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Public School and Me (the Mom)

January 21, 2015 by Jaci Dawn

My children attended public school during the early years, so most of our fun craft stuff was done on weekends or during summer vacations. In between those times, they had to get up in the mornings to catch the school bus. They liked school. They had great teachers and the school had a great support staff. Those were the years when (for us) public schooling was doing its job.

You need to be an advocate for your child if she is in public school and you are committed to having her there, but you needn’t make an enemy out of the teacher, either. The following vignettes are stories of me advocating for one or another child (or refusing to advocate, as it sometimes happened).

The first incident was when my oldest was in 3rd grade. She was advanced, and she got to spend part of her day in the 4-6 grade classroom. I’m fuzzy on the details, but something was done that caused the teacher in the advanced class to suspect the girls were cheating. Arwen was mortified and hurt. I listened to her side of the story and made a decision: she would ride this out on her own, write an apology to the teacher, and we’d see how things progressed from there. If a pattern of accusation developed, I’d get on my high horse, but for this one incident, I wanted my daughter to understand that adults view things differently and life is not always in our favor. We couldn’t prove she had not cheated (although I believed her and I let her know I believed her).

I don’t recall the consequences the teacher created for the crime, but they were not too excessive, and my daughter survived. There was no pattern of accusation and Arwen became something of a Teacher’s pet with that particular teacher, reinforcing my belief that she was fair. I believe, in the end, the teacher came to believe her accusations had been unfounded, at least in Arwen’s case. She saw a little girl with a conscience who was willing to try to win back the confidence of a favorite teacher.

Levi had a kindergarten teacher who started sending home homework. I understand that is the norm now, but not when I was a young mother. I returned to the school in person, homework in hand, and asked for a meeting. I explained to the teacher that the homework was redundant and I didn’t see any reason why my son should be doing workbooks in Kindergarten. She held a very different point of view. We kept it civil as she pointed out to me how many children come to school and the teacher becomes the focal point of their blossoming education.

I pointed out to her that we, as a family, were constantly reinforcing education by our lifestyle and the family games we played. I used the game “Slug Bug” as my example: you get one point for each VW Beetle, 2 points for a VW Van, 3 points for a VW van with camper pop-out, and 4 if you are lucky enough to spy a VW “truck”. The game is played on the road, the only rules being: it *must be a VW (call a Chevy Van and you lose a point), *no slugging, only calling, *first to call our gets the point(s), and *you have to keep track of your own points. Of course, I kept track of everyone’s points, too, so no cheating. If my son could manage the complicated math to play the game – and do it in his head – then why should he fill out a stupid 2+2=4 worksheet that belongs in the 1st Grade classroom?

I won. My son was set free from paperwork. He moved to the top of the class in no time.

Chrystal came to live with us when she was 10. Her new life coincided with me going back to work full time. The older kids were still home and homeschooling was an option, but I also knew Chrystal was deep in mourning for the loss of her mother and the knowledge of the loss of her father years before. We gave her the choice and she chose public school.

Enter Mrs. Tenure. She had a classroom of 30+ students (thank you, Goals2000 and the constant defunding of curriculum and classroom in favor of superintendents and outside managers for school districts). By the time the December parent-teacher meeting rolled around, Chrystal hated school. She wasn’t making friends (did you know that children pick on orphans? Yeah, sad state of commentary on peer pressure) and she was not blossoming. I sat down with Mrs. Tenure, my usual list of issues in my hand. Arwen’s Kindergarten teacher once told me that “You are the kind of parent a good teacher loves to see coming. A bad teacher doesn’t want to see you coming and will hate you.”

Mrs. Tenure was a Bad Teacher. Our session ended with her heavy sigh, in her heavily tenured manner, “Well, if you want better for her, you should just homeschool her.”

Chrystal did not return to public school after Christmas break.

There were the reading issues as well. I am a Christian, and while we did not go the homeschool route due to religion, it was an underlying foundation. Arwen was nearing the end of her 4th Grade Year when the beloved teacher actually asked the students what book they would like her to read aloud from to end the year out. The vote was overwhelming: something from R.L. Stine’s Goosbumps series. Arwen was certain she should not be listening to this and complained to me.

I went to see the teacher and she assured me the books were not demonic. She even offered to let me take one home to read & decide for myself, which I thought was a wonderful gesture. I accepted the challenge (and read the book overnight). I returned it and told the teacher that she was right – nothing demonic at all about the story line. However, I felt it was way underneath my daughter’s reading level and I thought Arwen’s biggest complaint was the writing style. I asked if Arwen could be given library time to read something more on her level (say, some Rudyard Kipling)? A compromise was met.

My style of advocating was to go in with an agenda, but never to confront the teacher as if she was doing something wrong. I had questions if they had time to address them. I was willing to listen and to research (read a book, for example). But I was never going to back down on what I deemed the quality of their education.

A lot can happen in the walls of a school building. Teasing, peer pressure, fights, suspensions, cheating, accusations of cheating. Most teachers are there for the right reasons. Most education laws are there for the wrong reasons. Teachers are trapped, too. Good ones will listen to you and acknowledge where their hands are tied. Bad ones will lean on their tenure and let out heavy sighs of, “You don’t know how difficult this class is. I have four Special Needs kids and yours is only one of them. I can’t do it all.”

I don’t hate public school or public school teachers. I hate the laws that tie our hands. I will fight to remove teachers who are resting on their laurels due to tenure (they were probably resting on their laurels as young teachers, too – just no one like me confronted them early on).

Good teachers loved me. Bad teachers lost me.

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An Announcement from my Grandsons

January 20, 2015 by Jaci Dawn

I am taking a little break from the homeschooling posts in order to bring you this.

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It says: DEAR GrAnDma i LOVE YoU VOLTRON Love, Zephaniah

Voltron, in case you are unaware, is the Defender of the Universe. He’s a Transformer ™.

I also received this:

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My daughter’s handwriting is scrawled across the bottom: Bad Voltron.

The other side reads (in my daughter’s hand):

Dear Grandma.

I hope you give me this present for my birthday. (Don’t worry, I’ve warned him it doesn’t exist) I love you.

Love,

Javan

My husband said, “Why can’t we give him that?

Me, “Because Voltron is a GOOD guy. There’s no ‘bad’ Voltron.”

But that’s not even the best part. The best part is the back of the envelope.

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HAHAHA! He must have been pretty proud of that picture.

I love my grandsons. Even the ones who can’t bear to part with their artwork.

 

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Early Childhood – Home: the Ultimate Preschool

January 19, 2015 by Jaci Dawn

I want to preface this with: I understand many women work away from home during their child’s toddler years. Single income living leaves a lot (if not most) families below the poverty level. So you gotta work.

I tried working outside the home when my kids were little. The biggest hurdle I faced was Day Care (which is now synonymous with PreSchool). The cost was counter-productive to start with. We made more money if I simply stayed home and didn’t work. More than that was this: I could not find a Day Care that met my stringent requirements for quality child care until a few weeks before I decided to give it up due to the high cost of quality Day Care. I will be forever grateful to Katy, that last Day Care person, for operating a quality business.

I won’t even touch on the horror stories, but I recommend you “drop in” without announcement to see how things are going. I fired one Day Care provider over what I found going on while I was at work (no, it was not abuse. It was more along the lines of emotional suppression: because my children were not allowed to nap (I’d never get any rest if they did nap), they had to sit in a quiet time for the entire nap period, without any stimulation such as work books. In other words, they were penalized for not needing to sleep.

I tossed out nap time when the oldest was 3 and I discovered that with a nap, she wouldn’t be ready for bed before midnight. She was always up at 5. Without a nap, I could put her to bed by 8 and she’d still rise at 5, but *I* would get some sleep. NO NAP. (To each his own.)

The greatest influence you can have on your child and his preparation for education is during these formative years. Their platform for learning is formed, their personality becomes more concrete, and their need for nurturing is at its highest. Forgive me if I cannot remember who said (Karl Marx?) that if you got a child before the age of 6, you could manipulate them to your will. (Paraphrased, & badly)

Before I had children of my own, I had twins. My dear friend, Janey, lent me her children while she worked. The twins were great learning ground (and their older brother, Justin, who I also watched for a period of time) for my future children. Before I had the twins, I had a summer job babysitting the adorable little girls who lived next door, ages 3 and 5 (or something like that): Tammy & “Beady”. Before those girls, I had talked my way into several summers of helping out at a local Headstart program during my Junior High years.

This was all during the time that I decided I never wanted children of my own. I loved the four year olds. It was the crying babies that got me.

The mother of the twins had a job with Headstart. She gave me the most valuable advice – ever – in raising toddlers. GIVE THEM A CHOICE.

She was appalled at the children who entered the Headstart program who did not know basic colors. “You and I, when we open the cupboards, will ask the kids, ‘Which cup do you want? The blue one or the red one?’ And they learn they have choices and what colors are. The kids who come in to Headstart have never been given those choices. Someone opened the cupboard and chose for them, never announcing what color the cup was.”

Sounds pretty sad, doesn’t it? When my ten year old niece came to live with us, she wanted to make hot chocolate and I told her it was OK. She heated the water (under supervision) but turned to me to ask permission to use a coffee cup in the cupboard. I was floored. “Any cup you want. They belong to all of us. They may get broken, but they *are* ceramic. WHY are you asking?”

“Because I was only allowed to use certain cups…”

Oh, for God’s sake. Unless it is a really special cup, who gives a flying leap? And aren’t YOU going to break it anyway, sometime? What did it cost you? Five, ten, fifteen bucks??

Or you can use all plastic in your house, but since I am opposed to plastic… Hey, don’t judge me. I won’t judge you.

So – the number ONE tool with toddlers is this: Give them a choice. A color. A size. “Do you want orange/cranberry/grape juice in the pink/blue/red/yellow cup?”

Go on “Treasure walks.” I’m pretty sure I invented this. You give your child a bag and you take their hand and you go for a walk around the neighborhood or park – at their pace – and pick up anything that interests them (exception: tossed condoms and needles. Sorry for the reality check there). Leaves, rocks, piece of glass (you might want to pick that up), wire, broken sunglasses, anything that catches your child’s attention. These are “treasures”. My oldest lives near a harbor and often has smelly crab claws in her home. They’re treasures. Get over the smell.

Stackable cups. I bought my set from Discovery Toys. Unless you have the personality to sell, purchase these from someone online. I might know someone who sells them, but most of my friends are Introverts and it’s likely that if they once sold them, they gave up.

Stackable cups teach kids how to measure, build castles in the sand, pour water, and stack items.

Duplos™ is a huge resource. Not only are they colored, but they stick together and you can create things. This is a HUGE pre-math skill.

Puzzles. Any big puzzle. Pre-math skill.

Crawling. Most new parents do not realize this, but crawling is very important. Don’t encourage your child to skip this developmental stage. Crawling is a pre-reading skill.

Pat the Bunny & other books are great, but at this stage they really just want YOU to read to them. In our house, my husband took on this role. He worked odd hours and the only time he felt he could connect to his children was to read them bedtime stories. He was a very literal reader, so he read the stories as written. Our children went to bed with those stories for the first 5-7 years of their lives.

(I am a more imaginative reader and will sometimes skip words to move onto the emotion of the story.)

Just think of things YOU can do to interact with your child, but still be an adult.

Homemade *Playdough – the best recipe can be found on the side of a cornstarch package. So you have to clean it up. You *are* the grown up.

Picking autumn leaves and ironing them between sheets of wax paper.

As i Said in my previous post: YOU are the limit. You need to decide how dirty you want o get (these are kids, for crying out loud: GET DIRTY) and what projects you want to do (COME ON!!! PLAY DOUGH!)

Veterans – please list your favorite Go-To ideas in the comments.

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Getting Family (and Friends) to Support You

January 18, 2015 by Jaci Dawn

Don’t. That’s really the only word applicable here.

If you are like me, you will be lucky in that your parents (or, in my case, parent) will support you. My folks never questioned any of my choices, not even the dicier ones like selling all my belongings to travel the U.S. on a Greyhound bus, solo.

You probably won’t be that lucky.

But what about friends? Or your church? They’ll support you, right?

No. Well, let’s classify that: if you attend a church where most of the families homeschool, yes. The church we were attending: no. But they didn’t support us when we brought Chrystal into the family. The senior pastor’s wife pulled me aside and said, in all earnestness, “You don’t have to do this, you know.”

No, I didn’t know. And I will *never* regret the decision to bring my niece into my family and to introduce her as my daughter. Never.

EVERYONE will ask, “WHAT ABOUT SOCIALIZATION?”

You didn’t even know that was a childhood concern until you decided to pull your child out of the indoctrinational halls of public education.

What the hell is ‘socialization” anyway?

Merriam-Webster defines it as: : the process by which a human being beginning at infancy acquires the habits, beliefs, and accumulated knowledge of society through education and training for adult status

The Psychology Dictionary defines it as: 1. The process by which we learn social skills. 2. The process that employees adjust to a working environment. 3. The process where people become aware on lifestyles and behaviours.

SOCIALIZATION: “Socialisation is the process by which we learn social skills.”

The first words out of your best friend’s mouth (unless she/he is already a convert to homeschooling) will most likely be these: “I don’t know about this ‘homeschooling’ idea of yours. What about ‘socialization’?”

Now, you could quote The Princess Bride. “I do not thin’ that mens what you thin’ it mens.” (Translation: I do not think that means what you think it means.) And you’d be right, because your best friend doesn’t have a clue about what that word means.

She means: But they won’t know how to stand in line for crappy food in the cafeteria, be embarrassed by the school bully, don cute little cheerleader costumes, and learn about sex by reciting johnny m*f*r behind the gymnasium.

Yeah. Let’s talk about “socialization”.

Unless you are one of those rare (but highly profiled) monsters who is planning to chain your child to a metal bed and hide them in the basement, feeding them the spare moldy bread crumbs, there’s a pretty slim chance that your child will not be properly socialized by the time she/he enters the adult world. She might be naive, but she will know how to fold a dinner napkin and sit down to dinner with people older than her. (And she will know all about s*x because she stole your copy of The Color Purple from your private bookshelf because she didn’t know it was forbidden to her.)

But she’ll miss The Prom!

Big friggin’ deal. Want to know what *I* did for my prom? I designed it, created the dance cards, decorated the school gym. I waited for someone to ask me out. No one did. I spent that night babysitting a wailing infant and a sleeping toddler, trying my hand at chords on my employer’s guitar. It wasn’t the best prom ever, but I made good money and the person who hired me to babysit her children is still a friend of mine.

My husband doesn’t even speak to the person he took out for prom.

Besides, homeschoolers actually have worked out ways for their children to enjoy the same benefits as publicly schooled kids! My son’s first date was to a homeschool dance when he was just 13. I sat in the car outside and read a book, but her father stayed inside and played chaperone. OOOOO fun.

My son developed a lifelong love of dancing which later led to community college courses in swing dance and going out on the town with a core of swing dance friends he made.

But he won’t get to play on the football team!

Back up here. If your goal in life is to raise a professional athlete, and your child has the talent to make it, public school may be your best option. You can still raise a very aware young person by being involved in every step of their education. Still, even *if* you are a homeschooler, most states allow your child access to the athletic programs. Believe me, if your homeschooled athlete has the talent of a Tim Tebow, I’m pretty certain a public school will make all kinds of allowances to allow your child to play – or to please you in the academic portion of their program. That’s not even a valid argument.

Let’s talk about what homeschooled kids can do that might make them more socially acceptable. Private music lessons, sewing lessons, crewing on a hot air balloon. Girl Scouts, Boy Scouts. 4-H, FFA, volunteering at an old folks’ home, participating in the Society for Creative Anachronism, Civil War Reenactments, Rendezvous reenactments, local theatre, Civil Air Patrol… Are you getting the idea?

We did: Cub Scouts, 4-H, private riding lessons, hot air balloons, Renaissance Faires, sewing lessons, band (just off the top of my head).

The sky’s the limit. Well, not quite: YOU are the limit. What you say “NO” to and what you say “YES” to will matter. What you are willing to shuttle your child around to/from, will matter. What you can afford will matter. The same as publicly schooled kids, your demographics and personal core beliefs will matter.

Socialization, however. is going to happen no matter what you do. It will happen according to your child’s personality and temperament. Grandparents, neighbors, other parents, and playmates will all have an influence on your child’s socialization – whether you want them to or not.

My children were not allowed to swear, but if we spent a weekend with my husband’s father – well, they learned every swear word in the book by osmosis. It wasn’t my place to correct my f-i-l. If he couldn’t filter his own mouth, then I had to explain the words to my kids. I wasn’t going to stand in the way of their love for their grandfather (or his love for them), so I interpreted. You have the choice to filter your family.

My own father judged children by whether or not they connected with him. He didn’t like children who would not talk to him as if he was their peer. He loved kids who could sit at the table with him and engage in an adult conversation, and kids who showed an interest in what he had to say.

We crossed cultural boundaries. Don’t be afraid! Our children attended a Christian Romani funeral. If you don’t know who (or what) the Romani are, look it up. I still have very good Gypsy friends, but they aren’t on Social Media. If we happen to meet in Portland, we hug and kiss.

Funerals, weddings, folk gatherings, art museums, camping, hiking, skiing, boating – life is limited by your imagination.

If your best friend still thinks your children are not properly socialized… You may need to adjust to the next season in your life and a new best friend. But keep the old one, if you can. Old friends are gold.

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Resistance: Lack of Support for Homeschooling

January 17, 2015 by Jaci Dawn

The first roadblock to our decision to homeschool our children was that we didn’t know anyone in real life who did it. The second roadblock came from friends and family, and even our church: anyone who can pronounce the word socialization will suddenly question every parenting technique you use. The first roadblock was easier to overcome.

The only person I knew of who homeschooled was an author in Washington State. I knew he homeschooled his four children because he wrote a book about it that consequently fell into my hands, and I read it. That he would later be better known for his novels was a side benefit: for me, David Guterson’s non-fiction treatise on homeschooling, Family Matters: Why Homeschooling Makes Sense, became my road map to home educating our children. If this man, who was a public school teacher at the time, decided to homeschool his children and could make a strong argument on the issue of socialization, then so could we.

Other friends refer back to authors like John Holt  or books like the Moores’ Better Late Than Early.

Our decision to homeschool was made in the late 1990’s. I started to meet local people who did homeschool, all Christians of different denominations. I had one friend in particular who lived just around the bend in the highway, and we often got together so our children could play. She worked full time as a nurse (you can homeschool and work outside the home) and I was a stay-at-home mother. Our children were close to the same age and we had the same underlying faith.

We progressed into homeschooling and soon discovered there were hidden pockets of homeschool support groups locally. Some were specific to a church where all the families were encouraged to homeschool for religious reasons. A nearby school district put together a short-lived co-op to support local homeschoolers and to offer them some of the benefits that publicly schooled children had. Our county library eventually developed a homeschool center.

We discovered these places because we were now using the lingo of homeschooling and they were on our radar. They had existed before, in some form or another, but because we were not looking for them, we did not know they existed. Now we were looking for them – and they were there.

Music lessons, theater, art.

The library, museums, book stores, antique stores.

Sports were nearly always through some community program and not the schools (although we did not participate in sports).

The local community college offered free classes to homeschooled students who could meet certain criteria (over the age of 15 unless the child challenged the test – we did know one boy who started there at age 13). Note: this perk was subsequently challenged by the public schools and other community colleges in the area and it consequently went away, but not before Arwen & Levi made full use of the benefit.

The kids were covered, but what about me? I had that one friend who homeschooled; none of my other friends even considered the idea.

The Internet existed, but not every home had a PC. Social networking consisted of websites like egroups. Egroups was later replaced by Yahoo Groups. I belonged to a small group of horselovers and it was through that media that I was introduced to the online support group that saved my sanity. There are now myriads of such support groups: on Yahoo Groups, Facebook, MySpace (does anyone still use MySpace?), and other social media posting boards.

The Internet saved me. The online support group I joined was a diverse group of homeschoolers who were exploring a radical idea called “unschooling”. I jumped in to a conversation (called a “thread”) and that was it – I was assimilated. That was sometime in 1997. I am still part of that support group, and the people who have passed through those emails are now some of my very best friends, some in real life, some on Facebook, and all through “the ccu-sisterhood” (apologies to the men who have occasionally braved those sacred halls).

I started as a school-at-home homeschooler and quickly found out how difficult it was to manage to do lessons with resentful children. I moved to a more eclectic style, following the advice I received from these online gurus, some of whom were full-on unschoolers in every radical sense of the word. They also supported me when I decided to send Chrystal to public school, then private school, then charter school.

If I needed to rant about a husband who wanted more out of the kids than they were willing to give, I had a sympathetic ear (and often a wise one that said, “Maybe he just wants to feel like he’s part of the team”). A child wrecked a bicycle and made a six-point fall (one point for each part of the body that hits the gravel)? Instant prayer support. My neighbor’s son shot my child in the head with a .BB gun? A calming circle of hugs (the child was fine and the x-ray proved he did, in fact, have a brain in his head).

What if my child can’t seem to wrap his mind around cursive writing? What to do? Maybe cursive writing is not that important. Who says it is important? Why is it important? Can you be willing to let it go?

That kid still doesn’t write in cursive.

Better yet, if one of the online members was going to be in the city near you, there was an immediate clamor for “do you think we could meet? In person?”

I learned the most important things in homeschooling are these: coffee. wine (for mom). dark chocolate. Led Zeppelin. The ability to quote from The Princess Bride. Forgiveness. Library cards. Overdue library books (and checking out more books for your daughter on your card until she can pay off her library fines).

And last, learning how to say Please pass the bean dip when family doesn’t understand your choice (or other real life peers).

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Journey to Homeschooling by a Veteran

January 15, 2015 by Jaci Dawn

Something that is near and dear to my heart is education. I did consider (very briefly) going into education as a career. I think I was 12. As I said, it was a very brief infatuation with the idea. I lasted longer with my desire to become a veterinarian (hopes to pursue that career were dashed when I flunked high school biology my freshman year. I mean, what tendon connects to what bone? Say, again??).

The thing is: I love to learn. I love to read. I’m fascinated with geography, anthropology, history, literature, English, culture, art, physics. I’m even pretty fair at mathematics and some of the other sciences as well.

The one thing I did not particularly plan for when I was still in school was parenthood. I babysat a lot through high school and I was pretty convinced I would never want children of my own. Of course, I hadn’t reached that point in life where my maternal drive kicked in. When I reached that point, I decided I wanted a house full of boys. Four boys. That sounded so perfect. No daughters, frilly dresses, hormones. Just four rambunctious testosterone driven daredevils.

Thankfully, God intervened. In both counts. Well, He didn’t allow me to become a veterinarian which is just as well. I’ve played vet to enough pets and I cry every time I bury one.

God shot down my four-boy-household dream when my first-born was a girl. Now, I love that girl with all of my heart, and she went on to (nearly) fulfill my dream when she brought four wonderful grandchildren into my life: three boys and one girl. The last one is the girl. But I knew as soon as she was born that I wasn’t going to be mom of four boys (I’m astute like that).

My son weighed 10 pounds 3 ounces at birth. That scratched any idea I had of having more children. Two pregnancies (well, three – the first ended in a miscarriage) was enough for me. I’d settle for two.

Again, God intervened, and I ended up with three children, but the third one came to me when she was 10 and I didn’t have to give birth to her. That’s almost the best kind of childbirth: let your sister do the pushing. (Note: I don’t recommend this. I mourn my sister every day of my life. It’s just I can’t sit around and not acknowledge the fact that humor is a healer.)

I kept putting my dreams on hold for this or that in the formative years of our marriage. Finally, our children were off to public school and I was a stay-at-home mom, involved in PTA and shuttling kids to and from activities.

Enter the 1990’s version of “Common Core.” I love Barbara Bush’s spunk, but I despise her stance on education. Oregon’s version of Goals2000 was written by our current governor (who was governor then) and several other politicians. I brushed up with “Behavior Modification” when I was in college and my first roommate was studying to become a teacher. She loved the concept; it scared me that teachers could think they had the right to modify behavior at will.

Now we had some set of vague “goals” that were supposed to raise the standard of education for our children. MY children. Goals that started with removing parental involvement. Goals that were so vague as to leave out large portions of history, social sciences, geography, and government. Funding for public schools in the State of Oregon was at an all-time low (recommended: Mr. Holland’s Opus. This was filmed in Portland and reflects the low priority the Arts were receiving during that time period).

It is a fact that music is a pre-math skill and children who are exposed to music early in life do better at mathematics than children who are not exposed.

But let me back up to the mom thing. I had (at that time) the two kids. My oldest was a surprising prodigy to all who taught her. She spent one school year in a Christian school where the administrators continued to test her reading skills because they were amazed at how well she read, how fast she read, and how much she comprehended from her reading. She was in First Grade. By the time she was in the 3rd Grade, she had achieved a Johns Hopkins Scholar Award and she was spending half of her time in the fourth/fifth grade classroom doing advanced work. She was labeled “gifted”.

My son was also gifted. Anyone who knew him, knew that. His teachers saw through him. He screwed around in class with his two best friends while the rest of the class struggled to catch up to them. He hated math and he couldn’t read, but he was light years ahead of his classmates in comprehension.

I wasn’t worried about his reading. I’d read the studies. I knew what sort of learner he was. I knew he was bright. Math, now, I worried about that. It turned out that he just needed permission to count on his fingers. Why schools don’t allow kids to add on their fingers befuddles me. I struggled with math for the same reason and I developed strategies to work around that handicap.

Did I mention that I am a fair hand at basic math? There’s no law against counting on your fingers after you leave public school.

I did not intend to homeschool. I did not even know it was a legal option. Or an option at all.

They closed our school. Our PTA fought the school district, Goals2000, and the laws in the State of Oregon to keep “our” little school open. We lost. They won. And many of us withdrew our children (and our designated tax support) from the school district. We were one of those families.

I stumbled into homeschooling because I felt I had no other option given the circumstances. Once again, I set my goals aside (not complaining, just a fact of the matter) and brought my children home full time.

Yes, there was a fight. Yes, there was criticism. No, there was not a lot of support – at first. There was even inner turmoil as I realized that I was giving up my Alone Time (that essential for all introverts) to be a full-time mom and educator. It was overwhelming. We made a lot of mistakes.

We tried the traditional school-at-home approach first. You know, everyone gets up at 8AM, eats breakfast, and then sits down with a workbook and does real school work. I think a lot of would-be homeschoolers quit at this point. My kids didn’t make it easy. They resented school at home. The oldest resented homeschooling. They really rebelled at Bible study. I could do an entire parody of trying to teach my children the Bible at home.

Lesson: Pick your favorite verse from the Bible and memorize it.

Daughter: “Jesus Wept.” John 11:35. The shortest verse in the Bible.

Son: “I will make mine arrows drunk with blood, and my sword shall defend your flesh; and that with the blood of the slain and of the captives, from the beginning of revenges upon the enemy.” (or some such similar verse out of Leviticus or Deuteronomy – does it matter?)

We scrapped Bible lessons early on.

Early on, I discovered the Internet. This was in late 1997. Our first computer arrived in a box from my older brother. My son (age 11) set it up in minutes. I’m pretty sure he was already IMing some pretty girl he’d met at church by the next Sunday.

I fell into an online support group called Christ-Centered Unschoolers (which still exists, by the way, on Yahoo! Groups). They introduced me into a radical new way of thinking about homeschooling called “unschooling”.

More on that tomorrow. Suffice it to say that all three kids have since graduated from some form of homeschooling now and I am a veteran. I loved being a teacher.

 

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Today Felt “Off”

January 12, 2015 by Jaci Dawn

I can’t put my finger on it, but the whole day just seemed odd. I love my new job and I am slowly getting organized. I picked up a few groceries after work and drove home – it seemed like the world was in slow motion, and I’m loving that. I am fully enjoying the lack of two daily deadlines and the sense of panic that comes with them. Life is small town slow, and I love small towns.

I don’t think that is why the day felt “off”.

I tried to take a nap after dinner and all I could think of was the troubling headline I’d read before I left home this morning: 2,000 dead in northern Nigeria. There were other headlines: the unrest in Paris after the deadly attack on Charlie Hebdo; the recovery of the black box from AirAsia’s Flight QZ85o1; girls being used as suicide bombers in the troubled Middle East; and the tirades on Facebook for or against gun control.

My mind raced through the centuries. History, as I recall it, has always been rather bleak and depressing. History fascinates me: the ability of human beings to survive human beings.

The Khans were amongst the worst. I’m fuzzy on the details (note to self: read up on Ghengis and the klan), but I recall reading a passage in James Michener’s Caravans: A Novel of Afghanistan about the scenes where thousands of human skulls were piled up as a record of Ghenghis Khan’s bloody conquest of the Asian continent. I read that back when I read everything James Michener. It starts out with a beheading in a public square.

There was Pol Pot, who is barely even mentioned in current histories, but who reigned terror in Cambodia with the Khmer Rouge. He was known to have murdered at least 3,000,000.

Idi Amin, Hitler, Manifest Destiny, the practice of genocide against aboriginals in Australia. The Norse raiding the shores of Ireland and Scotland. The Romans. Constantine. The Bible has passages where God told the Israelites to erase certain races of people from the earth (they disobeyed and allowed survivors, bringing God’s wrath down on them). Cain murdered Abel over a technicality that Cain failed to observe.

We have a bloody history.

As a Highly Sensitive Person (not saying other people aren’t sensitive!), I have a tendency to put myself in the position of the girls kidnapped by Boko Haram and forced to carry explosives into a public market. I empathize with the victims and plan how to be a survivor.

Taking a step back, when I first started homeschooling, I did so because I did not trust what government schools were teaching our children about history. Government schools were not teaching history: how many times can you cross the continent in a covered wagon and celebrate Oregon’s very existence while ignoring the American Civil War or the very Revolution that created the United States of America? And what about that French Revolution?

I told my children that if it ever came to it, the first people a despot will seek to kill and destroy are the educated, the artists, the journalists, and those who have learned to think for themselves.

Thinking about it, that is exactly what bothers me: the despots have reached out and murdered the artists and the journalists. What happened at the editorial office of Charlie Hebdo was the front line in a war against a war against a modern-day Ghengis Khan’s army. They have reached out and killed the intellectuals, the artists, the journalists.

Don’t think for yourself. Don’t have a biting sense of humor. Don’t mock their form of government.

This is not a war against a religion. The religion – Islam – has managed to peacefully co-exist (more or less) with other major religions for centuries. The last recorded war against Islam was the Crusades (which was also a war against the Jews). Islam, Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism – these have all brought the arts, literature, the sciences, and mathematics to us. We now have a single-minded faction that seeks to undermine and destroy all of that beauty.

Why? Don’t these people read history? For the Americans who have converted and traveled to Iran to join some jihadist army: did you not read about General George S. Custer? Adolf Hitler? Anyone take note of where the Khans are now in the historical time line of things?

George Santayana. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

The problem is: they condemn everyone around them to repeat it. It doesn’t end well for the despots. It doesn’t end well for tens of thousands, if not millions, of people.

I don’t believe we can sit in a circle and sing “Kumbaya” to end this war. I do believe that the only answer is a full-out hammer-on-the-head sort of answer (that’s my Norse ancestors speaking). Bury them. Blast them off the face of the Earth. They aren’t going to listen to the Voice of Reason.

Don’t get me wrong: I am a pacifist. I puke at the idea of someone punching another human being. I spanked my kids and cried afterward. I was sorry I never read anything about kind child rearing before I had kids (and I am doubly sorry that I did not know I suffered from clinical depression which made me angry).

The biggest problem with my approach to this pestilence called “radical” Islam (I prefer to call it “misguided”) is this: the number of innocent lives that will be lost. That bothers me. No one should be collateral damage.

On the other hand… I have trained myself to react/respond to personal threat by going full-out psycho woman. Maybe Mama Bear is the only response we can offer. I don’t know, but I know it disturbs me that we seem to be tied to civility in our response to a very uncivil war.

I wish I knew the answers. I also wish it didn’t haunt me in to my working hours.

I wish for the 1960’s and the Cold War. So much for that.

 

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Neighbors & New Year

January 3, 2015 by Jaci Dawn

I have decided not to post my resolutions this year (well, maybe ONE – at the end of this post). I’m too busy reveling in fewer working hours and loving the new job.

One thing I love about the new job is that I leave for work much later now. I used to race the other neighbors out of the ‘hood at 0-dark-thirty. They all headed south on our street and I turned north. I suspect we all eventually went north, but I was the only one who deliberately headed out to use the Little Bridge (Oregon City Arch Bridge) in order to avoid the mess of traffic on I-205.

Friday, the 2nd of January, I stood out in the cold, scraping ice, when my next-door neighbor from the south side came by. He was walking his dog, Levi. Levi is a blue merle cow dog of some sort – not quite an Aussie Shepherd. Phil doesn’t really live next to me: his mother does. Phil stays there when he isn’t working.

We stood and caught up a little on life and then Levi wandered over and peed on our newspaper. I started laughing. Phil looked embarrassed. Levi looked satisfied.

The paper is wrapped in a plastic sleeve to protect it from Oregon rain (and dog piss, apparently). I assured Phil that it was OK and I carried the paper up to the front porch (sans plastic cover) for my husband. (My husband said, “Well, a guy has to have something to aim at…”)

Today, I headed out with Harvey for a walk and we met Phil at the same place: the end of our driveway. This is the first time Levi and Harvey have officially met each other. There were sniffs, some tail wagging, and at least one excited whine. No growls, no hackles bared: the dogs like each other. Then Levi went and peed in the same spot the newspaper had been the day before.

Phil told me that today was not a good day for his mother. Virginia had an upper respiratory infection and can hardly breathe. She has dementia and this is the main reason Phil hangs around. Two years ago, his father, Bob, passed away after a massive heart attack. Bob was a great neighbor and I wish I had known he passed when he did – I would have gone to his funeral. But I didn’t learn until months later when I met Phil out walking around the block. Since that day, whenever I meet Phil out there, we talk about hings: his mother, his divorce, my husband’s brush with Atrial Fibrillation, the economy, and the weird neighbors to Virginia’s north (and directly behind us).

Later today, I was outside taking down all of the Christmas lights and decorations. I heard a friendly, “Hi Neighbor!” and turned to see Joe.

Joe is one of The Neighbors directly behind us and to the north of Virginia. There are three of them, all siblings. The sisters and Joe. I don’t know the whole story on them, but they are all on disability of some sort and they rent the place from the guy who refuses to fix the fence his tree squashed 7 years ago.

The guy who owns the place is a certified A-hole. His tree dropped a number of large tree-sized branches in a wind storm: one damaged Virginia’s roof and gutter, and another crushed the chain link between our house and his rental. He owns the fence.

In Oregon, fences are owned by whoever built them and what property they lie on. We have four neighbors who own fences around our property, and we own fence on one neighbor’s property. Three of our neighbors are awesome and responsible (and, actually, WE replaced the fence that Harvey ate because it was OUR dog who ate the fence that belonged to the other neighbor).

Landlord Guy refused to pay for the repairs to Virginia’s house and he refused to repair the fence between our properties (despite the fact that his renters have a large dog and we have two). He did not make points with Virginia’s husband, Bob, or with us. I put up a bamboo screen and wired it to the broken chain link fence. Works quite well.

The sisters are … strange. One loves to landscape and she’s done an incredible job in the rental yard, BUT – she landscapes in her bikini. Think Twiggy at age 60. Hence the bamboo screen.

The other sister has a pet tortoise that she calls a turtle. It’s name is “Precious”. Precious lives in the backyard in the summer. We eavesdrop on conversations that go like this: “Precious? Where are you? Oh, there you are. No, don’t eat that, Precious. You’re a bad girl, Precious. Precious, I know you love me…”

Then there’s Joe. Joe introduced himself shortly after moving in. He’s bipolar and on disability. He had a large German Shepherd named Max, but Max disappeared after a friend’s pet bunny was discovered dead in the yard (“Max! How could you??”). Max was replaced by a brindle pit bull whose name I forget. You can see Joe and the pit bull walking all over town.

I have been told that one time S.W.A.T. invaded our back yard as they surrounded the rental. This story was relayed to me by the other back yard neighbor, Joe’s neighbor to the north. I don’t know where WE were when this happened as it was apparently quite entertaining. This particular neighbor has no love loss for Joe’s sisters and their many “guests”.

We all agree on one thing: we all like Joe.

So here was Joe today, being pulled around by his brindle pit bull. I stopped what I was doing to say “hi” to him and to exchange pleasantries. He asked about our dogs. He was going to his mom’s later to watch football. And he seemed genuinely surprised (and pleased) that I remembered his name.

Joe is odd but he’s not a bad guy. His landlord, however…

Anyway, I thought it was kind of cool to see my neighbors and talk to them. Sometimes you can live in a place and never know your neighbors.  It’s so easy to go there in this day and age.

New Year’s Resolution

So – here’ my biggest resolution. There are smaller ones, but this is the one I want people to hold me accountable to.

I want to BE THAT PERSON. The person in the link who is the “heartwarming” example of humanity. My friend, Cindy, told me on Facebook that I am already that person, but I don’t think I am – yet. This is my goal.

We live in a troubled, hateful world. If those of us who live in the world where this blog can be posted and read – freely – would only resolve to BE THAT PERSON – we could change the world just a little, teeny, tiny bit. Be kind. Go out of your way. Treat others as you would love to be treated yourself.

Speak to your neighbors.

Love you all.

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Ending the Year with New Beginnings!

December 28, 2014 by Jaci Dawn

2014 is nearly over. I’m not yet finished with the year – to my left is a stack of Christmas stationery and a list of people I need to send a note to. The Christmas cards I purchased to send out never got mailed (or even addressed), so I will probably use them up next year. There is also a stack of end-of-the-year bills and insurance details that I need to take care of before the year is over.

I am almost finished with the Christmas crafts, so when I box up everything next weekend, I will box up everything. I won’t have any Christmas crafts hanging over me during 2015.

I did get all my filing finished, just in time to start a new year. Yay.

Tomorrow, however, is going to be a first. Tomorrow, I finish training and I take up my new position with a new company and a new office. I am nervous and excited. My New Year is starting on December 29th. I hope this is the last time I change jobs before I retire (in another ten years, give or take a little).

I will be working fewer hours. My husband likes to say this is the “new” full-time: a 30 hour work week. I see nothing wrong with that as long as I am compensated enough to pay bills and save a little. Fact is: I’m ready for a 30-hour work week! The past few years I have worked a full 40 hours plus the time spent in traffic getting to and from my job. Counting my lunch hour, I figure I have averaged 55 hours a week away from home.

I calculate I will be spending an average of 35 hours away from home with the new job, if that. I can drive home for my lunch hour.

My wages are starting out at the same rate as the job I just left, and there’s plenty of opportunity for raises. The medical benefits are good. The mileage – unsurpassed.

My mind has been calculating what I will be able to do with all that freed up time: more gardening, more painting, more writing, a cleaner (faint!) house. Well, probably not the latter. Let’s not get too excited about more free time. But the gardening, painting, and writing? Let’s not forget reading!

I have a lot to learn about my new position. Last week was spent making the same commute plus, just so I could sit under the tutelage of one of the best teachers this new company has to offer. Once again, I am privileged to be mentored by someone who really knows this business, inside and out. New company, different approach and software, same laws.
I work in real estate. I’m not a broker or an agent – I have no desire to hold a license and sell real estate. That takes a very different personality than I have. I am an administrator. I’ve worked reception, administration, and closings. I’m returning to administration. I love this industry, I understand agents, I can work with their egos. I liken it a little bit to being a very good roadie for a rock star. Christmas is over and the gifts have been opened. I have humiliated my dog once again.006(He’s a “Poin-Setter)New Year’s Day 2015 is a few days away. But Jaci’s new adventure begins tomorrow. Woo Hoo!(And the poinsettia costume? It was such a big hit that Murphy begged to try it on.)009“Okay! I put it on like Harvey did! Where’s my biscuit?”I’m going to be able to walk Harvey more often. He’s going to be soooo happy!

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Last Day

December 18, 2014 by Jaci Dawn

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Tomorrow, this photo will be removed from the company website. I have mixed feelings about that.

I made the choice.

I have been with this company for 14 years. FOURTEEN! That’s unheard-of in my work history: prior to this company, I worked a maximum of three years at any job I held and then I moved on. I got bored and the job became stale.

Fourteen years! I never even thought of changing jobs for the first 12 years – I loved it. Then the corporate office moved to a different location. It was easy at first: my first position was five miles from home. My second position was 13 miles from home. The switch from the east side of Portland to the west side was only made because the commute was the same distance: 13 miles. The last move added 9 miles to my commute.

22 miles is not a big deal to a Nevada girl. 22 miles = 22 minutes. OK, 25, but maximum 30.

22 miles in the metro area is a different creature altogether. On a good day, I can make it in 30-35 minutes. That’s no one else on the freeways and over-the-speed limit driving. I travel three different highways: I-205, I-5, Hwy 217. Alternatively, I can come up Hwy 99E, go through downtown Portland, and catch Hwy 26. Six of one/half a dozen of the other.

Today I made it home in an hour and a half. 90 minutes of my life, my marriage, my free time – spent in traffic. I put my car in park twice.

I can head out with all the little traffic lines in green on the Internet, but five minutes into the drive there’s a wreck on the fly-over ramp and a 45 minute delay that turns into a 90-minute commute.

If it was just me, maybe I could live with that, but it isn’t. My husband recently retired and the time I spend away from home between work and commute is time that I do not have to spend with my husband. I own pets, specifically a very needy and emotional dog (there are two dogs in the household and both greet me with enthusiasm, but let’s be honest – one dog is my husband’s dog and one is mine. The dogs know the difference). After a 90-minute drive one way, I have nothing left to give, emotionally or otherwise. I’m exhausted and I want to hide in a hole for the rest of the night. Others may have different “mileage” on this, but for me – it’s a KILLER.

I started looking as soon as we moved, but I felt that I had the time to be patient, cautious, and very, very, very picky. Whatever job came along had to be “perfect” because the job I was leaving was with such wonderful people. I did not apply very often and most of the time when I did, I quickly withdrew the application. It wasn’t right.

Well, that job found me. Or I found it. More on that in another post.

I applied, I was given an offer, I accepted. It is three miles from my house.

Tomorrow is the last day I make that 22-mile commute (one way). I leave behind a plethora of beloved real estate agents and friends.

I want to thank the family of Prudential Northwest Properties (now Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices) for the past fourteen years. I wish the best for all of you. Thank you, especially, to founder Bert Waugh Jr.

Last, a little plug for something very near and dear to Bert’s heart: Transitional Youth.

Please take the time to follow the link and read up on TY. Portland, Oregon, has the highest rate of homeless youths in the Nation. Bert is making a difference.

Thank you to all the Brokers and employees at Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices who have made the past fourteen years such an amazing adventure of my life. If you are already a friend of mine on Facebook, we will remain friends. I appreciate you so very much!

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