While Abbi and I were drooling over the art pieces, Tim and Alec were reading about planets and learning about physics from Einstein, (ok, a claymation Einstein). Einstein was telling them about how some TV shows and movies aren't quite accurate ;) Now, here's a connection, Abbi and Alec just found a show on the History channel about the physics within the Star Wars movies.
Of course this picture got a lot bigger.... (my least fav)
Though it is human to evaluate people we encounter based on first impressions, the conclusions we come to are seldom unaffected by our own fears and our own preconceptions. Additionally, our judgments are frequently incomplete. For example, wealth can seem like proof that an individual is spoiled, and poverty can be seen as a signifier of laziness�neither of which may be true. At the heart of the tendency to categorize and criticize, we often find insecurity. Overcoming our need to set ourselves apart from what we fear is a matter of understanding the root of judgment and then reaffirming our commitment to tolerance.
When we catch ourselves thinking or behaving judgmentally, we should ask ourselves where these judgments come from. Traits we hope we do not possess can instigate our criticism when we see them in others because passing judgment distances us from those traits. Once we regain our center, we can reinforce our open-mindedness by putting our feelings into words. To acknowledge to ourselves that we have judged, and that we have identified the root of our judgments, is the first step to a path of compassion. Recognizing that we limit our awareness by assessing others critically can make moving past our initial impressions much easier. Judgments seldom leave room for alternate possibilities.
Mother Teresa said, �If you judge people, you don�t have time to love them.� If we are quick to pass judgment on others, we forget that they, like us, are human beings. As we seldom know what roads people have traveled before a shared encounter or why they have come into our lives, we should always give those we meet the gift of an open heart. Doing so allows us to replace fear-based criticism with appreciation because we can then focus wholeheartedly on the spark of good that burns in all human souls.
Wonderful words to remember.
We'll be driving back to Bemidji today, after we say our goodbyes to diana and Hayden. It's always hard to say good bye to one of our tribe.
y hands on :)
But critics are on the rise, too. They say it's wonderful to think kids will soak up knowledge on their own, but that's not always the case.
"That is the romantic notion," says Gretchen Wheelwright, a retired high school teacher, principal and professor at Troy University in Alabama. "It was resurrected in the '60s for the hippies. Go out and everybody make love and the world is going to be a beautiful place. Our experience is that isn't what happens."
Wheelwright says unschooling is a disservice to children.
She remembers public schools trying a similar approach in the 1960s and '70s, when students could choose their own classes they wanted and work on self-directed projects.
"You saw the results five, 10 years later. They didn't know anything," says Wheelwright. "They had vast gaps in areas that they should have known." Wheelwright says even someone who loves to read Shakespeare needs to know math, science and history.
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And they do too.
School is almost out, but with day camps, summer classes and part-time jobs, many kids are left wondering when they'll have time to just be kids: to play in the world, rather than study it. Some educational reformers have asked the same question. They worry that a formal education often drives out a child's innate love of learning as it tries to drive in knowledge and facts. That's led some parents to a trend called unschooling.
Bemidji, Minn. — It's one thing to home-school your child, where parents become the teachers. They can download lesson plans, buy workbooks, and register their kids for online classes.
It's another thing to "unschool" your child. Kelli Traaseth insists she is not the teacher for her three children.
"I used to describe myself as a tour guide," Traaseth laughs. "I thought that was kind of corny but kind of true, because I help them along."
During the hours most kids are at school, Traaseth's house is full of activity. Her kids spend the day surfing the Internet, playing music, reading, painting or whatever else catches their fancy. Unschooling is about letting a child decide what to do and what to learn.
For Traaseth's 11-year-old daughter Abbi, that means studying piano, updating her blog, or reciting Shakespeare. Abbi read her first play by Shakespeare when she was only 9. It was "Macbeth." She found out about the play after reading a quote from it in Harry Potter.
Abbi says on any given day, she has dozens of interests. She'll wake up in the morning and start researching, writing or asking her mom about whatever is on her mind. Together, they'll look into one topic, but often end up studying something completely different.
Abbi's older brother Alec is much more focused. He delves into his studies for days at a time, sometimes staying up late in the night working out a single problem. He's only 14, but he has the determination of a graduate student.
Except Alec is not solving complicated math equations -- he's playing video games.
"This game, there's so much to it," Alec says about a game he's been recently mastering. "Now I've put in a total of at least 300 hours into it."
Three hundred hours? On video games? Most parents would cringe in pain at the thought. Spending months on Shakespeare is one thing, but playing World of Warcraft, Final Fantasy and Halo 2?
But that part of unschooling. Kelli Traaseth says if you tell your kids what they can and can't learn from, you'll shut down their curiosity.
That's what she saw happening to Alec when he was in school. She says he was bored and depressed, that he was losing his drive to learn. So she pulled him out of the third grade.
Since then he's spent his time building massive Lego ships, studying Japanese samurai, and playing his Xbox.
But Traaseth says video games inspire Alec to learn about other things, too.
"If you want to use school terms, geography, history, social studies. Alec has no time for mindless video games. It definitely has to be the problem-solving strategy to it," says Traaseth.
Unschooling isn't a new idea. Thinkers from Socrates to Jean Jacques Rousseau have touted the benefits of letting a child's interests lead their education.
But it was John Holt who penned the term "unschooling" in the late 1970s. He inspired some families to abandon the school system for a looser approach to education.
Recently, the idea has been catching on. Estimates are hard to come by, but within the roughly 1.1 million home-schoolers in the U.S., it's clear many are being unschooled.
Unschooling message boards and listservs are springing up around the country, some with several hundred members.
But critics are on the rise, too. They say it's wonderful to think kids will soak up knowledge on their own, but that's not always the case.
"That is the romantic notion," says Gretchen Wheelwright, a retired high school teacher, principal and professor at Troy University in Alabama. "It was resurrected in the '60s for the hippies. Go out and everybody make love and the world is going to be a beautiful place. Our experience is that isn't what happens."
Wheelwright says unschooling is a disservice to children.
She remembers public schools trying a similar approach in the 1960s and '70s, when students could choose their own classes they wanted and work on self-directed projects.
"You saw the results five, 10 years later. They didn't know anything," says Wheelwright. "They had vast gaps in areas that they should have known." Wheelwright says even someone who loves to read Shakespeare needs to know math, science and history.
In states like Minnesota, children taught at home are required to take annual exams, but the state Education Department never looks at the results. That makes it tricky for college admission counselors. Yet some universities like Stanford and MIT have welcomed some of these unconventional students.
For Roya Sooroshian, getting into college wasn't a problem. She's been unschooled since the fourth grade. She passed the high school equivalency exam at 15. Now, at 22, she just graduated from California State University at Long Beach.
Sooroshian says when she first started taking formal classes, she was amazed at the difference between her and her classmates.
"I'd get homework and I'd go do it, and yet all the other students wouldn't do it at all, or they'd try to do the least they could," says Sooroshian. "I think that's because they're tired of school. They're tired of people telling them what's important to learn right now. I never had that."
Sooroshian says her education gave her plenty of freedom. And that freedom is at the heart of unschooling.
But many parents and educators wonder -- left to their own devices, will kids find their internal compass and succeed in life? Or will they lose their way without the road map of a more structured education?
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I will write more tomorrow (when I'm feeling a bit more rested ;) about the questions that were asked at the end and I'd also like to address Gretchen Wheelwright comments about unschooling.
"I just nailed down what I think is a final guest for a conversation about student rights -- what are students learning when they need to live in a world of lesser rights than adults? The president of the Minnesota Association of Secondary School Principals is going to be good enough to join us (along with some students) to address the realities of balancing rights versus the need to create a good learning environment.
Beyond that, here's a little of what's on the burner:
THE DAILY GROOVE ~ by Scott Noelle
www.enjoyparenting.com/dailygroove
:: Helping vs. Co-creation ::
Q: How do you know when it's appropriate
to offer your child help/assistance?
A: When the offer feels *inspired* rather
than fear-based.
If you're coming from a perspective that your
child is
helpless, damaged, weak, incompetent, lost,
wrong,
etc., then your "help" will only give power to
that
belief. It won't feel inspired to you, and it
won't
inspire your child to connect with his or her
Power.
But if you consciously shift your perspective to
one
in which you see your child as capable of finding
his
or her way, you won't feel like you "should"
help, and
you probably won't offer to help unless asked.
However, you might be *inspired* to get involved
in a
way that doesn't feel like you're a "have"
helping a
"have-not" -- it'll feel more like two souls
playing
together, co-creating purely for the joy of it!
http://dailygroove.net/helping
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