educational priorities ~ a mamafesto ~ 2020 remix

Posted on August 16, 2020 by marybethrew

Quinn recently attended a six-day online Dinosaur Discoveries camp and at the end earned the “Most Likely to Become Everyone’s Favorite College Professor” award. It launched a great conversation between Quinn and I about how online learning does not necessarily have to mean pushing a bunch of “submit” buttons to enable the instructors to assess his learning accomplishments. The instructors provided materials for him to immerse himself in, trusted that he was absorbing them, and then detected his absorption of said materials through conversations, group discussions, and other contributions (voluntarily written and presented). No grading or testing occurred. And yet, both Quinn and I felt the instructors had somehow managed to glean a lot about who he is as a learner and an individual simply through six days of connecting with him over meaningful curriculum, meaningful because it was chosen intentionally by Quinn. As for the assessment of Quinn’s likelihood of becoming everyone’s favorite college professor, Quinn said, “I think it’s extremely accurate.”

In 2012, I sat down and wrote out my priorities for Quinn’s education, a valuable and worthwhile exercise that received a lot of positive feedback at that time, and that I have returned to at times when I’ve felt a need to check the calibration of my compass concerning Quinn’s education. Each time I’ve returned, I’ve been pleasantly surprised how well that list concerning my going-into-kindergarten five-year-old still fit, say, when he was transitioning from second grade at our living school to third grade in the public school, or when he was moving from there up into the middle school. These transition points pushed me to revisit my priorities for Quinn’s education more than the years in between, but when I did so, I found that what I valued for him at the beginning of his school years are the things I still value, and each time, it has helped me orient my efforts in advocating for his learning needs in each context in ways that aligned with those values.

2020 is a different year in every way, and it is exceptionally different in terms of how education is being and will be carried out. Quinn finished seventh grade pushing buttons on a computer screen, disconnected from his teachers and peers, isolating himself at his dad’s house in the woods. However, for the month it took for the school to transition into distance learning mode, he had a fresh chance to direct his own learning, and it was an oasis between the overscheduled school year to that point, and the button-pushing specter of school on a laptop that limped across the finish line. As we envision what his eighth grade year will be like, his last year before high school, it has been on my mind to revisit the priority list yet again. (Click here to read the original post.) With years of additional insights into how Quinn learns, I decided it would be a good time to do a fresh rewrite, although once again my revisit reconfirmed that everything on the list still resonates for me. The first priority, however, is the one that stopped me in my tracks this time: “Safety- A learning environment where physical safety is a no-brainer.” This cannot possibly be assured this coming school year with any physical presence in the school building. Though the language of that priority once centered around booster seats and sunscreen, the language of school safety has grotesquely mutated into how we can carry out active-shooter drills during a pandemic. Safety will always remain priority number one, and hence, this year will look very different from other recent years while Quinn has attended public school.

Still, I wanted to write this 2020 version from a place of naming what we want to move towards, vs. what we want to move away from. This is how I approached it in 2012 when I was feeling a visceral aversion to Quinn attending public school while he still needed quite a lot of social emotional support a good portion of the time. At that time, I tried to hone in on articulating the goals I have for his learning environment rather than just describing the outcomes I wanted to avoid; instead of focusing on how likely a differently-wired kindergartener is to be misunderstood in public school, I focused on working towards an organic learning environment where choice is central, the whole child is nourished. In 2020 I want to focus less on COVID-19 risk and more on crafting the best learning options for him given the circumstances. Still striving for an organic learning environment where choice is central, the whole person is nourished. The long-term goal is still and always a thriving lifelong learner.

Many things have changed in eight years, but so much has stayed the same. Most of what changed in this list is an organization of the original 12 separate items into 3 categories they seemed to gather into naturally: safety, connection, and self-direction. A disclaimer I would attach to this and all posts of mine: this is a description of my own values and is intended only as a means of articulating them for myself; if they resonate for you, that is a pleasant outcome we can enjoy, and if they do not, feel free not to let them slow you down as you scroll on by.

~Educational Priorities~

As Quinn’s mama my priorities for his educational experience are to surround him with nurturing environments and people and to protect and feed his love of learning. While I do not distinguish between learning and the rest of life, as I believe the two are inextricably linked, I will do my best to list my priorities for how I believe Quinn can best be supported so that he may thrive as a lifelong learner. I believe this will be achieved by prioritizing:

1. Safety

A learning environment where physical safety is a no-brainer. As drastically different as the content of this paragraph may be in 2020 than it was in 2012, the first sentence is the same first sentence. Physical needs must be met before learning needs can be fully realized. At Our Living School, we repeated a mantra concerning safety, “Our bodies are safe, our thoughts are safe, our feelings are safe, our work is safe,” and this is still a useful list.

Physical safety: Quinn’s physical safety is secured in his learning environment to enable him to focus on learning. The physical safety of educators must also be paramount. The presence of my learner in a school is possible only when teacher health and safety, and the health and safety of the families of those teachers, and the health and safety of other students and their families, can be ensured.

Mental safety: Quinn is in an environment where he can express his thoughts freely and knows his learning needs will be respected and supported.

Emotional safety: Quinn is able to feel, express, and care for his feelings.

Work safety: Whether it is what he was building out of blocks at five, or a research project he is getting ready to present at thirteen, the integrity of Quinn’s work will be honored.

2.Connection

I believe that a positive learning environment for Quinn will flourish when it grows from strong roots of connection and belonging. Several of the 2012 priorities focused on specific connections; between student and teacher, parent and teacher, student and peers, student and others of all ages. In 2020 I can see that these one-to-one connections are impossible to extricate from the web of community surrounding a learner, and while these individual bonds may stand out from the web when highlighting learning priorities, they all perform their roles in the best ways when the whole web is strong and stable. Strong connections will help Quinn develop empathy and compassion, and a realistic understanding of others’ realities. They will also help him self-reflect through relationship with others, and to continue to build healthy relationship skills.

Student-teacher connection: A bond between student and teacher ensures priority #1 through open communication and positive regard of one another. From connection flows the sense of nurturing, unconditional positive regard, and feeling of equal dignity that all humans deserve and require in order to do their best learning. I believe safety and equity for all other students is necessary for Quinn to experience the benefits of a connection to any teacher. If he can see that his peers of all identities and abilities are all being treated with that positive regard, then he will be able to trust that lighthouse when its beam is directed towards him.

Student-teacher-parent connection: Open channels of communication among those involved in Quinn’s learning endeavors allow for his strengths and areas needing extra support to be known so that all involved are attuned to his unique learning style. Parental involvement in learning is ongoing and meaningful.

Student-peer connection: The stronger the connections between Quinn and his learning community, the greater sense of belonging he will experience. Quinn feels ownership of his school as a place that is Home to him, with a positive sense of caring for his fellow students, who in turn care for him as part of their community. Values are instilled by the teachers towards this end, and extend outward to include his greater community, in which his school is an active participant. These values of community care are best realized by distance learning in 2020, protecting all learners and teachers, and finding creative ways to still foster belonging. Peer connections may take the form of online paleontology discussions and online D&D gaming sessions this year.

Connection to others of all ages: Quinn is connected with older teens and young adults who have skills he has yet to acquire to look up to, admire, and imitate, and kids who are younger, to keep things infused with imagination and wonder. He has involvement with people of all ages from the surrounding community, because the real world is a place where people of all ages interact, to everyone’s great good fortune. In 2020 we’ll have less in person interaction to be sure, but this will be good to keep in mind as a guiding principle, that while peer interactions are very important to developing teens, interactions with others of all ages matter as well, even if they have to be emails and video calls for a time. Grammy and Grampy, Mario and Luigi, I’m looking at you!

3. Self-Direction (trust)

The rest of the 2012 priorities group themselves comfortably under this heading. In 2012 I wrote about a whole-child approach, an emergent curriculum, a Yes environment with emphasis on play, developing an internal moral compass, and nurturing an intrinsic motivation to learn. In conversation with my teen about what works and does not work about schooling for him, we keep circling back to the need for choice. I want to strive towards a learning situation that prioritizes self-direction for the learner. (The heading contains parenthetical trust, because this path requires a large amount of it on the part of a parent supporting the self-directed learning journey of their youth.)

Whole-child or whole-teen approach: In my worldview, children come into the world as fully intact beings, destined to grow into their innate competence, as well as prosocial beings whose default desire is to cooperate, belong, and get along. Other worldviews exist in which children are born deficient or damaged, needing to be filled with knowledge and morals through a hierarchical top-down approach. My worldview encourages deep trust in the child’s inevitable trajectory towards competence, while the opposing one often requires proof through standardized testing or other means that they have reached competence.

I like a phrase coined by Marji Zintz that says, “attribute to children the best possible motive consistent with the facts.” Giving kids the benefit of the doubt in their intentions and abilities empowers them to grow into their competence.

Whole-child or whole-teen approaches to learning must acknowledge the following: Academics, while held at high priority, do not eclipse other important lessons. Some of the lessons/skills I value most, in no particular order, are:

social/emotional skills
healthy bodies
mindfulness practices
self-confidence
compassion
writing
relationship skills
empathy
communication
movement
sustainability
fine art
creative writing
world culture
cooking
sports
drama
reading
conflict resolution
scientific reasoning
practical life skills (everything from gardening to making things to voting)
being a citizen in a democracy
critical thinking
math
social justice
music
community-mindedness

Many of Quinn’s skills will be honed at home, e.g. woodworking with dada or sewing with mama, and at private (dance/music/art/sports/karate) lessons or through outside-of-school classes, so I apply this concept to Life in General as well as educational goals.)

binary hand-counting in the wilderness

Self-directed learning: I referred to this as emergent curriculum in 2012, while in 2020 the term self-direction feels more resonant for the same set of ideals around choice, maybe because it emphasizes his agency in bringing about what emerges. Quinn is able to learn what he is drawn to, and the purpose of teacher guidance is to help him create meaning for himself about what he learns. He is able to approach each component of academics as he is ready for it, in a way that he can absorb it efficiently because it’s meaningful to him. He has the freedom to opt in or out of lessons he feels compelled or uncompelled by, and there is plenty of enriching material for him to engage with and be challenged. Further, the lessons offered are set at a level that is most likely to compel him, given that they are based on his/the student body’s emerging interests/intrigues/questions/thoughts/votes. He sets his own balance of autonomous learning time to cooperative group learning. Quinn’s preparations for his life/career goals (college, trades, conservatory, world travel or whatever they may be) are in his own hands and he is confident in his ability to craft his own educational curriculum, one that will land him squarely where he desires to be, wearing a set of wings to take him far beyond.

Consent: As mama of a young man, I see it as one of my most important roles in his learning to make sure he is aware and competent around the concept of consent. By honoring Quinn’s integrity, boundaries, and self-direction in his learning, I am modeling consent. If Quinn’s stance on a given subject or learning objective is no, it means no. Often choice is seen as something a teacher “allows” a learner, but that still creates a top-down dynamic which, instead of preserving choices, in fact limits them; if one of the available options is not “no”, the choice is not freely chosen. There is an illusion of choice that is created when someone says, “I will let you choose” but then the power rests with the person “letting,” not with the person doing the choosing. Forcing someone to learn, to press the “submit” button, is one way that consent is overridden in young people routinely, and I strongly suspect it contributes to a culture where consent is undervalued. Where students experience teaching as something to be done to them, they learn not to honor their own signals, but instead become resigned to others’ demands on them. Instead, by being clear on his boundaries, Quinn is learning where he ends and other people begin, and not just knowing about it in theory, but practicing and embodying consent.

Yes Environment: Yes means yes! A Yes Environment means that opportunities, space and materials are available to him whenever he takes initiative to express and explore. When he reveals an interest, the tools and materials he needs to follow that line of inquiry appear in a timely manner so he can continue and take it as far as he wants, until he is satiated. If he is engrossed in dinosaurs today (/this week/this decade), books and activities (games, videos, camps, virtual museum tours, ecology simulations…) show up in following days based on that theme and are strewn in his path for him to gobble up. His teacher’s role is to observe what is sparking his interest and tend the flame, requiring an individualized approach and attentive observation. This is best achieved in small class sizes where curriculum can flex and adapt. Instead of “no” stance on deviations, a “how can we…?” approach is the default. A Yes environment also provides structured and unstructured time and space to play. Play is of extreme importance to learning, and not separate from learning. Play is learning. Beyond K-12, Quinn is encouraged and supported in his life goals and help is always available to guide him in the right direction to meet them.

Internal Moral Compass: Quinn gets to grapple with right and wrong based on his own inner knowing, as he practices and calibrates his internal compass. He receives lots of guidance, information, and suggestions to help him navigate territory that is new for him, but never force, coercion or bribery, rewards or punishments. In areas including but not limited to consent, it is increasingly important for him to make morally right choices when nobody is around to police him or direct him in the right decision. He will do that if he has been exercising this muscle all along and his moral compass is well-calibrated and strong.

Intrinsic Motivation to Learn: His desire to learn comes from within, and that is honored in a way that maintains its integrity within rather than pulling it outside of him and replacing it with an external stimulus. Rewards and punishments are avoided in order to protect this intrinsic motivation to learn. Self-reflection around daily experiences, triumphs and disappointments will hold more meaning than grades, test scores, diagnoses, labels.

It is my belief that by prioritizing these values in Quinn’s education, Quinn will be set up to lead a fulfilling life. He will know himself well, always having been aligned with his own internal motivators, conscience, and self-knowledge. He will have confidence that he can achieve whatever he sets out to do, and will have obtained skills and knowledge that are required for that journey. He will know what it is like to be surrounded by supportive, encouraging people, and will recognize them in society. He will be attracted to workplaces with inclusive atmospheres and friendships featuring positive regard and nurturing. He will be unwilling to tolerate injustice because of his intimate experience of participating in a compassionate, justice-promoting community. He will know how to be respectful as well as to live in a way that inspires respect. He will know how to be flexible, how to think critically and creatively, and how to navigate real world situations because the real world is the place he will always have dwelled. He will be fully competent in making choices, as self-direction has been a key component of his entire educational experience- he will know that life is made up of choices, and he will be empowered to make them. These approaches to Quinn’s education will produce a strong, capable, caring, well-rounded, enthusiastic, empowered, joyful human being.

nine is divine!

Posted on March 3, 2016 by marybethrew

it’s a magical number. 3 is the magic number, and 9 is the magic number squared! there is so much to love about the number nine and we’ll just try to remain in denial about nine being halfway to eighteen. (gasp!)

nine voyages around the sun for this birthday boy… and just in case you don’t have time to click on those other 8 birthday posts for a long, winding walk down memory lane, i will share a ridiculously cute quinn quote from age 3, the magic number:

“i know a baby. it was me. he was born all day, but then he was not born anymore. he was three. and he had balloons and a red party hat on.”

the post for his third birthday didn’t actually exist until today, when i realized it was the only birthday the blog was missing. there was a gap in time between my original baby posts from myspace and the time when i began blogging here, and although i had transferred over the myspace posts years ago, i intended (and still intend) to fill in the gaps. i have all the photos and many great quotes and stories from those years tucked in bff emails, so i am going to get back to mining those old archives and filling in the missing year or so of posts. because, balloons and a red party hat, and many other treasures to unearth.

but back to nine. this is about all i got to see of him on his actual birthday, last tuesday. one of the side effects of being a child of two households is you get to observe your birthday the weekend before and/or after your actual birthday, though i suppose it’s true for all kids when their birthday falls on a weekday, which is most of the kids on most of their birthdays. on the plus side, he gets multiple days of celebrating, on the minus side, he doesn’t get to spend time with the actual person who carried him around in her womb for 10 months. except for when she brings root beer floats and sugar cookies to school for your whole classroom to share (he had seen packages of sugar cookies at some point during a trip to the grocery store while we were in new york, and logged it away in his memory, hence the very specific request) .

when he got home on friday evening, finally, i fed him rainbow tortellini for dinner. during his previous week with me, he had read aloud from calvin and hobbes about tor-tell-ini (and how much calvin despises it) and after 7 mentions of the word, i let him know that i thought he would actually like tor-tell-ini, explained what it is, and also informed him of how most people like to pronounce it.

he came home very excited about his dad’s present for him of a drum set! he has already started taking beginning drum lessons on youtube, and here is how he explains what he has learned so far:

that night he got to open his birthday present.

saturday morning, he spent building his computer and i went off to farmer’s market to pick up eggs and coffee beans and spinach by my little self while the men stayed home. i came home and frosted the cupcakes (with orders for 3 colors of frosting, of course; his desires are inversely proportional to my effort to maintain simplicity).

we drove around and borrowed the oldest boys from each of our two six-child family friends for the afternoon. quinn was proud to show them his freshly built computer, and they set to work on the game together (minecraft, but with specific wiring missions required to follow the storyline. every so often i’d hear, “go forward!” “well, you’re the one holding the red wires, you do it!”)

these two are my favorite pictures of the day, which feel like they somehow foreshadow the bottomless pits of hunger they will be in a few years as teenagers. their appreciation of the food i provided was so heart-warming.

grazing the veggies, orange slices, and chips and guacamole while quinn arranged his pizza toppings.

after they “decorated” their own pizzas, as quinn likes to say, we let them bake while they got a game of pokemon monopoly underway. from the kitchen i could hear him directing, “okay! 5 1’s, 5 5’s, 5 10’s, 6 20’s…”

i was only able to lure them away from playing by offering food. as they played, i kept hearing “all in favor of (fill in the blank), say i!” and then three voices chorusing, “i!” i know that 3 is not always the magic number when it comes to friend playdates, but in this case, they were peas in a pod. when i called up to say, “all in favor of root beer floats, say i”, there was a similar unanimous vote. after i brought it up, i remembered that friend l had already announced that he was fasting sugar during lent, and that he was only taking breaks from it on sunday (i admired his integrity in saying so, when his camp boss mama wasn’t there to enforce, and told him i would send cupcakes home with him for the next day. he didn’t seem to equate root beer floats with sugar, though, and i wasn’t going to remind him after i had accidentally waved them in front of him. he was so gracious about how much he was enjoying his, that i imagine his heavenly father would have looked favorably and overlooked his oversight anyway.

we had a good cross-cultural discussion about lent (which friend c hadn’t heard of, but friend l was currently observing) but friend c was familiar with mardi gras and easter. it reminded me of ols conversations around holiday times that went something along the lines of, “some people celebrate this way… others do that…” and enjoying our diversity in an inclusive environment.

the boys worked together to place the lego candles, but i had to then borrow a ninth candle from my housemate, having not realized in time that the package only contained eight. party foul! for the cupcakes i followed catherine newman’s recipe entitled “yay it’s wednesday cake! cake” which were tasty and easy to throw together, since i had just read the post and hadn’t bothered to close the tab yet. her chocolate frosting will have to wait for my birthday.

alright, i know i said those other two pictures were my favorite, but this one is, too. quinn laughing while his two buddies duel their chips for the last few bites of guacamole in the bowl. as story jars go, this one is full of frosting, sprinkles, laughter, guacamole, and friendship. a delicious birthday feast!

~a month in the life of a lifelong learner~ take a picture of it instead

Posted on December 3, 2015 by marybethrew

i only just finished posting about last month and it’s time for another one! in this season of dim lighting and puddles, it all feels like a big blur, but when i go back and look through, some gems shine through the murk.

halloween, pokemon style.

self knowledge, after karate practice one night: “mama, can you please get me some crab meat to eat, right now?” why, yes, son, i can. we live in a fishing port, luckily for you, and whatever micronutrients and minerals your growing body suddenly requires can be obtained. thanks for asking.

followed up by popcorn and a movie. screen time in moderation, of course!

…and predominant screen use as a tool… for making his property cards, monster cards, and character cards for the dungeons and dragons monopoly game he recently created! (old trivial pursuit board from thrift store, 50 cents – didn’t have its cards anymore and was the perfect shape and size for monopoly.)

game making was big this month, and he created a farm animal board game for his friend, to whose birthday party he was the only boy and the only 8 year old invited. she was turning 4, and quinn did an awesome job tailoring the game to a level she and her peers could easily play (not needing to read or do any serious math, but including some basic counting skills). this has become our go-to birthday present, as it involves some thoughtfulness and creativity on quinn’s part, and not a lot of money (in this case, a thrift store purchase of an old pictionary game board for 50 cents.)

this particular birthday party was like an art therapy immersion session, and quinn and i both got our hands in clay, and i got to do some painting, while he got to sink his hands into a bin full of jelly balls (those things intended for hydrating cut flowers that you can buy at the dollar store – fun sensory play).

remembering our roots… quinn and i used to do far more hiking when we first got to this area, and he still fit in a baby carrier, but i can see what good self care it is for us to remember to make time for it now that we are older and busier. between the sunny days, my lighter work schedule, and being fairy dog mother this month, we managed quite a bit more outside time.

writing his choose your own adventure angry birds story, self supplementing his learning all the time.

i do see occasional backpack evidence of writing occurring at school, which he was reluctant to do last year.

although i mostly have to rely on my dig through the archaeological backpack record to find out what is happening at school, i am now established as the science friday mentor for quinn’s class, and that one afternoon per week in his class has been a lot of fun, and a nice window into his daily experience. our unit on simple machines has been an adventure for us all, and i will write up more about the curriculum in a post of its own sometime soon, after the culmination of our unit in the school science fair. it has also inspired some home learning supplementing on the topic. he and i watched a few fun rube goldberg you tube videos, and quinn mentally devised a pulley system as an alternative method for meeting his responsibility to get his dirty dishes from table to sink.

honda rube goldberg ad using car parts

ok go music video rube goldberg awesomeness

food preparation is still trending in the life of quinn, and he again made tacos, learned how to make his own french toast one morning, and helped me layer up a crock-pot lasagna.

in other house work, he is learning how to operate the washer and dryer, and helping the laundry process along. he has been folding his karate uniform ever since he began karate lessons, because i laid out the expectation early on that he would be responsible for taking care of his gear, which has helped him with folding other clothes, and now he is working through the other steps of the process one by one – this one has never been a requirement, and still isn’t, but he contributes whenever he is around when it is taking place. i can understand, i also never minded laundry, especially folding warm clothes out of the dryer this time of year. he also did a great room clean-up when asked (and cajoled a little bit, and told i couldn’t fit myself into his room to play d and d with him until he made some room), and after taking pictures of the toys he didn’t want to put away, he put them away. we have some good organizational practices starting to take shape, such as quinn’s accordian file of lego instruction manuals that he has fully embraced and actually utilizes as intended. with quinn, and i suspect with many children, organizational skills seem to develop in direct relationship to interest level in the subject matter (his desk at school does not look quite as organized as his lego manuals or his pokemon card binder, let’s just say.)

on his way through the orange belt curriculum – second black tip.

we also attended a big karate seminar in corvallis, and quinn got to learn directly from one of ed parker’s (founder of american kenpo) students, mr. sepulveda. he happens to have over 50 years of karate teaching experience and has something like a 9th degree black belt. the first two rows of students in the class were solid brown belts, and i could see that they knew this was not an opportunity to be missed. quinn seemed to sense that as well, and when it was announced in his regular class, he turned to me and whisper-begged to please please take him to it.

there was an amazing student-teacher ratio in the room, with black belts milling about everywhere to adjust and comment on their positions as they practiced with a partner. then mr. sepulveda would capture the whole room’s attention again in his soft-spoken voice, and demonstrate the next step. i was so pleased to hear him share that he has never once needed to use his karate to defend himself outside the dojo; he felt it was important for the kids to know that.

when the class finished, a whole bunch of junior black belts came out on the mat and began warming up for their chevron testing, and we were just in awe (and i had everybody was kung-fu fighting playing on my mental soundtrack. those kids were fast as lightning!) he got to see some amazing things and be immersed in a whole different studio’s culture (a much bigger, more echo-y one!) and i feel sure it was time well spent.

then quinn and i went out to a restaurant we haven’t been to in years, the laughing planet, and quinn remembered it from the dinosaurs on the table. many of them have gone extinct, and this one was missing some digits and part of its tail, but he adopted it to our counter seating area immediately upon entering the restaurant.

he took some pictures to remember the evening by…

pachycephalosaurus, he assures me. i did not google it to confirm, i trust my personal dinosaur expert.

he really wanted to bring the menu home with us. i used the “how about we take a picture of it, instead” technique, just like for the toys.

we took an amazing walk on a saturday afternoon in one of our local state parks, because quinn told me he wanted to hike in a forest next to a beach. he had a certain one in mind, and this wasn’t the one, so the first minute of the hike was a bit bumpy, with him threatening not to come along, but he did, and soon we were back at the car gathering essentials needed for a more extensive hike: a bag for pinecone gathering, a pencil and paper for making an inventory. there was puppy walking (and running) fun, tree climbing, parking in the middle of the trail to make an inventory of mushrooms and rattlesnake plantain (actually an orchid). there was sensory sand therapy, rolling down the dunes whole-body style, like any boy who needs his neurons reorganized on a sunny day.

because everyone likes to do multiple digit addition in their heads while they are hiking…

the very next day it was still gorgeous, we were still puppy-sitting, and we lucked out and showed up at another favorite beach just before low tide. tidepooling and seal watching…

reflecting…

speaking of reflecting, i have been thinking back on the educational priorities i outlined for quinn, goodness! was it already three years ago? what prompted me to write them in the first place was debating with my coparent whether quinn should go to our living school or attend public school, and once written, i felt that my priority list would be met in a much more comprehensive way by ols. now that quinn is a few months into public school, and we have our two years of ols experience to compare to, i feel i was correct in that assessment. at ols, i did not feel any of the items on the list were lacking. i will say that i have been pleasantly surprised with public school that more of the list items are not lacking, as i anticipated. probably the biggest things that stand out are the rewards system and external motivators i covered in priorities 8 and 9, and those do seem to be a part of public school culture. and yet, there is far less “grading” than i had feared; there is more testing, however, than i could have even guessed, but the kids don’t seem to have a sense of how they performed on the testing, they just arrive in whatever leveled classroom they were assigned to. interestingly, while quinn reacted very positively to the “class rewards” and “golden ruler” carrots that were dangled at the start of the school year, and these were the things he reported about most early on, i do think he has been learning without the rewards system long enough to have a pretty solid grasp of learning for the sake of learning (and not to obtain rewards). to the school’s credit, the rewards are for respectful and cooperative behavior, not learning goals. so they must be hip to the fact that rewards systems for learning backfires heavily. alas, i fear that respectful and cooperative behavior can suffer the same backfiring when motivated extrinsically, but here we are.

i am pleasantly surprised in the sense of belonging quinn feels (priority 3), the connection he feels to his teachers (priority 2), and even some age integration (priority 12; based on skill level, quinn hangs out with 10 year olds on a daily basis for part of his day. there are no younger kids in this school, as it spans grades 3-5 only).

i would of course like to see much more emergent/constructivist curriculum (priority 6, see also 5 and 7), i’d like to be rid of all of the testing, i’d sure love for there to be more arts, and generally more choice built in to his days. i knew there would be drawbacks, and i knew we would need to continue to supplement in all of these areas at home. i am currently relieved it is just supplementing, and not triage or damage control that we face. this definitely made it easier to embrace my recent extension of funding on my job, something we are of course very thankful for, given our upcoming house buying adventure. i was pleased with the time frame of the current leg of funding, because it meant i could reassess around when quinn had attended a full semester of school, and if something drastic needed to change, that could have happened. i feel a little weird about accepting this status quo, because i am not generally a settler for mediocrity. still, upon reassessing, there are no major fires to put out, and this is working for the time being.

obviously the supplementing and strewing will continue…

so that was our month. culminating in a puppy snuggle pile!

thoughts from the other side of the world

Posted on October 26, 2015 by marybethrew

the main event on our trip to new york in august was my beloved older brother’s wedding to my beloved sister in law. she’s been in the family since she was still in high school, so it’s not like it was a big surprise or really changed anything, not really. and yet, it was such a wonderful time of celebration, of acknowledging how far the two of them have come on their journey together. weddings make me think, and theirs in particular was a great example, of how wendell berry conceptualizes marriage as an act of community:

“Lovers must not, like usurers, live for themselves alone. They must finally turn from their gaze at one another back toward the community. If they had only themselves to consider, lovers would not need to marry, but they must think of others and of other things. They say their vows to the community as much as to one another, and the community gathers around them to hear and to wish them well, on their behalf and its own. It gathers around them because it understands how necessary, how joyful, and how fearful this joining is. These lovers, pledging themselves to one another “until death,” are giving themselves away, and they are joined by this as no law or contract could join them. Lovers, then, “die” into their union with one another as a soul “dies” into its union with God. And so here, at the very heart of community life, we find not something to sell as in the public market but this momentous giving. If the community cannot protect this giving, it can protect nothing…”

~ Wendell Berry, Sex, Economy, Freedom, and Community: Eight Essays

bro serving cookies to his guests; loved the symbolism of this.

the community that gathered around them on their day was so inspiring, the overwhelming majority of whom were the “chosen family” kind of friends. i just love them and all the amazing things they do, and have yet to embark on in their new married lives. i love my brother’s tenderness and his raw emotion, which i felt so keenly. there was no stopping the tears from flowing.

if we lived closer, quinn would take drumming lessons from my bro.

there are so many other things i’d love to say about them and i would love to post every picture i took at their wedding, but it is their story to tell.

(and bandit’s story, too.)

“can i sail through the changing ocean tides, can i handle the seasons of my life?” ~stevie nicks

i wish that by letting this little stone of a post roll around in the tides of my mind for several months, that it would have become polished and smooth and well-articulated by now, but that is not the case.

i know that one of the things keeping me from posting about our trip was that i really struggled with myself a bit during the trip, and i’ve been trying to understand that better as i type and delete, type and delete. i kept feeling like i was the mean girl from out of town who swooped in, laid down the law, and left just as quickly as she came. i felt like i was bossy with my mom, preachy with my sister in law, and flaunted my way of parenting with my nephews. but i also think my self-judgment is partly a cover-up for my concern for my mom and her health.

if i write about that, i kind of have no choice but to face it.

so maybe if i didn’t write about it for a while….

mom’s health issues are not new, and reach back at least as far as when i was in high school, when i remember her seeing many doctors who took years to figure out just which panel of auto-immune disorders she suffers from – again, someone else’s story to tell. but i will say a few things, because i think she won’t mind. one is that the list has grown over the years, until last year they officially declared multiple sclerosis to have made her list. this past spring, she spent a few nights in the hospital during a flare up of her symptoms, and she has fallen a couple of times in 2015. she and dad have moved out of the second floor of the house, so their bedroom is where the living room used to be, and things have shifted around a bit. in addition, my younger brother and sister-in-law, and luigi and mario and their four cats have moved into the upstairs, in a mutually beneficial multi-generational household arrangement, where the middle generation gets to clean the litter boxes and the elder generation gets to have kitties sleeping on their laps without any added pet chores.

leave it to me to waltz in and point out all the things that still have not been done to make my mom safer in her own home. partly, i think i was simply a fresh pair of eyes seeing what was already on some of their radars. since i’m not living there anymore, i noticed things like overly nested pie plates and salad bowls that put a tax on my own hands, much less my mom’s hands, which are known to suffer from weakness and fatigue. after a close call on the cellar stairs, the site of one of her earlier falls this year, some of the “advice” i felt i needed to give was even more direct, including telling my mom that NOTHING out the cellar door and down those stairs is worth throwing all the independence away that she still does have. she was a good sport, confessing the areas that stress her out (not being able to finish making dinner if an ingredient she needs is downstairs) and hearing me out on every wacky solution i proposed (keeping a backup frozen casserole in the upstairs freezer). when i enforced her using her cane for the wedding, i tried to do it in an appealing way… i added flowers and ribbon to coordinate with her dress. she put up with me really, really well, considering how overbearing i was.

my bff came up with the idea of reinforcing “good behavior” on my mom’s part, i.e. lack of risk-taking behavior, and she offered to buy a bar of my mom’s handmade soap each time; then we got really crazy and envisioned a crowd-funding campaign: remodel ma rew’s kitchen for accessibility to every pie plate and mixing bowl and cast iron pan and soap-making supply she needs without excessive nesting. you get a bar of soap for every 10 bucks you donate. i am still thinking about implementing this.

mom said one of the best changes was placing a small trash can in the kitchen (for a long time, the trash has been out that door on the cellar landing. one of my rants was to bring it to everyone’s attention that trash outside the door is no longer needed because, for years now, we no longer have a dog who gets into it. see? i was no fun to be around at all.

my beautiful mom <3

i also felt like mean aunt mary beth some of the time with my nephews, though they were very forgiving, and kept coming back for more.

the quote of the week award would have to go to my nephew luigi:

“aunt mary beth, why didn’t you ever grow any boobies?”

i had to laugh, and answer politely about how everyone’s body is different, but part of me always hears princess bride quotes in my head and wants to answer, “there’s is a shortage of perfect breasts in this world.” another quote from the best movie ever has been on repeat as i’ve been tending fish in the lab, and once in a while scooping dead fish out of the tanks; though some of them turn out to be only mostly dead and upon scooping, they swim away. “turns out your friend here is only mostly dead. there’s a big difference between mostly dead and all dead.” and anyway, i have a pretty good sense of humor about my very small breasts (and dead fish). one farmer’s market morning, i was tasked with setting up “melon island” in the middle of our farm booth and had several pallets of melons to transform into a manageable display before the market opened. the rest of the crew kept having to step around these bulky totes and at one point i commented, “oh yeah, you know, my melons are always getting in peoples’ way. story of my life.”

i had some nice moments with each of my nephews, making them double decker sandwiches, personal peach pies, and banana pancakes, as well as administering several peace bench arbitrations. even though they were yucky pancakes (“i don’t like them with bananas; i only like big pancakes, not little ones; that one is burned”) the first few times i tried to serve them, they eventually got gobbled up. and even though the peace bench was needed because there were cousin squabbles over legos and game rules, i encouraged the boys by telling them i could tell they were so committed to solving their conflicts because they were spending so much time on the peace bench finding a solution, and that could only mean they love each other a lot.

quinn has had a couple of years of peace bench practice at ols, and he really impressed me with his calm, cool, collected approach. he calmly sat down, stayed quiet while his cousin told me “what happened” from his side (that’s step one; state the facts – no blame or judgment, just what actually happened from your perspective) and then rattled off possible solutions, “share, trade, or take turns!” with a smile. we worked on steps 2 through 4 as well, for those keeping score at home and wanting to use a similar method, it’s directly from the non-violent communication approach of marshall rosenberg. step one: observations, step 2: feelings, step 3: needs, and step 4: requests.

it was striking, once again, to see how distance-defyingly close the cousins could be, my sibling’s children and my own child. it brought back my childhood in certain ways, and quinn’s younger childhood in others (such as mario’s cheeks that you can still see from behind, like when quinn was a bit younger-so squishable). this does not mean they are clones, their personalities couldn’t be more different and complementary, as evidenced by the personality test of ice cream sprinkles:

quinn: ever careful, he wants sprinkles, and it is important to him to pour them himself painstakingly, keeping the next customer waiting as long as it takes.

mario: wants a lot of sprinkles!!! and wants someone to pour for him so he doesn’t spill them.

luigi: dump!

mario had gotten all dirty playing in a giant dirt pile (as you do on the farm…) and had taken off his dirt-covered overalls and then he didn’t want to put pants on because he was hot. then he and luigi got into a battle of trying to fart on each other…. and quinn was kind of stuck in the middle of it and was laughing but i could also see a look on his face of “ew stop!” so i stepped in and just as i did it was escalating to “i’m gonna take off your underwear!” threats and i felt my limit reached. i broke it down: “who can tell me who is allowed to take off your underwear?” and quinn, as if on cue, said, “me!”

as i was providing this information to the boys, luigi covered his ears and chanted “i can’t hear you!” mario turned to me and said, “it’s not true, he really can hear you.” then he sighed and turned to his brother: “the fact that you’re saying you can’t hear her just proves that you can hear her!”

quinn was so sad on the last night before we left new york. he was also overtired because we let him stay up late, but then while putting him to bed, he was inconsolable. he moaned about norman the worm and how it wasn’t fair that he would have to never see him again, and was norman going to stand any sort of chance at a happy life? and then he switched to downright angry and told me if i didn’t find a way to take him to new york once every month, or stood in his way of doing that on his own, then he was going to come to new york two times every month. “that’s 24 times in one year!” he informed me, not one to sacrifice math accuracy in times of distress. it was hard to take this as a threat, with my own inner process over leaving right there with his in the denial/anger/bargaining stages, and finally he let me help give a name to the sadness he was feeling, the raging ocean settled into the container i provided, and he calmed down and went to sleep.

he is growing more and more of a sense of self, which is hard to describe in concrete terms, but he has his own way of walking through the world, and when i look at him i can see that he’s confident. he’s not concerned if he is cool by others’ standards, but he wants to be quull (the word he created for the coolness of quinn; which he likes because it starts with q and has two pairs double letters). he is 8 quintillion different things (a number he particularly likes). he is full of surprises, and full of things so unique to him, all rolled into one huggable boy.

he lets me, no, wants me to, walk him straight up to the door of the school building, hand in hand, then gives me a big hug before he goes in. i remember reading the book hold on to your kids when he was much younger, which emphasized the importance of parents mattering more than peers, and i find little things from that book coming back to mind as our time together becomes more fleeting.i soak up those extra minutes just before i release him into the wide world of school, and even though he doesn’t get to finish the whole conversation about the science experiment they did yesterday in class with paper towel strips and blue and yellow water, i try to savor those seconds, and the air we breathe together on our one minute walks, hand in hand, up to the door. he is still so young, but i feel like i have had a pretty good amount of influence in the years leading up to this one. i compare right now to two years ago, and imagine if i had not fought for an alternative to public school for him. he would have been so much more likely to flounder, be labeled, be bullied, not speak up for himself. a fledgling pushed out of the nest too soon.

it seems he was ready to fledge this year. i still don’t have a lot of love for the public education option in general, nor am i convinced it is the best option for him, nor do i feel great about being so uninvolved in his education. maybe love will grow in time. i am volunteering in his classroom as the “science fair mentor” so i can even have an idea what is going on there in the institution, and we are keeping up on things at home that he is no longer learning at school, like cursive. but i do see evidence, from the boy who comes home to me 50 % of the school afternoons of his life, that he is soaring, he took off right at the right time for his needs for a wider sky to fly around in.

two years ago, i can’t picture feeling this much at ease (him or me), as he went off to school. i think he would have had a death grip on my hand, with a serious battle each day to convince him to let go. i remember him early on at ols telling his teacher he was “hungry to play”; and now, although he hasn’t said it in so many words, he is seemingly hungry to learn. he was relieved when “walk to reading” and “walk to math” began, and he got to go off with fourth and fifth graders to learn things at his level (”i don’t really like being taught things i already know,” he told me). he came home one weekend and spent the weekend deeply engrossed in learning computer programming on khan academy. you know, a little basic animation using variables in javascript, no biggie. the better to design new games with, my dear.

the next weekend that he was with me, we played dungeons and dragons all weekend; and when i say all weekend, i think i put in about 12 hours of time on the game, all told. i don’t often have such days where i can really give him my undivided attention, so i took advantage of it when i did. it was well worth it, because i got to meet a 189 year old man dungeon master alter ego of quinn inside the story/adventure/quest; his british accent is impeccable, and he has the old man mannerisms down perfectly. i can’t wait to enroll him in theater camp next summer. in the meantime, he is pretty fun to slay goblins with on a faraway island with a hidden cave under the sea lion rocks.

my elf alter ego, oceanika, and her dragon friend opalonyx.

the next monday morning i pull bits of faintly bluish paper towel out of my sweater sleeve that have snuck into his pocket at school because of wanting to show me the results of the science experiment, and then snuck out of the pocket to mingle with other laundry. he is not at home, and seeing this parenting glass as 50% full is back to being a serious discipline of focusing on gratitude for the time i do have with him, instead of focusing on just how empty it is without him around as i’m not driving him to school or waking him up to eat pancakes.

i had a teensy breakdown on the last full day we were in new york. i was trying to pack up some things to ship out, and kept hitting stupid snags, and it took me so much longer than i wanted it to, which was so frustrating because i wanted to spend quality time with everyone on our last day, but also because i was judging myself for how i behaved the whole week. i was crying by the end of the morning, and just sort of falling apart. then rich drove me to the post office and i got calmed down again. just like i would do later that night for quinn, he handed me a container for all i was feeling, and it stopped being quite so overwhelming.

i have the ultimate luck of getting to spend my days with this guy. it makes it pretty hard to mope for very long, even when i am missing my kid.

we thank our stars all the time that we have not known each other since i was in high school. to everything there is a season, and we met at just the right season in both our lives. some of the times would have been completely wrong (his extreme party phase coincided with my extremely conservative good girl phase) and others would have been downright criminal (i was 12 when he was 20…) so we laugh hysterically about those whenever someone names a year (1983; haha you could have been my babysitter, honey! or better yet, 1985, given all of the current back-to-the-future-day hype: me in second grade, him about to have a son!) and move on with our present-day bliss.

he’s one reason i think maybe, impossible as it seems, i may be able to “handle the seasons” of this stage, and the next 99 years of stages, of my life.

we recently dined at one of our favorite local spots, and when we walked in and sat at the bar, our friend/bartender told us the happy hour specials, and my brain thought, “margarita,” but i didn’t say it out loud. then rich said, “i’m thinking about a margarita.” i don’t think we have ever even had margaritas together besides one time with his sister and niece in oklahoma. it’s not only on superficial things like fun adult beverages that we are this in synch, it’s like a really common experience while spending my life beside this wonderful man, but i still get the good chills every time it happens.

it’s the infinitesimally small likelihood of two swallowtail butterflies finding each other before they are shredded by the elements, or the journey, or both, in this wide world of pesticide-drenched field-deserts and treacherous 4-lane highways and walmart parking lots to cross. then multiply that by 8 quintillion times less likely, and you would be describing the statistical luck of the two of us.

we get to be together, against all odds. and i like that.

a year in the life of a lifelong learner

Posted on June 29, 2015 by marybethrew

i have been delinquent on posting ~a month of unschool~ for so many months now, that it is time for an update on a whole year! i gave up on the idea of back-dating the posts and decided to do one giant long post of the whole year in the life of one lifelong learner. which also feels like a more fitting title for where we are in life at the moment. i am not threatening to make these posts become an annual thing, i’d rather go back to monthly, now that we’re caught up… so go run to the bathroom and fetch yourself your beverage of choice before you read on, this one is going to take you a few minutes! and as always, thanks for reading. xoxo

june 24- july 23, 2014

~ ols summer program ~ pinata making ~ new owner of a library card ~ game making ~ logic game playing ~ book sewing ~

~big creek park hiking ~ water quality testing ~

~ snake witnessing ~

~ oregon country fair ~ pokemon toting ~ totem ogling ~ beauty absorbing ~ fun having ~

~ snail experiment to test intertidal snails’ tendency to move towards red and away from blue, hence towards “shallow” based on the attenuation of light at depth ~

~ tidepooling ~

~ scientific method! a good experiment is repeatable! repeating the snail experiment with a different batch of intertidal snails, different species from a different beach, but same experimental design ~

~ experimenting with wind energy and how blade configuration affects windmill efficiency ~

~ blueberry picking ~ livestock visiting ~

~ earth dough volcano making ~

~ more snails, this time freshwater snails whose parasites are pretty fun to watch under a microscope ~

~ marine science center fun ~

~ returning the snails to their river home ~

~ reading ~ playing ~ eating ~ yoga-ing ~

july 24-august 23, 2014

~ pancake-ing ~

~ marine discovery touring ~

~ developing a farmer’s market booth (a biweekly tradition observed at ols for practice with currency and entrpreneurship) around trading cards ~

~ camping with family. i love the magical glowing dust motes suggestive of fireflies, and the purposeful walk of the kids ~

~ comic reading, pasta slurping, river romping, adventure plotting ~

~ joy bubbling up at the river’s edge ~

~ tent dwelling, water meditating, karate dancing, tire swinging ~

~ big creek park adventuring ~

~ library summer program fun, including dragon puppet theatre’s 2014 feature “it’s electric!” ~

~ selling his very own homemade pokemon cards at farmer’s market, using magnatiles to display his wares and organize his cash~

~ noodling, sparkling, sprinkling, camping, and generally having fun at squirrel fest ~

~ tie dying ~ peaceful kids power teaming ~

~ eating, tracking down carmen sandiego, breaking into dance moves ~

~ perhaps foreshadowing his future karate self, or maybe air drumming ~

august 24- september 23, 2014

~first day of schooling ~

~ setting up a rock museum ~

~ best friending ~

~ learning through games ~

~ learning through engineering ~

~ learning through time for reflection ~

~ ceramics magic ~

~ biking ~

~ slicing up a fresh batch of pokemon cards to sell ~ reading aloud to younger students ~ figure drawing ~ math gaming ~

~ 3 dimensional geometry using a variety of media ~

september 24 – october 23, 2014

~ a study of optics prompted by a visit to ols by a local eye doctor ~

~ pancaking ~

~ airporting ~ flying ~ cousin reuniting!~

~ happy times in new york ~

~ helping grampy with the tractor ~

~ noodle field hockey at the nature center ~

~ observing lots of nature center beauty and life ~

~ these photos were taken by quinn, as material he planned to use in creating pokemon stadium cards ~

~ shelter building ~

~ demolitioning grampy’s broken wagon ~

~ lounging with grampy ~ mountain coastering with rich ~ perler beading with cousins ~ celebrating with grammy ~

~ apple picking wagon riding ~

~ play time with friends and cousins ~

~ writing ~ practicing with the metric system ~ more work on the eye and optics ~

~ hiking and exploring cape perpetua ~

~ experimenting with color mixing ~ contributing to group art piece gratitude poster made from finger prints ~

~ reading the raven and other books about northwest native american culture ~ creating art in preparation for dia de los muertos ~ visiting a local tribal cultural center ~

~ learning firsthand what it means to be a seal or a sea lion, during a pinniped lesson ~

october 24- november 23, 2014

~ taking lots of walks down our gravel road, often wielding a staff like donatello ~

~ baking pan (bread) for dia de los muertos ~ learning all about the day of the dead traditions and participating in a celebration of it ~

~ writing stories ~ drawing zombies ~

~ making maps of haunted mansions ~ coming up with the idea for his halloween costume from a pokemon card ~

~ making a group totem pole, including his own totem animal, the owl ~

~ delving into dungeons and dragons (seriously academic stuff, folks. lots of great math, storytelling, mapping, creativity!) ~

~ listening to his dad play banjo and guitar at ols ~

~ celebrating birthdays ~

~ studying animal classification ~ solidifying concepts about the 5 groups of vertebrates (mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians and fish) and also being introduced to kingdom-phylum-class-order-family-genus-species ~ playing a scattergories-esque game where you have to name a mammal, bird, reptile, amphibian, and fish all starting with the letter chosen (this got all the kids opening up reference books, and i quickly abandoned any time-limits in favor of letting them dive deeper to find more obscure animal names) ~

~ making gratitude trees ~ making games ~ making adventures ~

~ learning about the process of taking wool from sheep to sweater ~ more figure drawing, this time from life ~ reading my old book the little lamb ~

~ taking care of dogs and guinea pigs ~ breakfast with a guinea pig snuggled in your blanket is a great way to start the day ~

november 24 – december 23, 2014

~ making applesauce (which them became fruit leather) using simple machines (apple peeler-corer-slicer and food-mill) ~

~ making pumpkin pie ~ simple machine grinder to crush the ginger cookies for the pie crust ~

~ rolling with the simple machines theme ~ building a rope-making machine from scratch ~ making rope ~

~ sculpting storyteller dolls ~

~ coming up with new pokemon card designs to sell ~ making a set of cards and a special elven rope (very thin, exceptionally strong) using the ols rope making machine, for his dad’s birthday present ~

~ clearing limbs off the road after a storm ~ drawing by flashlight in power outage ~

~ taking care of ruby tuesday ~ listening to stories ~ reading stories ~

~ planting a new tree for the local public library ~

~ celebrating friends’ birthdays. i love his birthday song face ~

~ 3d geometry ceramics project in final form ~

~ caroling at ols, this year’s favorite song was “do you hear what i hear?” ~ decorating our tree ~ making gingerbread houses with friends ~

december 24, 2014 – january 23, 2015

~ celebrating with family ~

~ exploring the arctic ~

~ indulging mama’s photography practice by posing in front of christmas tree lights ~

~ for a while ~

~ super patiently ~

~ worked on a new report topic (started out with dragons but ended up focusing on oregon trail) ~ studied perspective through painting ~ learned how to rock a kilt thanks to an awesome homemade gift ~ visited whale bones ~

~ movie magic, discovering stop-motion film making ~

~ around this time, quinn made a few quotable statements:

“learning would be so much easier without teachers”

“when ava sat down it looked like a white lily pad!”

noted here so that once the sticky note i jotted them down on gets washed in my jeans pocket only to end up stuck in the lint trap and lost forever, they are somewhere

~ began a month-long pioneers and oregon trail unit ~ making corn husk dolls ~ keeping an oregon trail journal from perspective of a pioneer, including a budget for the supplies they would need for their journey on the oregon trail ~

~ acting out pioneer life in a wagon built from fort magic (what a great learning tool! we used it in many applications throughout the year) ~

~ presenting his research on life on the oregon trail, specializing in the life of pioneer children ~

january 24- february 23, 2015

~ pioneers continued ~

~ slates ~ rules and rulers ~ pioneer lunch (ham, biscuits, jam, cheese, pickles, dried apples, wrapped in cloth or stored in glass jars) ~ nail, ear, neck inspection ~

~ baking biscuits, shaking butter, building a salt dough map of the united states featuring the oregon trail ~

~ building an oregon trail diorama, calculating the number of times a wagon wheel turned depending on how many miles it drove ~

~ celebrated a grand finale *pioneer day* featuring washboards for washing doll clothes, candle making, soap pouring, lunch packed in baskets with no plastic baggies or tupperwares or individually wrapped snacks, and 3-legged races ~

~ research presentation on scorpions ~

~ egg drop engineering ~ spill-and-spell and handwriting practice ~

~ beginning a salmon science unit ~ provided a home for some salmon eggs in a tank on our ols science counter ~ ate snack made with graham crackers, peanut butter, chocolate rocks and blueberries, that looked suspiciously like our tank bottom ~ played return to the redd board game (so much good curriculum on salmon science is available online, the problem was not thinking up curriculum but sifting through all the great stuff already out there!) ~ group art project and puzzle making a large salmon poster from individual coloring sheets ~

~ found our way home using our noses (each stream had its own characteristic essential oil fragrance in a packet clothes-pinned to each fork in the stream; i made the stream finger-knitting while kids were giving their research presentations ~ watched eggs hatch out alevins ~

~ science counter with tank full of eggs, and finished poster ~ we also sculpted and embossed fish in art class, but i didn’t have good pictures to show ~

~ turning 8 at school ~

~ turning 8 on his actual birthday ~

february 24 – march 23, 2015

~ large floor diagram of internal salmon anatomy ~ adding the heart ~ all parts taped on and labeled ~

~ dissection of an adult salmon (provided by fish and wildlife, who had some leftover from a trap survey ~ thousands of eggs! this was a female, and we got to see a male, too ~ one egg ~ the lens removed from the eye ~ (note: a dissection is actually not quinn’s idea of a good time, and he opted to do the virtual dissection and not attend this dissection; i still wanted to record it here, to remember what i taught in science class!)

~ celebrating turning 8 one more time for good measure! dragon party at the dragon house ~ featuring reading of treasure hunt clues and science experimenting with lava lamps, amid all the cupcakes and fun ~

~ pancaking ~

~ climbing ~

~ fraternizing with eagles ~

~ unstructured time playing pokemon in costume in fort magic ~ watercolor and marker on wood veneer ~ reading great books, such as buffalo woman, to himself ~ organizing his pokemon cards in a binder, with a cover he designed and decorated ~

~ sand therapy ~

~ game making lab and library (including all the game pieces you might need for creating your own game- fake money, dice, spinners, timers, mover pieces, letter tiles, and more); students developed their idea for a game, tested it by having other students play it, and then were given a blank game board (thrifted and covered with white paper) and a sharpie to make it a real game ~

~ fry growing rapidly in science counter tank ~ returning carcasses of dissected fish to the stream ~

~ group project: stop-motion animation of the entire life cycle of a salmon ~ man in black currently operating the camera is quinn ~

~ setting up insect prey and making salmon eat them ~

~ the finished film ~

~ returning a week later with our ready-to-release fry, we observed the way the ecosystem was utilizing the salmon carcasses; all but one had been “utilized” completely, and this one remained, covered in snails ~ each student got to release individual fry, carefully netting it and setting it free in the stream, along with a “wish for a fish” for health and survival prospects ~ a fun frog was found on release day as well ~

~ some of the kids named their fish; quinn released swimmy and sammy ~

~ the free fry, swimming in the stream ~

~ his own stop motion studio at home, this time with his birthday lego set of mos eisley cantina ~

~ fully absorbed in the wings of fire series about dragons, by tui sutherland ~ pinewood derby fun ~

~ started karate!!! ~

~ what he looked like in the evening after the first few karate practices ~

march 24- april 23, 2015

~ room makeover ~

~ creating a board game for a best friend birthday present ~ decorating eggs ~

~ diving wholeheartedly into his new passion ~

~ celebrating a friend ~

~ experiencing a watershed model ~

~ exploring book covers as a material for art making ~ contributing to a group art exhibit at the local public library ~

~ pancaking is always so much fun ~

~ dabbling in photography, quinn has recently had very urgent needs to use my camera, and these two are some of his shots ~

~ drumming on a drum set ~ i see more drums in our future ~

~ karate game called “whack the students” for practicing basic blocking set ~ quinn got to go first and not knowing what to expect, the whole group ended up laughing together as he dissolved in giggles ~

~ did you see me? ~

~ brief flashback to another day, another daisy ~

~ earth day writing assignment, inspired by an out-of-print book i came across at omsi years ago, and then bought a copy of, called while a tree was growing ~ quinn’s story from the perspective of the tree he chose to write about ~

april 24- may 23, 2015

~ alternative energy experiments with solar panels and windmills ~

~ an earth-day board game ~ experimenting with wind energy, using it to perform work, such as hauling “kids” (washers) up in an “elevator” (cup) which was great fun ~

~ making their own laptops and ipads, on paper ~

~ sucked into the diary of a wimpy kid vortex ~

~ earned his red tip, and qualified to test for a yellow belt ~

~ yellow belt test success! ~

~ guinea pig research presentation ~

~ practicing coordinate plane with “find the spy” game ~ making a special egg quilt square for teacher k ~ becoming a wizard with a handmade blue-agate topped staff ~

~ visiting tall ships with class and learning about shipping trade and the life of a sailor ~ visiting tall ships with mama and learning about capstans, windlasses, tillers and lines ~

may 24 – june 23, 2015

~ horsing around ~

~ creating our own comic strips ~ singing spanish songs ~ fishing and canoeing ~ reading a ton!~

~ going on “dates” with mama to the food co-op for treats and quiet time after school and before karate and devouring calvin and hobbes ~

~ yellow belting ~

~ learning about babies ~ grating the purple cabbage of science, and using purple cabbage acid/base indicator to test our water supply ph (it’s all good, we don’t have a lot of trouble with acid rain here) ~

~ practicing archery (here only in gesture, but for real at his dad’s house) ~

~ tidepooling and adventuring with friends ~

~ learning the yellow belt curriculum ~

~ sparring ~

~ graduating! the ols kids had a last day of school outing to one of our state parks, and had a wonderful, heartfelt graduation ceremony, involving stuffed bears with graduation caps, tassels with meaningful symbolic charms attached, and diplomas, in addition to some wonderful words spoken by teacher k about her hopes for the kids as they leave ols ~

(condensed and excerpted here, so he can look back on it and remember!)

“Always do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Remember that we are one. Anything you do for another, you do for yourself. And anything you do for yourself, you do for another.

Obey all laws so long as they’re just. Check to see if a rule or law is fair. Ask questions. If you find that a law is fair, then abide by it. If it creates injustice for another person or being or a group of beings, then don’t.

Love, Love, Love, Love. Keep your heart open and your mind sharp. Remember that the best way to conquer an enemy is to become their friend.

Finally, never accept the status quo. If everyone around you says it can’t be done, then ask them to kindly step aside so that you can get it done. If you want to see more love in the world, then be the love.

Remember that each of your lives is essential to our world. Be who you are. Love who you are. Like the many instruments in a symphony, we each play a part. Play yours with all your heart!”

~ seeing the world through rainbow colored glasses ~ here he is looking at his tassel, with its golden key to the world, and musical instrument charm (his was a saxophone) ~

~ earning his first black tip on his yellow belt ~

~ first lesson with nunchaka (“chucks”) which quinn thoroughly enjoyed ~

~ and onward we go, embracing whatever comes around the next bend or over the next bridge, learning all the time! ~

salmon science

Posted on April 1, 2015 by marybethrew

~ salmon science unit ~ provided a home for some salmon eggs in a tank on science counter ~ ate snack made with graham crackers, peanut butter, chocolate rocks and blueberries, that looked suspiciously like our tank bottom ~ played return to the redd board game and “great anadromous fish game” (for 4-5 grade practice with fractions, long division) ~ group art project and puzzle making a large salmon poster from individual coloring sheets ~

~ found our way home using our noses (each stream had its own characteristic essential oil fragrance in a packet clothes-pinned to each fork in the stream ~ watched eggs hatch out alevins ~ recorded observations ~

~ science counter with tank full of eggs, and finished poster ~ we also sculpted and embossed fish in art class ~

~ large floor diagram of internal salmon anatomy ~ adding the heart ~ all parts taped on and labeled ~

~ filling in their internal anatomy diagrams ~

~ dissection of an adult salmon (provided by fish and wildlife, who had some leftover from a trap survey ~ thousands of eggs! this was a female, and we got to see a male, too ~ one egg ~ the lens removed from the eye ~ there is an ipad app of a fish dissection that can be used a an alternate lesson for kids who want to opt out of dissections ~

~ fry growing rapidly in science counter tank ~ returning carcasses of dissected fish to the stream ~

~ group project: stop-motion animation of the entire life cycle of a salmon ~

~ setting up insect prey and making salmon eat them ~

~ the finished film ~

~ quinn released swimmy and sammy ~

~ the free fry, swimming in the stream ~

additional options… game making – have them make their own games to help others learn about salmon, salmon data math for various skill levels, stream water quality testing… can expand rather limitlessly!

~rainbow mondays~ fish wish

Posted on March 17, 2015 by marybethrew

red: an often revisited subject

orange-yellow: still looking lovely today…

green: lisa kitty in the grass

green on blue: i love the angles in this.

blue on blue

purple: tie dye and plaid. i didn’t take this one. 🙂 quinn saying a wish for his fish, swimmy, as we released our ols salmon fry on friday.

~rainbow mondays~

a splash of color on monday morning

a photo study documenting the colors of the spectrum: the balance points between light reflected and light absorbed

like a wagon wheel

Posted on March 11, 2015 by marybethrew

on new year’s day, coyote visited rich in the form of a near miss with his new truck. the next day, i drew a card about this new year, and sure enough, there was coyote, the piece entitled makes you stronger, by pixie campbell.

coyote travels the rough terrain, establishing territories everywhere. he learns his lessons the hard way, keeping a sense of humor about him as he goes. he turns rigid thinking upside down, preferring to keep it light, while adapting in order to survive. he is a humble teacher, a blissed out fool, an accidental genius. his song carries over mountaintops to find his kind. he is persistent, enduring and prolific. there is nothing he can’t do, nowhere he won’t go. he is fearless. coyote outlasts bad weather, yipping contentedly through his long days and many journeys.

haha, universe. keeping our sense of humor, check.

though i don’t think of them as fortune telling tools, this card turned out to be a fairly decent forecast of the trickster of a year we have encountered so far. luckily the strengths of coyote seem to be finding their way to the surface. i think i can say for our family that we remain persistent, enduring and prolific. fearless is another apt description. scrappy. we are definitely outlasting bad weather, and looking ahead to contented long days and abundant journeys ahead.

the weather hasn’t been so bad, in the literal sense, though in the metaphorical sense we have had been weathering some storms. rough terrain, indeed.

we were confronted around new years by our landlord, who said she was kicking us out as of this summer so that she could “get the house back in shape”. (background info: rich has rented our house for 18 years, raised his two kids here, his grandkids know it as “grandpa’s house”, my son has now lived half his life in it, and we have no desire to go anywhere else, ever. nor do our cats. he has also done everything required of him and then some as a tenant, or else we’d have no toilet, kitchen faucet, stairs to front and back doors, clean chimney, etc.) we countered what felt like an out-of-the-blue attack with “what if we offered to buy it from you?” and we have been attempting to negotiate with her ever since.

dealing with her, and learning lots of legal and real estate vocabulary, and feeling the threat of a potential major transition for the whole gang has been less than pleasant. i prefer to focus on the way rich set my heart aglow when he told me he wanted my name next to his on the deed. and of course, visualizing a successful sale and ourselves shaping this place up, with every incentive to do so, once we own it.

then there is our living school. my current livelihood, and the centerpiece of quinn’s current educational experience, will be on sabbatical next year. as of june, i need a different livelihood to manifest, and in september, quinn will embark on a different educational plan.

but hey, there is nothing scrappy coyote can’t do.

finally, i have put a lot of energy into trying to help a friend for whom i have been extremely concerned. this has been a brand new learning curve for me, and has definitely required fearlessness, persistence, and a sense of humor. it has been a mix of every stage of the grieving process, weighing and then stepping up to my convictions of responsibility i feel we have for each other in community, and a delicate act of balancing self care, family care, and friend care.

you know, small potatoes like that. nothing that a long-overdue hour-and-forty-five-minute phone conversation with my bff couldn’t put into perspective.

for our third anniversary in december, i made rich another mix cd to add to his growing stack, and one night i hovered outside the bathroom door to hear quinn singing an old crow medicine show song in the bathtub, “rock me mama like a wagon wheel, rock me mama any way you feel, hey mama rock me, rock me mama like the wind and the rain, rock me mama like a wagon train.” (the actual lyrics are “like a southbound train” instead of “wagon train” but i love his version). how sweet that the lyrics are applicable regardless of what sense of the word mama you’re intending; loving mother mama, or loving hot mama.

without a doubt, quinn had wagon trains on his mind when he picked up that tune, as we spent january at ols studying the oregon trail and pioneer living, which was deeply captivating for him. one of these days i will get the month of unschool posts back-filled so you can see the fun we had heading out west, and then in february, focusing on salmon as we hatched them from eggs in a tank in our classroom.

in quinn’s life lately, dragons are big, thanks in large part to the wings of fire series he has so enjoyed for bedtime stories. he has created a game that kids at school have adopted and adapted, based loosely on the books, where you get to choose if you are a mud, fire, water, or air dragon (i may be forgetting some elements), and then the play consists of using your particular powers, as far as i understand, to conquer evil dragons. of course i chose water, and our ceramics teacher chose mud. quinn is also better than halfway through listening to the lemony snicket audio version of a series of unfortunate events. he picks up the comics page in the newspaper regularly now and will announce, not very long after he picks it up, “i read this whole thing,” as in, “next!” and he is often found reading whatever he finds laying around. i, in turn, have been strewing plenty of library books in his path, as my unschooling roots dictate.

yesterday, quinn realized he had been graduated from the middle reading group, and his teacher told him his reading had opened up so much that he now reads on level with the “olders” group. she said his chest really puffed out when he heard that. the kids who were still in group (which he had walked in on at the end, which was how he had realized he was no longer in it) cheered him on and celebrated his accomplishment, without taking on any sense of inferiority. oh, ols. we will miss you next year.

when he isn’t reading, he is spending large amounts of time with pokemon cards in hand, and it’s fun to see how the kids at school respect and value his poke knowledge (oh wait, that is because it’s all about reading), as several more of the kids have started their own collections recently. he enjoyed more than a few minutes of fame when he added to his collection a mega charizard ex with 300 hp, found in one of the expansion packs rich bought him for his birthday. if you understood even half of that sentence, you’re doing well.

finally, he has become interested in stop motion animation, and i got a clunky but serviceable free app called zoetrope on my laptop to help him in that endeavor. it seems he has a bit of a knack for incrementally moving pieces of a lego set around, frame by frame, in order to tell a story. his first few films are linked here, in order of production date. after the first one, all the rest have been taken using my good camera.

if you have to choose just one to watch, i highly recommend arctic adventure, in which a friendly polar bear helps the valiant arctic explorers capture a crook who steals all their equipment from the research station.

like a coyote, and like a wagon wheel, we’ll be continuing onward across some rugged terrain, and we expect we’ll be yipping contentedly along the way!

~rainbow mondays~ dragons r us

Posted on March 3, 2015 by marybethrew

it’s rainbow tuesday again! we had a magical week celebrating a certain boy turning 8 years old, and an even more magical weekend! more pictures to come, this is just a taste of the rainbow.

red, and friends: after five or more years in storage to become a quilt, i decided to abandon the quilt idea. these colors were so perfect for dragon party decorations anyway!

orange: quinn has been enchanted by the wings of fire series by tui sutherland lately, and the rain wing dragons in that series keep sloths as pets. low budget re-purposed fabric gifts from mama included a pet sloth (his hands are magnetic so he can hang upside down from things) and a hoodie-turned-dragon costume.

yellow: looking lovely today, and every day.

green: party guests got to roll out and top their own personal pizzas.

more green: that way they had something in their bellies before they gobbled up dragon cupcakes (those blueberry nostrils are exuding chokecherry fruit leather fire from durango!).

blue: wow, sky. starry dogwood fuzzy buds.

blue: humming dragon on a lofty perch.

blue: chronologically out of order, this was quinn’s birthday cake for school on his actual birthday on monday. he requested cake with the texture and color of sand (but not the flavor of sand, i asked) and blue (a little darker than the sky, more like aquamarine) frosting that tasted like blueberries. he also wanted rainbow sprinkles (but only spread outside the circle of candles- yes he even specified the configuration of his 8 candles!) he is a detail man.

purple, and friends: playdough dragon sculpting was a popular party activity. i recently learned that switching my (read: my mom’s) standard playdough recipe to coconut oil instead of “vegetable oil” makes luscious, far superior dough for squishing. i may be late to the coconut oil party, though. in case anyone else doesn’t know, i thought it bore mentioning.

~rainbow mondays~

a splash of color on monday morning

a photo study documenting the colors of the spectrum: the balance points between light reflected and light absorbed

priorganize

Posted on November 14, 2014 by marybethrew

“mama, what was that word you were saying, priorganize?”

“prioritize?”

“Yeah, prioritize. What does it mean again?”

Quinn and I have talked about prioritizing each of the many things he *needs to buy. I have been explaining about budgeting and how if I need to buy food, a new hairbrush, and a CD, but if I only have money for one of those three things, I have to decide which is most important and buy that one first. Then I have to save up for the others. If the food is the most important thing to buy, then it is of the highest priority, while the others are lower priority items.

We also talked about prioritizing people over things. this came up over a theoretical question brought up at morning meeting one day: “who do you like better, cortez or clash of clans?” and some of the kids felt it was tough to decide between their good friend and a video game. once, when i swerved to avoid hitting a chipmunk with the car, quinn was annoyed that his pokemon cards had slid off his lap, but we discussed that while the pokemon cards could be reorganized, the chipmunks guts could not. we decided the chipmunk received higher priority.

Quinn has begun working on Dungeons and Dragons, and like Pokemon, I find that the game provides endless opportunities to work on reading, writing and math skills. the math in d and d is more advanced than adding and subtracting by 10s, as in pokemon, and it seems there are fairly unlimited possibilities for increasing complexity. Quinn’s writing has taken off, as he makes lists of powers and attributes that his characters have, and makes up clever names for them. It’s impossible to refuse a request from my child for another piece of graph paper. i have priorganized it pretty highly on the shopping list this week.

This kid has just finally learned what a punch bug is, but is much farther down several less mainstream paths in american culture.

we have returned to the season of waking up at 4 am to start our day, as there are more boats to weld than time in the day for rich to weld them. so i will be having more time to write in the mornings, if i can keep from nodding off. also, i know i said i was taking a hiatus from reading, but then ender’s game hopped off the library shelf at me, and i figured it was time for a re-read after all these years. my laptop keyboard is acting up, though, so if i suddenly start typing in all caps instead of all lowercase, that’s why, i’m not shouting at you intentionally. i am debating what to do with that. pay someone to repair the keyboard on my laptop which gives me warnings every day about how my operating system is no longer supported? brave black friday sales? hmmm.

i’m pretty happy to be getting up at 4 am to help this man of mine get out the door to work. having him roll his truck into the creek two weeks ago has really brought it home to me how much i really like having him alive. he came through unscathed (ok his elbow was scraped so i guess he was scathed, but for how bad it could have been, he was very lucky!) he is driving a different truck now, and although we were sad to see the truck in which we shared our first kiss depart, i am deeply grateful that i get to keep kissing the guy. it’s something i enjoy doing. the whole thing also reminds me just how awesome he is. not one to let loose ends dangle, the incident occurred on a wednesday and he was driving the new truck on thursday, commenting on how it must have happened for a reason, and making reference to the other serious car accidents he survived in the past thanks to what he considers to be miracles. in some of our earliest conversations, this was what drew me to him. he gets sh!t done, and he doesn’t dwell on the negative. i am in awe of his unswerving positive outlook on life and it makes me want to be around him as much as possible and strive to be half as efficient and positive myself.

silly old raccoons, you need to stay off the road.

recent tragedy in our small town has also had me holding my son just a little closer. i don’t even want to put the details into print here, but i also believe the event probably made the national news and many of you can guess at it. i am feeling sad for my friends who are friends of the family involved, and of course sad for the family. oh, mental illness. such a horrible way to go through life, and with such tragic consequences.

my own struggle with mental illness years ago pales in comparison but i have enough experience to know not to think of this human being as Other. what she did was horrendous but my guess is there were signs and calls for help and plenty of red flags, leading up to the unthinkable happening. while she is ultimately responsible for her choices and actions, there is a level of community responsibility. i say this more in terms of a responsibility to one another as human beings, rather than a responsibility for putting safety fencing on the bridge. i am thankful that when i called for help, i got help, and that the help i received was truly geared towards my healing so that i could go on and thrive in life, instead of merely surviving. and this was not help from one person telling me one thing i needed to hear, it was a community of support, some of which i sought out, and some of which was sort of imposed on me. if it hadn’t been for the combination of therapy, my friend and neighbor who happened to have a psych degree and helped me separate myself and my identity from my thoughts, my therapist who helped me focus on me instead of my (also mentally ill) partner at the time, al-anon (and my therapist urging me to go there), yoga, and the love and support of my friends and family, i might not be here to tell about it. seriously, without that particular constellation of miracles and providence converging on me at the right time, my story may have been very different.

concerning the tragedy in our community, a friend (one who knows the family) said the other day to her husband, “it makes our problems seem really insignificant, doesn’t it?” i think it offers a great opportunity for us all to do some priorganizing of what is really important in our lives.

ok time to lighten this up a bit. so, i have been teaching science, and as luck would have it, my class usually falls on a friday. doesn’t sci fri have a nice ring to it? so far this fall we have studied rocks (inspired by my rekindled love for them thanks to oklahoma), which morphed into a study of crystals, which dovetailed nicely with our geometry math unit, which then morphed into a unit on optics, lenses, and anatomy of the eye, which corresponded to having eye screenings at school, and culminated in the dissection of cow eyeballs. then we began an schoolwide theme of study of oregon’s first peoples, and so following up on a visit to the cape perpetua interpretive center and noticing the naturalists misidentifying the stranded sea lion in the intertidal zone as a seal, i wanted to make sure my students wouldn’t make the same mistake. this also worked nicely with the metric system math unit that was going on concurrently, and we converted the lengths of various marine mammals from feet into meters, and then realized we would have a hard time fitting an adult elephant seal into our classroom. after my pinniped class, i followed up with a lesson on the classification of vertebrates (and let the older kids in on the 5 kingdoms of living things and told them how king philip came over for good spaghetti.) i had a particularly validating i-must-be-in-the-right-place moment during the younger class when the kids all had a nice discussion among themselves about mammals feeding their young “mama milk” and how we humans are mammals because we drink mama milk. the 4-6 year olds quickly veered off on a tangent about how yummy mama milk was, and how now we are too big for it, but boy was it good! it made me a little nostalgic for the mama milk period in my life as quinn’s mama, and it also makes me wish for all mamas to be healthy in themselves, enough so that they can experience the delight in their child that i have been fortunate enough to experience.

also, i will put in another plug for self care, i cannot tell you how much better i feel after a dozen lengthy hot baths, a bunch of supplements, and finally getting back to yoga class. just in time for the holiday season. i encourage you all to consult your self care lists and remember to honor yourself and keep a little reserve during this season of outward giving.

mb

magic & bioluminescence

Tag Archives: our living school