pageta
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Posts posted by pageta
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I swear, the bitterness against HSLDA and the reasons given for such make me want to run out and renew my membership right now. If you're liberal and and secular and don't believe in the family structure and think that the government knows better how to raise your children than you do, then you will hate HSLDA. If you believe in traditional family values, then you will probably like them and appreciate their services.
HSLDA supports parental rights amendments, contrary to the UN and other organizations that are trying to erode the rights of the parents. They do lobby on behalf of that cause. If you believe in parental rights, you probably won't mind indirectly funding their activities on that matter. If you think the US should be more like Europe or Canada, parental rights will probably irritate you and you might want to consider other options.
In our state, I have seen them consistently try to minimize legislation overseeing homeschoolers. They take the proposed legislation and explain their position on it and what changes they believe should be made. I have yet to disagree with any of their suggestions - in our state. I do not claim to be an expert on legislation in other states.
I've also seen them take cases in our state where homeschoolers were following the law but government authorities were extending their oversight beyond their bounds. So just because you are "following the law" doesn't mean you won't need to deal with authorities on some level. In our state, if your children are in public school and miss a certain number of school days, even if those absences were excused you automatically get referred to the attorney general and have to hire a lawyer to defend yourself. That makes me nervous, even though my children are not in public school.
As to whether prepaid legal assistance is necessary for homeschooling - that is the question. We have a rogue family member who likes to make things up about us and then complain to everyone else (e.g. I have a low-end dSLR camera, and this family member accused us of starving our children because I have that camera - seriously). We will probably renew our membership at the beginning of the school year just for peace of mind in dealing with whatever that family member might stir up.
I would recommend talking to local homeschoolers in your are to get their take on HSLDA. Unfortunately, on this board, there is a core group of HSLDA-haters who will take over any thread even remotely related to HSLDA and you will not get a balanced response whatsoever.
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Take a look at KingArthur.com. I rarely go wrong with their recipes, and I've learned a lot by trying various recipes on their site. They give excellent directions as well. That is where I would start.
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WHOA.
Stop. Time.out.
Major.line.crossed.
I wouldn't even know where to begin listing how many things are wrong with the above.
Now I know people have really lost all perspective.
I'm not saying that his atrocities add up to Hitler's. I'm just saying you can take about anybody and say "he was a good coach" or "he was a good leader."
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How is a conductor of an hypothetical orchestra with a bunch of drunk players = Joe Pa and child rape. It was used (along with me being the drunk that plays the piano well) as an example to show that people can be good and bad and it is ok to acknowlege both. One does not cancel out the other-people are both. I also never gave him a pass on his character flaws or lack of character. He can be lacking there and still have been an acomplished coach. I am finding it interesting that people cannot understand that. Maybe some just want to hate so much that they cannot see the truth in what I say...that people can be good and bad...
Sandusky was a good coach. He was to be the next head coach after Paterno. But Sandusky was using Penn St facilities to attract and rape these boys right under Paterno's nose, even after he had been relieved from his duties as coach at the age of 55. He continued committing the same crimes in the same place even though he no longer had any reason to be there.
Yes, Paterno is an accomplished coach, but lack of courage in this matter unfortunately outweighs any great coaching he may have done (which means it's really bad).
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It was extremely petty, and you are correct, games are won on the field, not awarded by the NCAA. No matter how they wish to call it, if we defeated another team 56-0, they will look kind of stupid claiming some kind of victory.
If a team lost to Penn State in one of the games that was forfeited, it is still shown as a loss on that team's record. So it is a loss-loss for the recordbooks.
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that still does not take away the fact that the person is a good conductor. I just means that person is a good conductor that doesn't have good management skills.
Hitler was a great leader. Look what he got Germany to do! You have to be a great leader to get that many people to go against their consciences and do what the Germans did during WWII.
Why are you so bent on defending this guy?
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that it is abhorrent that I can think that he was skilled in teaching football skills to his players? How is that offensive in any way? and how does that in any way have to do with the cover-up. They are two different things. I can be good at playing piano and drink too much and drive. That doesn't mean I am now not a good piano player... It means I am both a drunk driver and a good piano player. They are not mutually exclusive.
If you're conducting the orchestra and you know that players are drawing checks but aren't showing up for performances, then even though you may be awesome when conducting, you still have a stain on your reputation.
Knowing that your coaches are doing things like this within your program and ignoring it is a lot closer than just going home and being a drunk when you're off duty.
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a comment about how some of the family members certainly knew and should be punished... and several about how they should not say anything. If someone accused my husband and I didn't believe it-I would protest publically no question. I expect nothing less of others. I don't think that makes them bad people. I also see people that want every penny Joe Pa ever made taken from his family... like they had anything to do with it.
As for Fred and Frieda-I was talking about the punishment of those that had nothing to do with it... not whether you would visit for Sunday Dinner. I dont' think Frieda's co-workers should be punished for Fred's crimes or Frieda's cover-up. I also wouldn't have a problem being around any other family members that did not know about Fred's crime-even if their first response what I cannot believe that Uncle Fred would do that...
If they truly didn't know, then no, they aren't responsible. But given the realities of running a football program - the long hours, the tight atmosphere - it's really stretching it to say they didn't know. Stuff like that gets around, even if people don't witness it first hand. Sometimes when rumors like that go around, they are true. There had to be suspicions.
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Did this (bolded) come out in the investigation? It's repugnant to me to suggest they did, if there is no evidence that's true.
That probably isn't something they would ever investigate. But I've heard it said by more than one person (guys on sports talk radio and the like). It is common for guys to go home and tell their wives about stuff that goes on in the workplace that they probably wouldn't mention to anyone else. I would be really surprised if none of the wives had any idea any of this was going on. That doesn't mean all of them did. It's just highly likely that they were their husband's #1 confidant, and if their husbands spilled the beans to anyone, that's where it happened.
But if you want to assume that Joe Paterno was clueless and that the janitors and other coaches and staff and all were clueless as well, then their wives probably had no idea what was going on either.
JoePa obviously isn't going to rise up from the dead and defend himself (though from watching him on the sidelines at games, I can see how people might think he had no clue of what was going on since he hardly seemed to know he was at a football game - they had to move him upstairs to a booth to watch the game because he wasn't alert enough to move out of the way and got run over by players executing a play).
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Football funds itself and almost all other college sports. We are in Nebraska, and everything loses money except occasionally men's basketball and baseball...occasionally. So all of those womens' sports and all that? Would be extremely limited without a good football program.
So yes, you can be aghast at the money in football. Most of it is from tv contracts. But it also supports other sports programs, giving lots of people an opportunity they simply wouldn't have otherwise.
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I should add, when we eliminated processed foods from our diet, I went through our pantry and removed all of the processed food. Some of it I tossed as I had no desire to eat it (not something we especially liked) and the rest I put on a contraband shelf which we ate from only on the weekends (and still our diet was mostly non-processed foods during those days).
I would make the transition gradually - try one new recipe a week and slowly build a new set of recipes you like that you eat most of the time.
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We read In Defense of Food and have eliminated (almost) all processed food from our diet. When we watched Forks over Knives, they say "plants based diet" over and over again, and people assume that means vegan (and a couple vegans were part of the movie). But a plants based diet doesn't mean just plants - it just means the majority of what you eat is from plants. So we eat meat (as we always have) but we definitely consider our diet "plants based" as the majority of what we eat comes directly from plants.
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I''m not into sports, so, honestly, I had never even heard of Paterno until this all came to light. That said, I've spent about fifteen years in academe. Here are my thoughts:
1. I don't understand why so much blame is being attributed to Paterno, compared to Sandusky. Paterno, Paterno, Paterno. Yes, he was head coach, but it was Sandusky who actually did this.
2. Clearly Paterno was in the "The buck stops here" position. Yet, he had both a lot of accolades and a lot of pressure from those above him. Again, not excusing him at all, but I know academe well enough to know that he was acting as "company man," keeping this quiet. I don't know him enough to know how much was about his legacy and how much was about protecting his school. Not that either is okay, but I've watched some real idiots "protect" schools as the risk of their students' educations and future professions.
3. Paterno, due to his death, was not given due process. We don't know what else may have come out had he survived. I don't know if there would have been anything, but I do have concerns about all that is being said about him given the lack of due process.
If you know about something and you're in a position to do something about it yet you do nothing, you are responsible. The coaches and their wives all had to know about it. The coaches could have gone to the authorities, but Paterno had the power to do that AND ban the guy from coming anywhere near the football program. But he just had Sandusky retire but let him still come around and do whatever he wanted. So he let it continue right under his nose. That is wrong.
Even if Paterno was still alive, he probably wouldn't be healthy enough (or mentally competent enough) to undergo a trial and so forth. Just because someone isn't alive to defend themselves doesn't mean that what they allowed to go on quietly without doing anything about it is okay.
Sandusky is in jail. His punishment has been dealt. We're now talking about the rest of the people involved.
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I think taking away Paterno's victories is the best thing the NCAA could do. He was head coach in name only - he was too old to do much besides show up, yet he retained his position, taking all the glory and benefits of the title of head coach while his assistants did all the work. He was nothing more than a mascot. The selfishness that made him not retire was the same selfishness that made him not do something about Sandusky. For Paterno, it was all about him and his legacy. What a selfish man!
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I boycott businesses based on my personal experience with them. If they have high prices or bad service, I don't go there. If I like what they sell and the price is reasonable and the service is good, I'm a loyal customer.
I think the whole boycott businesses in regards to some current issue just creates division. Liberals use it to try to shut down things they don't like (such as Rush Limbaugh - they don't listen to him but they try to shut him down by intimidating advertisers), and generally when someone is boycotting something, it is liberals being mad about something conservatives are doing (though conservatives have certainly picked up on the habit, to my chagrin).
Personally I think its petty behavior. You just end up with companies taking stands on issues that have nothing to do with what they do and everyone is mad and has to make a list of businesses to be mad at and people feel holier-than-thou because they boycott certain businesses and so forth. And yes, that is a run on sentence which only demonstrates my point. Nothing but childish behavior, IMO.
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We do 36 weeks of school and my goal is to do 3 weeks per month (simple math). So I divide our curriculum like I would if we did the 180 day schedule and go from there. Some months we don't make our goal (# of school days) and others we exceed it. But in the end, it all works out and we finish our curriculum as planned by the end of the school year.
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I have a Kindle. I thought long and hard between the two and ended up going with the Kindle simply because I find amazon's website much easier to shop on. Barnes & Noble hides all the free books or the formatting is horrid, and they seem like they have a chip on their shoulder. Amazon has all of the free books up with everything else like they're happy for you to have them. They also have great suggestions for other books you may enjoy.
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I would write the author and ask her. She's pretty good about answering questions, though it might not be right away. We love this program but are only in the lower grade levels so I'm not help otherwise on this issue. I am artistically challenged and enjoy doing the grades 1-3 projects along with my kids, but the examples of the projects are doing by young kids which your child might not appreciate.
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Yes, I agree. It is a possible solution. But it could also be explained by other simple factors, such as his age and the fact that he is at the stage where he is building fluency and hasn't mastered that part of reading yet.
I got Overcoming Dyslexia by Sally Shaywitz, M.D. from the library last night and stayed up late scanning through it, and I have read the articles linked in this thread. There are a few things that match things I am observing in him, but I would say he has less than a third of the symptoms I've seen discussed, both in the book and in the articles I've read online (linked here and that I've Googled). And things that are emphasized as fundamental to dyslexia - like poor phonics skills and being a bad speller - do not describe him at all.
I think he needs to learn test taking skills. I will get a book and practice with him as one of our subjects covered in school.
I think he needs to practice reading aloud in order to work on developing fluency. I will have him read aloud five days a week, even on days we are not doing school, rather than just limiting this practice to school days (we school year-round so not every day of the week).
I think an experienced teacher (who has heard hundreds of third graders read aloud) needs to hear him read aloud and tell me if his reading skills are appropriate for his age. I am working on arranging this.
I think that he needs to be given the test in smaller pieces and with more breaks. I got certification from BJU yesterday to administer the test and plan to give it to him myself this fall (they have it on sale in November and December). I will give it to him one section per day, allowing him to choose which section he wants to do that day (just as I let him choose which of our weekly readings we will do when it is time to do a reading in our school routine, which always results in a better narration and a better attitude in general toward school).
Then once I get his ITBS results back in December, I will make a decision as to whether further testing for dyslexia is merited. I will read Overcoming Dyslexia in the mean time (I am finding a lot of wonderful information on the process of learning to read that I have long searched for) so that I am better informed as to how to teach reading and evaluate for problems.
But I think it is prudent to try the simple solutions first before I go and get extensive testing done and give him a label of "handicapped" that he will have for the rest of his life.
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I just read through this entire thread and a few things jump out at me.
First, several of the things you are describing are screaming learning disabilities to me. Late talker, verbal skills lagging, copywork with missing punctuation, not finishing sections on the test, difficulty in baseball when actually dealing with the ball, etc. These things, in combination with the fact that you're thinking of holding him back, make be think that you might want to seek an evaluation. I'd see about getting him evaluated for dyslexia (with someone who gets gifted kids with issues such as dyslexia, called twice exceptional or 2E if you want to google) with an eye toward sensory processing issues as well (it sounds like there might be a vision thing going on and perhaps an auditory thing as well, both very common in dyslexics, BTW).
Your homeschooling style is pretty much perfect for a bright dyslexic, which is probably why you are feeling like he is generally doing well. He is! It's just that he's doing well with some pretty extensive accommodations. If he does indeed have dyslexia or another LD, you're going to need to have a plan to transition him away from the accommodations, and it will take time and effort on everyone's part, so you'll probably want to start now.
I want to comment on this since so many people are seconding this.
He reads from the 3rd McGuffey Reader just fine. Sometimes he pauses, mostly at the end of a line, and sometimes he misses words. But he reads with expression. Occasionally he skips words, but usually they are small words like on or of immediately before an unfamiliar word - I think he misses them because he is focused on the unfamiliar words. But he can read a story from the 3rd McGuffey Reader aloud, sight-reading the first time through, and narrate it perfectly.
It's things like Pilgrim's Progress and Howard Pyle's Robin Hood that I read aloud to him because he says he it's harder to read them himself and then be able to narrate. Ambleside selections are on a higher grade level. They aren't children's versions of Charles Dickens or things like that. I hardly think that an 8-year-old third grader should be labeled dyslexic because he can't read this sort of selection on his own.
Other selections are easier and such that he could easily handle except that he gets overwhelmed by the length. Yes, that could be a sign of dyslexia, but it could also mean that he is reading these selections at a very young age and simply hasn't had the practice to have the confidence that he can read those selections fluently on his own. Just because you have a 2-year-old that can walk doesn't mean you take them on a 5-mile hike and expect them to walk the whole thing themselves.
That is also why I'm pondering holding him back - I think with an added year of maturity and experience, these same things would be much easier for him. His birthday is 5 days from the cut-off so he is at the young end of the range for his grade. If he were one of the oldest kids in his class rather than the youngest, things would be much easier for him simply because he's had time to develop rather than being pushed into things.
He started crawling at 7 months so we thought we'd have an early walker, but then he didn't walk until 18 months. When I started school with him and placed him in first grade, he loved books and had a great enthusiasm for learning. He did very well with phonics (which I think is why he is such a good speller), but now he seems to have stalled out like he did with crawling.
I've heard of many kids for whom reading doesn't "click" until they are 8 or 9. I was very good at phonics when I was in kindergarten, but I didn't really take an interest in reading until third grade (age 8) when it finally clicked for me and I learned to enjoy reading for the love of reading. I think it simply hasn't "clicked" for him yet and additional time would take the pressure off.
He is very good at spelling. He is also very good at phonics. In fact, now that we do Latin he goes around sounding out words with Latin pronunciation rules just for fun. The area where he is stalling out is building fluency and endurance for longer passages. We are working on that by doing selections from the McGuffey reader.
I think before I do any testing for dyslexia (from what I read, the testing is quite extensive), I need to have a teacher who has heard many a third grader read listen to ds read and tell me if he is behind for his age or if his reading skills would be perfectly acceptable for a child his age.
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If they gave the ITBS in four hours, they could not have taken more than five minute breaks between sections, with possibly one 15 minute snack break about midway through the testing session.
When you test your child at home, you will get a full instruction packet on how to administer the test. I think, when you read through the packet, you will realize how insane it was for the test to be given in one four hour session.
I do have friends that have their children take tests in the situation you described. Their children do fairly well on the tests, the moms are happy enough with the results.
But I don't agree with that testing situation. It seems inhumane to me. Even the public school setting doesn't cram that much testing into one morning.
It was four hours a day for two days.
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I am :confused::confused::confused: at your conclusion here based upon the things I bolded in your earlier statement. It sounds like you did ZERO preparation before throwing him into the testing environment. Then, the testing facility (of which he's completely unfamiliar) administered the ITBS incorrectly for his age, I believe, because the company recommends no more than 2 sections per day! To me, it's like you threw him to the wolves with raw steak tied around his neck! Then, you want to punish him for not performing well by red-shirting him? (I don't mean that as harshly as it reads).
I'm not following your logic. If performing in tests well is paramount in your home, then work towards achieving that goal. If it is not, then don't use it as an arbitrary yardstick with which to prove success or failure.
I did prepare him in that I had him do a series of practice tests for math, spelling, and reading comprehension (possibly more, I don't remember). I made up the test myself based on what I remembered having taking the test every year when I was in grade school. I typed out the questions and gave 4 answer choices and had him fill in the bubble on a separate sheet.
For the reading comprehension questions, I simply took a lesson from Writing With Ease for his grade (I had that curriculum for my reference only) using the passage and the questions from the text. The answer I made up included the correct answer (obviously) as well as answers that were close but not quite right.
So he understood what the test would be like and how to do it.
How I didn't prepare him was that I didn't sit him down and give him full length practice tests. His reading comprehension test was one passage with questions - not a series of passages each with its own series of questions.
He took the test with a group of homeschool students. The administrators were homeschooling mothers themselves. They just used a church with classrooms that had tables at the right height for each group of students. He knew some of the kids he was taking the test with. I know they had snacks and I assume they took breaks.
I think my plan for next time is to do it myself and only give him one or two sections a day. I applied to administer the test myself through BJU.
I don't necessarily want to do "school at home" but I do want my children to be at least functional in that type of setting because it will come in handy at some point.
I was just shocked at his results because on most of the sections he could have just randomly filled in the blanks and scored better than he did.
And I'm not punishing him by red-shirting him, LOL! I have been pondering that since well before he took the test. He was a late talker, and his birthday is now 5 days before the cutoff. We seem to hit a lot of walls where he just doesn't get something but then we come back a couple months later and I don't hardly have to explain it to him and he understands it. That would be the story of homeschooling him. I think an added year of maturity would make a lot of things much easier for him, though he could also be one who just needs time for things to simmer. The cutoff date was three months later than it is now when we started schooling him or I probably would have delayed his entry.
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Math and Reading, however would concern me. If he reads he should have done a lot better than the second percentile on the reading test. That's why I would want to see how he did on the test prep book.
It does concern me.
But get this: I went through his scores because they give total questions, total attempted, and % correct (of the total questions). I plugged those numbers into Excel and calculated the % correct of the questions attempted. So, for instance, say there were 12 questions, he attempted 6 and got 25% right. That means he answered 3 correctly. Answering 3 of 6 correctly is an actual score of 50% simply based on what was attempted. [He sat and read his book at the end of more than one test thinking he was finished when actually he was not.]
So his highest score using my method of scoring was spelling in which he got 90% - he answered 13 of the 15 questions he attempted correctly (there were 21 questions total).
Would a child who was really a poor reader score that high in spelling? To me it seems more likely that he flaked out on doing the test.
His second highest area was science, which is one of his favorite subjects. He would need to have a basic ability to read in order to score well in that subject area. We haven't done physical science yet as we are following the WTM 4-year cycle, so he didn't do well on those questions, but he scored almost perfectly on life science which he loves.
If he was really that bad at reading, I just don't see how he could have done that well on spelling and science. He had to read well enough to read the questions, understand what was being asked, and choose the correct answer.
As for History (which he also loves), with Ambleside we are currently in the midst of the Reformation so he hasn't been exposed to a lot of general history. We're going a lot more in depth rather than repeating the same overview every year or two.
Had he done as well in the remainder of the test as he did in Spelling and Science, we wouldn't be having this discussion. I think he just got bored with it, thought it was pointless, and didn't bother to try.
{And thank you to everyone for your responses. Just because I didn't quote you and respond doesn't mean I haven't appreciated what you said and taken it to heart.}
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If he has not been exposed to fractions, adding numerals with 4 digits, money, division, multiplication, etc (which cannot all be done orally) then I am not surprised he didn't do well on the math portion of the test. I guess I don't see why you would test him when you know he has not done much formal written work.
Granted. However, money can be done with real money which does not involve pencil and paper. Ditto for weights & measures and telling time.
As for addition and subtraction, we learned the basic facts first until he knew them extremely well. Once we moved onto multiple-digit addition and subtraction, borrowing and carrying was very easy to master since he wasn't wasting energy trying to remember what 2+2 was - he got the concept of regrouping and so it didn't take three weeks of math to teach borrowing and carrying in mulit-digit problems.
If you tell him someone was born in 1532 and died in 1611, he can tell within ten seconds how long they lived without using pencil and paper to figure that out. I would consider that at least three-digit subtraction.
Once you get to long division, yes, you need to have pencil and paper. But prior to that, we simply look at the worksheet and he does the math in his head and gives me the answer orally, and 90%+ of the time he gives me the correct answer.
Fractions are introduced in third grade, but on simple enough level that they can be done in your head sans pencil and paper.
So I do think in the lower grades it is possible to do math largely without any formal written work.
And I don't always read everything aloud to him. Many times I just highlight the problem on the screen (we have the electronic version of Math Mammoth) and he gives me the answer. I just don't see the point of having him write out skip counting by 6's when he's done that orally many times. With Ray's, sometimes he reads the questions, and sometimes I read them aloud.
Bottom line - if a math question can be done mentally and answered orally, I would prefer to work that way. My job involves a lot of math, and everyone else at the table will be using pencil and paper or a calculator and I'll have the answer before any of them just doing it in my head (and my accuracy is as good as theirs). So I think being able to do math mentally is an advantage.
He's done enough math with pencil and paper, though, that he should have been able to do better on the test.
HSLDA?
in General Education Discussion Board
Posted
Nobody fits into a neat little box, including HSLDA. I am sure that they (as with any law firm) have handled cases in ways that (in hindsight) I might not always completely agree with.
However, stereotypes come from somewhere. If you tally the list of issues cited (when they are in fact cited, as they often are not) on this thread (or any HSLDA thread), you will find that they are largely liberal in nature.
Generally if you're conservative, you support HSLDA and the issues they take a stand on, and if you're liberal, you loathe them with every cell in your body. Generally.