Thank you to everyone who helped us with the mistakes survey! (To read more about the project, click here, here and here.) We hope you enjoy our reports (which were dictated to our friend Beth). INTRODUCTION & METHODS From Zach: We wanted to learn about what mistakes people made and how they react. We were reading about mistakes with Wendy, and we found out that she wanted to do a survey about mistakes. We first got an email account. We thought... Read more
It’s 7:21 on a Friday night, and I’m ready for bed. If that isn’t enough to make me feel old, Zach’s comment tonight was. I was preparing the boys to read Babe, The Gallant Pig, and told them that some of the language might be hard to understand because it was written a long time ago. Zach nodded along and confirmed that he understand with, “Oh yeah. You mean like in the 20th century, right?” Yeah, buddy, I mean like... Read more
After teaching in New York for five years, I went to grad school. If I thought I had done a lot of work to root out my racism, grad school took it to a whole new level. It was there that I learned the term White ally. White allies recognize their own unearned privilege and work with others to fight oppression and share power. I loved the term, especially because it gave me a clear sense of what my role should... Read more
Still thinking about race. (See Day 1 and Day 2.) When I was first teaching, I had a brilliant student named Milky. She was brilliant in both the sense that she lit up a room and that she mastered academic challenges quickly. So when Milky told me that she was going to be away from school for a few months and wanted me to give her some independent study work, I quickly said yes. We agreed that she and I... Read more
I’ve been thinking about race lately. Actually, I think about race a lot. Just ask Kevin, a young White man who works for me as an AmericaCorp volunteer. In his final reflection paper, Kevin was asked to sum up what he had learned having worked for two years running a variety of youth programming at our church. He said essentially, “What I learned this year was not to say anything about race to Tara. If you do, she’ll give you... Read more
A few years ago, sitting in the park with a group of hip, Cambridge mommas, I was feeling insecure. These mothers are playwrights, and artists, and very, very Cambridge. They are fun and liberal and like Margaritas. And in spite of the fact that I write, and I’m politically liberal, and I’m usually fun, and I always like Margaritas, I was afraid they wouldn’t think that I was one of them. Because I love Jesus and believe the whole, crazy... Read more
I’m so done with our mistakes project. I’m done talking about it, reading about it, analyzing the data for it, and writing about it. I’m done. Unfortunately, we aren’t close to actually finishing said project. When we started, it was just going to be reading a few social stories and acting them out. Then we thought we could survey a few people about their attitudes about mistakes. Which turned into 100 people. Which turned into poster-sized pie charts and bar... Read more
What is it about a tent? Two nights ago the boys set up a tent on the porch and slept out there with Daddy. Zach’s assessment of things as he crawled in for bed? “Oh my GOSH. This is the most awesomest night of my life!!” Ezra’s thoughts? “Dude, we could move out here.” Daddy’s thoughts? “Don’t you think it would be great if MOMMY slept out here and I stayed inside in the big, comfy bed?” It rained yesterday,... Read more
The boys need an intervention. A reading intervention, to be precise. Ezra, who has amazing comprehension skills, can’t decode or spell to save his life. Zach, who started reading well at three and could read Harry Potter IN SPANISH by five, doesn’t really understand what he is reading. Oy! At last week’s IEP meeting for Ezra, the school district offered to help him two hours per week using a method known as Orton Gillingham. But after researching online, reading a... Read more
Poor Jeff. He was born in California during the 50s, which means that he learned to read and to do arithmetic during the 60s. I don’t know if the reason he never received explicit phonics instruction was because his teachers were a couple decades ahead of the whole language craze or if everyone was just too busy enjoying the ganga and free love to bother with basic instruction. Whatever it was, he had never heard of silent e until the... Read more
The Homeschool Chronicles
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