Things Worth Remembering The three habits that lead to success are: Patience, Application, and Vision.
Take care: The person who will tell others' faults to you - will tell yours to others.
It is always better to be underestimated.
There are three things that are better than riches: Health, Freedom, and Honor.
Think swiftly, speak softly, act wisely.
"The world is neither Scottish, English, nor Irish, neither French, Dutch, nor Chinese, but human, and each nation is only the partial development of a universal humanity." - James Grant on founding the National Association for the Vindication of Scottish Rights, 1862
All from: The Book of Celtic Wisdom
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Governor Tarkin: ”The Imperial Senate will no longer be of any concern to us. I have just received word that the Emperor has dissolved the council permanently. The last remnants of the Old Republic have been swept away.”
General Tagge: ”But that’s impossible. How will the Emperor maintain control without the bureaucracy?”
Governor Tarkin: ”The regional governors now have direct control over their territories. Fear will keep the local systems in line. Fear of this battle station.”
Star Wars IV: A New Hope
Padawan Learner had his first day of the public school classes he’s taking, and the day went pretty well. He had an early snafu as the city bus was 15 minutes late (so much for running every 10 minutes!) and he arrived at class 2 minutes late. He has decided to leave an extra five minutes early in order to increase his chances of making the earlier bus on school days. His Environmental Sustainability teacher was very laid-back about it (hey, he’s taking public transportation to class and not getting driven to school in a private automobile, right?!?) and just waved him into his seat without making a fuss.
One of PL’s main lessons was that not everyone wants to be in class. Several of the students made their apathy and lack of interest in the subject well-known during the three hours of class. Well, that’s a good lesson to learn because working with people who just don’t give a damn is a sad fact of life. As this is the first year of ES, there is still a fair amount of work to be done converting the classrooms from a fashion design focus to a study of energy systems and within the curriculum itself. PL was put to work moving desks and other heavy objects. The teacher also discussed the year’s curriculum focus, out-of-classroom activities, and planned learning modules. The end of the period was spent watching the first part of the Planet Earth series from The Discovery Channel.
Beginning Italian was a whole different story. The instructor for this class runs a very tight ship and spent the bulk of the 1.5 hour class period going over a list of around 30 classroom rules. In a nutshell: no talking, touching or moving without permission. PL came home with a copy of this same list for both PL and me to sign. It’s due back to the instructor by the second class period. No exceptions. While this instructor is certainly no push-over, he also sounds like a fun instructor when he’s actually teaching. He believes strongly in the educational use of games and interactive activities rather than lots of book work. He also values family life and, therefore, rarely assigns homework. (My hero.) His idea is that he’d rather his students learn Italian from him – and learn it well - than try to learn it – with questionable success – on his own after school is out for the day.
The students seemed to be more interested in being there, too. I think the fact that the more popular language classes (i.e., Spanish and French) are available in all the feeder high schools, makes the extra effort required for the advanced academics at – not to mention getting to – the Academy building unlikely for seriously apathetic students.
Princess Leia: “Han!”
Han Solo: “Yes, Your Highnessness?”
Princess Leia: “I thought you decided to stay.”
Han Solo: “Well, the bounty hunter we ran into on Ord Mantell changed my mind.”
Star Wars V: The Empire Strikes Back
With apologies to the people who have already seen this on Facebook…
I did it. I signed Padawan Learner up for classes at a local high school last week.
Despite the fact that he had – for years – said that he never wanted to set foot inside a school again, PL decided that classes on environmental sustainability and Italian sounded too good not to attend. Despite the fact that he’s a confirmed night owl, he chose to take a class that starts at 7:55 am. Choice makes all the difference in the end, doesn’t it?
On days that he has school, his day will end at 2:15 pm - those will be every other school day – with a 2 hr study/lunch period in between the two classes. He also wanted to take an intro art class, but it had a waiting list of 40 students so he couldn’t add it this time – maybe next year. So I guess we’re about to join the ranks of tied-to-the-school-year families now. (We’ve even bought a few school supplies to get him through his first few days: a 1″ binder for each class, an insulated lunch box, a water bottle, and mechanical pencils. We already have a ton of paper and pens.)
About two hours after I signed him up, I had to point out the inconsistency of taking a class in environmental sustainability and leaving the deck slider door open when it is about a billion degrees outside and the AC is running.
“Use the force, Luke.” Obi-Wan Kenobi, Star Wars IV: A New Hope
Today was our first day of the 2008-2009 homeschooling year. Yes, we’re a bunch of traditionalist homeschool scheduling ninnies. Unschooling dropouts. Evil curriculum slaves. Creativity squelching automatons. Or are we?
Here’s your quick answer: Actually, we’re not.
Yes, we do keep to a roughly traditional school year, but we push back the start a bit to enjoy the nice September weather a bit longer (It was cold and rainy all day today. The perfect day to start. Score.) and end at July since June has for the past several years been cold and rainy here and no fun to play outside in. BUT we do M-F lessons for 7 weeks, taking every Wednesday afternoon off for other fun stuff, and then we take a week off to relax and recharge.
We think unschooling is a great way to learn – and deep down might even consider ourselves to be closet unschoolers, since learning is never forced on Padawan Learner. He has a full say in what we cover, our schedule, and if he does or does not want help from moment to moment, day to day, and topic to topic. If we’re really screaming along on something and don’t want to stop, we don’t. Other things just get pushed back for another day. If something is just a brink wall, though, we move on to something else. No sense in making ourselves crazy. However… Dad Windu and I also have a full say in these things. We all bring ourpoints, concerns, wants and wishes to the planning table and figure it out. Maybe not all at one time or in one place, but everyone gets their say eventually. For example, I have been gently suggesting piano lessons for 5 years. Padawan Learner has not been interested, but this year when I brought it up, he said, “Hmmm,” and decided to give it a chance. After his first lesson, he was hooked and I couldn’t get him off the keyboard for a week straight. It was finally the right time. He might never have considered the piano on his own since we don’t own a piano and neither Dad Windu or I play the instrument (we ended buying a keyboard after his first lesson), but I’ve watched how he moves his fingers and his body listening to music and I had a feeling it would be a good fit for him.
Yup. We use curriculum. Some of it is homeschooler intended, some of it is schoolroom intended, some of it was never intended to be used as curriculum in the first place. WooHoo. We pick and choose what we want and need. We ignore pages that are irrelevant. We add items that we think are missing. We skip the idiotic. We mock mercilessly all busywork.
As for being creativity squelching automatons. Well, I guess you’ll just have to figure that one out for yourself.
Happy learning, everyone, today and everyday.
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Secular Homeschoolers Unite!
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