Show and Tell

I read the saddest thing this morning. It was just a sentence or two but it broke my heart a little.

[Mood and tone] are often confused and middle school students can't seem to find a way to differentiate the two, no matter how many times they are told that tone is what the author/narrator's attitude is towards the text and that mood is the reader's attitude toward the text.

Wow. That attitude just takes my breath away. "No matter how many times they are told" seems to me an expression of frustration. How often do we as parents and educators share that feeling? "I've told you and told you...!" Or, as my mother often phrased that same exasperation, "Do I have to jump up and down on your chest to teach/remind you to breathe???"

If nothing else, I've been very forcefully reminded lately that only the smallest portion of learning comes from being told something. And yet as adults we persist in believing that if we tell someone a thing enough times it will sink into their [presumably thick] heads and they will finally learn it. Stop and watch children convey information to one another. They use their entire bodies, miming actions, sketching pictures, holding up finished products, imitating sounds. Remember the old school assignment where you write instructions for a simple task such as making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich? I don't know how that assignment played out for others but in my class the teacher proceeded to demonstrate following our directions to the letter and made a huge mess. Because telling conveys only a small part of the experience. Imagine if we had been allowed to make the sandwich while describing our actions. Imagine if we had gotten to add a diagram of the steps or even a picture of a completed sandwich. Teaching incorporates so much more than telling, telling, telling.

What have you been telling your kids that you could express in another way?

Plank Pullin' - The Prickly One

This is one I've been meaning to do for some time. I have plenty of planks to pull. So let's start the deconstruction!
I'm brittle. Sensitive. Whatever word it is you use to say "I get my feelings hurt far too easily and frequently feel snubbed or slighted when no such thing was intended." The Hubs will pick up something laying on an end table and I fly into defensive mode, determined to show him that I am NOT a bad housekeeper - the jerk! How dare he insult my homemaking skills! By - um - errr - picking up - after him - self? My mother-in-law and sister-in-law will run out of town shopping together and one will ask if they can pick anything up for me. Steam begins to billow from my ears. My eyes cross. Blood boiling. They've snubbed me! They could ask me to go but noooooo, they just - kindly offer - to do me - a - favor?
I think what makes it worse is that this trait reminds me so much of my mother. How often would that woman irrationally fly off the handle at some perceived slight that never happened? I've really felt convicted about this lately. The funny thing is, what kicked off the conviction was an incident that I'm still not convinced wasn't an intentional slight. Either way, though, it brought to my eyes the fact that too often I respond with a flash of anger to a perfectly harmless thing somebody does. And as I think about my own mother and her responses I remember that constant feeling of walking on eggshells around her, trying not to break the wrong nerve and cause her to lash out. This is what I've probably been doing to my own husband and daughters.
I can't promise an overnight change but at least I finally noticed the giant log in my eye so I can start taking steps to fix it. Possibly one toothpick at a time, but that's better than nothing. And I promise, if you chime in with an opinion here, I won't bristle up and snap at you ;-)

ICU

It's a little ICU ala Bohemian Bowmans.

This week we want to: survive the week. That's pretty much my only goal. Shannen wants to do other things like hanging out online with friends, "getting" another math thing that's frustrating her, read more books, and generally have fun.

The kids are: amazing me with their drive to do things that I can't imagine wanting to do. Like the math thing. They're spending time on Khan Academy, watching lots of Netflix documentaries, scouring my DVDs for musicals, and driving me crazy begging for carbonated beverages.

I am learning: compromise. I stink at it. But I'm learning. I'm also learning a lot about learning. Which is neat.

I am struggling with: compromise. LOL Seriously, it's hard (she whined obnoxiously). Have I mentioned that hubby and I are not in total agreement about how to best educate our youngsters?

This week is the first time: I've gotten to sleep before 3 AM in a looong time.

I am grateful: for the time I'm able to spend really CONNECTING with my kids and the chance to watch them become amazing young ladies that I'm proud to count as friends.

One thing I have changed in the last year is: how I'm able to talk to my girlies about subjects that make me very uncomfortable.

Tales from Public School 1

This will probably be an ongoing series for a while. I intend to chronicle the silly, the ridiculous, and the downright stupid that I notice in my older girl's public school. Texas is now 2 days into the 2011-2012 school year. Here's what has tickled my funny bone so far:

The first day of school, Mindie came home talking about her classes. This year they have a new class called "Teen Leadership." Apparently the purpose of this class is to, in Mindie's words, "teach us how to work in groups and feel good about ourselves." I'm going to refrain from commenting on how often those two are mutually exclusive goals. What I would like to point out is how the teacher began this class. They were to introduce themselves by standing up and saying, "I'm [name] and I like myself." I asked Mindie if this increased her self esteem. Her eyes rolled back up in her head and she replied, "Yeah. Because if I say it enough it'll be true, right? I'm Mindie and I like myself. I'm Mindie and I like myself." She continued the chant for a while, becoming increasingly silly with it. This is one of my pet peeves with "self esteem" as preached by public schools. Apparently, to hear educators talk, self esteem is something that can be obtained through repeating untrue mantras and collecting hollow compliments. Don't get me wrong, I'm a big fan of self esteem. It is, to be perfectly honest, one of the reasons Shannen is staying OUT of public schools this year (and hopefully for the rest of her years.)

The second day of school brought two more funnies. Apparently there was a school assembly this morning. They watched a movie about "a guy with no arms and no legs who goes around to schools to talk about stuff. A lot of the females in the audiences get all teary." I asked Mindie what the point of the movie and/or the speaker was. "I don't know. I got bored and kind of zoned out. Don't be different or something." Since I'm reasonably certain the school didn't put on a presentation about the joys of conformity hosted by a differently able person I can only assume that this presentation failed in an epic way.

The other funny was a little more subtle. Mindie told me the school is cutting down on the amount of time between classes. In the midst of major construction they now have 4 minutes to move between classes. She also outlined the new tardy policy. On the first tardy of the semester students will be assigned a 30 minute after-school detention. The second tardy will get a student "swats." Obviously this isn't a "ha-ha" funny situation but I find some gentle humour in the thinking behind these two changes together. I wonder if anyone at the school even put these two policies together in their head before setting down rules.

A Fork in the Road

If this process we're going through toward unschooling is a roadtrip, we've hit a fork in the road. After much thought, discussion, and prayerful consideration we've reached a decision for the next step in the journey. Shannen will be staying home this year. Mindie will be returning to public school for another year.

The reason for this is that after talking with The Hubs about it all, we felt like Shannen had the most to gain by staying home. Public school has been hard on Shan. The bullying because the first week of kindergarten. It's gotten worse from there. Most days after school last year, Shan got in the car in tears. A clique of girls long ago targeted Shannen for "outcast" social status. By second grade when the class got two new girls, the clique had exerted enough social pressure that Shan had no friends. The clique ostracized and excluded anyone who tried to be friendly to Shannen. The new girls were told that Shannen was a "snobby b-word." One of the new girls chose to cozy up to Shannen anyway so the two are friends in isolation. They sit alone at lunch. They play alone on the schoolyard. They're not invited to anybody's birthday party and when the class is forced to sing the birthday song to either of these girls, the female part of the class silently glowers instead of singing. Now that middle school has arrived a new taunt has been added to the chorus of jeers. My daughter and her lone friend are now "lesbians" and "perverts." If either of them so much as glances at a boy, she's teased for days about being a "slut."

Academically Shannen has spent the past 7 years being an A-honor roll student. Twice now she's scored perfectly on the objective verbal/language skills portion of the state standardized test. She's been reading on a college level since 4th grade. Her math skills are weaker, but only by comparison. She's excellent at mental math but gets a little lost in writing it down sometimes. She's capable of doing math a level or two ahead of her grade.

Unfortunately her organizational skills are very poor. She frequently loses assignments, often after she's already completed them. She forgets homework, forgets to bring home the books necessary for the homework, forgets to return the homework. Her locker (as well as her bedroom at home) is full of trash mixed in with useful things. Her handwriting is sloppy and nearly illegible at times. She scares us all when she uses scissors because of the way she holds them pointed toward her belly but no matter how many times we guide her in holding her scissors properly, she always defaults back to that dangerous position. She was 7 before she learned to tie her shoes and she still has trouble tying them well enough to stay that way for very long. We blamed it all on her being a lefty for a long time but I've wondered in recent years. We've tried many, many strategies to help her learn some minimal level of organizational skills but so far haven't found one that works for her.

The other big problem we've had with her may sound familiar to parents of children with Asperger's syndrome. When she's motivated to learn something she learns in minute detail. When she's not motivated there seems to be very little we can do to get the information into her head. Luckily, so far her intelligence has kept that from hindering her at school too much but she's probably on the verge of hitting a brick wall in regards to math. Meanwhile, if "Star Wars" were a school subject she'd be operating on a Ph.D. level of work. Similarly "Harry Potter" and "Percy Jackson" are subjects in which she can share a level of detail in which probably even the authors are uninterested. As a matter of fact, most anything in the Greco-Roman mythos is intimately familiar to her.

She recently came to me complaining of boredom. I thought I might try to "teach" her how to wiki-surf. We went to Wikipedia and she entered "Greek mythology" at my direction. Then she turned to me and said, "Mom, I've already read this." I told her to be patient and click on one of the links in the article. She'd read it too. I told her to click another link. After two hours of systematic clicking and paging back I discovered that this was something with which she was all too familiar. She had already read EVERY link in the main Greek mythology link and followed each link in those articles. She's basically read Wikipedia on everything remotely related to Greek literature and mythology. For kicks and giggles I decided to try something. I found an old test in my files from a college course I took in mythology and had her take the test. All of the objective standards were 100% correct when she finished but the majority of the test was short answer and essay. I spent two days looking up some of the things she included in her answers. She was right on all of it. Beyond that, she showed a high degree of analysis of her information. I pulled up a few other mythology tests online (tests from college courses, not the silly Quizilla style things) and she aced those as well. This kid is probably capable of doing grad-level work in mythology. But it's amazingly lopsided for her. Greek and Roman mythology she knows inside and out. She grasps an overview of Norse mythology but has no interest in it at all. Japanese mythology is almost as intimate as Greco-Roman. She's apparently still working through Egyptian mythology in her head. She can repeat stories about virtually any figure in Egyptian mythology but she can't draw conclusions about that information yet or relate it to other mythologies.

With all this sort of thing in mind, we felt like Shannen had a lot to lose by going back to school. But The Hubs is still nervous about chucking it all to homeschool. I suspect that his very disapproving mother might have something to do with it. Either way, Mindie isn't as hampered by school. What harm it probably does her seems minimal. She fits in better with her peers and has many friends of a variety of ages both within and outside of the school environment. School might not challenge her as much as I would like but it provides her with opportunity for intellectual growth. It doesn't seem to stifle her creativity or curiosity since she still comes home and pursues learning and creating opportunities on her own initiative.

And so when two paths diverged in a wood, we took both paths.

The Theater Chronicles: Pt. 2 - On the Source of My Current Joy

I started last night's blog off with how happy I am right now but I got a little verbose before I made it to my point. I'm almost there, I promise.

"Kids Say the Darndest Things" was a huge success for me. But some of the process of getting there was frustrating. I was working with mostly completely inexperienced actors and actresses. The director had never worked with so many kids nor so many novices. And I was working with my daughter among them. It was difficult and it certainly didn't end in complete success but it started me thinking and sharpened my appetite for teaching. It was never teaching itself that I was uncomfortable with, just the other stuff that goes with teaching in a school environment.

The biggest task with this group of kids was getting them to project. Maybe 3 in our cast of more than 20 got it in the beginning. I hit upon a technique or two that got around a 100% boost in volume out of the kids I tried it on. It's really two variations on the same thing. I tried it first on Shannen at home. I could not seem to get through to her how to speak from her diaphragm. Finally I just socked her in the gut. Not hard enough to hurt her but enough to leave her slightly breathless. In that moment I saw the click. Air comes from there! There was an immediate 50% volume increase as she struggled to figure out how to control that air. There were two problems with that technique. I could get away with doing it to my daughter but I didn't think I could go around punching my cast members. And besides, it made the idea of using her diaphragm click but still left her trying to figure out what to do with it.

After a day or two of thought I hit upon a more effective variation. I stood behind Shannen as she practiced her lines with my arms around her, hands resting on her abdomen just below her diaphragm. As she spoke, I pressed inward forcing just a little air out. As she repeated the line I pressed harder. Her volume began to rise. We repeated the activity five times with me pressing harder each time. And suddenly sound exploded from her. My quiet, mumbling daughter was issuing words that carried through the house. I took my hands off and the volume and resonance continued. By jove, she had it!

My next victim - er, pupil - was a young man of the same general age who was working and struggling to improve his performance. I could see him take director's notes each night and incorporate them into his next performance. He clearly wanted to get better. I pulled him aside and repeated the exercise I used on Shannen. He was a quick study and only took three tries to make the connection. That night I watched him onstage as we rehearsed. He sat up straighter when performing his lines and a few times I caught his arms crossed over his diaphragm. He was giving himself the mechanical push I had used to kick off a vastly louder performance.

I was hooked. I was teaching and I loved it! But there was a storm cloud brewing on the horizon. Shannen was moving into "I know, Mom!" mode. She was mentally tuning me out. And worse, she resented having to do it. My enthusiasm was overwhelming her fun. I backed off for the rest of the play. This was her spotlight and she deserved the space to find out if she liked it. Even though I was itching to push her to give the performance I saw buried in her, I resisted the urge.

Luckily for both of us, my own love of the limelight has dimmed some since my youth. By the time we were done with "Kids Say the Darndest Things" I was worn out and ready for a break. I knew there was going to be a performance geared for young actors over the summer and this time I was going to stick to the plan and only work backstage.

The summer play is "Narnia" and I stuck to the plan. I'm general backstage crew. I'm listed on the bill as properties master but I'm also in charge of sets, organizing backstage crew, and hair. The only time I set foot on stage is when the lights are out or the curtains are closed. Strangely, it's giving me new opportunities to work with Shannen on performing. The "Narnia" directors are a husband and wife team and they're fairly hands-off in terms of teaching but they're asking a high degree of performance from the cast. Shannen is struggling to give them what they expect. Because I'm not in the cast with her it's giving me a degree of separation that makes her more willing to accept guidance and mentoring from me. I'm not as much of a teacher in the formal sense now and yet I'm teaching her more and more.

At first she was only willing to let me run lines with her so that's what I did. As staging progressed, though, she was turning to me for guidance on how to meet the directors' requests. One of the directors would say, "Shannen, your words have to cut through their bickering here. You have to be commanding." Shannen would come to me at a break and want to know how. She would practice the lines and look to me for suggestions on improving them.

Finally a couple of nights ago we left rehearsals with her frustrated and upset because she just wasn't getting it all. When we got home she and I hunkered down in her room and I was able to introduce my peculiar blend of classical and method acting. The Method made sense to her but just as I had found long before, it's difficult to use for a younger actor. The lack of life experience limits the pool from which an actor can draw as well as the depth of that pool. But like many young actors, Shannen is a keen observer of the people around her. If she hasn't yet experienced the profound sorrow to fuel a tragic performance, she's seen people around her experience a much deeper sadness than she herself has felt. I encouraged her to draw not only on her own well of experience but on her observations of others. How did I act when my mother died? And suddenly she was able to portray sorrow with genuineness. In "Narnia" she's playing the eldest boy, Peter. Shannen is the youngest girl in our family, though. By connecting Peter to her older sister, Shannen has taken on the strange blend of bossy and nurturing that seems so natural to an oldest child.

We were even able to draw on other actors' performances in loved movies. Peter leads the Narnian army in the second act. Clearly Shannen has no personal experience from which to draw to command troops or run a battlefield. What she does have is a deep and abiding awe for the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy. With a nudge in that direction she was able to weave together a powerful general who inspired love and loyalty in his troops. She found the voice to shout orders above the din of battle. She pulled up a well-spring of strength to face an overwhelming force in a battle that seems doomed. She even found the softness to connect with her stage siblings in that hopeless moment before battle is joined without losing the edge of desperation and determination.

All that remains for Shannen in this performance is her greatest challenge: to let go and show the happiness and exuberance that she keeps tightly bottled in her own life. It was sadly amusing last night to watch Shannen onstage with everybody else as Aslan returns from death to aid Narnia in the final battle. The other actors were bounding around the stage, animated in their joy. Shannen stood to one side with a stoic (and strangely sardonic) grin barely passing her lips. After several attempts from the directors to get her to "happy up" they finally gave up and moved on with the scene. After we got home I holed up in her room with her again and we tried to find something for her to hold onto in her head to let the happy flow but we never really got close. With each idea she wavered between sarcastic amusement and maniacal glee. We'll keep trying today and every day until we get it, but I'm not sure she's ready to let that wall down yet.

In the meantime, though, I'm having more fun than I ever dreamed possible. Seeing things click for her, watching her improve, learn, and really hone her craft is more satisfying to me than a million standing ovations. And it's giving me dreams again. I'm thinking of other ways I can share this love and passion with other "students." Except students isn't the right word at all. The more I'm de-schooling myself the more I think "partners" is a better word than "pupils." For whatever knowledge I have to impart on young actors, they have as much to teach me. Learning isn't a one-sided relationship at all, I'm discovering.

The Theater Chronicles: Pt. 1 - Of What Came Before

I'm so far beyond happy right now. When I was a teen I had a career plan. I was going to be a drama teacher. It was going to be wonderful and I was going to ignite a passion in young people. At some point in my first year of college I started thinking about that dream in realistic and concrete terms. I began to imagine not just the awesome classroom exercises I would lead or the public performances I would direct but also the "staff development" meetings I would sit through, the teacher evaluations I would endure. I thought for the first time of those students who took drama not because they had a love of the stage but because it was the class their pencil dropped on in the "fine arts credits" column. I began to wonder how I would grade students who had a great deal more enthusiasm than talent. And suddenly I knew that I wasn't cut out for teaching, at least not in a public school setting. I switched majors to something more practical that I wouldn't completely hate and I shelved a dream.

When I gave up the dream of teaching theater I also shelved being a part of the theater. First I had studies to concentrate upon. Maybe later I would have time for my silly hobby. Then I had small children who needed me. Maybe when they grew up I might have time for my silly hobby. Then I was in a small community and the theater group was probably cliquish and I was shy. Maybe someday I'd get the gumption up to indulge my silly hobby.

In January, my then-11-year-old daughter told me she wanted to try her hand at acting. I can't say I gave it much thought beyond agreeing that she could audition for a play "sometime" if a suitable part came up. She was elated and in her youthful passion she mentioned it to a church friend who happens to serve on the community theater's board. In February my mom was dying, I was driving 160 miles a day to be with her in the hospice then returning home each evening to care for my family. One evening when I checked messages there was one from the church friend. "Hey honey. I just wanted to let you know they're doing the cutest little play called 'Kids Say the Darndest Things' and holding auditions in a week. It would be just perfect for Shannen, don't you think?" My heart skipped a beat. My brain went into overdrive. She HAD to be in this play but how on earth was I going to manage to get her to auditions and help her learn lines while my mother was 80 miles away dying? I was so conflicted. Finally I decided to take her to auditions and just see what happened.

Luck was on my side, sort of. The first day of auditions there was a nasty ice storm. That meant no trip to sit with Mom that day. We slid into a parking spot in front of the theater and both girls and I trooped into a frozen theater. Almost literally. The plumbing had completely frozen. The heat wasn't working. It was cold and miserable. But I was in a theater again for the first time in 14 years and it felt like being home. A sad, shivering group of kids assembled in the front of the house. Two adults besides the director were there. Another joined us later. I helped Shannen fill out her bio sheet. I had a few words with the director. I volunteered to work backstage if needed. It was something my mother did in my early theater years, too. If she was going to have to drive me into town for rehearsals and hang around waiting, she might as well be productive and keep an eye on me. More often than not she served as a dresser, assisting people with quick costume changes.

I sat and watched kids read parts. I'd like to say Shannen was a shining star but she wasn't. She was better than many of the hopefuls with no prior experience but there were plenty better than she was. And then the director pleaded for adults to audition for the part of the host. I watched the dad stumble through a painful reading. I debated internally. I tried to talk myself out of it but somehow my body shot up against my brain's will. I grabbed a pencil from the pile near the bio sheets and I stepped up onto the stage with a script.

Let me flash back for a moment to a time when I was around 12 years old myself. I was an avid reader and frequent patron of the local library. I had discovered an author named Erma Bombeck who made me laugh even though I probably didn't identify with a lot of the humor. On the shelf near Erma's offerings was a small tome entitled "Kids Say the Darndest Things" by Art Linkletter. I checked it out one day and had finished reading it by the next. And then I read it again. And again. I couldn't have told you then what it was in Mr. Linkletter's writing that struck such a chord in me but I knew that he spoke to a very private part of myself. Sure, the things he mentioned the kids saying was funny, but that wasn't what I got from his book. There was something in HIM that appealed to me. It would be more than 20 years before I understood what it was. My point is that I identified with this role. Strangely, in January before I knew about this play I had been watching YouTube clips of the show to try and cheer myself up as Mom's condition wore me down.

When I stepped on stage that evening, some amazing things happened. The first was that my passion for performing was reignited. I hadn't even been aware of the loss until I felt it return. The second was that some part of Art Linkletter came through me as I read his words to my audience. I don't mean in that corny "channelling" way. I wasn't possessed. But that something inside me that had been stirred so many years ago reading the book for the first dozen times came alive and poured out of me. It was a sense of wonder, awe, amazement, and yes, amusement at the minds of children and a burning desire to share that with the world. I wanted people to see the freshness with which the young view the world and to laugh not only at the obviously humorous misuses of our language but at the innocence and yet timeless wisdom of their genuine observations.

I guess I wowed the director but I honestly don't remember much of my performance because I was lost in it. She took a few days before letting me know for sure I had the part but I could tell when I left the theater that night that it was mine. My certainty wasn't because of her behavior but the simple knowledge that it was MY part. I hadn't been acting on that stage. I was sharing myself through someone else's words. Thalia, the muse of comedy, would never let that part go to anyone else.

When I was offered the role I told Dee, the director, "I might as well warn you now. My mom's in a hospice in Odessa and she's dying. We don't know how long it will take but that's going to complicate your schedule." She, in her wonderful way, said, "I figured something like that was going on. Don't worry. We'll work around it. I want you for this part." At the same time, Shannen was offered a role in the third scene as one of the principal interviewees.

Mom passed away a week later. I'm sad that she wasn't able to be in the front row on opening night to see TWO of her girls on stage together. In my more maudlin moments I comfort myself by thinking that she was on the front row in Heaven although I really don't believe that any more than I believe in Greek Muses. I think in Heaven, being with our Creator pretty much eclipses our interest in what's happening back on earth. But since nobody's ever come back to tell me for sure, I figure the possibility of me being wrong is enough that I don't mind the occasional comfortable delusion.