Miscellany of Mundane Life
Just a general round-up:
1. Dev and I are both so very relieved and happy to "take back" our homeschooling plans. Schooling through Indiana University seemed like a good idea, and probably would have been great about five years ago. Alas, their class work and degree requirements shifted toward "Common Core" at the same time the university cut its staff. We were left with extremely limited class options (no more ability to take dual credit courses, no more flexibility for degree completion, a mere handful of electives) while paying way too much for what had become, essentially, lessons I had to mostly teach anyway. Besides, most of the classes were simply classroom-based methods jammed onto the internet. Online classes must be structured differently to be effective!
After a great deal of research--and confiming of said research with outside sources--I decided to quit fretting over "accredidation" and focus on, y'know, the learning. An increasing number of colleges and universities are standardizing the process of evaluating homeschooled students for admissions, and we have guidelines now on how to prepare and present a homeschool transcript and portfolio. We already have our reading lists, textbooks on every subject but biology and chemistry, an excellent math tutor who can't wait to see how far Dev can go, free courses available online through awesome colleges and universities, and a variety of community professionals who have agreed to show Dev different parts of their career and business. And in August, we begin the homeschool version of Rosetta Stone's Italian.
2. Dev is heading to aviation ground school for high schoolers this summer. My father has taught at this program for years, and Dev would have attended last were it not for a conflict with karate camp. (Last year was his tenth year ata karate camp, and he wasn't about to miss that!). Dev is thrilled, and so am I. For five whole days, I will have nothing to worry about except my own appointments and classes. Woohoo!
3. I'm still coming around, mentally, from the loss of Patricia. Just a few months ago, when it seemed the cancer had been fought back yet again, she and I were discussing moving in together again in about a year and a half. I suppose both of us should have known better than to hope for such time, but neither one of mentioned a second thought. Maybe we both simply needed to believe it.
4. Related to all of the above, everything related to writing is taking far longer than it should. It isn't a matter of inspiration or willingness. It is time. Effing time. One of the things I'm doing to address that is cutting my garden size in half. This is not the year I can spend oodles of time out there during the growing season, or many hours processing the bounty of a large garden at harvest time.
5. Should the universie be willing and Dev be on his game, he will have his driver's license sometime in the next thirty days. We'll do the road test likely in the last week of May, and the written test the second week of June. Dev wants more car than he can afford right now, so we'll likely share a vehicle for awhile. This won't be an issue over the summer--when he plans to stack up a bunch of hours--though I can't see us going much beyond November without a second vehicle.
6. And the dojo? Still humming along. I'm averaging between five and six new students a month, though that will likely drop to one or two over summer months. We're now gearing up for summer camp, less than two months away. Part of me does wish I could attend as a mere student again. Since I'm running the dojo, running Dev's schooling, running my own publishing, and running my new (in development) wellness project, I'm getting tired of being in charge of something all the time!
1. Dev and I are both so very relieved and happy to "take back" our homeschooling plans. Schooling through Indiana University seemed like a good idea, and probably would have been great about five years ago. Alas, their class work and degree requirements shifted toward "Common Core" at the same time the university cut its staff. We were left with extremely limited class options (no more ability to take dual credit courses, no more flexibility for degree completion, a mere handful of electives) while paying way too much for what had become, essentially, lessons I had to mostly teach anyway. Besides, most of the classes were simply classroom-based methods jammed onto the internet. Online classes must be structured differently to be effective!
After a great deal of research--and confiming of said research with outside sources--I decided to quit fretting over "accredidation" and focus on, y'know, the learning. An increasing number of colleges and universities are standardizing the process of evaluating homeschooled students for admissions, and we have guidelines now on how to prepare and present a homeschool transcript and portfolio. We already have our reading lists, textbooks on every subject but biology and chemistry, an excellent math tutor who can't wait to see how far Dev can go, free courses available online through awesome colleges and universities, and a variety of community professionals who have agreed to show Dev different parts of their career and business. And in August, we begin the homeschool version of Rosetta Stone's Italian.
2. Dev is heading to aviation ground school for high schoolers this summer. My father has taught at this program for years, and Dev would have attended last were it not for a conflict with karate camp. (Last year was his tenth year ata karate camp, and he wasn't about to miss that!). Dev is thrilled, and so am I. For five whole days, I will have nothing to worry about except my own appointments and classes. Woohoo!
3. I'm still coming around, mentally, from the loss of Patricia. Just a few months ago, when it seemed the cancer had been fought back yet again, she and I were discussing moving in together again in about a year and a half. I suppose both of us should have known better than to hope for such time, but neither one of mentioned a second thought. Maybe we both simply needed to believe it.
4. Related to all of the above, everything related to writing is taking far longer than it should. It isn't a matter of inspiration or willingness. It is time. Effing time. One of the things I'm doing to address that is cutting my garden size in half. This is not the year I can spend oodles of time out there during the growing season, or many hours processing the bounty of a large garden at harvest time.
5. Should the universie be willing and Dev be on his game, he will have his driver's license sometime in the next thirty days. We'll do the road test likely in the last week of May, and the written test the second week of June. Dev wants more car than he can afford right now, so we'll likely share a vehicle for awhile. This won't be an issue over the summer--when he plans to stack up a bunch of hours--though I can't see us going much beyond November without a second vehicle.
6. And the dojo? Still humming along. I'm averaging between five and six new students a month, though that will likely drop to one or two over summer months. We're now gearing up for summer camp, less than two months away. Part of me does wish I could attend as a mere student again. Since I'm running the dojo, running Dev's schooling, running my own publishing, and running my new (in development) wellness project, I'm getting tired of being in charge of something all the time!