their families. Other people are other people: different. The children's observations may not reflect the character we plan to instill in them. I wouldn't read too much into it.
My response wasn't directed at you, but at pinewarbler. The quote feature messed it up.
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I wish I knew how to fill this void. I have only found them one other PG kid in 13 years of looking hard. She adored them the second they met and vice versa.
Both kids just have lots of friends who would be more appropriately labelled acquaintances. My youngest calls them 'bus stop' people... from toddler age he explains to me that you need to collect a lot of them... you never know when you'll be waiting somewhere and need someone to talk to. I realized how open he was, not judging people, and he's still like that.
However, having a lot of people who you can talk to is not having friends or true peers. My eldest THINKS she has found one peer at high school - the school has well over 1,000 students and she joined every single club that had older grades participating. I swear she met everyone this year... and she MIGHT have found one friend. I'm not sure there is a solution to this.
wrt: Bolded
I found my peers at the age of 25 (approx a decade ago). Most of them were 60+ yr olds then, but they were such interesting people who had lead fascinating lives. I found another group of peers when I went back for my grad degree; this time they were the 25 yr olds. :laugh:
Friends are hard to find and keep; especially when one's tribe is statistically non-normative. My DD has been lucky to find a few friends; personality attributes+character compatibility rather than common interests. Its definitely easier that way.
ETA: I went back and forth whether to post what I'm about to, but decided to go ahead. The underlined part of the post bothered me deeply. Especially the 'collecting' of people so that one has someone to talk to. Even figuratively speaking, viewing those cognitively average or otherwise as objects to be collected or bus stop people, is....dismissive and depreciative. :sad:
Maybe I've misunderstood, if so, I apologise.
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They collect dust, they cost a lot to move, about 1500 of them took more time to pack, unpack, shelve, re-shelve than I spent reading them (that was after I got rid of more than 1000).
This.
When we moved for the 5th time in 8 years, we were carrying along 40 large boxes of books. Unpacking, re-shelving took 2 weeks. When my dh threw his back out moving a box filled with books from one room to another, we knew we had a big problem.
I donated and sold most (which could be replaced easily) off over a year. Invested in a kindle and now exclusively buy ebooks.
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What I'm hoping for is an accelerated/(insert label) kids forum where the next gen from this board can communicate with like minded peers across the world. That would be a game changer in my life.
As DD gets older, I find I'm hesitant to discuss her emotional and intellectual phases in great detail online or IRL.
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Do you think it is appropriate to give a 9 yr boy to read The boy in a striped pajamas?
I summarised the story and ds is asking to read it now and says that he will not be scarred :confused1:
Has he read anything about the Holocaust earlier? My DD read and watched 'The boy in...." but it wasn't her first book on that topic. Her first introduction to it was Judith Kerr trilogy starting with 'When hitler stole pink rabbit'.
IMO, I wouldn't recommend 'The boy in.." as a first book on the Holocaust, particularly if the child is sensitive. ymmv
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Yes, ever since she was born.
But, as DD gets older (almost 12 now), I struggle mightily with *my* role in keeping her busy. As in, I was hoping she would have an internal compass by now that points her to the problem of intellectual stimulation and seek it out *without* my help. Maybe I should include this in her life skill goals to meet, for this year. :p :D
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Oh my! That video has achieved the impossible... condescending and offensive on all levels *to both men and women*!!.
Girls need to hear that if they choose to marry late, they won't find anyone eligible because all men want younger women? Women are born rich and become poor? men are born poor and become rich? I hope she's speaking in metaphors..
I don't get why the sender of this video is so invested in your daughters future marriage/late marriage? Very bizarre..
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I'm not sure I believe in a "well-rounded" education. I think there are some very basic things that everyone must learn--reading, writing, and arithmetic, manners and social conventions, and how our government works and the mechanisms we (and others) have for influencing it because it affects your life very directly. Beyond that, I think there is way too much valuable information for anyone to learn in their entire life, let alone 13 years of school.
I also believe that people change their interests later in life.
Perhaps this is why unschooling is intriqueing to me. But i don't quite have the guts to do it, because I think my kids would only play minecraft all day.
You said it better than I did.
To add, does a well rounded education mean an education without a strong focus? i.e if one concentrates on all academic and non-academic disciplines equally...
I suspect a well rounded education helps the students who have strong interests early in life- the specialists.
The teens who are, by temperament and abilities, generalists will by default gravitate towards a well rounded education.
What the latter might need is something different from the former. something more focused to help them choose their discipline/field.
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A perspective from someone who possibly tried to balance marriage, kids and career:
Indra Nooyi, CEO Pepsico on why women can't have it all.
"My observation…is that the biological clock and the career clock are in total conflict with each other. Total, complete conflict. When you have to have kids you have to build your career. Just as you're rising to middle management your kids need you because they're teenagers, they need you for the teenage years.
And that's the time your husband becomes a teenager too, so he needs you. They need you too. What do you do? And as you grow even more, your parents need you because they're aging."
"Train people at work. Train your family to be your extended family…. If you don't develop mechanisms with your secretaries, with the extended office, with everybody around you, it cannot work. You know, stay at home mothering was a full time job. Being a CEO for a company is three full time jobs rolled into one. How can you do justice to all? You can't."
However, I'm telling my daughter to prioritize financial independence over waiting to meet the right guy/marriage/kids. The former is within ones control, whereas the latter...
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I've been pondering the concept of when it's appropriate to focus studies and when it's beneficial to ensure a "well-rounded" education. Ebunny's post in the Ideal Humanities thread made me wonder when/how it would be possible to truly focus studies in an area of interest, rather than piece-meal subjects that touch all the "appropriate" areas of instruction.
I feel like having a list of largely unrelated subjects (math, literature, science, history, language, music, art, etc.) provides some benefit, by broadening the learning base and allowing our children to have an experience in a bunch of different areas (I am still thankful for my college philosophy class even though it about killed me to pass it and it made no impact on anything in my life), but I wonder how much that concept is actually beneficial to our children when we do it year after year. One of the benefits of homeschooling is that I don't have to pattern my kids education on the public school system, but I don't really know how to break out of that broad base of studies and allow for a more in-depth focus of study.
I recently saw a thing on my facebook feed that one of the downfalls of the modern education system is the lack of passion and focus of most graduates. And that those kids who do have passion and focus and become the world shakers and changers, averaged something like a 2.9GPA in highschool because they had trouble conforming to the broad education base required.
My DD and I have recently finished reading the 2-ebook series on the Gifted Potentials and the way they set up the course of study is two courses focused on aspects of interest/potential, a third course focusing on a weakness, but tying assignments to the other two courses, and then "intensives" once a week, focusing on something random of interest. The idea is intriguing - allowing for in-depth study in areas of strong interest/potential, focus on a relative weakness to tie it into those areas of interest, and then provide little mini-courses on a variety of "extra" areas. My problem is that I am too stuck in the box and feel like I'm going to mess my kid up by not providing the typical course of study.
I've been kicking this around in my brain for about a month now and am still foggy about the concept, and it's probably not helped by curricula available on the market, which doesn't seem to cater to this concept, at least none that I have found. Anyone else have any thoughts?
fwiw, my post on that thread was a very high level look at what I considered to be an ideal humanities education. I don't know how it would look on a day-to-day basis in elementary school because I've not yet had an opportunity or necessity to chalk a plan out. Maybe I should at some point..
Having said that, and to give some background on that post; I'm a product of a relatively well rounded 'school' education system. I had history, geography, physics, chem, bio, algebra/pre-cal/cal, geometry/trig, 1st language, 2nd language, 3rd language from 1st- 10th grade.
My generation was also expected to achieve equally across all subjects. All of us were streamlined post 10th grade (sciences/humanities/fine arts). Those 10 years of formally studying 3 languages? didn't need them in formal education post 10th grade. :rolleyes:
Of course each subject stretched us a little bit, and of course all of them gave us a holistic view of academics; but there are only so many hours in a day/week/month/year, iykwim; and the price we paid for a holistic academic education was sports, performing and fine arts. Can you tell I'm still resentful after all these years? :001_smile:
For my DD:
My DD who's inclined towards the sciences and accelerated only in math/science.
out of a 30 hr 5 day week= (approximations)
3 hours language per week at grade level,
3 hours History/geography per week at grade level.
24 hours per week split between Math (algebra/geom) and sciences (phys, chem, bio) accelerated.
She has the exposure to all subjects like a mainstream schooled child in India plus the flexibility to not perform at the same level across all. She has the luxury of time.
Time to play a sport and an instrument. Time to read, dream, slack off, brood, chat and do nothing too.
So far no regrets.
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I'd love to have a discussion about motivation and quality of work.
Do your children do their best work for you at home?
If not, how do you handle it in elementary, middle school, and high school?
If so, why do you think they do?
How do you encourage high quality work without also encouraging perfectionism? and while keeping a love of learning?
In our homeschool, DS10 does his best work in his favorite subject (math) pretty consistently. In his least favorite subjects, he usually does the bare minimum - his work improves when he has outside accountability.
DS7 hasn't had much outside work yet, but he seems to freeze with outside assignments. He struggles with perfectionism. So far, his best work is done at home.
I struggle with how much to push for quality work day-by-day. Does a student need to put in their best effort on every assignment? I think doing things well is a good habit to develop, but I also see that taking this too far can lead to perfection (especially in those who are prone to that anyway). I was encouraged to do quality work consistently by grades, but I see the pitfalls of that system, too. And adults often need to be self-motivated, but how do you teach self-motivation?
Just curious about your experiences and thoughts.
Great question!
After many many many blunders where I expected DD to read my mind in elementary school, I went through a period where I had to determine what I meant by 'quality' how would I measure it, and if its developmentally appropriate for my DD to reach the level that I demand/expect.
Due to that introspection, middle school has been simpler than elementary. Expectations and routine is already set on both sides and she usually complies when I ask her to redo a piece of writing because we now have a common understanding of what quality looks like. Hence,she does her best work for me; at home.
Quality in Math and sciences is relatively easy to implement. Where my DD has struggled is quality in writing. I suspect this will continue to improve as she matures as a person. Some aspects of academics just need maturity and life experience, iykwim.
wrt the bolded:
It depends. My DD is an aspiring scientist, so that's where her best is invested.
I'm not sure motivation can be taught. IME, I can only create an environment that is likely to keep her motivated or model it. Usually a hit or miss here. :D
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Warning: Long, rambling, probably will delete.
I do know that I am not a teacher, and I am realizing how little I really know about teaching. I am starting to wonder 1) is he really gifted, or am I just a big impostor? 2) whether he would be better off in regular school, perhaps the GATE program would be enough of a challenge. I don't know. I am just down and frustrated, and am wondering if I am wasting my time homeschooling him. Maybe he just doesn't *need* it. Or, maybe he is just 8, and his mind started to wander during the lunch hour, and I should stop projecting my insecurities on to my child (who obviously doesn't give a crap about any of this). I mean on some things, he scored high school level, so my husband is having a hard time understanding how this is a homeschool-ending "failure," and yet, for some reason, I feel like it is.
Can anyone relate to any of this? Feel free to tell me that I am being ridiculous.
I can relate and I don't think you're being ridiculous. He sounds quite like my DD between 7 and 8. Highly verbal. Very high energy.
IME, Achievement not meeting teacher/parent expectations means a couple of things:
1- No idea of what the test is testing
2- Anxiety or other issues like ADHD causing a bottleneck
3- Being highly verbal has its drawbacks in written tests.- likely to be developmental.
We, rather I, struggled with 1 and 3.
I fixed point 1 by having periodic review built into our schedule and making sure DD knew what she was being tested on. Whether she takes it cold or practices for it; its extremely crucial for *all* students to be aware of the test expectations.
wrt 3:
It will sort out once he is older. Maybe during puberty or after.
For instance, My DD is 11-almost-12 now, there's an enormous positive change in her focus, attention and self control from when she was 7/8. 3-4 years of a constant commentary on everything and now (for the past 6 months) I see the movement of young childhood to young adulthood happening.
He sounds to be in the right place (home) for his academic and developmental needs. Hang in there!
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Me: channeling Mr Miyagi (or Yoda if you prefer), " Either you do this or you don't. There is no try".
DD: with a long suffering look, "Mom, very few choices in life are binary. This is not one of them".
Me: :blink:
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It's not a label I've ever heard before this thread, tbh.
So far as the bolded, I'd say yes, it does matter, given the way we structure our schools. If our schools were radically different, perhaps it wouldn't matter so much at all.
I have a child in her 6th year of public school education. It's been a good education, reasonably rigorous, nice teachers etc. Despite an overall positive experience, I can see the drawbacks in how school has shaped her outlook very clearly. It's a loss, imo.
If we just want to measure a certain set of skills and mastery of those, and a body of content, sure, school/not school can just be two sides of a coin.But homeschooling - or alternative schooling - is not the B side to school; it's a different record altogether.
I am pretty happy condemning mass education in my own country. It does do some things very well, and it's a neccessary evil at this point in time. It's full of hard working, caring teachers.
Doesn't mean I think the model isn't broken.
My DD has been in many different learning set-ups in her 8 schooled years (3 to now 11). Montessori, home, mainstream private, alternative non-ideology, coop and home again. My perspective is that of a person who has had first hand experience of all educational spaces in a very large geographical region across 2 states. Every single learning space had its trade-offs, even our home.
I do see great positives in home education, but I've also experienced (through other homeschoolers in my country and on the interwebz) the negatives. :mellow:
I'm thankful and grateful that we do have the choice of homeschooling, but I'm not a homeschooling crusader and home education isn't a hill I want to die on. *shrug*
eta: The WTM board is a very rare safe space that welcomes diverse educational perspectives, experiences and voices. I hope it stays that way.
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Given the reasons that most accidental or refugee homeschoolers come to homeschooling, this has rarely if ever been my experience. When one leaves the school by necessity rather than preference, one tends to not have a lot of pro-school attitudes. And unlike the more extreme ideological hype that gets spewed at schools from the right and left (they are indoctrinating kids to be gay! They are training mindless drones for the war machine!), my objections are rooted in reality and actual harm done to my actual child.
The above bears repeating.
To add, despite the fact that our family has had terrible school experiences, government run public 'mass' schools are the *only* place where majority of the kids can receive a half decent education. Especially in developing countries.
If parents have the best interest of their child at heart, does it matter if the best learning space for a child at a given point in time -is school? At other times it could be the home!
I'm never that content with my homeschooling prowess that I would condemn other learning approaches. And I cannot sacrifice a reasonably rigorous education that my DD might have in some school on the altar of my ideology, given the opportunity.
I'm not pro school for all but I'm definitely anti-labels like refugee homeschooler for anyone.
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My DS11 would need to do the same vocabulary workbook that would have been busywork for my DS12. Same exact workbook but different kid even though siblings. My DS12 could have skip SM and absorb from just living math but my DS11 would not have been able to do that.
Both my kids need to do music theory workbooks to remember while there are kids out there who would consider those workbooks as busy work.
It takes time to figure out what works for which child so don't fret yet.
Absolutely.
To add; the problem is also that what would count as not-busywork can become busywork the moment a student takes a developmental leap. I suspect that's happening in our home.
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Thanks for sharing its history, ElizaG
Reading over the replies, I have this sinking feeling that a significant % of what DD does in academics at home might be busywork. She's an advanced student who was brought home late last year after spending 3 years spinning wheels in mainstream and alternative schools.
Maybe its the curricula..maybe its my insistence on output. :mellow:
ETA: I don't recall doing much busywork as its been interpreted here in school. I was an above average student in a school affiliated to a Board of Education know for its rigor. Standards have changed(lowered) now, and mixed grouping is encouraged. I guess its how busywork crept into classrooms.
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Yes, but don't blame the teacher or assume that she/he has bad intentions. It is probably that half of the class really didn't master how to boil the water and so it needs to be retaught or practiced. Many kids need repetition in order to learn skills. What is busy work to a few students is necessary practice for others. As often as we teachers talk about differentiation in the classroom, it is often very hard to implement with everything. Some kids end up doing "busy work" while others get the necessary practice they need. Avoiding busy work is a blessing that homeschoolers have because they can teach each child individually. However, I would bet that many who homeschool a variety of ages together do use "busy work" with their littles or older in order to keep the day running smoothly.
Agreed, especially with the bolded. Okbud and Farrar have mentioned the same upthread.
This is what I just wrote in the output thread:
Busywork is output for output's sake with no clear pedagogical purpose. If I cannot identify the purpose of an assignment and where it is necessary for my child within the framework of his education, the assignment is busywork.
Practicing a math concept until mastery - fine. Assigning pages of more problems for already thoroughly mastered concepts just because some curriculum has those assignments - busywork.
Taking notes from a text to learn notetaking, to help identify and remember key points, to clarify complicated concept - fine. Taking notes just because - busywork.
Drawing pictures of vocabulary words the student already knows=busywork.
Rewriting lists of spelling words the student can already spell = busywork.
ETA: My gifted kids attended public school for elementary, and pretty much everything was busywork for them; they were able to absorb the tiny amount of daily learning in a few minutes and did not require hours to practice skills that they had already mastered. It was painful, and ultimately lead us to homeschool.
She will waste the time of those students who have mastered the concept already and are waiting for the slowest learners to catch up so the class can learn in lockstep.
Without differentiation, the top students spend their days doing basically only busywork. Ask me how I know. (Unless they are given permission to do something completely different. My DD spent five years in school reading fiction with teachers' permission - they were just glad that she did not disrupt the class. That was not busywork, but it was also not an education.)
I've taught a classroom of diverse ability (math) kids in the past. A few couldn't grasp the concept of a number line, the middle group could mark negative and positive numbers on a number line and the highest ability group were adding and subtracting integers without a number line. Although I had 3 different levels of worksheets, I'm fairly certain now some of the high ability kids thought my worksheets were busywork. :o But that's the pitfall of an inclusive and diverse classroom. Thankfully, the next time I went in that class, I had more resources and my wits about me.
Can busywork be eliminated completely? I don't know...
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They were just tedious and time consuming, work out the code by doing these sums kind of things. None of these things add to learning.
:o I've had my DD do those worksheets in our past round of homeschooling. On one of those days when our energy levels were mismatched.
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Does some amount of busywork in a classroom build tolerance for boredom? for patience? Although, I can see it backfiring mightily if that's all a student was doing.
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So, from what I understand teacher intent is necessary to call an activity busywork. Literally keeping the children busy without adding to their learning- A pass their time kind of activity.
I wonder if low standards in terms of content coverage and commensurate output lend themselves to busywork . I mean, if a teacher has 16-20 chapters to complete annually in a math class of 25-30 students, she is unlikely to waste her own or the students time with anything that does not move them further in their learning curve.
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I have heard the term busywork being used in Asia when I was a kid in the 70s and my older cousins have heard that term too.
For a child with beautiful handwriting and great spelling, copywork of spelling words in public school does feel like busywork.
For a child who can do 12x12 multiplication as fast as a normal calculator, math drills worksheets in public school does feel like busywork.
My oldest is a natural speller. A spelling curriculum would have been busywork to him. My younger boy on the other hand needed hand holding for spelling.
For example as a public school kid, I finished my entire year's math textbook exercises in the Nov/Dec end of year school break. To me they are busywork that had to be completed since my teacher does grade them for working. There was no harder textbooks available that were approved by my country's ministry of education. They didn't have elementary school math olympiad then or I could probably have done those during class time. Instead I did my chinese and music theory homework in math class for 1st-6th grade.
In the 70s in Sg? That's interesting. I don't hear of it in India at all. Its all grouped under 'studying'. :laugh:
FWIW, handwriting may not stay beautiful forever, unless one writes copiously (Ask me how I know! :tongue_smilie: ).
Math computation too. If a child can do 12x 13 in 1 second now, can s/he do it in 1 second a year from now without any multiplication tables practice?
For eg: arithmetic computation: can speed remain high without any specific computation practice?
For writing: can writing speed increase without...writing huge amounts?
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Over the past 6 years I've seen the word 'busywork' often enough on the boards, and still haven't managed to get a clear understanding of what it means. Is it an American culture specific word?
IMhO, It doesn't seem to have an Asian context because any academic pursuit (at least in India) is seen either as a 'new lesson' or 'practice' or 'revision' or 'studying'.
I've also seen this word crop up more frequently wrt accelerated/gifted/advanced learners.
So what is your interpretation of busywork? What is the difference between busywork and practice? (especially in math). How do you determine if something is busywork or not?
Accelerated Learner forums question
in Accelerated Learner Board
Posted
No, haven't heard of the show. But, I get what you're trying to say.