What my kids read… May 3, 2012
Posted by mareserinitatis in education, younger son.Tags: astrology, books, paranormal, reading, skepticism
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The younger son has had a fear of reading due to his perfectionistic tendencies. In the past few months, however, he’s really taken an interest in it, especially when there are comic books available. (Yay for Marvel comics!) I’m really not too picky about what my kids read. I’m of the opinion that the more you read, the more you learn to think critically.
Or at least, that’s what I thought until the younger boy brought a book home from the library on “Unsolved Mysteries.” Basically, the book talks about all these events that are apparently paranormal. As a scientist who is also a bit on the skeptical side (though I don’t like the term skeptic, despite our subscription to Skeptical Inquirer), I have to admit that it got my hackles up a bit. At first, I wanted to go complain to the librarian.
The funny thing is, though, that I had to sit back and remember that I used to read this stuff, too. I remember checking out books on the Bermuda Triangle and astrology. In fact, I, at one point, went through and plotted out full astrology charts for everyone in my family. I fascinated my family by finding out interesting little factoids like that my sister was actually a Taurus and not an Aries, like we’d always thought, because her sign didn’t fall on the normal dates the year she was born, for some strange reason.
As I continued to read and learn about this stuff, however, I started coming across counter points to all the supernatural phenomena I was interested in. As I became more educated as a scientist, I began looking at how people were conducting their ‘experiments’. And, probably most important, I wanted to know how things worked: I wasn’t satisfied with explanations of, “It can’t be explained!” Eventually, I began looking at things much differently.
I realize the younger boy will probably be walking around for a while talking about the stuff he reads in the book. However, I’m trying to look at this as an opportunity to introduce him to questioning things that he reads and get him thinking about whether or not he can find what might be a more realistic explanation of how things work. It’s a slow process, and it won’t be helped by not exposing him to these things. And having a cultural reference to these things aren’t always bad: we still like to joke about my sister being bull-headed.
Wordless Wednesday: Younger son visits the South (sort of) April 25, 2012
Posted by mareserinitatis in photography, younger son.Tags: alligators, pictures, wordless wednesday, younger son
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(picture by Angie Hartgrove)
Terrified of homeschooling (again) March 27, 2012
Posted by mareserinitatis in education, homeschooling, math, older son, younger son.Tags: acceleration, gifted, gifted education, homeschooling, homework, older son, younger son
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Last night, the younger son was working on his math homework while I sat next to him and played sudoku. I’ve found that this is the best way to oversee his homework because I don’t really pay attention to what he’s doing unless he asks for help, but I’m close by in case he starts getting frustrated. And really, I can’t concentrate on anything important when I’m interrupted every ten minutes for an explanation.
The younger son has started running into problems with a concept now and again. After he gets so many wrong, the program will switch gears and have him work on something else for a while. Then it goes back and tries the subject again. This happened for the first time a few days ago. He complained, saying it was repeating questions. I told him the program thought he needed more practice. Last night, it happened again.
“Mom, the program thinks I need more practice. But I don’t. I know this stuff.”
“Well, you’ll have to prove it to the computer.” And he answered every question correctly. The fact that he got peeved about repeating questions is a huge improvement from the kid who would avoid doing pretty much anything for fear of getting it wrong…and if he did try and get it wrong, there would be a major emotional blowout to follow. That kid is a distant memory…but was around as recently as six months ago. This, in my mind, is why you need to present challenges to perfectionists.
I’m now anxious for another reason. I really thought the younger boy would slow down in his math progress. Yes, I did up the amount of time he spends from 20 to 40 minutes per day, my reasons for which are elaborated in another post. And he no longer gets everything right. In fact, on his daily practice, he’s usually hitting somewhere between 80 and 90 percent correct answers. But he’s still not really slowing down.
At the end of the year, he’s going to be three years ahead in math. We didn’t expect this, and this puts us past the ‘drop dead’ point where the school can do anything. His school only goes up to 5th grade at his campus. The other campus starts at 6th and goes through the end of high school. Realistically, he’s not ready for that with his reading and writing. So now we’re obligated to keep going with his current math program for the next three years. Because of the structure of the courses, he will have to slow down signficantly. However, we’re still looking at a realistic possibility of him being through algebra 2 before he starts middle school. At that point, we are going to have to see if the school is willing to let him join a bunch of high school students for geometry or precalc…when he’s 12.
I’m nervous about this because of what is going on in his classroom. He’s not participating in the regular math class, but he does work on addition and subtraction drills. His teacher is putting on his report card that he’s ‘beginner level’ in math based on these drills. I really am not worried how he’s doing on this because of the fact that I know he can add two and three digit numbers in his head, even though he still writes some numbers backwards when writing the answers. I am guessing the pressure of timed quizzes, the act of writing, or perhaps lack of interest are causing his poor performance. (Incidentally, while he may not do every problem, all the problems he does are correct.)
I am concerned that teachers in the future are going to look at this and believe he doesn’t know math rather than looking at what he’s accomplished through the online math program. And I’m worried this will have a negative impact on our ability to accelerate him when the time is appropriate. But, mostly, I’m frustrated that so much of the assessment of his abilities rests on judgements of things like basic arithmetic or handwriting when it’s become so obvious to me that he’s got some serious abstract thinking abilities. No teacher is ever going to see that unless they give him some challenging material. (I have to admit that I had no idea until we started down this path with the math program.) Likely, they won’t because they’re so stuck on what I consider to be somewhat superficial things.
Based on my experience with the older son, I guess this is starting to leave me terrified that the younger boy will eventually need to be pulled out of school. I have that thought every time I get a note about some problem at school. Admittedly, most of them are small things that I don’t have to worry about. The thought is sitting just under the surface, though, and pokes an eye out every time something seems amiss.
For now, we’ve decided to just keep him moving through regular school while supplementing math during the school year and language arts during the summer. I imagine that in about 3 years, however, we’re going to hit a pretty serious fork in the road. I’m a person who doesn’t take well to waiting, however, so even now it’s still on my mind a lot.
Getting re-oriented March 12, 2012
Posted by mareserinitatis in family, older son, pets, photography, younger son.Tags: cactus, health, illness, Mike, older son, sabino canyon, travel, younger son
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I’m back home and getting adjusted to normal life again. Due to illness, I have been sleeping more than normal (which I probably should be doing when not ill, as well). My sinuses are also not happy with the additional 1500 ft of air pressure…but I’m getting used to it. Daylight savings also came at an inopportune time as I am now two hours out of sync rather than just one.
The dog was happy to see me and even happier that I took her for a walk today (just couldn’t make myself run). The younger son was very adamant about getting his present, so I handed him a bag of pistachios. He looked horribly disappointed but managed to squeak out a ‘thank you’. Then I gave him his real presents: a junior ranger vest (with many pockets for rocks), a book on the wildlife of the deserts of the US, and some Saguaro cactus seeds. He wore the vest all day and wants to plant a garden of cacti. (Mike and the older boy were more patient – they got shirts and some cactus candies.)
I did manage to get out to Sabino Canyon on Saturday morning before flying out. It a beautiful spot. I’ll probably post more pics on Wednesday. In the meantime, I have to tell you how tickled I was with the Saguaro cacti. They are so easy to anthropomorphize, and the one above looked like he was having a conversation with the rest of them. Or maybe it was yelling at the tourists like myself. With that little arm sticking out, it looks like it’s pretty adamant about something.
Wordless Wednesday: Faux Cats March 6, 2012
Posted by mareserinitatis in Fargo, photography, younger son.Tags: cats, fargo, pictures, snow, wordless wednesday, younger son
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My many hats February 9, 2012
Posted by mareserinitatis in computers, engineering, gifted, homeschooling, math, teaching, work, younger son.Tags: division, minion, software, work, younger son
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A couple weeks ago, my blog was promoted by a couple of sites and the hits started flowing in. I commented to someone (most likely Gears) how it’s nice to be recognized for my blogging about engineering but frustrating for the lack of recognition for my actual engineering work. Guess I should’ve waited a couple weeks.
Normal work has also been crazy. I’ve been given full control of the Minion and have thrown him in on a new project where he’s learning everything from scratch. It’s similar to projects that I’ve done, but even more complicated and using a different program. So our next couple weeks are going to be real fun as we’re going to be trying to make our way through using this new program and occasionally resorting to the old program for reality checks.
The other serious challenge I’ve been dealing with this week is long division. It’s pretty scary stuff, especially when you have a seven-year-old who is fighting some rather strong perfectionistic tendencies. He’s been getting to the long division portions in his computer math, and he starts to shut down. I’ve been getting more and more frustrated with it, so I decided to put an end to it tonight. I went back and printed out some of the older homeworks so that we could take a couple steps back. I think the problem is that he really thinks he can do everything in his head. I have to admit that his ability to do mental math far outweighs mine: I simply have to write everything down. However, he’s starting to hit the limit of this particular ability, and so he freaks out whenever he has to do a problem where he can’t do it all in his head.
I told him that tonight’s homework was going to be doing some work sheets. With the problems written out on paper, he didn’t seem to have this idea that he had to do everything in his head. The first couple were challenges, but then he started getting the hang of things and was able to execute the last few problems very quickly. By the time we had finished, he was doing 3-digit numbers divided by 2-digit numbers with no problem. We’re going to do some more difficult problems tomorrow and then try heading back to the computer.
We tried a similar approach when he started to get stuck on multiplication a couple months ago. I guess there are some things that really have to be written out to be understood. I just hope he starts to make regular use of his notebook from here on out.
Wordless Wednesday: Hoarfrost makes North Dakota winters beautiful February 8, 2012
Posted by mareserinitatis in Fargo, photography, younger son.Tags: fargo, hoarfrost, winter, younger son
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I also blog at Engineer Blogs, home away from home to some of the best engineering blogs.
I might be *gasp* a role model March 15, 2012
Posted by mareserinitatis in education, feminism, gifted, math, societal commentary, younger son.Tags: feminism, girls, math, nerd girls, role models
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My younger son is in chess club, and one of the girls, whom I’ll call K, is in his class and also in the club. K is a pretty bright cookie as she has won things like spelling bee and chess tournaments. I was picking him up from the club on Tuesday when K said hi as she walked by. A couple seconds later, K came back to ask me if I would be coming to their class for our weekly math lesson this week. I said I would, and she cheerily went on her way.
I went in for our lesson earlier today, only to find that the teacher was sick. Rather than work with the smaller group of kids as planned, I offered to read the whole class a math story (which I’ve been doing every other week). So I read Sir Cumference and the Isle of Immeter. They were all very excited, and there was a lot of discussion about the story.
At the end of the session, one of the girls came up to me (whom I’ll call F). F isn’t in the group I work with regularly, so I don’t know much about her other than she’s not as advanced in math. (I assumed that meant she wasn’t all that interested in it.) She’d been in the restroom and had missed the first page of the story and wanted to see it. I said I could leave the book with her to read. She was very excited. Then K came up and gave me a hug, and after she was finished, F gave me a hug. I was rather shocked, though certainly not unhappy about it.
I’m trying to process it, though, and it seems interesting in light of a couple semi-related things. First, I came across an article about how reducing academic pressure helps kids succeed. Given the younger boy was having huge difficulties with perfectionism, my response to this was, I admit, nothing more than, “Duh!” We’re helping him to deal with this by using his math program. Some days he does very well, other days, he’ll get somewhere between 75% and 80% right. I try to tell him that I appreciate his hard work, and that if he doesn’t get it right, it only means he needs more practice. He’s also learning that he almost never gets 100%…and that is making him okay with doing things wrong. Yeah, he still gets frustrated, but he’s not so scared to try anymore.
However, I realized that I’m kind of doing this with the kids I’ve been working with at school. I’m doing stuff with them that I don’t completely expect them to get, but I also don’t get upset if they get it wrong. And there’s no grades. We’re doing it to have fun and to learn, and I think the kids really like doing something just for fun.
Another recent event was when a coworker started lamenting to me how his daughters, who are middle school aged, seem uninterested in math. Being an engineer, he’s very disappointed, especially because they seem to be quite good at it. I suggested he get the books written by Danica McKellar and give them to his daughters.
Now, I have to say that I can’t imagine myself reading those books when I was that age (of course, I could very well be wrong – although I had some unusual role models). On the other hand, I figure that if there are bright girls out there who are eschewing math and these books get them interested, then I’m all for it. It turns out that my coworker did give them the books and, even better, they really seem to be enjoying them. Maybe they won’t turn into math majors, but he seems a lot happier, and they may be enjoying math more.
I’ve talked about efforts like Nerd Girls in the past, and I have to admit I felt it was stupid to try to ‘girlify’ engineering to attract women. On the other hand, I’m obviously the kind of woman who wasn’t very stuck on social messages about women in science or engineering. It’s not hard to imagine that there are a lot of young, intelligent girls out there who feel social pressure to avoid technical areas because they lack role models. Maybe some of those girls really need things like Nerd Girls and Danica’s books. I don’t have any daughters, so I can’t really say much based on experience. After my experience today, though, I’m wondering if female role models are far more important to some girls than I ever thought.