I guess it’s time for an experiment update. We’re into month 3 and the kids just got their first quarter report cards. They are on target according to the computer and their online teachers; I, however, am grading on the rollercoaster scale: it’s mostly a great ride, but there are equal parts screaming and laughing, and sometimes I feel like throwing up.
Is this normal?
The cons:
I’m running a three ring circus. Pre-Algebra, pond eco-systems, and Michaelangelo, all before lunch. Kids ask me things like, “How do we measure salinity, Mom?” My standard answer, “Look it up. It’s not fair for me to tell you all the answers.” (as if I know) We are honing our conflict management and interpersonal skills. It’s not always pretty. 
My own work online from home every day. I would rather be free to do things together away from the computer– like measure salinity (see photo).
As we try to figure out things like classifying igneous rock, I often find myself silently asking questions like, “Why do we need to learn this?” Then I sit in semi-crisis, knowing that my questions reveal my attitudes toward certain subjects, and I resolve again to just be quiet and let them work. One of them might discover their life long passion in igneous rock or salinity– it’s not looking good right now, but you never know.
The pros:
When asked about school (by anyone but me), the kids respond with an enthusiastic, “We love it!” When I ask them, they flop into noodle-body-slouch-pose and roll their eyes, moaning.
The school stress-o-meter has come WAY down the last couple weeks. I don’t know if we’re just figuring it out or if it is really getting easier or if they have realized Christmas is just over two months away. Probably all three.
Moments like this: Ransom and Memphis are taking the same American History class, and we just finished reading about the Triangular Trade Routes and the Middle Passage (How cargo and slaves were traded in the 1600 and 1700’s). Cora Jo was listening in and the room was deathly silent as we read from Olaudah Equiano’s account of his kidnapping from Africa and passage on the ships as an 11-year-old boy. He was Ransom’s age. I teach this slave narative each year in American literature, so reading excerpts with my own kids was a treasure. Equiano was kidnapped from the backyard of his family’s home while they were at work and sold into slavery. It’s hard to understand the brutality humans are capable of…there’s no explaining it. We talked about how people are broken because of sin and without God there is little hope, little love, and little freedom. Mem’s verdict, “It’s just wrong, Mom.” Luckily before we finished in complete desperation over the plight of man, Memphis realized that the slaves on the ships had no access to bathrooms, which while awful, began a flurry of sanitation related questions and of course regressed into bathroom humor which lightened the mood considerably.
Is it Christmas break yet?