Pro-Life on Campus and My Son

One of my favorite times of day is when John gets home from school and he tells me about his day. I know. We all love that moment, but this kid is extra interesting because he thinks so much, he observes, and he's pretty darn hilarious. He tells his stories with such energy and I find myself laughing constantly. I love his unique observations. From what happens in the classroom to learning theories to current events to his own response to things, his stories both amuse and impress me.


On Monday the campus had some sort of stump speech by the Right to Lifers. John was nursing the beginnings of a head cold so he was lying in the sun in the quad, giving him an interesting vantage point on the speeches going on. When he joined the audience from a closer range, John told himself I don't know much about this; I'm going to really pay attention and learn something.  He observed the rhetoric and the barbaric tools the RtoLers showed their audience and he was quite shocked by what they were claiming. He was upset and bothered by the things that they claimed about abortion and he felt the need to educate himself on the issue.

He went back to his little place in the grass and started researching the claims that were being made as well as information essential to understanding the divide in points of view regarding abortion. As you can imagine, his research revealed quite a different reality that what the speakers were saying. He continued his reading on into the day and later that night.

TEN MINUTES, he said, only ten minutes of reading and I was already seeing the significant fallacies in what the speakers were saying, how they were trying to get people emotional and upset instead of informing them.

He told me about a conversation he had that day with three young women at the rally, all of them Right to Lifers. John was confused by their apparent comfort with having the government tell them how they can and cannot operate within their own bodies. He told me that when he say to them It's your body! Why would you want the government tell you what you can and cannot do?  The young women all claimed that they would not change their minds. He was flabbergasted. His word. 


Today he's revealing his growing passion to represent the Choice people. He's been talking about it constantly and doing lots more reading and researching on his own on both sides of the argument in a highly ethical way. He's now kicking around the idea of starting a Pro-Choice group on campus!

My point?
I am so proud of him for his willingness to entertain ideas that appall him, confuse him, that he disagrees with so vehemently. It shows a real sense of integrity to find out for himself, doesn't it? His energy at the moment makes me feel such tremendous love and pride and amazement with the human being that he is... 

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Transitions

So many of my friends are sending kids away to school this week. Many of the kids that Elizabeth and John have grown up with are heading out on their own journeys. Some on road trips, some to jobs, some to colleges... Many transitions all over the place going on...and I'm feeling it too.

Elizabeth has been in college for about three years, off and on, and John is starting full-time college in about a week. Yes, he has been taking a class or two here and there at the community college, but we've been homeschooling too. This week starts my first official week as a non-homeschooling parent.

Enter my own issue: empty nest.
I'm feeling it.
I feel on the verge of tears often, though I haven't mentioned it to anyone (except for the dental assistant yesterday...lol). My last baby is growing up. 
He is...growing up...

The boy who wore costumes, who played superheroes, who pretended well and fully, who played and played, who left toys everywhere, who made friendship look easy, whose sweet words made me speechless, who lived in his fabulous imagination, who was preternaturally mature, who wore capes or goggles or unusual hats, whose eyes would seek me out, who laughs, who pulls me tight for a hug, who always says You look nice, Mom, who has a life outside of me, who is preparing dinner for the family as I speak, who sometimes still sleeps with a rather large stuffed animal, who winks at me when he teases, who makes plans entirely independent from me, who has his own set of keys, who never forgets to kiss me goodnight, who looks to me for lesson plans, the boy who is my littlest one. 

What does this mean for me?
What will I do?

When I think about these questions the days seem to yawn ahead of me. I know it's just the beginning and I know that parents all over the place deal with this...but now it's me...

What will I do?

.........................................................
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School's In

homeschool blog

John John has been at a local public high school this month taking driver's ed. That's about three weeks worth of classroom, driving simulator, and behind-the-wheel time. This class represents the very first time John has been in a formal classroom, the first time with a school teacher, the first time he has had to take notes in an actual classroom, the first time he has been in a classroom among other students, the first time he has been formally graded on work, the first time he has taken a test in a class, and the first class that resulted in an earned grade. Aren't you looking forward to hearing about his impressions of these firsts?

The Formal Classroom

The school that hosted this summer class offering is a fairly old school, probably built in the 1940's. We've been on campus a couple of dozen times for their public hours of swimming in the pool so John felt pretty comfortable being on campus. He was always on time for classes but he says that it was very common during this session of driver's ed for students to come in late or to miss class all together.

The Professional Teacher

This course was team taught, one instructor for the classroom days, one for the driving simulator days, and a couple of instructors on behind-the-wheel days. Each teacher, of course, had their own personality and teaching style. Many days John came home with comments about how unpleasant one of the instructors was.

One instructor was a guy who didn't seem to like teenagers much and who, specifically, didn't seem to know or care to know how to engage a classroom full of them. The other instructors, though, according to John, were pretty good, but boring.

Taking Notes

John has learned note taking skills here at home so he knows what he is doing there. After one lesson he was to turn in his notes to the instructor! He was concerned because the class had been a list of things and his note taking wasn't word-for-word, but rather key words to jog his memory, using some tricks to help himself to remember the content of the class.

He's seen the notes from several other students and his notes were quite different. John was nervous that the instructor wouldn't appreciate his notations but he did get the check mark feedback from the instructor that everyone else got who turned in their class notes. 

Being in a Classroom

Oh, the socialization.

Each day I would ask him about meeting people and participating in class and yada yada yada. And each day he would tell me that people don't talk in class, no one interacts with anyone else, and no one, I mean No One volunteers information in class. By the second week he started wearing an ear bud during class, just like everyone else.

He was somewhat disappointed that people weren't really open to talking or meeting new people.

Formal grading

In this class John was graded on two different things: driving simulators gave a computerized score and a final multiple choice test resulted in a grade. According to John John, the driving simulators were as poorly calibrated and as poorly functioning as you remember from your own high school drivers ed class. Every single simulator in the world must be at least sixty years old. I remember my own experience with them at the end of the 1970s when I thought the darn things must have been at least thirty years old. 

He tells the story of how he was on the simulator and he forgot to take the car out of gear for the entirety of the simulator session. He got a 72 out of 100 possible points.

Test Taking

I can't say the tests in this class even remotely represents true high school tests. The only tests John took were multiple choice except for a single occasion of drawing sketches of turn lanes.

Earned Grade

He did get an "A" in the class.

My Impressions

The class seemed pretty laughable to me. I can't say I recommend taking this class through this school district. John did feel that he learned a few things through the course. But most of the time in these past few weeks John has often commented on how odd classes are. 

John's Impressions

There is this artificial period of time for learning a set amount of material and it is highly imperative to dump the entire content of the course onto the student during this artificial time period. Furthermore, learning in the actual environment of the student, i.e. in the world-at-large, makes more sense than sitting in a classroom. Taking information apart and separating it from real life seems to make it difficult to find meaning in the content. And, lastly, classrooms seem to be places of spoon feeding information rather than places of discovery and true learning. 

Just one kid's observations. 

Homeschool Driver's Ed

atheist homeschool

How will you teach math? 

What will you do for prom? 

What if they want to play sports? 

What about driver's ed?

Are these not the usual questions?!  lol

I've heard every one of these questions about a hundred and fifty times and I'm sure that I'll continue to hear them. So will you.

The funny thing is that homeschool seems so natural and normal to me that these questions do nothing to challenge me. All the questions do for me is suggest that the questioner doesn't really understand homeschool. And that's OK.

A few months ago I posted a bit about John getting his driver's permit. He is kind of a lucky kid because he was able to drive in another country, a country that totally drives on the wrong side of the car on the wrong side of the road! Even though he was quite young (12-13 ish) while we were in Australia I had him get behind the wheel a bit (in a very safe spot) and drive just so that he could have the experience of driving there. Elizabeth did too.

So John has had his permit for several months and he's been driving both with me and with his dad. My husband will take John driving on the road and I'll take him on safer back roads. We also spend time reading Rules of the Road. As we drive we talk about right of way, roadway signs, cautions, emergency procedures, city and country driving, parking, driving requirements, map reading, GPS, mapquest, operating the car, gas and oil, and all of the what not that a knowledgeable driver needs to know. 

Today John started something new.

CONGRATULATIONS
Me!

A couple of years ago Elizabeth chose to take driver's ed through the local high school district so John wanted to give it a try too. This morning he started his first class, the first of two weeks worth of classes. Three hours a day for eight days. After three hours of school, his FIRST EVER CLASS IN A SCHOOL he had this to say:

He laughed about the so-called instruction. He laughed about the outdated driving simulator. He laughed about the way the class was dictated by the instructor. He felt that the instruction itself was very boring and the students were used to the boredom. The two classrooms that his class visited were both small rooms with too many kids in them. He found it difficult to focus because the instructor was either droning or being annoyed with students who were talking. Overall John was not at all impressed with the school. But he did feel that most of the kids in his class were perfectly nice and well-"behaved" during classes. 

How do we Driver's Ed?
We use all resources available to us. We drive, discuss, learn as we do, use our state's free driving book from the DMV, and we took the unessential driver's ed through the school district.

How will you do it? That's up to you.

Would any other veteran homeschooling parents

like to add anything to this?

Does anyone have any questions?

CONGRATULATIONS TO ME

FOR MY 800TH POST.

THANK YOU for staying with me.