Category: education

Caitlyn, education, parenting

At least it ended well

First, a rant: Washington’s state constitution says, “[i]t is the paramount duty of the state to make ample provision for the education of all children residing within its borders…” (Article XI, Section 1). We had one federal holiday and three and one-half snow days last week. Caitlyn went to school for a grand total of 2 hours. We were scheduled to have a school holiday this Friday (I’m not sure why), but that has now been canceled. School will be in session on Friday as a make-up day for one of the snow days last week. If you’ve already made …

Caitlyn, homeschooling, Seasons

A Little Autumn Craftness

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The school district sent me an email yesterday (Wednesday) reminding me that there will be no school last Friday. I realize that sentence makes no sense, but neither did their email. But it did remind me that Caitlyn and I spent some project time together last Friday, at her request, with somewhat mixed results. Our first project was a kind of leaf printing. I’d done a search for crafts with fall leaves and found this. Note for next time: it could be significant if there are no photos with the instructions. Without pictures, my imagination provides the expected result, which, …

education

Leaving Everyone Behind

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We’ve received two interesting letters from the school district last week.  One was to let us know that Caitlyn scored well during testing last spring and would we like to consider doing more testing?  The other was a notice about how the district isn’t doing so well according to the standards established by No Child Left Behind. According to the letter, school districts need to meet a set standard (which was left undefined) in up to 111 categories to qualify as making “Adequate Yearly Progress”.  (Is it progress if you meet the standard two years in a row?  Or is …

Caitlyn, current events, education

Observing History

 

Thirty years ago, something woke me up in the middle of the night. When I went downstairs to investigate, I found my mom watching the wedding of Prince Charles and Princess Diana. Amazingly, she didn’t send me back to bed, and we watched the live broadcast in the middle of the California night. I was 6 years old. Caitlyn is well-trained to sleep through a lot, so I didn’t wait for her to wake up on her own, but collected her from her bed shortly after 2am our time Friday morning to watch the live stream of Prince William’s wedding …

Caitlyn, education

One More Memory

At the risk of being officially labeled late to the party, I’m posting photos from the lunar eclipse last month. I remember watching a lunar eclipse when I was a kid, though I don’t think the one I remember required waking up in the middle of the night. My folks did get me up for Halley’s comet in 1986, though I remember being cold and the frequent comment that I would probably get to see it twice (it returns in 2061) more than I remember actually seeing the comet. Who knows what Caitlyn will remember of this recent eclipse – …

Caitlyn, education, parenting
 

I am uncertain of my relationship with the notion of “childhood”. There seems to be this pervasive contemporary cultural sense that children should be protected and sheltered from all sorts of things, and that childhood is a time of magical, blissful ignorance. And while it’s certainly too true that there are American children (and others, too) who face too much too soon – hunger, poverty, abuse, homelessness, disease, etc – there are plenty who are indulged and coddled and sheltered from the burden of Responsibility for far too long. I have no problem with kids believing in the Tooth Fairy, …