bearing blog

bearing blog


bear – ing n 1  the manner in which one comports oneself;  2  the act, power, or time of bringing forth offspring or fruit; 3 a machine part in which another part turns [a journal ~];  4  pl comprehension of one’s position, environment, or situation;   5  the act of moving while supporting the weight of something [the ~ of the cross].

  • If you’re wondering where I am: I really hope it’s “sleeping in.”

    I would just like to state for the record — and maybe it is a record around here — that "bedtime routine" lasted FOUR AND A HALF HOURS.

    It is one-ten AM. I just got the baby to sleep about three minutes ago. At twelve-thirty-nine AM I was contemplating shooting webcam video of the scene of two children wrestling on my bed while an older one knocked on the door moaning that he could not get to sleep, and then possibly texting the video to my spouse, who usually does Bedtime Routine, more efficiently than I do, I might add, and I might have done it too except that our phone conversation from much earlier in the evening hinted that he probably had had a worse day than I did. At least my day didn't involve poorly secured equipment falling on people's heads.*

    All this is to say that I just might have to start my weekend a day early. I may even turn the computer off and read a book or something. If I can get them all into the attic, with my back against the door (chill out, they'll be fine, that's where we keep the Wii) I could probably get through a chapter or two at a time without anyone losing a limb.

    _____________

    n.b. The aforementioned spouse was not responsible for securing the aforementioned equipment, nor was his head among the aforementioned heads. THIS TIME, she typed dramatically.

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  • More of other people’s writing: WYD edition.

    Great post from World Youth Day by Marc at BadCatholic.

    A group of Mexican girls, here for World Youth Day, walked in and prayed with us, asking us afterwards whether we were discerning the priesthood. Assumedly, singing is a sure sign of future celibacy. Now I, in response, wished to say, "Maybe, but I am in love with a girl right now." But that's a hard sentence to form, and I speak the least Spanish of my friends. So I decided to dumb it down and tell the girls, in some what of a joke, "No, I like girls." So, rifling through my limited vocabulary, I came up with the foolproof sentence: "No, me gusta chicas." I was perturbed to notice, immediately after delivering my impeccable linguistic one-liner, a shocked and holding-back-laughter expression take hold of each of the girls. What my Spanish-speaking friend Nick immediately explained to me, and to them, was that "me gusta chicas" basically means, at least to these Mexican girls, "I find girls sexually pleasing." So re-imagine their devout question.

    "Are you considering being priests?"
    (I, full of confidence) "No, you girls are too hot."

    Oh well. 

    The rest of the post, entitled, "How to Speak Catholic," describes two more surprising encounters with language barriers.  Read it all.

    I will be kicking myself for the rest of my life that I didn't make it to any World Youth Days while I was, even on a technicality, a youth.

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  • Vocation story.

    I'm continuing under a bout of blogger's block, so let's try paying forward a bit.

    I've been following a fascinating blog for the last few weeks, even though I know it's coming to an end on August 28th.  On that date, Meris Chaumont is scheduled to enter the Ann Arbor convent of the Dominican Sisters of Mary, Mother of the Eucharist.  She's been blogging the last few months on the outside:

    • as she scrapes together her Nun Wishlist (including items like "Beige Twin Bedspread w/Fringe, Not Quilted and Not a Comforter"), 
    • road-trips to visit friends
    • searches for "nun shoes" 
    • stitches "Sr. Meris" labels into her clothing with hot-pink thread
    • models her brand-new mom-stitched navy blue vests over a zebra-print tank top
    • enjoys the Nun Shower thrown for her by family and friends, complete with the traditional game of "make a Dominican habit out of toilet paper"

    Oh yes, and asks for help.

    This video has been making the rounds, but I thought I'd repost it and do my part:

    Meris Chaumont, like many young men and women who aspire to religious life, has to take care of her undergraduate college debt before she can enter.  She and the other sisters entering with her (Dominican Sisters of Mary, Mother of the Eucharist, located in Ann Arbor, Michigan) are encouraged to beg for the money.  She enters August 28th.  

    Youtube and Paypal, it seems, are the modern-day begging bowl.

    If you feel moved to send Meris some help, but by the time you get around to it she's reached her goal — which looks promising — perhaps you can help out some of her new sisters-to-be.

    Img_3138 (photo grabbed from Meris Wants to Be a Nun)

    They're selling rosaries and T-shirts to raise money to discharge their outstanding debts.

    Anyway, even if donating isn't your bag, check out Meris Wants to Be a Nun and read her blog.  It's fun and interesting and hopeful — and there isn't very much of it, and there won't be any more after August 28th. 

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  • Writer’s block: a little self-examination.

    I've been experiencing a profound lack of blog-worthy thoughts lately (have you noticed?), and not much motivation to sit down.

    Coincidentally, it occurred to me this morning that this has been going on for roughly as long as we have been on [/fingerquotes] summer vacation [/fingerquotes].

    In other words, I don't have so much that I have to do.  I have free time.  

    Consequently, I'm wandering around the house wondering if I feel like unloading the dishwasher again* while the kids ride bikes or play video games or dig in the sandbox, and just as consequently, I don't feel like blogging much.

    I have no doubt that the minute school starts and I suddenly have a zillion things I'd better get done, I will think of things that I really must blog right now.

    Clearly I am inspired by the need to avoid doing USEFUL work.

    _____

    *Yes, I would really love to sink into a good book.   There are many around here I could choose from, including quite a few that are new to me.  Unfortunately, I live under two conditions that make that impossible right now:

    1. I suffer from a disorder that causes the rest of the world to disappear when I am reading anything even remotely interesting that is printed on paper.  Children could be bleeding and screaming "Help!" and I would be, like, "Whuh?  Leave me alone."  Scratch that, I wouldn't even be, like, "Whuh."  I would not hear them.  When I was in college I referred to this as a "skill" rather than as a "disorder" but now that I have children I have reclassified it.
    2. I have an eighteen-month-old.

    I'm seriously not kidding about #1, and because the aforementioned toddler of #2 is running around learning how to pick locks and scale walls and inhale uncut grapes, I cannot settle down and read a real book unless he's sleeping or somebody else is in charge.

    And now you see the results of this:  My footnote is longer than the blog post containing it.  Maybe I would have had a lucrative career in academia after all.

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  • Remember that homeschool-room show and tell….

    …that I said I wanted to see, but didn't want to set up?

    Well, Dorian Speed of  Scrutinies and Convolare Design  stepped up and got it going for me on Flickr.  And thanks to her prodding, the pot has been sweetened (note to self:  send Dorian money) and there's a prize!

    Here's the goods, as posted by the fabulous Ms. Speed and slightly adapted by me for posting here:

    Okay, homeschoolers, let’s rally to the cause. Some of us may be vaguely contemplating the beginning of the school year, while others may have kept on going over the summer. Regardless, I’m sure we would all enjoy a bit of creative inspiration when it comes to organizing our school areas. Whether it be a dedicated schoolroom, a bookshelf, or a really cramped minivan, we  would like to see how you’ve set up your space.

    It’s a contest! Except not really! Maybe it’s just a drawing!

    To sweeten the deal, we are running a not-a-contest drawing. We’re going to fill a Flickr photo pool with your submissions, and randomly choose one photograph on Monday, August 22. The winner will receive a $20 Amazon gift certificate.

    The Rules:

    The general theme is “Schoolrooms, or how our existing rooms accommodate schooling.”  Examples would include:

    •  storage solutions for small spaces
    • solutions for multiple children (do they all work together or do they need separate spaces?)
    • ways that an area can multi-task, e.g. a table serving both for dining table and schooling table
    • if you have a dedicated schoolroom, just photos of how it is laid out
    • how you’ve chosen to arrange decor and interior design given that your home is also a school
    • any sort of functionality you’ve come up with that works really well and is worth sharing (or works not so well and you want to crowdsource)
    • furniture hacks
    • underground lairs, if any

    Deadline is 11:59 PM Central Standard Time on Sunday, August 21.

    It doesn’t have to be a recent photo. 

    You may enter as many photos as you’d like, but each photo should be of a different aspect of your homeschooling setup – so, don’t post three photos of the same shelf taken from different angles.

    If we can get at least 25 different contributors and at least 100 photos in the pool, I’ll dip into my Secret Prize Fund and add another $10 onto the value of the gift certificate. 

    How to Enter:

    If you’re already using Flickr, you can click here and add photos. I am moderating all submissions, so they won’t immediately show up as being added to the photo pool. If it’s been more than 24 hours since you added a photo to the pool and you’re still not seeing it, shoot me an email.

    If you’re not on Flickr, you can send DORIAN an email: dorianspeed AT gmail.com with photos attached. Please use “homeschool photo” in the subject line.

     

    Feel free to post questions here in the comments as well.  

    And bother other people about it too.

    Because the second half of August is EXACTLY the right time to be entering homeschool room competitions.

    (Go on.  Run off to Office Max first.  We'll be waiting.)

     

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  • One paragraph.

    More Simcha:

    The Church, every time, demands closeness.  It insists that babies be conceived in their mother’s womb, with the father as close as a man can be—not prodded into existence with a needle in a petri dish.  Sex should be enjoyed without physical barriers, or the barren dead ends of vasectomies or tubal ligations.  Even confession, like all the sacraments, must be in person, and not done by distance, over the phone or internet.  The Church concerns herself with the most intimate things, because this is how we are made:  with hands and skin, with voices and breath, and with blood.

    The post is about abortion; this paragraph is about more than that.

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    1 comment on One paragraph.

  • Simcha wins the Catholic homeschooling blogosphere.

    With photo #3.

     

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  • Everything I remember from fourth-grade Ohio history.

    MrsDarwin mentions having to get the Ohio state history requirements in:

    The oldest two are heading into 3rd and 4th this year, and since it works well to have them do things in unison we're leaning towards putting them through two years of US history and kids literature (with enough Ohio specific side-lights to say that we met the state education requirements)…

    Although the whole Darwin family is recently transplanted from Texas, MrsD also grew up in Ohio, I think, but just in case I thought I'd help her out.

    Everything I Remember From Fourth-Grade Ohio History

    1. The glaciers stopped partway across. That is why southern Ohio is so hilly and interesting, while northern Ohio is so flat and boring.

    2. The boundary of the glacier-scoured area is called a "moraine." 

    3. Many trilobite fossils can be found in Ohio, possibly more than in any other part of the world.

    (Fun fact: once while hiking in Red Rock Canyon outside of Las Vegas I met an upper-level college geology class from the University of Dayton, who were presumably having a field trip to somewhere less flat, even though comparatively lacking in trilobites. By casually dropping the above information in conversation, I managed to be mistaken for a geologist.)

    4. First there were the Mound Builders. They built mounds. The most famous mound is the Serpent Mound. They were a peaceful people, i.e.., they were already gone by the time white settlers got to Ohio.

    5. Then there were the Miami people. They were very interesting. They were not already gone when white settlers came to Ohio. They gave Ohio its name.

    6. The first capital of Ohio wasn't Columbus, but Chillicothe.   There's some story about how it got changed but I forget it.

    7. Ohio was an important destination along the Underground Railroad. Some houses had secret rooms for hiding fugitives. Maybe even YOUR house!!!!!  That would be SO COOL.  Or at least that's how I remember it from being nine years old.  

    8.  Ahem.

     A comparison of the contributions of North Carolina ("First in Flight") and Ohio ("The Buckeye State") to powered flight:

     Ohio:

    • Orville
    • Wilbur

    North Carolina:

    • Wind
    • Sand

    9. Ohio is nicknamed "Birthplace of Presidents" because a bunch of U. S. presidents were born in Ohio, including William Henry Harrison (He died in thirty days).

    10. Also the electric automobile starter. You know that crank sticking out of the front of your car that sometimes kicks back and breaks your arm? No? WELL, then. Did North Carolina have anything to do with that? I think not. 

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  • The full literature-based U.S. history curriculum.

    I thought maybe this deserved its own index post.

    You may use it freely, but please attribute or link back.

    U. S. History I: Prehistory through 1812
    U. S. History II(a) The Civil War
    U. S. History II(b): Topical survey of the 19th century
    U. S. History III: Topics of the twentieth century

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  • Literature-based American History (III): Topics of the twentieth century.

    The other two parents that I co-school with really liked the topic-based format that I used for the year we studied 19th-century America, so I went with that again for the twentieth century.  

    There's so much that happens in the twentieth century, it was very hard to narrow down the topics.  In the end I let two principles guide me:

    (1) Since this is American history, I would stick with a U. S. perspective on global events.  I wouldn't, for example, explain what led up to World War One over in Europe.  We would cover that material in World History.  So instead I would limit my discussion of WWI to the Americans' entry into the Great War and afterward.  I applied this same principle to a number of other global events.

    (2) I would favor topics that would help explain "how we got where we are today."   If something is important in today's news, I wanted to try to give the last hundred years of context for it.

    After much fruitful discussion, we came to this arrangement of topics:

    • American foreign relations and the roots of the War on Terror
    • Economics (including the Depression, the effects of unionization, Social Security, the national debt)
    • American mobility (including the interstate highway system, migrations, immigrants)
    • Parties and ideologies (FDR, Reagan, the 2000 presidential election, Bush v. Gore)
    • Civil rights (women's suffrage, Brown vs Board of Education, Martin Luther King and Malcolm X, the disability rights movement,  important Supreme Court cases, and homeschooling rights)
    • Twentieth-century changes to the American experience of childhood (child labor, schooling, gender and race restrictions are lifted, the American family mutates, the unborn lose protection)
    • Communication technology (radio, television, movies, computers, Internet and social media)

    Meanwhile, I completed my short list of dates for the kids to memorize, and we did various exercises with the dates all year long.  Previously learned memory dates include:

    • 1492, Columbus sails 
    • 1776, Declaration of Independence 
    • 1860, Lincoln elected
    • 1865, Civil War ends; Lincoln assassinated 
    • 1900, remember that McKinley was the president at the turn of the century

    Here's a week-by-week book list.  "Hakim" refers to Joy Hakim, A History of US.

    Week 1—— MEMORY DATE: 1918, the "Spanish" flu epidemic and the end of World War I.

    • Hakim vol. 9 Preface about world war I 
    • Marquette, World War I 
    • Hibbert, In the Trenches in World War I
    •  "U. S. Enters World War I" short film at http://www.newseum.org 
    • Kudlinski K, Hero Over Here (Spanish flu) 
    • Sergeant York (film)

    Week 2 ——

    • Blassingame, Combat Nurses of World War II .  This book is twelve kinds of awesome.  You get the stories of women who saw combat, you get a close look at the Pacific theater, and you get lots of interesting details that never make it into textbooks.
    • Hakim vol. 9, chapters 26, 27, 29, 30 
    • The Great Escape (film)  (okay, they were Brits, but it's such a great movie)
    • Sands of Iwo Jima (film)
    • Leckie R, The Battle of Iwo Jima

    Week 3 —— MEMORY DATE:  1941, Pearl Harbor attack, U. S. enters WWII.

    • "Japan Bombs Pearl Harbor;"  "Nazi Holocaust Exposed;" "Hiroshima" all at  http://www.newseum.org 
    • Stein, The U. S. S. Arizona 
    • McGowen, Battle for Iwo Jima
    •  Blassingame, Combat Nurses of World War II (continued) 
    • "The Great Escape" (PBS NOVA documentary)

    Week 4 —— MEMORY DATE:  1945, the first nuclear attack on a city; WWII ends.

    • Elish,The Story of the Manhattan Project

    Week 5 ——

    • Foster, The Story of the Cold War (read parts through 1957)
    • Kallen, The Race to Space 
    • Grant, NATO 
    • Various books about Apollo and Mercury missions
    • Doeden, Weapons of the Cold War
    • WarGames (film)
    • Russkies (film)  DO NOT LAUGH AT THE EIGHTIES FILM LOVE.  I wanted to show the kids what the pop-culture notions of Russians and of nuclear war were like in the mid-eighties.

    Week 6 ——

    • Hakim, vol. 10, chapter 7 
    • Leckie, The War in Korea 1950-1953 chapters 1, 2, 12, 13.  This is a fantastic Landmark book.  I wish I had had time to read it all to the kids.
    • Foster, The Story of the Cold War (read from Sputnik to Johnson) 
    • Kent, The Story of the Saigon Airlift
    •  Discussion question: If the war in Vietnam is over, why continue to argue about whether the US sould have fought it, or when it should have come to an end? 
    • Huynh Q, The Land I Lost – a memoir about Vietnam from a Vietnamese refugee

    Week 7 —— MEMORY DATE: 1989, the Berlin Wall is opened.

    Week 8 —— MEMORY DATE: 2001, the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon

    • Meltzer, The Day the Sky Fell.  This is a history of terrorism in general.  It is a Landmark book and was revised after September 11, 2001; older editions won't have a discussion of the 9/11 attacks.  It's really wonderfully comprehensive.

    Week 9 ——

    • Meltzer, The Day the Sky Fell (continued)

    Week 10 ——-

    • Meltzer, The Day the Sky Fell (continued)
    • Several news articles about terrorism in the past week, to show that it continues to be a significant global threat

    Week 11 ——-

    •    14 Cows for America

    Week 12 ——- MEMORY DATE: 1929, the great stock market crash

    • Downing, The Great Depression (free browsing) 
    • Blumenthal, Six Days in October 
    • Sandler, The Dust Bowl through the Lens
    • Lange, "Migrant Mother" (photograph)

    Week 13 ——-

    • Appelt and Schmitzer, Down Cut Shin Creek: The Pack Horse Librarians of Kentucky.  Love.  This.  Book.  

    Week 14 ——-

    • Discuss current economic recession 
    • Lauber, Flood: Wrestling with the Mississippi.  This book didn't really fit in anywhere but I liked it so much I wanted to use it, so I decided it went in with economics (since natural disasters are economic disasters, right?)   Patricia Lauber is a prolific writer of kids' science titles.

    Week 15 ——-

    • Paradis, From Trails to Superhighways: The Story of America's Roads to show how we got our interstate system
    • Williams, Road and Rail Transportation (pgs 20-26) for a handful of technical details

    Week 16 ——-

    • Stanley J, Children of the Dust Bowl: The True Story of the School at Weedpatch Camp.  This is an utterly amazing story of how Okie children, rejected by Californians, built their own school with their own hands under the leadership of a visionary and kind public school official.  It is sobering to think how far we have come from the regionalistic xenophobia of just a couple generations ago, when citizens of one state regarded migrants from another state  as dangerous aliens.
    • Discuss other migrations (African-American "Great Migration;" Mormon migration; Gold Rush)

    Week 17 ——-

    • Paul, North Across the Border (Mexican immigrants) 
    • Springstubb T, The Vietnamese Americans.  I picked these two books not because I particularly favored Mexican or Vietnamese immigrants over others, but because they seemed the best books our library had about the immigrant experience

    Week 18 ——-

    • "The Rainmaker" (from Armstrong, The American Story) about FDR
    •  Church and Lacayo, "Social Insecurity," TIME magazine, March 20, 1995 
    • Hakim vol. 9, chapters 20, 22, 23, 24, 25 
    • Discussion about how Social Security works and potential for insolvency; possible solutions.

    Week 19 ——-

    • Hakim, vol. 10, ch. 36 and 37 (Nixon) 
    • Lewis and others, "5 Held in Plot to Bug Democrats' Office Here" The Washington Post, June 18, 1972 
    • Discuss the attitude that one's political opponents are one's enemies.

    Week 20 ——-

    • Hakim, vol. 10, chapters about Ronald Reagan 
    • Discuss: Reagan as polarizing figure, liberal vs. conservative economic philosophies, pros and cons of progressive taxation, arguments about trickle-down economics, Reagan as "the great communicator."

    Week 21 ——-

    • The American Experience: Ronald Reagan (film)

    Week 22 ——-

    • Discuss 2000 presidential election, close elections, electoral college, Florida recount, mechanics of voting machines, chads; 
    • 2008 Minnesota senate race (close race with hand recount) "Challenged Ballots: You Be the Judge." Activity from Minnesota Public Radio website,  I printed out the challenged ballots, cut them apart, and had the three kids pretend to be election judges and decide how to allocate the challenged ballots.
    • CBS News archive coverage of presidential election night, 2000. 
    • Hakim, vol. 10, chapters 46-47 
    • Greene A, Understanding the 2000 Election (background chapter)

    Week 23 ——-

    • Separate but Equal (film): first half.  It's a made-for-TV movie about Brown v. Board of Education.

    Week 24 ——-

    • Finish Separate but Equal (film). 
    • Read Justice Earl Warren's opinion in Brown vs. Board of Education.

    Week 25 ——-

    • Hakim, vol. 10, chapter 16 (integration of Little Rock Central High)
    •  "1920: Votes for Women" (from Armstrong, The American Story) 
    • McKissack P and Zarembka A, To Establish Justice: Citizenship and the Constitution, chapter 10 on the disability rights movement.  There's some adult and controversial material in this book so I excerpted carefully.

    Week 26 ——-

    • "I Have a Dream" Martin Luther King speech, full, on Youtube 
    • Short clip of Malcolm X speaking 
    • Hakim vol. 10, chapters 14, 15, 19 (Martin Luther King) 
    • King ML, "Letter from a Birmingham Jail" (excerpts) 
    • Graves R, Malcolm X (Cornerstones of Freedom series) 
    • "The Black Revolution" from The World's Great Speeches (Malcolm X speech to socialists organization, 1964) 
    • Discuss Malcolm X and MLK: influences of religion on them, name change, assassinations, opinions of the method of nonviolence

    Week 27 ——-

    • Curtis CP, The Watsons Go to Birmingham — 1963 (fiction, used as independent reading)
    • Writing assignment: Curtis places a real event (the 1963 Birmingham church bombing) in a fictional story. Does it make a fictional story more interesting if it contains a real event? Does the fictional context make it easier to understand the impact of the historical event?

    Week 28——-

    •  Laws and court cases relevant to homeschooling rights and regulations: 
      • Meyer v. Nebraska 
      • Pierce v. Society of Sisters 
      • Wisconsin v. Yoder
      • Minnesota v. Newstrom (relevant in Minnesota only)
      • Current Minnesota statutes about home schools 
    • Discuss: Should the state regulate the subjects taught? Should the state regulate the credentials of homeschooling parents? Should the state regulate the number of days of instruction? Should the state ban homeschooled children from working during school hours? Should the state require public schools to allow homeschooled students to use their facilities?

    Week 29 ——-

    • Discussion about how the lives of children changed between about 1920 and 1990. (consumer safety regulations, equality in education, overall better health but more obesity, labor laws, sanitation, vaccinations, antibiotics, extended families living more often far away, fewer family members lost to premature death, more divorce, working mothers, smaller families, racial and gender diversity of role models) 
    • Discussed growing awareness of diversity by discussing the role models who were available to young people. 
    • Ryan, When Marian Sang (about Marian Anderson) 
    • Weatherford, Jesse Owens: Fastest Man Alive 
    • Szabo C, Sky Pioneer: A Photobiography of Amelia Earhart 
    • (Biographies of others were available, including Jackie Robinson and Jim Thorpe)

    Week 30 ——-

    •  Cleary B, Dear Mr. Henshaw (fiction; first half) 
    • Themes of 20th-century child life: divorce, working parents, child support, moving to a new school, small family, lack of connection to extended family 
    • Discuss various literary styles of Dear Mr. Henshaw: first- person; "epistolary" or letter format ; writing in dialogue; diary format; book review . 
    • What do we think Mr. Henshaw thinks about Leigh? How do we learn what Mr. Henshaw has written to Leigh? How does Leigh express his feelings?
    • (this actually appeared a few weeks later and we discussed it then, but thematically it goes here:) "Census: Saying No to Marriage," Star Tribune, May 12, 2011. Less than fifty percent of Twin Cities households include married couples. Read the article, list the main points, and discuss the implications.

    Week 31 ——-

    • Cleary B, Dear Mr. Henshaw (second half) 
    • Continue discussions of themes of 20th-century child life
    • 20th-century child life: Roe v. Wade. Discussion with parent.  (I did not teach this to the group.)
    •  My take: 
      • What it means. 
      • How it changed U. S. law. 
      • Current legal controversy (aside from moral controversy) about whether there is a constitutional right to privacy. 
      • Rights of the unborn compared to what we have learned about civil rights, women's rights, and the rights of the disabled. 
      • What mechanisms exist under which the law could be changed? What can an ordinary citizen do about it?

    Week 32 ——-

    • Discuss radio, cinema, silent movies, newsreels 
    • "1938: The War of the Worlds" from Armstrong, The American Story 
    • Watch: "Keystone Kops: Fatty Joins the Force"
    •  Watch: Newsreel of the Queen Mum's 1923 wedding, side by side with TV highlights of Prince William's wedding to Kate Middleton in 2011 
    • Watch: Trailer for movie "THEM!" 
    • Discuss the social and cultural purposes and effects of movies in different periods 
    • Are there fewer moviegoers now? Why? What do theaters do to keep customers coming?
    •  For browsing: Parkinson D, The Young Oxford Book of the Movies

    week 33 ——-

    • Kent, Z. The Story of Television. 
    • Clarification of the differences among broadcast television, cable television, VCRs, DVDs, streaming video, hard drive storage of video. 
    • Discussion of expanding choices; role of advertising; and cultural and economic changes brought about by television. 
    • Discussion of genres of television shows. 
    • Watch: Two episodes of I Love Lucy. "Switching Jobs" and "Lucy Does a TV Commercial."

    Week 34 ——-

    • Sherman J, The History of the Internet 
    • McPherson SS, Tim Berners-Lee: Inventor of the World Wide Web (parts) 
    • Stewart GB, Larry Page and Sergey Brin: The Google Guys (parts) 
    • Discussion (mostly of technical details and GenX reminiscings): ARPAnet, Usenet, bulletin board analogy, gopher, email, world wide web, browsers, search engines.
    •  How the Web brings people together bycommon interest. "Cyberspace."

    Week 35 ——- MEMORY DATE: 1991, the World Wide Web opens to the general public

    • Discussion of safety while using email, online shopping, and social media. 
    • Predators; viruses; identity theft; inappropriate or dangerous material; privacy settings; information that should remain personal; precautions that kids should take. 
    • Risks organized from most to least dangerous: encountering people who intend physical harm; encountering people who intend harm via internet communications; identity theft; monetary fraud; spreading of private or secret information; bullying; malware; inaccurate information or lies; harvesting personal information for targeted advertising.
    •  "1500 Crash Birthday Party After Facebook Slip Up," Stephen Spencer Davis, 6/6/2011.  
    • Frontline: Digital Nation (TV documentary)

    Week 36 ——- final exam.

     

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  • Co-schooling: making them do a bit of the work.

    Last Thursday, Hannah and I found ourselves with not much school to teach and two fewer children than usual, so we tried a dry run of one of our new plans for next school year: inaugurating the concept of “servers” at the lunch table.

    Until, now, it has seriously seemed like more trouble than it’s worth to have any kids actively assist us with some of the tasks at lunchtime on our co-schooling days. There is a certain investment of training required before the “help” pays off. So while we have had kids (for example) clear their own dishes from the table and such, we haven’t had them do much more than that. It has been simpler and more peaceful to get the kids fed, then have lunch ourselves, then clean up, then return to schooling. This is more efficient than it sounds, because I generally need a mental break from teaching in the middle of the day anyway, and it worked fine for that to happen while cleaning up the lunch table.

    This year, however, Hannah and I looked at the schedule and realized it wasn’t going to work. There just isn’t enough time in the day. It is now time to enlist the kids to help us serve and clean up after lunch.

    We don’t want a free-for-all, and we don’t want fights over who will do what. So we decided that each day we will have two servers, one drawn from among the biggest kids and one drawn from the middle-sized kids. Each will wear an apron. Hannah and I will fill a sink with soapy water, we will assemble the plates with the first helpings on them, and we will set up the rest of the food with cups and the milk jug and a pitcher of water on a countertop nearby. Then, the server kids will be responsible for

    – calling the other children to the table
    – offering the prayer
    – bringing the plates to the table
    – pouring water or milk (the bigger child only)
    – fetching condiments
    – fetching second servings
    – slicing bread
    – making sure spills get wiped up
    – cutting stuff up, spreading butter, etc. for the very youngest children
    – reminding everyone to scrape their plates and put them in the sink
    – returning condiments, milk, and leftovers to the fridge
    – clearing the table, sweeping under it if necessary, and readying it for schoolwork.

    At the end, the server kids can take off their aprons and be excused only after we’ve checked that the table is ready to go. Then Hannah and I will get the dishwasher running (it would take too much time to train all the different children how best to load our different dishwashers).

    On Thursday, I had made BLTs for lunch, which turned out to be a fairly high-maintenance sort of lunch to kick off the kids-serving-kids program, but it worked pretty well. It was very enjoyable to hear “Mommy, get me some milk” and to get to say, “Remember to ask the 9-year- old.” As for Hannah and me, we got to enjoy our lunch sitting down for the first time in a while.

    Looking forward to trying it again next week!

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    4 comments on Co-schooling: making them do a bit of the work.

  • “F*ck cancer. Seriously.”

    Powerful comic at xkcd today.

    Occasionally Randall produces novel, visually interesting, crisply communicative graphical displays of information in the webcomic medium.  Today's was sobering.

     

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    5 comments on “F*ck cancer. Seriously.”

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