education

Patch’s Multiplication

By / November 15, 2011

Third grade means memorizing multiplication tables. This has been true since my own schooling. It was true for my three older kids. Now it is true for Patch. This particular scholastic challenge has been hard for him. He’s in a more academic program than my other kids were at his age. The measurement of this skill is very results-focused, five-minute tests of 80 problems each. Patch’s teacher offered a new set of markers as a prize for anyone who makes their way to 12s before Christmas break. Unfortunately Patch got stuck at threes for several tests in a row. He lost confidence and began to feel bad about himself and about school. He alternately declared that markers didn’t matter and cried because he didn’t believe he could earn them.

Presented with this situation, I had several choices:
1. Confront Patch’s teacher about her expectations, be angry with the requirements that were making my son feel sad and reject the system that imposed them.
2. Negotiate with Patch’s teacher to lower the bar so that he didn’t have to struggle so hard.
3. Step up my game and Patch’s practice to help him pass the requirements.

A conference with Patch’s teacher resulted in a combination of two and three. She would give him a little bit of extra time and a few extra mistakes allowed. I would work with him every day to help him be prepared.

We start with flash cards. This is a fairly standard method for teaching multiplication facts to kids. As I held up cards for Patch and he sometimes struggled for answers, I pondered how complex this seemingly simple task actually is. Patch looks at a card and his visual centers interpret the reflected light into an image. The language center of his brain translates that image into symbols which have concepts attached. Patch then has to access his memory to find the correct answer to go with the presented symbols. This memory then has to be translated into words so that Patch can speak the answer. All of this must occur in mere seconds in order to get through 80 problems.

I realized that we were practicing verbal answers, but that the test was written. We needed to be practicing that final translation step both written and spoken. I devised a writing game where instead of answering out loud, Patch wrote the answers on a white board. Then we printed out math facts practice sheets so he could take practice tests. I sat next to him as he wrote, glancing from timer to his pencil. Patch cruised along smoothly until the moment when his brain did not instantly supply an answer. Patch shifted in his seat, rubbed his eye, tapped his pencil. It was as if he was attempting to jog loose the memory by physical action. Sometimes these fidgets led to longer distractions. I once watched him spend a full minute with his pencil poised over a single problem because his mind went off on some tangent of thought.

It was so very tempting to switch to the angry option. We worked and Patch struggled. Threes forever. In the middle of one practice, Patch declared he hated school. My heart sank. I fumed at the seeming arbitrary measure of 80 problems in five minutes. I groused a bit to Howard outside of Patch’s hearing and he pointed out that the speed of recall was in indicator that the facts were stored in a permanent and easily accessible memory location. This was the point of memorizing the problems at all. I swallowed my grumbles and faced the next practice session.

It was that next practice session when everything clicked. Patch, who had routinely only been completing 40-70 problems in five minutes, sat down and rocketed through 80 in under four. “Wow!” I said and gave him a high five.
Patch smiled back at me. “I just found the right way to set my brain. I just told myself I could do it.”

Far more important than storing math facts in memory, Patch learned how to focus his mind. Someday there will be something he wants very much and getting it will be easier because he knows how to focus and persevere. The pattern continued through fours, fives, and sixes. We practice, practice, practice, it seems impossible and then click. It is easy. But even during the impossible-seeming parts we know that it will eventually work. Patch still does not rejoice when I declare practice time, but he heads off to school happy each day because he knows he can succeed even when the task is difficult.

Kindle Update: Why I Still Buy Paper Books

By / November 5, 2011 / 15 Comments

I have had a Kindle since January. My husband has had an iPad for about the same length of time. Having an e-reading device has revitalized his love for reading. He buys books and reads them often. The only reason he will buy paper any more is if he is at the book signing of a friend and wants to show support. He’ll bring home the paper book and then buy an e-version for reading. We buy all the books on one account, so when he buys an e-book I can also read it. It is kind of nice to not have to negotiate over first turn. I really liked reading the Hugo voter samples on my Kindle. However we’ve noticed some troubles.

Howard bought the latest Pratchett book and began to read it. I then downloaded it to my Kindle, which helpfully assumed that I’d want to start in the same place where Howard had been reading. I began reading on chapter three without realizing I was doing it. Another problem also manifested with this particular book. Pratchett loves to do footnotes. I love to read his footnotes. On an iPad you tap, read the footnote, tap, and are back to your place. On the Kindle I have to push up-up-up-up-up-up-up-up-up-up-up-up-up-up-over-over-over–over-over-over-over-over-select to get to the footnote. Then I push back to return to reading. It is a significant disruption to the flow of reading. Between these two frustrations, I am currently reading some paper books I got from the library instead of reading the new Pratchett book. I’ll eventually read it on Howard’s iPad, but am waiting until there is a period of time when I can have unfettered access to the device. Or perhaps I’ll just buy the book on paper.

I still find reading on an electronic device to be a touch distracting. It takes awhile for my brain to settle into the story because I associate electronic devices with internet and work. When I am stressed and need to disengage, I pick paper over electronic unless there happens to be a book that Howard bought electronically that I really want to read. Most of my reading is still on paper.

I know it is possible to borrow e-books from my local library. I don’t want to learn how. I want to read, not learn a new electronic-based skill. I certainly do not want to have to troubleshoot a loaning system. Electronic devices invariably have snags, errors, crashes, and annoyances. All of these can be recovered from, but all of them can steal my small space of relaxation and kill my good mood. About the only frustration a paper book can supply is being lost.

I regularly loan books to a long-time out-of-work neighbor. He has no money for cable television or to buy an expensive e-reader. Getting to the public library costs him money either in gas or bus fees, but he can come raid my library easily. If all my books were electronic he would be out of luck.

We are still buying kids books on paper only. I do so for the following reasons:

I can hand a child a $7 paper back and not have to police the treatment of the book. Books end up in bathrooms, spattered with snack food, left on floors, buried under piles of clothing, stepped on, shelved, stacked, and read. I could not do the same with a device costing over $100. I would have to keep track of it and spend time training my kids to treat it correctly. This is not just a kid problem either. I constantly have to remind myself not to leave my Kindle laying where it could get knocked off, stepped on, or other wise smashed. That little bit of extra required attention can be wearisome when I’m stressed or tired.

I have four kids. I want them all to be reading, sometimes simultaneously. I don’t want to spend $400-$700 to get enough reading devices for everyone to read at the same time. Additionally we have a house policy that a child can have an electronic device when they care enough to buy it with their own money. This way they have an emotional stake in taking care of the device. If my kids save up $150, they’ll buy an iPod or a 3DS, not an e-reader. They regularly spend $3-$15 buying books for themselves.

One of the best ways to get kids to choose reading is to have books laying around where the covers can catch their interest. Many moments of boredom have resulted in hours of reading because book was laying nearby. This does not happen if all the books are neatly filed on my Kindle.

Physically taking my kids to the library addresses reading in a new way. The kids are able to speak with a librarian and really think about what they are looking for in a book. Then sometimes their favorite books are ones that happen to be shelved near the one that the librarian was showing them. Involving a librarian in the book selection process means a new perspective and opens up new possibilities for the kids.

Owning a physical book and shelving it with their possessions is one of the ways my kids begin to form their identity. Different kids will latch on to different books or series of books. Then they loan them to each other. There is power in being the one who loans or recommends a book. If all the books are organized in the same electronic library my kids will not feel the same sense of ownership.

My children spend a lot of time playing computer and video games. Sitting down with a paper book gives their brains a break from the flicker of screens. It encourages them to switch over into a relaxed way of thinking. I’ve had them read things on my Kindle or Howard’s iPad, they read for shorter lengths of time because the presence of the electronic device is a constant reminder that there are video games in the world and that those video games might be more fun than reading.

When my Kindle was new, I had three children taking turns with it reading the same book. The process for bookmarking and unbookmarking was button-press intensive. As a result, they only book marked, never unmarking. This meant that we always spent at least a minute, sometimes as much as five, trying to figure out which of the bookmarks belonged to the child whose turn it was to read.

In summary: Paper books are still useful to me in ways that e-books have not yet managed to replicate.

Homework Time

By / November 2, 2011 / 3 Comments

Helping my children do homework is kind of fun. Arguing with my children because they’d rather pick a fight than do the work is not fun. Standing guard over my children so they don’t distract themselves is alternately boring and frustrating. Unfortunately most homework times feature the second two far more than the first. The work they are assigned is not too hard, nor does it take them too long. If it were only the homework we’d have no challenges. But my children are… children. They lack the emotional maturity and skills to understand that sometimes the best way to get out of something is to go through it as fast as possible. I’m teaching perseverance and problem solving right along with spelling. I’m teaching them how to read a text book along with answering the history questions. I’m teaching neat handwriting along with the math. With those hidden lessons considered, then the true challenge of homework becomes apparent and their struggles with it become understandable. The thing I have to remember when I’m biting my tongue and counting to keep my temper, is that the struggle itself is the teacher. It is when we are struggling that we grow. Which I suppose should apply to my own struggles and have more patience with me as well as with them.

Score Card for the Week

By / October 27, 2011

Projects completed:

Gleek’s multi-page mystery story featuring the ghost of the explorer Samuel De Champlain which needed to demonstrate the qualities of an explorer, have at least three clues, have at least three obstacles, be detailed, and typed. With a card stock cover.

Kiki’s art project for reflections which she originally envisioned as five small paintings matted together to create a single image. But then some of the details were too small for painting, it didn’t turn out how she pictured, and she decided she hated it. In the end she stayed up til 3 am the night before it was due, discarded three of the paintings to finish up the other two, and still was not happy with the result. At least it got turned in.

Gleek’s explorer board game based on the life of Samuel De Champlain. We re-purposed all the pieces from a CSI Miami board game that I found at the thrift store. There was much cutting, pasting, taping, and gluing to get everything in place.

Link’s balsa wood bridge. He did this pretty much by himself, both carefully and methodically. There was a moment of panic in the final assembly, but all turned out well.

Link’s book reports. He had to finish up two book reports before the end of the term. This meant finding and reading books then writing the reports. Fortunately both the books and the reports can be short. One down so far.

Putting up t-shirts in the store and then shipping them. All the packages ordered before 8 am yesterday are out the door.

Howard spent some time designing new merchandise. Most of these items are ready to go.

Gleek’s Tiffany Aching costume. This included the creation of a book entitled The Goode Childe’s Booke of Faerie Tales and the acquisition of a black witches hat.

Patch’s Nac Mac Feegle costume. The Halloween shopping fairies smiled upon me yesterday afternoon and let me find all the needed pieces in a single store. I have a little bit of minor sewing to do, but I still count finding all the pieces as a win.

Projects incomplete:

Mailing another 30 or so packages.

Link’s second book report.

Kiki’s page-long Japanese translation assignment, which was due today.

The repair of the furnace which decided not to heat the house today. Current house temp 61 degrees and dropping.

The repair of my windshield so that I can pass safety and emissions and re-register the car. Also so that I can get that chugging noise in the engine checked.

Howard wanted to draw several weeks of comics, hasn’t happened yet.

Helping both Kiki and Link figure out costumes.

All the less urgent things which got shoved so far out of my brain that I can’t remember what they are. However I will remember them quite clearly next week when they still aren’t done.

Patch’s reflections project which he had originally envisioned as a visual arts piece, but discovered that creating what he had in his mind was beyond his current capabilities. The new plan is for him to write a story on the theme instead. This is due next week. Time must be made for it over the weekend.

Gleek’s book report. This is due on Monday. Fortunately she has already read the book and the report itself is not particularly difficult to put together.

Emotional dramas endured this week:

Gleek’s fear that her story and game were not good enough.

Kiki’s emotional roller coaster over her art piece.

Link’s overwhelmed sadness at having end-of-term pressure.

Kiki needing to work through her emotions about a mean girl at school who has chosen her for a target.

Patch being much more volatile and quick to anger than usual. Still haven’t figured out if this is an age thing or if there is some underlying emotional issue that I need to dig out.

5 out of 6 Taylers having at least one semi-depressed day during which all efforts seemed futile and the tasks ahead insurmountable.

Many arguments over the cat because the whole family loves the cat, but we all have differing opinions about how to appropriately love, play, and interact with the cat. The cat also has opinions, but is fortunately blessed with a deep well of tolerance and patience.

Kiki realizing that she simply does not have the skills nor the time to make the Samus armor costume that she has been envisioning for over a year. She had to grieve and figure out how to put that dream down for awhile.

Many arguments along the lines of “argh! You’re not listening to me!” vs. “I was listening, I just needed to finish this one thing.” Also many arguments over “Yes you did!” “No I didn’t!” Players were completely interchangeable. Everyone took their turn being unreasonable.

Other thoughts:

I have a hard time feeling sympathetic with children who are feeling overwhelmed when I am also feeling the same thing, only my overwhelmed also encompasses all of their things as well. Yet observing this out loud does nothing to help anyone, and it is in some measure false. Their things are theirs and I should keep my mitts off.

Link really impressed me. The day after stomping off sad and depressed, he sat down and made his very own checklist for how he was going to accomplish all of his work. Then he calmly and quietly work his way down the list. He just did it. I need to remember to compliment him for that maturity.

I don’t like it when I go into a rant and realize that I sound exactly like the rant which annoyed me from a child only hours ago. It makes me have to face the fact that either I am as childish as they are, or their rant was valid and I should have been more respectful of their emotional experience. A little of both probably.

On Monday the shirts arrived. Today I will ship out the last of them. We’ve had the influx of income which lets us re-stock the store for Christmas and which will let us pay bills in the interim. I am very glad of this. I could wish that this event was not in the middle of all the other events, but it couldn’t have happened earlier and we didn’t want to delay. We need this flurry of merchandise right now, but it will be nice to get back to the slower-paced work on creating books.

And after writing all of that out, I discover that I have no interest in actually calculating a score for the week. Instead I’ll just let it all be what it is and hope that next week can be calmer.

Homework Stress

By / October 25, 2011

This is the week when all four of my children simultaneously realize that the term ends on Friday and they have run out of time to finish all their procrastinated homework. Stress is swooping around the house and creating little quarrels just about everywhere. On top of that is the imminence of Halloween, for which we are also unprepared. I get to run around, trying to find the correct balance between taskmaster, cheerleader, assistant, and psychologist. Ultimately I can’t do the work for them, I have to remind myself of this every time I am faced with a task which would take me only ten minutes. I can see clearly that ten minutes of my effort would buy us freedom from stress. However it would also be stealing the rewards of effort from my child. Educating the children is supposed to be the point. Yet sometimes it takes every bit of willpower I can muster to keep my hands off.

I think today is the climax of the stress. I hope it is. I would very much like tomorrow to be more pleasant than either today or yesterday.

Contrasting Trips: The Dump and The Museum of Art

By / October 22, 2011 / 2 Comments

This morning I ventured to the dump for the first time in my life. Somehow it was always someone else who made those trips, not me. This particular trip was long overdue, as a corner of our driveway was filled with objects of no use to anyone. Not even putting them up for free on freecycle had resulted in their removal. So the pile sat while I didn’t go to the dump, not because the dump was daunting or frightening, but simply because I’d never done it before. The unknown minutiae of navigating to the waste transfer station, paying the fee, and unloading all served as a barrier which was in no way insurmountable, yet sufficient to inspire repeated procrastinations of the project.

In the end all those minutiae were no trouble at all. Finding the place was easy. The fee for a van load was a mere seven dollars. We backed up to a huge pile of accumulated detritus and threw ours onto the stack right next to where some one else had thrown the remains of a roofing project. On the other side was a discarded couch, pieces of an old jungle gym, carpet remains, and a broken mirror. All around were and huge masses of plant matter. It did not smell rotten, though I could tell that there was another pile somewhere nearby which did.

I drove away feeling lighter and grateful that our city has such a service. My home is cleaner and ready for further projects. However I was also sobered by the huge masses of waste, some of which could have been re-used. It was fascinating to see the process of disposing of discarded items. I could see the areas devoted to green waste processing and recycling. There was a section for chemical disposal. It is good for me to see this side of civilization which is usually hidden from view. I am newly reminded to be mindful about the quantities of waste that I produce. That pile was huge. I want to contribute to it as little as possible.

I showered off the psychic residue of having been to the dump, then Kiki and I headed to the BYU Museum of Art. She had a homework assignment to visit a gallery. The first exhibit seemed to fit right in with the trip of the morning. The theme of the exhibit was books as objects. One art piece was a twenty foot high and twenty foot wide cube of books stacked overlapping almost to the ceiling. All of the spines were inward so that only the pages could be seen. Another was a video of books being dissolved to pulp in a commercial washing machine. Books as objects is not a theme which makes me happy. I don’t like to view books think thoughts about wastefulness. I much prefer to hold a book and see the artistry both in the physical construction and the way that words have been intentionally spun to contain meanings. Fortunately the remaining exhibits in the museum were much less nihilistic.

I found myself standing in front of Bierstadt’s Seal Rock.

It was twenty years ago when I last stood in front of this painting. I was a college freshman at home for a visit. There was a whole exhibit of Bierstadt and I walked slowly past them all, but Seal Rock was the one that called to me most. I marveled at the way he captured sunlight refracted through the wave. The painting was bigger in my memory. Perhaps because so many of Bierstadt’s other works are on a giant scale. Today I stepped close to the painting and looked at the textures of paint used for the sea foam. A few steps away I spent some time staring into the painted eyes of a young Bostonian from 1739. I wondered what this young man thought while his portrait was painted. The painting was over three hundred years old and still hung for people to see and admire. The opposite of waste.

As I walked through the museum I was aware of the people around me. Mostly I noticed them as disturbances in my thinking space. I like my pools of thought to be undisturbed as I seek to examine my reactions to art. However the people were also interesting. Many were parents who had elected to bring their young children. I could not tell if the children were present to expose them to art or if they were just along for lack of babysitting. Art museums are not aimed to engage youngsters, though they can still benefit if the adult in charge is willing to be an informational bridge. I saw mostly hauling, not bridging. People sat rubbing sore feet. Students with clipboards went from painting to painting, filling out worksheets for an assignment. Some groups spoke quietly about the pictures they were viewing. Some spoke of other things entirely while glancing at pictures as they walked past. A few quiet people stood for a long time before a piece. Kiki sat and sketched for a bit. All of these people had come to the museum today, each of them took home a completely different experience.

The day was wrapped up by viewing my favorite category of art; when an artist takes something old, useless, or ugly, then transforms it into something beautiful. Such creations are the opposite of the waste transfer station. In this case the art manifested as quilts. Sometimes quilts are planned whole from new materials and are completely stunning. The ones that really tugged at my heart were the quilts which were obviously made from re-purposed materials. I stood next to one quilt and looked at the individual pieces. The fabrics had stories and my mind tried to picture them.

By this time Kiki was tired. Apparently the teenage art student has less patience for museums than does the aging humanities major. However we could not leave without stopping by the gift shop. It contained an exhibition of fine-art-inspired consumerism. This was the place where child focused objects were omnipresent; each urging parents to buy culture for their children. I noted all the toys without much interest, when my kids were younger I would have been tempted. Instead I was drawn to the rack with many beautiful notebooks and journals. I also discovered that museum gift shops are an excellent source for note cards. I resisted temptation, until we spotted the tiny jewel faceted spider ear rings in the Halloween display. They were adorable and priced to sell.

We stopped at the grocery store on the way home, as I walked down the aisles I was surrounded by packages and materials which would mostly be transformed into garbage for the dump. Yet there was also the possibility that these same things could be used in the creation of art. It was a distracting train of thought, which I had to shake off so that I could focus on buying the foods our family needs. Food and family are themselves worthy creations. I guess I’ll have to be content if the sum total of my efforts creates more beauty than waste.

Fall Parent Teacher Conferences

By / October 7, 2011

Parent teacher conferences are always fraught, not with peril, but with the potential for high emotion. Sometimes I enter with worries and exit with new reassurance and confidence. Other times I have no particular concerns going in, but leave reeling from how much more that child needs than they have been getting. It is my chance to speak with teachers who have alternate viewpoints upon my child’s development. They see things that I don’t, not because I’m unobservant, but because school is different than home and different aspects of my children rise to the surface.

Last week I had conferences for my older two kids. Today I had conferences for the younger two. I now have a laundry list of needs which require me to adjust the family schedule (yet again) so that they fit. The adjustments are minor, but time and energy must be spent on them. Mostly the things which turned up in the conferences are not surprising. We’re having new iterations of familiar problems, nothing new or baffling. This means that the solutions are new iterations of old solutions. In a way the familiarity of it all is reassuring. The kids are all exactly where they need to be for steady growth.

I’ve never seen parent teacher conferences from the teacher side of the desk. I know how tired it makes me, even when there’s no major issue to address. I marvel at the stamina of those teachers, who have 25-30 conferences in two days and a laundry list of issues they hope to address. They must face varying levels of indifference, anxiousness, over-protectiveness, and outright bewilderment from the parents who show up. Teachers are expected to find all the trouble spots and provide solutions, often when no easy solutions are to be had. I am constantly impressed by the efforts of the dedicated teachers who work with me for the benefit of my children.