Category: Education

Goal-setting parent guide—free download

Posted on by Suki

Note: I have written a Parent Guide to accompany my new book, Homeschool with Confidence, which is a goal-setting guide for homeschooled teens. Although it is meant to introduce the concepts in my book, it might be of interest to parents in general (school and homeschool). Feel free to download it here if you are interested in reading more.

Dear Parents,

Congratulations on your recent acquisition of a teenager! I promise you will not be disappointed. Your teenager should be expected to display common teen features, including surliness, flashes of brilliance, sudden mood swings, unparalleled sweetness, antisocial tendencies, social neediness, advanced sense of humor, and unfailing attraction to all manner of digital devices.

This guide will help you guide your teenager through my goal-setting curriculum, following a few simple steps:

  1. Do not, under any circumstances, let on to your teenager that you are guiding them
  2. Do, always, give your teenager unconditional support and encouragement
  3. Do not let on to your teenager that you feel invested in the outcome
  4. Do let your teenager know that you see a bright future for them.

Confused? Welcome to being the parent of a teenager.

Sociologists have found that the concept of “teenager” is not common to all cultures and across the span of human history. It may be a unique phenomenon of modern industrialized societies.

However, that doesn’t make your job any easier. You are trying to guide someone who doesn’t want to be guided, mentor someone who may actually believe they are smarter than you, and stay sane in the process.

It’s a tall order.

Why goal-setting?

My new book was inspired by working with my kids and my students.

When my older child was 13, I started to see a difficult near future. Though he’s generally a pretty mild-mannered guy, we were getting a lot of pushback and defiance about things that I didn’t consider important at all. It was wearying. I’m sure at some point I must have said this: “If you must fight with me, can you at least choose something meaningful to fight about?”

I started to read about teen development and realized that goal-setting might be a way to get around some of the communication difficulties we had. I couldn’t find a curriculum that wasn’t full of school and organized sports, so I did the homeschooler thing: We muddled through with what we had and adapted what we could find.

I was amazed at the changes in our relationship, and immediately started to integrate what I’d learned into my parenting and teaching. (I teach in-person classes and also online classes at Athena’s Advanced Academy.)

It’s really quite simple. Goal-setting allows you and your teen to:

  • Get to know each other on a new level, as humans with ideas and desires rather than just parent and child
  • Develop a common understanding of your family’s values and concerns
  • Develop a common understanding of your teen’s values and concerns (which may be different)
  • Create a system of planning that is both focused and flexible
  • Learn a new vocabulary to communicate without value judgments and emotionally loaded expectations

Read on by downloading the full guide from my website.

Related:

Support your teen with goal-setting

Posted on by Suki

[Disclaimer: I didn’t write this because I have somehow perfected the art of raising a teen. I’m writing this because the teen-me watched in horror as the adult-me parented my teens exactly how the teen-me knew I shouldn’t. The teen-me was positively screaming in my ear, but did I listen? Well, I did my best!]

My new book is about goal-setting for teens, and I wrote it directly for teens, not parents. The reason for that is that from what I’ve seen, teens pretty much won’t do anything well unless they feel invested in it.

But teens also need the adults in their lives. Though there are those rare teens who seem to be able to handle everything on their own, most teens need—and actually want—guidance. It’s just that the sort of guidance parents tend to offer is, shall we say, not exactly what they’re looking for.

So how do we support our teens?

Give them agency

In traditional cultures, teens were young adults. They got to take up a spear or build a fire. But our culture is significantly more complex. As much as we might wish that our teens will do well in life with a fine spear and good aim, they need education, a driver’s license, and lots of experience sorting real from fake Nigerian princes.

So they do still need our guidance, and few are ready to be modern “adults” at 14. But they also need to feel growing independence as they go into their teen years. They need to feel trusted with real jobs (even though they might complain about them). Lots of destructive teen behavior comes from their need to make a mark in some way.

Follow their lead

We all knew when our babies were learning to walk that we needed to let them fall. It’s so much harder to let our teens fail when their failure might make a permanent change in their life path.

College professors are reporting that more and more, young students are coming to them and asking how they can make sure they get an A, as if success is more important than learning. This attitude leads to kids who have an instinct always to play it safe and to guard what they have. Perhaps this might make for success in getting into college, but it’s not a good recipe for success in life.

Help them find a direction (for now)

If we’re going to let our kids lead, we have to feel like they are going somewhere. And lots of teens really don’t know where they are going. Goal-setting is a way to help them have a direction, even if it’s just for the next week. And having a direction is important, even if, halfway up the path, we decide to go a different way.

Enter goal-setting

That’s why I fixed on goal-setting as a way to communicate with my kids. I figured if I could get them to articulate goals, even the most minor ones, we’d share a common language for moving forward. I didn’t find a book I liked, so in the spirit of being a lifelong learner, I wrote one myself!

I also use the book (in its previous nascent form and now as a published book) in goal-setting classes I teach online at Athena’s Advanced Academy. It’s fun to work with teens who aren’t my own and find out that just like mine, they thrive when they feel that they have agency, choices, and a direction.

4 reasons why schools shouldn’t play “immigration police”

Posted on by Suki

Amongst the various proposals put forth to deal with illegal immigration there is a perennial one: catch ’em at school. People generally want their children to get educated, and also, free public schools are free childcare, right?

School children in New Mexico in 1941. (Wikimedia Commons)

So the thought goes like this: Figure out which “illegal kids” are at schools, and then go after their parents.

Britain is already doing it. And with conservatives in control of the U.S. federal government, we might be following close on their heels.

Here’s why forcing schools to track undocumented kids is a bad idea:

An educated population is always better

This is a rule that never changes, no matter which kids you’re talking about: If you want your country to function better, you want educated people.

Educated people are healthier, they have fewer children, they provide more skilled labor, they pay more taxes.

If you force undocumented adults to keep their kids at home, the only net change is that our country has fewer educated people, which means they’ll have more kids, be unskilled workers, and pay less in taxes.

This is not what we want.

Healthier kids make a healthier society

Children eating school lunch in Virginia. (U.S. Dept. of Agriculture)

Our public schools don’t just educate. They offer free health testing such as vision and hearing. They screen kids for severe dental problems. Teachers are trained to watch for signs of physical abuse.

The reason we put this money into our public schools is that it is paid back many times over. Healthier kids are cheaper to have in our society than sick kids. Sick kids turn into sick adults, who need more care, and more expensive care.

This is not what we want.

The job of educators is to educate

When we attempt to turn teachers into anything but educators, we end up with conflicts that muddy their job descriptions and decrease their effectiveness. This is something that you’ll hear conservatives say often: Teachers should just be teaching the “three R’s.”

In that case, it looks like we agree on this: If we turn teachers into immigration police, they will have less time to teach, and less focus when they are teaching.

This is not what we want.

“Street Urchin” by John George Brown, 1885 (Wikimedia Commons)

Going after children is not only unethical, it’s un-Christian

The fathers shall not be put to death for the children, neither shall the children be put to death for the fathers: every man shall be put to death for his own sin. [Deuteronomy 24:16]

We have a long tradition in Western culture of not blaming children for what their parents do. If we decide to change this tradition, should we imprison children whose parents are convicted of felonies? Should we refuse to feed children whose parents are unwilling to work? Do we leave children with abusive parents simply because the child was born to those parents?

Children of those who have immigrated to the U.S. without legal papers have done nothing wrong. They shouldn’t have to fear going to school. We may as a society decide that undocumented adult workers should fear our government. But allowing immigration officials to catch families through their children imposes immoral burdens upon the children.

This is not what we want.

In other words, quite simply, Britain is doing the wrong thing. Our government has historically done the right thing. Let’s keep it that way.

Math Stories: Fun, Deep Learning for Elementary Students

Posted on by Suki

Readers: This is an update and consolidation of previous posts on this topic. Hopefully I’ve gotten all the resources in here!

It started one night when my seven-year-old daughter explained to her father how you can determine the number of faces in a geometric solid from the number of points. I’d ordered a Sir Cumference book from the library on the many recommendations I’d seen, and for the fact that my daughter was obsessed with knights.

Sir Cumference was our introduction to math stories.

It didn’t occur to me that this would be an efficient way to teach math. Since then, I’ve been on a quest for math stories.

First, a definition: What I’m calling math “stories” are books in which the story is more, or at least as important as the math it contains. I’m not confusing them with “story problems,” the bane of many a standardized test-taker. A math story is a really great story that happens to contain math.

It’s also a very effective way to spark interest in and understanding of math in elementary-aged kids.

The first books we tried, the wonderful Sir Cumference series, are picture books about medieval times peopled with wonderfully named characters: Lady Di of Ameter, Geo of Metry, and of course Sir Cumference himself.

The books have the lush pictures and captivating storylines you’d expect from picture books, but they also teach math concepts in a deep way.

In learning about pi, that confusing number associated with circles, Radius (Sir C.’s son, of course) actually experiments with a pie. The shape of King Arthur’s table leads to a discussion of circles and their particular attributes.

The success of Sir Cumference led us to seek out more math stories. A friend recommended The Adventures of Penrose the Mathematical Cat. Author Theoni Pappas has written a number of math books for a range of ages and abilities. They all seem to center around the idea that if people just understood all of math’s lovable attributes, they’d love the discipline as well.

We instantly fell in love with Penrose. If you have a cat, you will recognize Penrose in an instant. He learns mathematics because his mistress (Pappas) is always looking at her math papers. So like any good cat, what does he do? He inserts himself between his mistress and the papers. Fun and learning follow.

The charm of Penrose is, first, that he is a real cat. Though the illustrations are in pen and ink, there’s a photo in the beginning of the book of the real Penrose, poised in mid-play amongst his mistress’s papers.

The fictional Penrose not only enjoys getting attention, but also gaining knowledge. He starts to wonder about what’s on the papers, and soon the numbers and shapes come alive and talk to him.

This is a consistent metaphor in the books, and is a good metaphor for what happens to a child charmed by Penrose. At the end of each story there is a small box with an intriguing question. My daughter, who screams in frustration at a page of math problems, took the initiative in finding paper and pencil to answer the first chapter’s conundrum.

We’re on to our third Pappas book now, hungrily lapping up Penrose’s forays into tessellation, prime numbers, and equiangular spirals.

We were on a roll. Someone else suggested The Number Devil. There are a couple of caveats about this book: First, this is a playful take on religion, with a Number Heaven/Hell and the Number Devils that live there, so beware if this doesn’t fit with your world view. Also, this book starts with the main character, Robert, having nightmares, and given that our household was being turned upside-down at that point with nighttime wakings, I was leery of adding more ideas for bad things that happen at night.

I decided, however, to give it a try, and it was a hit. Not only did Robert’s nightmares not scare my daughter, but the Number Devil soon invades the dreams and drives away all the bad thoughts. They are replaced by dreams of number theory, explained through colorful language and ever-changing scenery.

We loved the Number Devil not just for the math but for the fiction.

The book has a therapeutic as well as didactic approach: Robert’s fears of the big, scary world and also of his detested math teacher, Mr. Bockel, are replaced by musings about the beauty of numbers. By the end of the book, Robert becomes a number devil himself, having earned a place in Number Heaven (or Hell, depending on how you look at it) and a license to think about the cool stuff that number philosophers have thought about since ancient times.

This may all beg the question: What did my daughter get from this? Is she learning useful skills?

First, I have to say that all this reading will probably not translate directly to any increase in her testable numbers. Standardized tests look for mastery of skills; these books encourage excitement about ideas. Standardized tests focus on grade-level standards; these books throw that all out the window and figure kids should learn about the cool stuff… leave the boring, repetitive stuff for another day.

What math stories do is introduce kids to the big, enticing ideas that make all the work on boring stuff like multiplication facts worth the effort. A child who is excited by triangles is going to learn soon enough that having to pull out a calculator or multiplication chart over and over to remember 3×3 just delays the pay-off.

Math stories also teach math concepts in a deeper way, embedding them in a narrative that fits into the way children learn in the real world, through experience and need.

If you’re looking for math stories for older children, check out the British Murderous Maths series (which I’m happy to see is now available in the US) and Theoni Pappas’s The Joy of Mathematics, both of which teach the history and ideas behind the math that kids will need to tackle in late elementary and middle school.

Resources

  • Living Math is a website full of great math resources

Here are various math stories that we read and enjoyed or that other readers have recommended:

RIP, Gentle Giant

Posted on by Suki

A short note for a sad event: The largest old-growth redwood in Nisene Marks State Park (otherwise known as our wonderful backyard) is gone. It fell over in  a recent storm. Following are some pictures. Hoping that if the old-growth redwoods behind our house meet a similar fate, they fall down the hill, not toward our house!

Locals: Unfortunately, given the location of the tree you can’t currently get to it from the main entrance without wading in a very swift current—you’ll have to wait until they put the seasonal bridge up this spring to get to it. You could use the Vienna Woods entrance but then would have about a 20-minute hike (at least) to get there. There is an entrance across from Safeway that should put you on the correct side of the creek, but I’m not sure whether there is a sign.

Advocate - 1
The sign still points toward a major attraction that is no longer.
Advocate - 2
There’s an enormous hole in the vista that used to be filled with a majestic tree.

 

Advocate - 6
Another visitor left roses.
Advocate - 3
It stretches all the way down to the creek. I couldn’t lift myself up onto it to walk down, but my husband said that the top of the tree had “exploded” when it hit ground.

 

Advocate - 4
A little perspective: he’s 6 feet tall!

 

Advocate - 5

 

Now available