October | 2011 | Legendary Learning

Archive for October, 2011

Our Halloween Horror is Growing-Up

This Halloween my teenagers wanted to go to a pumpkin patch and corn maze, just like we did when they were little. Fall has always been our favorite time of year, especially after living in Connecticut, where the gorgeous autumn foliage combined with the smell of wood smoke and apple cider made it feel like we were living inside a Norman Rockwell painting.

After Connecticut, we moved to Hawaii for six years, where Halloween was more of a shorts and flip-flops event. Any costumes we made had to be lightweight or the kids would swelter. There was one heavily trafficked pumpkin patch on the island, but we waited till three days before Halloween to get our pumpkins from the air-conditioned grocery store so they wouldn’t turn black with mold before the big day.

Now that we have moved to Northern California, the kids couldn’t wait to go back to a real pumpkin patch, so we did. There were fields of autumn flowers, pumpkins, hay bale pyramids, goats to pet, a haunted barn, an apple cider stand, gift shop, and the ever-popular corn maze.

The kids enjoyed it well enough, but realized it wasn’t the same as they remembered. Even if we could go back to Connecticut it wouldn’t be the same, because they are not the same, and it made them kind of sad. My oldest son frequently pines for the “good old days” when life was simpler, when he didn’t have to think about college and his job and moving away from home next year.

It occurred to me that both my boys will probably be away at college next Halloween, but I didn’t mention it because I didn’t want to ruin a perfectly good day. Instead we talked about future Halloweens on our future family farm, where they will bring their future kids to visit, or maybe live nearby.

We talked about how “growing up” changes our perception of things; how what used to be magical somehow seems more mundane. A child’s world extends to the edge of his or her family and friends, bounded by a neighborhood or perhaps the edge of town. But as we grow older, our awareness gradually stretches to encompass so much more, good and bad. We might move away, make new friends, learn new things, and experience more heartaches.

On the surface, it seems so sad to leave behind our childhood favorites, but not if we remember to make new favorites. There is still plenty of room for play in the adult world. We may not go trick-or-treating, but it’s still fun to dress up and go to a Renaissance Fair or build a contraption for the Maker Faire. Hayrides may not be as exciting as they once were, but now we can go mountain biking or river rafting. As our perspective changes, so do the opportunities.

Probably the most important thing is to keep family and friends close, no matter how we play. Nostalgia is useful for passing on traditions and stories to the next generation, but we can’t live in it. Instead of being sad that tomorrow will never be the same as today, I prefer to think that tomorrow will be even better.

Using Mind Maps to Get Your Head Straight

Do you ever feel completely overwhelmed with all the stuff you have to do? Do you homeschool your kids? Work from home? Volunteer? Take care of the house? Grow your own food? Run bazillions of errands? Workout? Have a social life?

Me too. My husband knows better than to come home and say, “So what did you do all day?” It’s an innocent enough question, but the part that gets me is that little word “all” in front of “day.” It implies a long empty span of glorious time, when in fact my day seems to last all of 90 minutes before it’s time to go to sleep again. The better question is, “So what did you do today?” Most of the time, I barely know what to say because I’ve done so many little things that keep everything rolling forward. It’s like pushing 14 marbles up a hill all at the same time. I’ve read the time management books and the getting organized books and I’ve tweaked my routine hundreds of times over the years, but it all comes down to priorities. I would have more time if I dropped some things, but I’m holding out for some reason. And I’m doing OK. Do you want to know what helps?

When my marbles are scattered all over the place, I like to gather them up by journaling and/or a mindmap. A mindmap is a nifty way to jostle your brain by linking words or ideas together into more or less a web of connections. Here’s one I made recently to pull together all the marbles I’m pushing up the hill right now:

The idea is to start in the middle with one central idea and then start making branches. I’ve used this for goal-setting, brainstorming, outlining, and recording things that I want to remember. For related items, a simple list works fine, but when you’re dealing with lots of unrelated items, creating a mindmap is oddly liberating. For more ideas, just search for images of mindmaps on the Internet. You’ll see that some people like to draw pictures, shapes, and fancy arrows from one thing to the next. Every mindmap seems to be as unique as the person who made it, like a signature or a self-portrait.

Give it a try. You may not add any more minutes to your day, but it will help your head feel better.

Ten Ways to Make Your Kids Hate Homeschooling

Use real school desks and chairs to mimic the “real thing.”
Perform lots of drill and rote memorization of state capitals, grammar rules, and other facts.
Every time your child asks what a word means, tell them to look it up.
Insist that your kids sit still and look at you when you are teaching.
After every chapter, make sure your kids answer reading comprehension questions in their notebooks. Don’t forget to use full sentences.
Always choose serious, academically challenging textbooks for your curriculum.
Remind your children everyday of the importance of studying hard, so that they won’t be a failure in life.
If your children balk or dilly-dally over school work, make them sit at the desk until it is finished.
Set a schedule, and stick to it, even if your child is working on something else.
Worry a lot, out loud, and wonder if you are doing the right thing.

Dashing Expectations

My dad wanted me to be a lawyer. I got good grades and seemed predisposed to a sensible occupation, but I just couldn’t get excited about law. What I really would have liked to do was “commercial art,” as it was called in those days, but my dad convinced me that art was a risky career choice, so I decided to go to a military academy instead. I don’t regret that decision, because it broadened my horizons, and led to great adventures and friendships. But here I am again, reading typography books for fun and pining over those “Where Women Create” magazines. The trouble is, I feel like I lost my creativity somewhere back at the Academy, and I have to get it back.

In 2006, I started taking “New Media Arts” courses from my local community college and it was wonderful – like coming alive again. I took drawing, graphic design, digital art, art history, and some other courses before my schedule imploded. It’s hard to go back to school while homeschooling three kids! The kids felt like I had abandoned them, and my husband couldn’t understand why anyone would ever want to take typography. That’s OK, because I believe there is a time for everything, and they needed me then.

Our lives are full of expectations, from ourselves and others. We all push and pull on each other, unconsciously sharing our fears, hopes, disappointments and habits. I’ve tried very hard not to impose expectations on my kids, but I know I do anyway. Whenever I give advice, I’m influencing them to do something the way I would do it, or the way I think would work best for them. Is it possible to not give advice to children? I doubt it, but I do believe that less advice is best.

Have you ever known someone who not only gave you unsolicited advice, but had a firm conviction you should follow that advice? It’s very uncomfortable, because if you don’t agree, the other person may be insulted or angry or put up an argument. It won’t take long before you avoid that person’s advice at all costs, or perhaps instinctively rebel from it. That’s even more uncomfortable. Have you ever found yourself doing the same thing though – perhaps with your kids?

What if we never offered unsolicited advice? And if someone did ask for our opinion, we simply offered it with no expectations attached? This takes a lot of trust, and self-awareness. We have to believe that our kids are inherently capable, though they will make mistakes (just like we do). We have to know that our kids do not belong to us, and the fact that they choose differently doesn’t make our choices wrong. This might be a hard switch to make, especially if we are used to other people laying expectations on us. We have to undo all the phony connections that are based on ego (the thinking self), and simply be ourselves.

I still struggle with how much to give in to my family and how much to hold my own. I try not to expect anything in particular from my kids, but I cannot shake the expectation that they will always be wonderful. My dad does the same for me, even though I never became a lawyer.

Are Your Kids Ready for the 3rd Industrial Revolution?

There have been a lot of predictions and discussions about a “3rd Industrial Revolution” in the past, but the one I’m referring to is promoted by a man named Jeremy Rifkin who was interviewed Oct. 3rd on NPR. He maintains that our current carbon based energy economy is unsustainable, because of both climate change and resource scarcity (we will eventually run out of the stuff). Everyone talks about the need for renewable energy, but Rifkin is promoting a shift away from centralized power and energy distribution to a more lateral system where we all create our own energy in homes and businesses, which are then all tied together by an “Energy Internet.” He’s trying to convince governments and industry to let go of the old business models in favor of a new system where we are all nodes in a giant web of information and energy transmission.

It’s an interesting idea, and I want to read his book to learn more. But it reinforces for me the urgency of our situation. Regardless of how well society transitions out of our old carbon-based energy dependence, we have to be ready for changes. Our kids will have to be ready for changes. Fortunately, they will probably be better at it than we will.

Based on my research so far, here’s some of the changes that I am predicting:

oil (and fuel) prices will continue to rise indefinitely, meaning prices for everything else will rise
local organic food production will expand due to high shipping and conventional farming costs
people will find ways to conserve more energy/drive less as costs go up
power companies will continue shifting to renewables but it won’t be enough to meet demand, so supply will have to be rationed
to control rising costs, any job that can be outsourced to cheaper labor pools will be outsourced
the only jobs left in the USA will be jobs that must be done in person here (construction, medical/personal care, hospitality, agriculture, storefront retail, etc.), and those that require creativity, research and innovation

There’s a bunch of other things that I could add to this list, but that will be enough to make my point for now. There are many people who present a very gloomy view of this future, and it’s true that a lot could go bad if we don’t adapt quickly. I don’t want to wait for things to go bad though. I want to adapt now, and help my community get ready too.

Part of that involves educating our kids, or rather, letting them educate us. Innovation isn’t top-down, it’s bottom-up. Great businesses know this. They have recognized that they need to give employees the freedom to come up with a better way to do things. While researching for my book, I found that so many of our greatest innovators did so in spite of formal education, not because of it. Now, I don’t mean to malign all formal education, just standardized formal education. We have to give kids the wiggle room to design an education that fits their personal interests and ambitions, because that’s where their genius is. And we’re going to need all the geniuses we can get in this new world.

We don’t need pliability, blind obedience, subservience, or disengagement. Here’s what we do need:

Creativity
Collaboration
Flexibility
Personal responsibility
Leadership
Innovation
Experimentation

How do we get these things? Self-directed education is a great first step (read my book!), but that doesn’t mean learning in isolation. Kids really do need opportunities to find mentors, work in groups, solve real-world problems, and be involved in their community. They need access to other people and information via the Internet. Technology will be a big player in how all of this turns out, so there’s no use sheltering older kids from computers. There’s even evidence that multi-player video games give kids a chance to solve complex puzzles/problems and exercise creative thinking.

Adaptation on a massive scale is going to take all of us working and learning new ways to cooperate and live within our means. It will probably take a generous dose of humor and goodwill as well. We can start with ourselves, unlearning what we used to know, and let loose our kids to learn what we will need to know.

Use Google Docs to Make Homeschooling Cooler

My son Aengus loves a lot of techie things, but Google probably tops his list. His dream is to work there someday, but until then, he likes to stay on top of all their latest developments and explain it all to me. So, I cannot take credit for learning to use Google Documents – it was all his idea. It didn’t matter to me whether my kids wrote with a keyboard or a quill pen, I was always just happy to see some writing. But then Aengus tricked me into seeing the wonders of Google.

Here’s how it started. For the last year, Aengus has been “turning in” all of his writing assignments on Google Docs (short for “Documents”), which was working fine. But I didn’t really get it. For me, the only difference between Google Docs and emailing a copy was that the document was stored somewhere else in case your hard drive crashed. Recently however, Aengus needed to write an essay for a scholarship application, so he wrote it up on his laptop and called downstairs to ask me to take a look at it on Google Docs. I was already signed in to my gmail account so I switched over to Documents view and saw his essay there at the top of my list, already enabled to share with me. I started reading it and noticed an insistent message on the top right side of my screen: “Hi Mom.” “Oh – how cute,” I thought as I searched for a way to reply: “Hi Aengus.”

Then he wrote back, “What do you think? I’m still working on the last paragraph.”

I wrote: “What was the essay supposed to be about?”

He promptly copied/pasted the requirements into the message sidebar.

And so it went. I made a suggestion or asked questions, and he responded immediately. I could even see his cursor and the words being typed as he fixed things. The essay was taking shape right before my eyes.

Aha . . . that’s how to use Google docs. It’s collaborative! I get it now. And it doesn’t matter that he uses Windows and I have a Mac. We don’t have to use the same software for me to make edits.

Later, he showed me how I could have left comments at specific areas in the text if we weren’t chatting live, and how Google keeps a history of changes made to any document, and how cool it is that any number of people could see or edit documents without emailing it back and forth.

Now we even share a spreadsheet to track changes to another project we are working on. I’m asking my older son Jesse to move the science fiction novel he’s writing to Google docs so that he doesn’t have to email me the whole document when I ask to read it. It’s so cool!

I may be late to the game, but at least I got this far, and I plan to learn more. If you want to learn more too, here’s some quick videos to get you started: