Susan Wise Bauer's Blog, page 10

Winter's farewell (I hope)

So after a much warmer winter than last year's, we got to February 20 without anything really sticking. Even last weekend's unexpected snowshower fell, and went, in the same hours. And then this happened.

(Border collie in snow…)

(Teenaged boy in snow)

The power went out; the snow was heavy and wet and bent the trees (and electric lines) down to the ground. It was cold, and thick, and damp. There were birds in it, building nests.

The day after the snow, it was 55 degrees. Tonight, I can hear frogs peeping in the front marsh, while the last of the snow drips off the eaves.

Liminal. That's what late snow is; at the threshold, not quite in either season, bridging winter and fall and belonging to neither.

Twitter Weekly Updates for 2012-02-19

Spent the late afternoon pruning fruit trees with my father: He points, I snip. Very efficient. #

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The Complete Writer weekend

This past Friday and Saturday, we hosted a writing workshop here at the farm.

Although we put together a tenth-anniversary Well-Trained Mind conference in Williamsburg when the third edition of The Well-Trained Mind came out, this is the first time we've done something here at home. Space was limited, as you can see…

so we limited registration to 100 people.

We planned the weekend workshop to coincide with the release of Writing With Skill, Level One, which is the first book in our four-book middle grade series. Writing With Skill is the next step after our elementary series, Writing With Ease. (If you want a brief overview of my writing philosophy, you can read it here.)

Of course, the problem with planning a February workshop is that it happens in, you know, February. And after one of the warmest winters we've had here in Virginia for quite a while, this is what happened during the last workshop.

(Our attendees, fortunately, took it in stride.)

I presented four workshops: an overview of the writing process, plus one session each for elementary, middle grade, and high school writing. I also did three hands-on demonstrations: narration and dictation with elementary students, outlining with middle-grade writers, and topic brainstorming with the high school students.

All of the sessions will be available shortly on DVD and as audio files. So stay tuned, if you're interested, and I'll let you know when they're ready. In the meantime, if you'd like a preview (or if you were there), you can have a look at my workshop slides below.

Writing Overview PHP 2012

Elementary Writing PHP 2012

Writing Middle Grades PHP 2012

High School Writing PHP 2012

They raise chickens, knit, educate their kids, and don't spend $40K on kindergarten

This week, two articles about education caught my eye.

The first came from the New York Times. "Bracing for $40,000 at New York City Private Schools," the headline read. And we're not just talking about high school either.

Avenues, the for-profit start-up school set to open in Chelsea in September, will charge $39,750 starting in nursery school, which might make it the most expensive preschool in the city. (The school will offer bilingual classes and a longer school day than most early-childhood programs.)…At Horace Mann, where the parents of kindergartners are paying $37,695 with additional fees, the children attended 155 days last year. For those doing the math, that's $243 a day.

Possibly, a reason to consider home education?

Although home educators, granted, can't offer the same benefits as these $40K academies…

At Poly Prep, with 983 students on two campuses in Brooklyn, there are five sections of Level I Mandarin. Dalton offers Zen Dance; Saint Ann's has Roman Travel Writing; and at Columbia Grammar, there is a theater class on "The Nature of Revenge."

At the moment, my ninth-grader is wallowing on the floor with the dog and my fifth-grader is writing a novel on her brother's ancient Mac hand-me-down. We've never done Zen dance, and my instruction on the Nature of Revenge has mostly consisted of yelling, "JUST BECAUSE YOUR BROTHER POKED YOU DOESN'T MEAN YOU HAVE TO POKE HIM BACK."

I mean, we have done a few out-of-the-box educational things. We take field trips to admire great artwork.

We provide opportunities for active and creative play.

We experiment with the culinary arts.

(That's a zombie cookie, a.k.a. What Happens When Teenaged Boys Cook.)

But somehow I feel that we're not keeping up, here.

Fortunately, we're not alone. Newsweek has finally twigged to the fact that not every parent aspires to PTA meetings at Horace Mann.

We think of homeschoolers as evangelicals or off-the-gridders who spend a lot of time at kitchen tables in the countryside. And it's true that most homeschooling parents do so for moral or religious reasons. But education observers believe that is changing. You only have to go to a downtown Starbucks or art museum in the middle of a weekday to see that a once-unconventional choice "has become newly fashionable," says Mitchell Stevens, a Stanford professor who wrote Kingdom of Children, a history of homeschooling. There are an estimated 300,000 homeschooled children in America's cities, many of them children of secular, highly educated professionals who always figured they'd send their kids to school—until they came to think, Hey, maybe we could do better….

Many of these parents feel that city schools—or any schools—don't provide the kind of education they want for their kids. Just as much, though, their choice to homeschool is a more extreme example of a larger modern parenting ethos: that children are individuals, each deserving a uniquely curated upbringing. That peer influence can be noxious. (Bullying is no longer seen as a harmless rite of passage.) That DIY—be it gardening, knitting, or raising chickens—is something educated urbanites should embrace.

As a highly educated parent who happens to spend a lot of time at my kitchen table in the middle of the countryside, I'm not sure I appreciate the wide-eyed wonder in this piece. But the article is worth a read anyway, if only to reassure yourself that your kid does not need classes in Roman Travel Writing to be a fully functioning human being.

Twitter Weekly Updates for 2012-01-29

Rain at 33 degrees: one of the great joys of a Virginia winter. (Sarcasm intended.) #

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Twitter Weekly Updates for 2012-01-22

Watching a bulldozer clear new pastureland on the farm. (It's a good thing to have cousins who own very large machines.) #
Heading for NYC very early in the morning. Meeting editor, hitting Columbia U. library. I love open stacks. #
60 degrees at Richmond airport…45 minute flight…35 degrees at LaGuardia. I have culture shock. #
If you liked my Driscoll review, you might enjoy this: http://t.co/yVBeKmva #
Tuesday is Edith Wharton's birthday. Celebrate by hooking your wagon to a star: http://t.co/6JEO7s7K #
At LaGuardia, waiting for my flight home. Apparently I am returning south just ahead of Snowpocalypse (all three inches of it). #
Does ANYONE else want to know exactly when Lennie James will reappear on the Walking Dead? OK, we all have other things to think about… #
When your Friday night flight home from LaGuardia is delayed, all sorts of interesting speculations spring to mind as you linger… #

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Twitter Weekly Updates for 2012-01-15

Note to self: When doing full-text search for "Battle of Bouvines," remember that "Battle of Bovines" will bring up very different results. #
20yo son: "The car's pretty low on gas. Mind if I fill it up?" I love my kids. #
18yo son: "Want me to go get the groceries out of the car for you?" I love my kids #2 #
DD11, at movies, w/DS20, calls home: "I'm eating Milk Duds & I lost TWO TEETH!" DS in background: "Uh, that's supposed to happen, right?" #

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Twitter Weekly Updates for 2012-01-08

Picturesque winter farm scene: Border collie lying on porch, gnawing an enormous lump of frozen-hard manure. Not exactly Currier & Ives. #
When I search for "Real Marriage" and "Driscoll", Google pops up an ad for "Divorce in 3 Weeks, $400, By Experienced Virginia Attorney." #

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Real Marriage, the shocking and scandalous review! (OK, not really…)

And this brings us to the hype. Given that Real Marriage isn't all that different from scores of its predecessors, you might think that Thomas Nelson would have trouble marketing it to readers. You'd be wrong. Apparently, all Christendom is holding its breath in anticipation…

Recently I reviewed Mark and Grace Driscoll's new book for Books and Culture. Here's a link…your thoughts are, as always, welcome.

Between Christmas and Epiphany

A cold coming we had of it,

Just the worst time of the year

For a journey, and such a long journey:

The ways deep and the weather sharp,

The very dead of winter.

And the camels galled, sore-footed, refractory,

Lying down in the melting snow.

There were times when we regretted

The summer palaces on slopes, the terraces,

And the silken girls bringing sherbet.

Then the camel men cursing and grumbling

And running away, and wanting their liquor and women,

And the night-fires going out, and the lack of shelters,

And the cities dirty and the towns unfriendly

And the villages dirty and charging high prices:

A hard time we had of it.

At the end we preferred to travel all night,

Sleeping in snatches,

With the voices singing in our ears, saying

That this was all folly.

Then at dawn we came down to a temperate valley,

Wet, below the snow line, smelling of vegetation;

With a running stream and a water mill beating the darkness,

And three trees on the low sky,

And an old white horse galloped away in the meadow.

Then we came to a tavern with vine-leaves over the lintel,

Six hands at an open door dicing for pieces of silver,

And feet kicking the empty wineskins.

But there was no information, and so we continued

And arrived at evening, not a moment too soon

Finding the place; it was (you may say) satisfactory.

All this was a long time ago, I remember,

And I would do it again, but set down

This set down

This: were we led all that way for

Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly,

We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death,

But had thought they were different; this Birth was

Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.

We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,

But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,

With an alien people clutching their gods.

I should be glad of another death.

–T. S. Eliot

"Journey of the Magi"