Sunday, June 29, 2008

New name?

I'm thinking of calling our homeschool by a different name than Sutton Academy. I want something with a little more flair to it. A friend of mine has hers named after the street she lives on. Another one has a cutesy type name to hers. So I got to thinking, what name would I choose if I changed the name of our "school". I thought about the street we live on, "Alabama Street Academy" but I decided that since I am from Texas, I didn't want to name my school after another state. Just didn't seem right. lol! I thought about naming it after the housing addition we live in, "Bluegrass Academy", but naming it after a music style just didn't seem right either, even though I like to listen to Bluegrass once in a while. We have a creek running through our property, so I thought I might use that name. The thing is, I can't find the name of the creek anywhere. There is a "lake" that this creek flows from, but I didn't like the sound of it - "Clark Lake Academy". Since our creek merges with another creek and then runs into a much bigger lake that is part of the Trinity River, I thought I might name it after the Corps of Engineer park that is closest to it. It's called "Mustang Creek". I thought that might be a cool name to call my school "Mustang Creek Academy". Sounds outdoorsy and it could be the name of my creek.


I ran these new names past my son, but he said that he didn't want to change the name of our school. He also said that our "school" really isn't a school since he's the only student. So that brought to mind what the definition of a school really is. I looked up the definition of school on the web and this is what I found:


  1. An institution for the instruction of children or people under college age.

  2. An institution for instruction in a skill or business: a secretarial school; a karate school.


    1. A college or university.

    2. An institution within or associated with a college or university that gives instruction in a specialized field and recommends candidates for degrees.

    3. A division of an educational institution constituting several grades or classes: advanced to the upper school.

    4. The student body of an educational institution.

    5. The building or group of buildings housing an educational institution.

  3. The process of being educated formally, especially education constituting a planned series of courses over a number of years: The children were put to school at home. What do you plan to do when you finish school?

  4. A session of instruction: School will start in three weeks. He had to stay after school today.


    1. A group of people, especially philosophers, artists, or writers, whose thought, work, or style demonstrates a common origin or influence or unifying belief: the school of Aristotle; the Venetian school of painters.

    2. A group of people distinguished by similar manners, customs, or opinions: aristocrats of the old school.

  5. Close-order drill instructions or exercises for military units or personnel.

  6. Australian A group of people gathered together for gambling.

There were several other words listed in The American Heritage Dictionary under the heading with school in it so I clicked on the link to see the others. I found homeschool. Under that definition I found this:


VERB:

tr.

To instruct (a pupil, for example) in an educational program outside of established schools, especially in the home.

VERB:

intr.

To provide educational instruction in a homeschool.

NOUN:

A school operated outside established educational institutions, especially in a home.

In the previous listing, the word "school" is listed as a noun as were all of the other words with school in them except afterschool which is an adjective and homeschool which is listed as a verb. I guess it makes sense that homeschool would be a verb, after all it is an action since we as parents are homeschooling our children. Normally I write homeschool as one word because I am talking about how I am teaching my son. Other times I'm talking about where we do our schooling so I really should write it out as home school instead of one word. I will have to think about how I am using the word in a sentence next time and write it the "correct" way.


BTW, I decided to just keep the same school name we've always used. After all, it tells exactly who we are.

Unschoolers, transcripts and books

A new friend of mine is an unschooler. Now I'm not real sure what exactly an unschooler is and apparently unschoolers have different opinions of what it means too. The way I perceive it is that they have no set of curriculum, no schedules, no real structure and they just kind of learn as they go. Now I'm no unschooler, but I'm not as regimental as some homeschoolers I know. I do like some structure, a plan and most times a curriculum. I like having most things laid out for me. BUT I'm not stuck with a schedule. I do plan a schedule for him to follow as to what he is suppose to do each day but if we have other plans for that day, then he just does those lessons the next day or whenever he can. My son also likes knowing what he is suppose to be studying that day. I think it helps him to stay on track. I'm not set on any one type of curriculum. I do use textbooks, workbooks, computer courses, and worksheets but I also use videos, movies, websites, field trips, outside classes, etc. as a supplement for those courses. I'm always looking for something that will help my son to better understand what he is suppose to be learning.

A few of us homeschoolers got together a while back and we asked this unschooler about grades and doing a transcript. When we met up with her yesterday, she gave us each a copy of the transcript she made up for her daughter. It was very simply done but it had all of the information that a college really needs, that she met the requirements for a high school education and what subjects were taught. There were no grades listed, just a statement saying "We do not 'label' or 'grade' students. Subjects are studied until material is integrated and mastered." This is exactly what I have been trying to get through to some other homeschoolers I've talked to. You don't need grades for a transcript, and colleges could care less if you made straight A's in high school. They only care if you get them in college! I loved the way this transcript was done. It's similar to the one I have written up for my son except mine has a description of the courses. I think I'll go back and redo his transcript. I realized that I don't need to put the description down for the courses unless they are so off the wall that they need further explanation. After all, colleges teach English, Math, History and Science too. I think they know what those are.

Another homeschooler made a very good point when it comes to English and History. The student is taught the same thing over and over all through school. In elementary school we were taught about grammar and sentence structure and that continued all the way through high school. The same thing with history. We learned about the presidents, constitution, Civil War, all the way through the present time, and that continued through high school. The only thing that changed with them was the reading level of the books. We didn't learn anything new about how to conjugate a sentence or how the Civil War ended, it was all just a repeat of what we had learned earlier in our education. Math is a little different only because we go from the basic math skills to Algebra and Trigonometry. The public schools even touch on Algebra in elementary grades! But nothing changes with math. The only subject that changes is science. New concepts and discoveries are happening all around us, so the child leans something new every time they turn around. If a child reads and is able to comprehend what they are reading, then they will be able to learn anything they need to know about any subject they want. So why must we constantly teach them English and History each and every year? If a child does not read well, then they cannot learn. So why don't the public schools focus more on teaching a child to read and less on spelling tests (the child would learn how to spell correctly if they could read the words)? My own son has missed out on so much because he was not a good reader when he was in public school. It wasn't until we took him out of public school and started homeschooling him that his reading got better. He's still not big on reading but he's a lot better than he would be if he was still in public school! I wish I had made my kids read more when they were younger and not just fiction either. They could have been learning so much more. So I have decided that with these last two remaining years that I have to teach my son, we will focus more on reading all sorts of books and a little less on busy work. Hopefully it will open up a whole new world for him.

Wednesday, June 25, 2008

Ah Summer!

Summertime is upon us. Most of us take the summer off. We haven't had a summer off in several years. Usually my son is finishing up work that he didn't get completed during the normal school year due to this and that. This year he finished up his work one day after my "deadline". I was impressed. He finally kept to the schedule...well sort of. There are some things that I want him to work on over the summer, but they are for enrichment and to keep him busy. Mostly this summer he will be working on getting together with other teens in the area and practicing his driving for his license. That's my main goal. Then school will start up again probably the first part of September. I haven't really decided when the first day of school will be. I'm looking at the day after Labor Day. I usually plan on him finishing up his last day of school by the end of May but that's flexible too. I'm just going to take it easy this summer. First time my son's really had a summer off since he was in public school, and that was the summer of 2000! Wow, a long, long time ago. Poor kid. He won't know what to do with himself! lol!