Privacy Policy newteawithjam.blogspot.com/

Privacy Policy for newteawithjam.blogspot.com/

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Student Assignment Report

It's progress report time at the high school, and my inbox is filling with files from Kayleigh's teachers. That she can get as low as 21 percent in Effort and still get in the 90s and 100s in the Knowledge and Skills portion of her grades is a testament to what a tremendous waste of time much of the homework assigned really is and makes me wonder what she would be doing if they actually challenged her. Good thing she challenges herself with other things.

My favorite part about these reports is the label on the little icon that accompanies the email attachment: "Student Ass."



Smokin'. What exactly is my daughter being graded on at this school? And do the teachers feel this way about all their students?

Homeschooling

I never thought I would be a homeschooler. Homeschooling was for religious fundamentalists, back-to-nature extremists, and parents who believed their kids were the new Einsteins. Homeschooling was for the extraordinarily anal and the extraordinarily loose, not for ordinary people like me. I lack the organization, the discipline, the follow-through to push my kids through the scientific method, daily baths and well-rounded meals. I lack the easy-going, stream-of-consciousness, follow-your-bliss free spirit to focus on Japanese folklore for three weeks followed by concurrent units on locking mechanisms, archery and sculpting clay. I lack the patience. I lack the desire. Or so I thought. Because this fall, I will join the ranks of those educational Froot Loops.

Kayleigh will be in 11th grade. The plan is for her to take art and electronics at the high school and the rest of her subjects at home. With me. State law allows her to take two classes at her home district school while being homeschooled, as long as there is space in the classes she wants. The school can choose to allow her to take more than two, but they don’t have to. She is required to take 875 instruction hours per school year and study, minimally, language arts, reading, math, science, social studies and health in sequentially progressive courses.

We’re busily gathering advice from other homeschoolers and researching curriculum. In some respects it’s exciting. Kayleigh is delighted at the thought of studying history that does not involve the American Revolution or Civil War. But in other ways, it’s pretty daunting. I don’t really remember much about chemistry. I mean, when’s the last time I needed to know the atomic charge of calcium? The last time I took chemistry.

It’s not just daunting academically, either. Kayleigh and I have a lot in common, and I think we get each other. But we also are very different. We’re motivated in different ways and our interests are often miles apart. Basically, we can drive each other absolutely nuts. I know that’s true of any mother-daughter pair, but we’ll be stuck together. She can’t slam a door when she doesn’t like it that I’ve asked her 14 times to focus on the limit of X as it approaches infinity rather than what her Achilles tendon feels like when she repeatedly bangs it against the metal barstool – just as I can’t throw my hands up in frustration and stuff my face with chocolate in said situation. Just wait until we’re both in the throes of PMS. Eek.

Kayleigh is a smart kid with a unique temperament. She also has ADD. Although she has usually done well academically, she has never really gotten along with school. School is very regimented, and there is little room for creativity or exploration. She has the rule-centeredness of most first children, but her head is happiest, and perhaps most productive, in the clouds – or, more accurately, in the worlds she created in her mind. She did not excel at rote memorization of math facts, and a packet of instructions for a history project or an English paper that basically tells her line-by-line what to write is completely overwhelming. But she slogs on. The perfectionist in her has kept her going until recently.

She is a well-behaved child. She doesn’t need to be lectured, yet again, on what constitutes acceptable behavior at school, unlike the children who have cut her hair, spit in her face, sworn at her and dubbed her a reject. Hell, even the rejects have finally rejected her. She was often unaware when other children tried to befriend her, likely a result of the ADD. As time passed, they stopped trying. The teachers she didn’t enjoy have called her aloof and oversensitive. The ones who saw past her shyness and self-doubt think she is bright, talented and a joy to teach. They encouraged her to open up more, but after years as a square peg, she gets no satisfaction from participating. Even now that her classmates simply see past her and she could probably say and do anything without social recourse, she remains silent. It is her defense and offense.

I hope that in the last two years of high school we can give her opportunities for meaningful exploration and expression free from the bounds of brick walls, lengthy assignments designed to prepare her for her next standardized test, and judgmental classmates. We are proceeding with hope and excitement, as well as a bit of fear and nervousness. I think we’ll be OK.

See you later

Goodbye, friend. I hope my brother met you with open arms.

November is Lung Cancer Awareness Month

This is my brother Clint. Clint died two years ago after a shockingly short battle with lung cancer.

November is National Lung Cancer Awareness Month. Lung cancer kills more people every year than breast, prostate, colon, liver, kidney, and melanoma cancers combined, yet it receives a fraction of the research funding. October was Breast Cancer Awareness Month. Pink ribbons were ubiquitous, from the corrugated insulator on my coffee cup at Caribou to specially marked packages of M&Ms, with proceeds going to fund research and outreach. Public awareness, screening programs and research funding have helped contribute to huge strides in treatment and survival of breast cancer, and that is fantastic. Now it’s time to focus more attention and money on lung cancer, a disease that affects so many people, either themselves or someone they love.

Like my brother. Clint was diagnosed in August 2007 and died that December. Although I shouldn’t have been shocked, I was. Only a week before he died, his doctors told my sister-in-law, Lee, they expected him to recover.

He was not a smoker, not that it should matter. But some people seem to think that people with lung cancer deserve it because they smoked. That attitude surely contributes to a lack of funding for lung cancer research. According to the Lung Cancer Alliance, total research funding for lung cancer in the U.S. in 2009 is projected to be $199 million, down one-third since 2005. Compare this figure to breast cancer research funding: a projected $1.1 billion for 2009, up $50 million from 2005.

Perhaps the lack of funding also stems from projected outcomes. Lung cancer is considered a death sentence, with 5-year survival rates just under 16 percent, compared to 89 percent and almost 100 percent 5-year survival rates for breast and prostate cancers respectively. Doctors don’t want to board a sinking ship, and the government doesn’t want to buy a boat with a hole in the hull.

Clint and Lee had four kids. He will never see his children get married, never know his grandchildren, never gaze lovingly at his wife again. He will never tease me again, never show me how to be a patient, loving parent again. My mother had to bury her first-born child.

I miss my brother. I think about him every day. His photo is on my hutch. His Coca Cola glass is on my dresser. His love is in my heart.

Lung cancer needs to be talked about, and it needs to be eradicated. Check out these sites for more information or to get involved.

Lung Cancer Alliance
National Cancer Institute
Bonnie J. Addario Lung Cancer Foundation

Fun times

Instead of getting our work done, we had a family day on Saturday.






Kelsey had her first soccer game. She was delighted and a little scared.







After soccer, we went to Ski-Hi, a local apple orchard. We bought some apples, some carmel apples, some cheese curds. We had a good time just hanging together.










They have a sense of humor at Ski-Hi. A bench next to a sign reminding you to put out your cigarettes.




A crate of nasty apples that they used to sell as deer apples, but that's illegal now, so who else would you feed but your horse?

Sheepish

It has come to my attention that my daughter reads my blog...previous entry edited.

I'm better today.

I don't want people coming to the conclusion that I'm always bitchy. I'm not. And I'm not stressed out over my job. I really enjoy my job. Certainly I wish people did their work on time, but that's something I'll have to deal with forever.

Anyway, anyway--I'm better today.