I wonder if this is different in the UK than the US. My UK-based sister thinks maybe so, based on recent law? Sample size of one opinion.

Not intending to hijack this thread, but has anyone been able to contact Kathryn Wall about her US History class? @Farrar? I have tried emailing her a couple of times and had no response.

I read and tried a few different systems many years ago, and was overwhelmed by clutter. I didn't like flylady even though all my friends of the time used it. My Ah Ha moment was when I got Julie Morgenstern's book and started using her system. It's not judgmental at all, and it works whether or not something sparks joy or not, whether or not I use or wear something or not. I like all my weird artifacts and dress-ups, I just need them to be organized and in their homes. Don't buy the containers until you've done the first three steps. It's easy to remember because it's based on this acronym: SPACE Sort Purge Assign (a home) Containerize Equalize (maintain the system) So you start by sorting into like-things. Take a pile or a box and go through it one by one. Hair ties, ibuprofen, and nail clippers are like things. Scarves, books, and Christmas ornaments are not. Purge by getting rid of garbage or donations. Physically do this before moving on. I do cheat with a psychic purgatory level which is for things I want to throw away or donate but they need to sort of off-gas my connection to them for a month or two or ten. I do have a home for psychic purgatory. Whatever you want to keep is fine. Keep it for any reason. Assigning a home is possibly the most important step. My dress-ups go in the attic. The hair ties go in the bathroom. Board games in the back room. Try to put things where people expect them as much as possible and your system has a better chance of holding. Containerize by deciding what kind of container you need and want. I try to never use cardboard boxes because our house is prone to mold and cardboard is mold food. For a while I used vintage suitcases because I liked the look but found they molded too. Dress-ups go into plastic totes in the attic, hair ties go into a basket in the bathroom, board games go onto a rack in the back room. Equalizing is a way to continue the acronym but just means maintain your system once you have it set up. When you've assigned everything a home, you have a place for it all to go, and when you clean and tidy, it goes there. Done.

Yes! We do this exact thing but call it the Lightning Tidy.

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2021/may/22/kathleen-stock-taboo-around-gender-identity-chilling-effect-on-academics Gender critical feminist writers are so hated and bullied, it's no wonder academics would shy away. It's amazing to me we are even having this conversation/thread.

I've read about at least one ethnonationalist embracing homeschooling and using SOTW. This sounds like a comment from one.

This is a hoot. Reminds me vaguely of The Red-Headed League...watch out if they ask you to start copying the encyclopedia! Or maybe cutting-and-pasting links in a browser, for a more modern take.

My first was at 24, last at 40 and two between, plus lost a couple. As other posters say, I had more energy young and more patience old. We were not financially stable with the older ones - maybe still not by most people's standards - and I think it's what made oldest take such a different path in his life. He went into engineering with a plan to work 9 - 5, weekends off, two weeks vacation a year and have a retirement fund, following his super fun, enriching, non-traditional upbringing. He has thanked us for his the way we raised him, but it sure it won't be the way he raises his own! He and DIL are continuing to try for children, she's had some fertility issues but I'm glad they started when she was 28 and not any older. The hardest part for me was the lack of community. I had very few friends who were also having babies young. Actually, only one, and she moved away. So I was very lonely. This was also true 20 years later when youngest DD was a child, and all of the homeschool moms of that time were having their firsts. Recently my third looked at a picture of me swinging him up in the air and smiling as he is pitching a fit and said, "was it fun to be a young parent?" I said absolutely! Though I wasn't that young when he was born. He loves babies and wants kids sooner than later, but his sweetheart is heading down the post-bac, PhD track and so it looks unlikely.

Thank you all for these thoughts, it's something I'm thinking ahead to for last dd as well. It also makes me realize I need to examine the boxes now before junior year and consider what is ticked!

Ah! So sad I missed the picture! I will just keep on imagining it 🙂

If you don't post a pic, I will still have a great mental visual of this!

The above posters have convinced me about the flowers, I think I'm just wishing DH would give me flowers!

I might be with DH on this, yes to flowers, but no to paying since she invited him? And they're attending as friends.

That was just what I told her!

I saw that Rosie closed one quick recently, possibly because it dealt with pregnancy?

F

I'm sorry you said this. Did you really mean to? Privilege and blessings are so different. Gratitude is for blessings. Privilege is being able to get pulled over for a burned out tail light and not get shot to death. https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/georgia-trooper-charged-murder-traffic-stop-shooting-72382237 https://qz.com/725618/another-black-man-was-fatally-shot-at-a-traffic-stop-in-the-us-his-girlfriend-broadcast-the-aftermath-on-facebook-live/ https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2015/04/09/398615265/s-c-dash-cam-video-a-broken-tail-light-a-routine-traffic-stop-a-fleeing-man

The wording you used made me think of this book: https://www.nationalbook.org/books/stamped-from-the-beginning-the-definitive-history-of-racist-ideas-in-america/

I agree. My sense is that, as a poster upthread said, the teachers don't have time to figure out how to dig into this. This should not be an excuse to a) ignore the problem or b) do a terrible or damaging job. I want to believe that teachers and school districts hold the goal of reducing bigotry and ultimately structural racism through new approaches across the curriculum. Clumsy, heavy-handed, demonizing - not helpful. Children need joyful and straightforward. And there is joy in anti-racism! I also think the young kids being taught this right now will be some crackerjack thinkers and do-ers in the future. When I taught a group of 5, 6, and 7th graders US History, one of my main goals for this age was to avoid defaulting to White. What I mean by that is making sure that when the class talked about "what was happening when" we asked "who" also - when the Lowell girls were striking, were they White? All races? When women wore certain types of dresses, was it all women? Enslaved women? Then just kept going or else got more involved if a student engaged with it. Without spending much time on it, I wanted these kids to remember, when they got to higher level history learning in the future, to question the default assumption of Whiteness in historical thinking. Was this a worth-while pedagogical theory? I don't know, but I do know that my own dd who was in the class now "questions the narrative" with both ease and grace.

= structural racism. That's what we're talking about. I've been gone all day but others have posted many links supporting these "vague generalized claims." It's shocking to me that a grown person in this day and age would characterize this information in this way. Don't take critical thinking about systemic racism personally. It's not about you, it's about us.

It's the branding. Like masks vs anti-masks, kneeling vs not kneeling, "Black Lives Matter" vs "Cultural Marxism." The Trumpist Republicans have done an excellent job defining their brand and know that it rallies their troops. I don't believe that this means all Republicans agree, but the Trumpist wing is currently ascendant. In my opinion, CRT must show up across the curriculum. The construct of White is legally favored by law, health care policy, education practices, policing and voting, commercial banking, real estate and lending, non-profit organization, environmental policies, and every other social scaffold. To confine teaching about race to history is to miss the entire point. I was taught to not be a bigot but didn't understand systemic racism until I began to think less about myself as a White person being an oppressor and more as a recipient of the good stuff that flows from these social scaffolds.

nm

I guess I'm not entirely clueless, but my plan is called something like homeschool to elder care and death doula then decide. I felt so pleased for a few months this winter when I thought I had decided: I would open a forest kindergarten at my home. I like littles,I have a big yard and garden that connects to a woods, and there's a real need for child care here. I started a program through Antioch for a grad certificate, and DH and kids were fully on board. I called up a friend who has a place-based private school nearby and lo and behold, she said they were opening their forest kindergarten program this fall. So I paused, and also realized that I've made a commitment to caring for my mother and have literally asked her to hold on until youngest graduates in 18 months. She is 92 and is aging in place, my sisters and I all rotate visiting and caring for her but she will eventually need me to live there. The forest school is still appealing, but really my plan will be helping my mother in her last years. My sister who is just a couple of years older than me has terminal cancer and I imagine I will also help her and her family through her death. After that? I can also see doing what I didn't do as a young person because I started my family instead: traveling, learning languages, studying history. The income part is easier for me since DH and I own a business together. But replacing homeschool after 30 years will be a big hole in my psyche and heart.

I consistently reply "I could never be a school mom" with a big smile. And it's the truth!

No wisdom but following, this will be me in two years and I am clueless.