saxon math : unschooling
Homeschooling is always a courageous adventure but presents special challenges when the journey begins after years in public school. Last Fall we entered our third year of homeschool with our ninth-grade daughter and confidently began again as we welcomed home our seventh-grade son for that exciting and challenging first year.
After several weeks of relaxed, unstructured homeschooling, my 12 year old son fell into a weeping mess. Though my heart broke for his emotional pain, it taught me volumes about his public school experience through the 6th grade and strengthened my determination to help him find his way.
According to the school district, my son is advanced in mathematics. Since I had no idea where to start his studies, we decided to do Saxon Math placement testing. No score to achieve, no percentage correct or number incorrect to mark in red pen on the worksheets--simply 50 questions progressing through the levels of the Saxon Math textbooks--levels 54 through Algebra 1. Students are given up to one hour to take the test, may not use a calculator, and must show all their work. They are instructed to work until they cannot work any more problems.
My daughter took the testing in stride and placed higher than we anticipated, but my son was a completely different story. He sat down to the worksheet a relaxed, happy little boy but quickly turned into an anxious,grouchy monster. I was confused by the transformation and cautiously approached the situation. I explained again that the test wasn't really a 'test', that we just needed to know which textbook to purchase for him because mom didn't want to spend money on a book that was too easy or too difficult. I told him to do the problems until he came to those he couldn't complete. My words bounced off his forehead! He was determined he could finish ALL the problems and finish them correctly which, at his age and experience, was just not possible! First he became indignant, then angry, and then he began weeping. Not just tears, but deep sobs with tears running down his face. I stopped him and gave him a hug until he quieted down. Then I asked him to explain, but he truly didn't understand his reaction either. I said, "This is not a test. It's not important. Mom is the only one who will use the results." He just shook his head 'in defeat'. I said, "Look, this isn't school. We can stop and put this away and do anything else you want! This is mathematics and you like math--but this isn't school math." A sigh of relief came from his body. I asked him, "How did you ever get through math tests at school?" With new tears but less intensity he said, "Oh Mom, it was horrible. It was so much worse. It was so bad--not just math. I was so afraid." I gave him more hugs and validated his fearful experience.
I never knew. I never knew he was so scared ... every day. How did I miss it?
In "How Children Fail" John Holt comments about the abundance of fear that exists in our schools and wonders why so little is said about it. He believes we easily recognize the obvious signs of fear but often miss the more sublte signs in children's "... faces, voices, and gestures, in their movements and ways of working ..." These are the signs that I misunderstood, the signs that serve as true red flags and reveal that "... most children in school are scared most of the time, many of them very scared."
My son was a good student in public school, but sometime during sixth grade he changed. We thought it was boredom; it didn't look like fear. Perhaps he was using too much effort trying to control his fear, live with it and adjust to it, and we missed the signs. We thought he was bored, not being challenged enough. The public school certainly didn't see any red flags when his grades dropped from strong A's to average C's, and we misunderstood what was actually happening with our son. He was trying to control his fears like a good soldier. But as John Holt comments, "The scared fighter may be the best fighter, but the scared learner is always a poor learner."
Though this is a very personal situation (especially for a now 13 year old boy), I'm sharing our experience because it's the Paul Harvey-type 'rest of the story' that blesses me and gives me a chuckle. It may help other children to adjust to homeschool life after public school.
Since that awful day we have done no math worksheets, no testing, and hardly anything that resembles 'school math'. We did buy a used textbook (The Nature of Mathematics, 7th edition, by Karl J. Smith) which is so interesting I can hardly put it down myself. It's very colorful and includes history notes, a pull-out timeline, and biographies of mathematicians. My son browses its pages when the impulse strikes, but that's as far as we've gone with the issue. He doesn't even realize yet the impact mathematics has had on virtually every instructional day since the Saxon testing.
Last Spring we built a picket fence, and he has spent hour after hour working with the scrap pieces of wood. He has virtually used up every triangular piece of wood in his 'stockpile'. First he 'stapled' them into patterns. Then he nearly drove me insane with hammer and nail projects until he found the hot glue gun (safety lesson there). On his own initiative, following his own interests, he did artwork of geometrical shapes and complementary colors (he favors the triangle.) He even made his own kite but was disappointed that the first test flight proved Mom and Dad's theory rather than his own.
My personal favorite is the video game cheat code antics. These 'tips' and 'shortcuts' are deliberately programmed into the games by the designers as a challenge to brilliant minds. We had downloaded several codes from an Internet gaming site and my son wanted to download more. He was frustrated with me because I was too busy with web design work and kept putting him off until later. Since he couldn't download more codes, he looked at the old codes until his brain recognized a pattern. He yelled, "Hey Mom, I broke the codes!" Well, that is genius--recognizing patterns ... and it's mathematics!
According to our favorite math text, Dr. John Paulos hated math as a kid but is now a widely respected mathematics professor. He admits he learned to love mathematics by browsing through books in the library. Though my son doesn't know it yet, he is learning what Dr. Paulos already knows: "Doing mathematics depends on computational skill no more than writing novels does on typing skills." My son is also learning he doesn't have to be afraid. He's a homeschooler now. He's free to learn in his own way at a safe pace. Learning is now his adventure, not his fear. Jeanne Mills lives in PA with her family. Visit her website http://www.addedimpact.com/contactme.html Reprinted with permission.
by Jeanne Mills
After several weeks of relaxed, unstructured homeschooling, my 12 year old son fell into a weeping mess. Though my heart broke for his emotional pain, it taught me volumes about his public school experience through the 6th grade and strengthened my determination to help him find his way.
According to the school district, my son is advanced in mathematics. Since I had no idea where to start his studies, we decided to do Saxon Math placement testing. No score to achieve, no percentage correct or number incorrect to mark in red pen on the worksheets--simply 50 questions progressing through the levels of the Saxon Math textbooks--levels 54 through Algebra 1. Students are given up to one hour to take the test, may not use a calculator, and must show all their work. They are instructed to work until they cannot work any more problems.
My daughter took the testing in stride and placed higher than we anticipated, but my son was a completely different story. He sat down to the worksheet a relaxed, happy little boy but quickly turned into an anxious,grouchy monster. I was confused by the transformation and cautiously approached the situation. I explained again that the test wasn't really a 'test', that we just needed to know which textbook to purchase for him because mom didn't want to spend money on a book that was too easy or too difficult. I told him to do the problems until he came to those he couldn't complete. My words bounced off his forehead! He was determined he could finish ALL the problems and finish them correctly which, at his age and experience, was just not possible! First he became indignant, then angry, and then he began weeping. Not just tears, but deep sobs with tears running down his face. I stopped him and gave him a hug until he quieted down. Then I asked him to explain, but he truly didn't understand his reaction either. I said, "This is not a test. It's not important. Mom is the only one who will use the results." He just shook his head 'in defeat'. I said, "Look, this isn't school. We can stop and put this away and do anything else you want! This is mathematics and you like math--but this isn't school math." A sigh of relief came from his body. I asked him, "How did you ever get through math tests at school?" With new tears but less intensity he said, "Oh Mom, it was horrible. It was so much worse. It was so bad--not just math. I was so afraid." I gave him more hugs and validated his fearful experience.
I never knew. I never knew he was so scared ... every day. How did I miss it?
In "How Children Fail" John Holt comments about the abundance of fear that exists in our schools and wonders why so little is said about it. He believes we easily recognize the obvious signs of fear but often miss the more sublte signs in children's "... faces, voices, and gestures, in their movements and ways of working ..." These are the signs that I misunderstood, the signs that serve as true red flags and reveal that "... most children in school are scared most of the time, many of them very scared."
My son was a good student in public school, but sometime during sixth grade he changed. We thought it was boredom; it didn't look like fear. Perhaps he was using too much effort trying to control his fear, live with it and adjust to it, and we missed the signs. We thought he was bored, not being challenged enough. The public school certainly didn't see any red flags when his grades dropped from strong A's to average C's, and we misunderstood what was actually happening with our son. He was trying to control his fears like a good soldier. But as John Holt comments, "The scared fighter may be the best fighter, but the scared learner is always a poor learner."
Though this is a very personal situation (especially for a now 13 year old boy), I'm sharing our experience because it's the Paul Harvey-type 'rest of the story' that blesses me and gives me a chuckle. It may help other children to adjust to homeschool life after public school.
Since that awful day we have done no math worksheets, no testing, and hardly anything that resembles 'school math'. We did buy a used textbook (The Nature of Mathematics, 7th edition, by Karl J. Smith) which is so interesting I can hardly put it down myself. It's very colorful and includes history notes, a pull-out timeline, and biographies of mathematicians. My son browses its pages when the impulse strikes, but that's as far as we've gone with the issue. He doesn't even realize yet the impact mathematics has had on virtually every instructional day since the Saxon testing.
Last Spring we built a picket fence, and he has spent hour after hour working with the scrap pieces of wood. He has virtually used up every triangular piece of wood in his 'stockpile'. First he 'stapled' them into patterns. Then he nearly drove me insane with hammer and nail projects until he found the hot glue gun (safety lesson there). On his own initiative, following his own interests, he did artwork of geometrical shapes and complementary colors (he favors the triangle.) He even made his own kite but was disappointed that the first test flight proved Mom and Dad's theory rather than his own.
My personal favorite is the video game cheat code antics. These 'tips' and 'shortcuts' are deliberately programmed into the games by the designers as a challenge to brilliant minds. We had downloaded several codes from an Internet gaming site and my son wanted to download more. He was frustrated with me because I was too busy with web design work and kept putting him off until later. Since he couldn't download more codes, he looked at the old codes until his brain recognized a pattern. He yelled, "Hey Mom, I broke the codes!" Well, that is genius--recognizing patterns ... and it's mathematics!
According to our favorite math text, Dr. John Paulos hated math as a kid but is now a widely respected mathematics professor. He admits he learned to love mathematics by browsing through books in the library. Though my son doesn't know it yet, he is learning what Dr. Paulos already knows: "Doing mathematics depends on computational skill no more than writing novels does on typing skills." My son is also learning he doesn't have to be afraid. He's a homeschooler now. He's free to learn in his own way at a safe pace. Learning is now his adventure, not his fear. Jeanne Mills lives in PA with her family. Visit her website http://www.addedimpact.com/contactme.html Reprinted with permission.
by Jeanne Mills
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