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Never tell me the odds November 6, 2013

Posted by mareserinitatis in science fiction, younger son.
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As I was explaining (complaining?) to the older son about the odds of some particular favorable event happening, the younger son, who was playing a video game and didn’t even bother looking up from the computer, piped up with this little gem:

You know, he’s a smart kid.  If Han Solo hadn’t attempted to outrun the Empire, the most likely outcome would’ve been capture.  Of course, I suppose he didn’t see the getting encased in carbonite thing as a potential outcome.

Fortunately, I don’t anticipate that any outcome will result in carbonite encasement regardless of the success or failure of my attempts.

You could be a teacher October 16, 2013

Posted by mareserinitatis in career, education, feminism, research, science, teaching, work, younger son.
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math_teachers_tshirtAs we were settling in for the ride home after swimming, the younger son asked, “Mom, you’re good at math, right?”

The older boy snickered.

“I like to think so,” I responded.

There was a brief silence followed by, “Welllll………you’re good at math, and you’re a teacher…maybe you should teach math at a high school!”

What followed was a long explanation about how I just physically can’t handle the idea of teaching K-12.  Teaching 6 hours a day, grading, prep, etc.  Actually, it’s mostly the teaching.  Teaching more than 4 hours turns me into a puddle that can’t function until I’ve had a good night’s sleep.  Teaching high school is not the ideal profession for introverts.  There’s also the fact that, frankly, it would get boring to teach high school math after more than a year or two.  The math is what interests me more than the challenge of helping students to understand (though that is an interesting problem when the material is also sufficiently intellectually stimulating).  I think he gets it, but he still likes the idea of his mom as a math teacher.

This did bring to the surface some thoughts I’ve been mulling over.  Does he see me as a teacher because he already knows I teach or does gender roles have something to do with it?  I’ve been pondering this a lot because I get the sense that there are some academics who really do view teaching through a gendered lens and therefore think I’d be better off at a community or liberal arts college.  In fact, I imagine there’s a blog post where I discussed someone telling me as much, but I’m not going to dig it out now.

One thing that has occurred to me is that, if I want people to look at my research, I may actually actively have to avoid things that will stick ‘teacher’ into their heads when they think of me.  That is, it’s probably a good idea to actively avoid involvement in education conferences and societies except at a cursory level.  Teaching should be kept at a minimum.  I enjoy the service work component and the idea of exploring interesting aspects of STEM education.  I also really enjoy interacting with students (but not all day long).  I don’t like the idea that it means that my other abilities and accomplishments will be overlooked.  Maybe that’s taking things too far, but I don’t really know how to cement the ‘researcher’ thing into people’s brains unless that’s the only thing they see when looking at my CV.  Maybe once the ‘teacher’ version of me has been wiped clean, it’ll be okay to begin dabbling in serious educational research pursuits.

That’s obviously not what my son was worried about.  He simply wants me to have a job I enjoy…and maybe there’s a bit of an ulterior motive as he hopes I’d be home more during the summers.  It’s a nice idea, but the other nine months of the year probably wouldn’t be all that enjoyable for me…especially if doing research was secondary, or worse, nonexistent.

All that being said, I think that if I do ever become a math teacher, I want the above tshirt.  (You can get it here, if you’re curious.)

I wonder where that came from? October 15, 2013

Posted by mareserinitatis in family, science, younger son.
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Mike was helping younger son study for a science test.  After they were finished, Mike turned to me and said that younger son seems to have a very good handle on the subject.  The younger son, in response, said that he really likes science and thinks it may even be “his talent.”

I smiled at Mike and said, “Gee, I wonder where that came from?”

Younger boy, apparently not realizing that the question was rhetorical, said in the most definitive tone, “You, Mom!”

I sure wasn’t expecting that but I certainly appreciated it.  For the record, however, I’m guessing Mike had a little something to do with it, too.

It’s official: younger son is smarter than I am. October 3, 2013

Posted by mareserinitatis in gifted, homeschooling, math, younger son.
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Younger son isn’t one you’d pinpoint as being very gifted…at least I wouldn’t.  I have had random people tell me that he’s quite bright, but that’s never what has come across to me.  He’s very outgoing and socially conscious…VERY big on morals and ethics.  Fun.  Goofy.  Just wants to get his homework done so he can play.

In other words, to me he seems like a perfectly normal little boy.

In math, he’s one of these kids who struggles with computation.  Not as badly as some kids (*ahem* older brother *ahem*), but it is his computation that slows him down.  He’s enrolled in Stanford’s EPGY program for math, which we do at home (even though the school still grumbles occasionally).  I thought he’d get into the program, but I was honestly stunned at his ability to answer logic questions.  I remember when he took the test, I was watching, trying to puzzle through some of the questions and he was already onto the next question.  It made me realize that there’s obviously some ability there…but because of the computation issues, he struggles to express it.

When helping the younger son do some homework on percentages earlier this week, he made a very interesting comment:

When you divide an even number by an odd number, except five, you get a repeating decimal.  When you divide an odd number by an even number, though, you just get a remainder.

Is that right?  It sounded like it was plausible, but I’d never come across such a rule.  I had to look it up.

According to Wolfram’s MathWorld, if the divisor is a multiple of two or five you get finite decimal expansion.  If, however, the denominator contains a prime other than 2 or 5, you’ll get a periodic decimal expansion (i.e. repeating decimal).  

So he was very close and might have been able to prove it by induction for very small n…if he knew how to do proof by induction.

It kind of stunned me, though, that he was trying to figure this out and neither Mike nor I had ever given it any thought.

I am a feminist because I have sons August 25, 2013

Posted by mareserinitatis in family, feminism, older son, societal commentary, younger son.
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One thing that should make any mother a feminist is having a son go through school.  Having two boys makes it doubly bad.

“What is ‘it’?”, you may ask.

In my experience, boys deal with an excess of stereotyping that is just as pervasive as what girls deal with and often times is more rigid in it’s ‘enforcement’.  I’ve had teachers complain because both of my sons played with girls.  I’ve lived in fear that my kids will get picked on because they like nail polish or My Little Pony or Dora or pink things (discussed here).  I’ve had to deal with parents who think it’s inappropriate that I let my little boys cry in public rather than getting them to suck it up.  And oh so much bullying.

I came across a graphic on Facebook this weekend that nicely sums up the situation:

1170850_10151815408473330_1125038209_n

This is not a realization that came easily to me.  When it finally hit me was when the older son was in kindergarten.  I was taking a sociology class on gender roles, and I was lucky enough to have a teacher who focused a significant portion of the class on male gender roles.  She described how men are raised to be unemotional and competitive.  She described how forcing them to be stoic could later cause problems when emotionally bonding with a partner or how they can be depressed if they can no longer be involved in competitive activities (primarily sports) when they get older, especially if their identity centered around their participation in these activities.

The class was an eye-opener for me.  Having spent so long defending myself against stereotypes about women in science, I had really not had the opportunity to observe how stereotypes were affecting the men around me.  I can certainly appreciate where some of them are coming from now, though I still need help now and again to understand why I perceive circumstances a lot differently from some of the men around me.

It wasn’t long after that I got the first comment about the older son playing with girls.  (At nearly the same age, the same thing happened with the younger son.)  It was fairly apparent that neither of the boys was as rough and tumble as some of the others, and they preferred interactive/imaginative play with girls to dog-piling with the boys.  I was more disturbed that the teachers thought this was a problem.

Having one child who has nearly reached adulthood, I feel that reacting to these teachers by saying, “So?!” was definitely the right thing to do.  The older son now has an amazing ability to pick out stereotypes of both genders and explain exactly why they’re ridiculous.  It’s impressive, and I hope it’s helped him to feel comfortable with himself and not like he has to adhere to some societal norm that’s simply not him.

Being comfortable yourself and not having to adhere to someone else’s expectations is exactly what feminism is about, and it’s just as important that boys are able to break out of stereotypes as girls.

Quakers like oats, not oaths August 22, 2013

Posted by mareserinitatis in personal, religion, younger son.
Tags: oaths, , religion,
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Last spring, younger son came to me and said he wasn’t comfortable saying the Pledge of Allegiance. His reasoning was that one of the ten commandments says one should not pray to false idols, and he very much felt that saying the pledge was the equivalent of praying to a false idol.

I thought this was a very interesting perspective, and I admired his desire to be consistent.  It also felt like one of those ‘teachable moments,’ so it led into a whole discussion on the Quaker view that one should not take oaths. Not only does it have a basis in the new testament, but many quakers feel like it creates a double standard for truth. There’s also the issue that you’re making a promise to adhere to something whether or not it contradicts your conscience or beliefs.  (I previously discussed oath taking in this post.)

After our discussion, I sent an email to his teacher and principal discussing his decision and how this is part of our beliefs as Quakers. They said they understood, and there would be no problems.

I was glad to hear this.  The younger son actually attends a religiously affiliated school.  I have no problems with the beliefs of this religion, but I have found that there seem to be some differences in implementation of those beliefs.

I wasn’t sure how the younger son would handle things in a new class this year. I asked him if he said the pledge, and he said yes…and then realized he’d forgotten about what he said last year. So he immediately said he wasn’t going to say it any more. But then he said that he also had to say a pledge to the christian flag and an oath to the bible. But that was okay, because it’s really an oath to God.

That really disturbed me. First of all, I have no idea what the Christian flag even is. Who decided the Christians needed a flag? (Mike informed me that the Methodists did about 100 years ago.)

Yep...there really is a Christian flag.

Yep…there really is a Christian flag.

Second, many Quakers don’t hold to the notion of the Bible as the literal word of God.  I asked the younger son if he would make an oath to the bible if it said that slavery was okay. He said no, and I said that the Bible does in fact say that slavery is okay. We talked about how making oaths in general is a bad idea because people can put bad ideas into good things, and by making an oath or a pledge to something, you may unknowingly be agreeing to a bad thing. The Bible is a good book because, read with an understanding of the social context,  it can help us to become better people.  The point was also made that the men who wrote it were not bad people, but they had a lot of different beliefs back then that were incorporated into the Bible whether or not we think those ideas are okay today or were actually divinely inspired.

I think that was really rough for him. He’s still at the stage where he likes to see things in terms of black and white, good or bad. I just took something he’s been taught is all good and sacred and told him that there is evil in it. I could tell he felt bad learning that, and I felt bad for shattering that particular world view. But I also want him to understand that his conscience is the most important moral compass that exists for him, and he needs to learn to trust that instead of blindly following what other people tell him.

I am worried we’ll be hearing from his new teacher.  I’m also having trouble dealing with cognitive dissonance because my son was asked to make an oath to something that says not to take oaths.

Wordless Wednesday: Admiring the lake August 21, 2013

Posted by mareserinitatis in family, older son, photography, younger son.
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admiring_the_lake

A clean sweep August 20, 2013

Posted by mareserinitatis in family.
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For the past year or so, we had enlisted the services of housekeeper because I was just simply overwhelmed with everything.  However, I’ve decided that I need to cut back a bit on my time at work so I can spend more time on my thesis as I also have a class to teach this fall.  We decided that the drop in pay was about the same as the housekeeper.  Given the housekeeper was having a hard time doing all the stuff within the given time, it seemed like the obvious answer was to let him go and have everyone pitch in around the house for the same amount of time.

When I was a kid, my sisters and I were expected to do the majority of the cooking and cleaning.  My parents jokingly referred to us as ‘slave labor,’ though I have to admit to not finding much humor there.  Realistically, though, it was the only way to make things work as my parents were working…a lot.

I’m still not crazy about the slave labor idea, though, even for my own kids (as appealing as certain aspects of it may be).

The first thing I did was to make a schedule for myself to see when I would actually have some time for housekeeping.  I need 2-3 hours per week, and knowing myself, I need it to be consistent.  It ended up being Saturday morning.  After that, I listed all of the chores I would like done around the house.  I then assigned a monetary value to each chore so that the total for all chores was a bit lower than what we were paying the housekeeper.  The chore list goes up on the wall on Sunday, and the kids put their initials next to every chore they do.

Here’s the kicker: the kids get paid for every chore they do between Sunday and Friday (except for anything in their room, like vacuuming).  I initially thought I would assign rooms to each kid, but it turned out that some of the chores are easier for younger son to do and some for older son.  Once we get to Saturday morning, though, and I have to help, they don’t get paid for any of that time.  My goal is to provide some economic incentive for them to get things done before Saturday so that I can have some down time to wear my slippers around the house.

The first week didn’t go so well, but that’s to be expected.  I actually set some time aside after supper on Friday so that they could get going on things.  Even with that, there was still about half of the items left this morning.  It’s obvious that it may take a couple weeks of doing this before they’re able to function completely on their own as they had a lot of questions about how to do things and where the various tools were hiding.  I’m also a bit worried that, with extracurricular activities and homework for the younger one that this will all get left for Friday evenings/Saturday morning.  However, there were no complaints, even though they weren’t getting paid for part of it, which is a huge difference from prior attempts to get them involved in housekeeping.  In fact, I frequently got the question, “What can I do next?”

It certainly was easier to have a housekeeper, but I genuinely appreciate that everyone is pitching in and willing to work.  I just hope that morale doesn’t dwindle as time goes on…and that applies to the adults, too.

Digitally challenged July 30, 2013

Posted by mareserinitatis in younger son.
Tags: , hands,
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A little while ago, Mike and I went to watch the younger son at a baseball game.  The younger son seemed like he was struggling with some ball-handling skills, so we decided to get some gear and practice at home.  One of the things I got was a baseball glove that Mike or I could use.

Or so I thought.

I found one that fit me well and bought that.

After using it for the first time, Mike came to ask me if I’d realized I’d bought a kids’ glove.

“How can that be? It fits my hand just fine.”

It turns out that not only can Mike not use the glove, but younger son decided he likes the new glove better than his old one.  His fingers are less than a half-inch shorter than mine.

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