Jack's House

I wasn't sure what to do with this section.  I didn't expect to be adding to it, but didn't want to delete it either, so I thought maybe I could make these postings here.

I've had a couple of meetings this week about working with the homeschooling group.  It looks like there's definitely enough interest to make it worthwhile to run something.

My meeting Tuesday was with a guy - let's call him Mr. M for now - whom is a leader in the homeschooling group.  Not much to say about him, though he did have one interesting comment.

"You'll probably have three groups of people interested in this.  Mom's who don't know how to connect with the fiction their sons like; religious types who are scared of most fiction; and STEM types who don't understand why their kids need fiction."

That's not an exact quote, but it's generally correct.

I'd have to double check to be sure, but I think we had 22 families show at the meeting today, which represented 39 kids.  Most of them were boys.  Most of them were between 9 and 14. 

I am putting together a couple of reading lists over the next few days for several reasons.  First, so I can find out how many of the kids have read any of the proposed books.  Second, so the religious homeschoolers have a chance to check on how 'appropriate' anything with which they're not familiar might be.  That part shouldn't be too difficult, since I was already teaching at a Christian school, and I'll mostly be teaching the books I've already taught in the last two years.

Over the next week or so, I'm going to meet with each of the families involved, so I can get an idea of exactly what they expect, and of the needs of each of the kids involved.  I think I might have irritated a couple of people who thought they were interviewing me, who learned that I not only don't care if they come or not, but that they have to earn the right to be there. 

There are a few kids whom I'll definitely be directing elsewhere - they're just too young for me to work with.  I suppose they could really shock me, but I'm not interested in working one on one or babysitting.  With the kids back in school, I'll have some free time again, even though I'll still be working the stores about 24 hours a week, but that doesn't mean I want to tie it all up again.

Since this is homeschooling, would you be doing your lessons over a computer screen or in person at some location the kids could get to?

Sorry, I've discussed this elsewhere (maybe just in chat?) so I didn't do much build up or introduction to it.

We have a local home schooling group, mostly who work together for field trips, PE classes, and social activities, where more than just family kids are needed/helpful.  I have worked with this group in the past (it's how I met Joe Mintz), and we offer a discount for them, for any books/educational material they order through us.

When they found out I wasn't going to be teaching anymore, they contacted me to find out if I'd be interested in doing something smaller scale - similar to what I was doing at BCA, but with less kids, on a less regular schedule, and not all day.

I mainly quite teaching because of the time demands, especially that they were keeping me away from the store.  I did like working with the kids, and I was willing to at least consider the idea.

At this point, we will probably be meeting at the campus store and running the groups there.  It's fairly central for our area, and the game rooms are never in use during the school day, and they're already set up to handle a bunch of people, so they're a great place, and hopefully we'll get some sales since people are coming in.

(the other 2 wanted full control over what I taught, and since I'm not being paid for this, I had no trouble not agreeing to that). 

That didn't surprise me.  There are always a few control freaks.  I would imagine that most parents that home school are controlling to some extent, to have the mentality to actually home school.

So did these two families decide to not be a part of the program, are taking some time to think about it, chose to participate even if they can't control everything?

Obviously I understand why you said NO to being controlled.  You have to be in control if you are going to teach and have any lasting affect on your students.

Our first meeting is Tuesday.  It turns out I am going to give the kids some control, which means the parents will end up with some.

I'm making a list of the best/most popular novels I've taught in the last nearly two years, and I'm going to give the kids a chance to mark which ones interest them the most and which ones they've already read.

Tuesday is just going to be setting things up. 

At this point, I'm going to be doing this on Tuesdays and Thursdays.  Over the next three days, we're going to be talking about why to read, how to find things one likes to read, and the purposes of teaching reading.  I want to leave plenty of room for discussions, but also do some stuff, so we'll be reading short stories.  Probably a Sherlock Holmes to start, and maybe read a Goosebumps book, then watch the video (like One Night in Horrorland, since many of the Goosebumps seem to be kind of girlcentric on the main characters).

After that, I'm planning to do first books in series, like Tarzan, Percy Jackson, Ranger's Apprentice, Magician: Apprentice, Eye of the World, Hatchet, and Pawn of Prophecy are all good places to start boys in finding something that interest them.

We've had a couple of meetings now, and it looks like there are going to be a total of 28 kids participating - 26 of them boys.

As I mentioned before, most of them are the same ages I've been teaching - between 5th and 8th grade, so about 10 to 14.  There are a couple of 15 year olds and one 16 (those are all three boys) and my youngest is only 8, but he already reads on a 7th grade level, his dad's not a reader, and his mom just can't keep up with him, so she hopes that turning him over to me for reading will let her concentrate on other things.

The oldest boy, Dwayne, is dyslexic.  He's had all the training for it, and he knows what to do, but he and his mom struggle with getting him to read.  She hopes that being in a group with other kids and reading 'boys books' and stuff that's maybe more fun will help him.

I need to spend a minute or two talking to each of the kids. I might end up doing that outside of our meetings at some point.  Maybe I could invite them over for a pool party?

At this point, we're meeting with all the kids together.  None of them are especially advanced readers (except Hudson, who's only advanced for his age, not compared to all the other kids).  Since this isn't a school, I don't have to keep them all busy five days a week, so if they finish sooner, that's fine with me.  What I really hope to do is run things kind of like a book club, and get them all talking about what they've read.  I'll be able to let their parents know what we're reading and give them some homework ideas, but all I'm really interested is helping them get interested in reading and find things they like to read.

I was not deliberating ignoring Zyngaru's question.  Rather, I had seen it, intended to post a detailed answer, then completely forgot about it.

While I'm not sure I'll have time to do a detailed answer right now, I didn't want to risk forgetting it again, so....

The short version is everything is going well. 

We've basically been running it as a book club - actually as two.  It was a bit hard at first, but as the older kids grew to know each other (and to be fair, a lot of them already knew each other at least somewhat, from field trips or PE activity things their families had done together), I was able start leaving the older kids on their own more.  A lot of it was really more about them getting an idea of what I had in mind.  My first few weeks required me asking a lot of questions and driving the conversations myself.

Not every kid (remember, there are two girls with us - both in the older group) wants to talk about every book, and a few of the kids are pretty quiet, but most of them seem to enjoy talking about the books they like (and, as you might guess - the problem with a couple of the kids is shutting them up). 

We are down to 23 kids.  Three of them were pulled because the schedule just didn't work for them, one of them just wasn't doing well in the situation (a kid who I think had some emotional problems and I don't mind if the atmosphere gets a little rambunctious at times, which didn't work for him), and one whose mom decided she couldn't handle all my book choices after all.

I have had to have a meeting with some of the parents when I turned to some of the books with alternate mythologies.  I had come up with an idea that seemed to work.  In the first place, my standing argument has always been that fantasy books today are just a modern form of mythology.  Over the years, I've firmed that up a bit to add that using 'mythological entities' allows authors to explore ideas without offending anyone's specific religious beliefs.  My newer idea (which seemed pretty well received in this bunch, at least) is that using 'mythological entities' also allows them to deal with modern situations, such as people who are good people, but don't worship the way you do, without having to cast a modern religion in an offensive way, as well as by helping people look at issues in a different way by eliminating preconceived notions (and since these homeschoolers often feel oppressed, I might have tilted the way I presented that argument just a bit).

We had our first meeting in early September, and we've been meeting twice a week since then, except Halloween, when I had to cancel because I was sick.  We have finished 6 books, and have also read a couple of short stories - Hatchet, My Side of the Mountain, Rangers Apprentice: Ruins of Gorlan, Tarzan the Ape-Man, and Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief.  The sixth one was The short stories were One Night in Horrorland, which we read leading up to Halloween (while I had to cancel, they did meet at the store for the snacks and TV version that I'd promised them on that day). The short stories we read were The Ransom of Red Chief by O. Henry (every kid there laughed aloud, but also agreed that Johnny needed a good spanking, which was an interesting discussion to hear) and The Adventure of the Dancing Men by Conan Doyle.

We've had four meetings since Halloween. The first was spent discussing horror in movies and literature.  Since then, we've been reading/discussing the Pawn of Prophecy.  That series deals much more with religion than many, so we spent a day discussing it before we started reading.  That almost didn't happen, because the book is basically out of print now (the novels weren't very long, and the five books are now mostly available as two books collecting the original five, but at a $15 price tag, so I pretty much took a loss so the kids could read them).  I'm planning on dragging this one out a bit to last through next week, since we're not meeting the week of Thanksgiving.  I am going to make sure I have a short story on stand just in case - probably Rikki Tikki Tavi. 

The reason it took me a while to answer is not what's been shared above though.

Let me start with Dwayne, who's 16 (and dyslexic).  He was a bump on a log at first, but he was apparently listening, and as he realized the other boys were getting the same things from the stories as he was, he started being more willing to talk.  I've actually had spent some private time to the point that he's been over here a couple of times, and I finally got his parents to allow me to try something different with him.  He's been using Audible to get the books when available, and reading along with them.  I had to work with him to get him to really try it, and his dad informs me that they have to watch to make sure he actually does read along, but it seems to be really helping him.

I stopped at Sonic the second time he came home with me.  Let me say that Dwayne is an okay looking kid - kind of light brown/dark blond hair, fair skin, blue eyes, a bit of acne, and braces.  A medium build - maybe 5'10", and lean, but not especially skinny or athletic - just kind of average really.  Nice kid though and fairly polite.  One of the other kids in our group had been a bit of trouble that day, and I used that to mention paddling kids when I'd been teaching.  Dwayne went SO RED!

His mom is the teacher, and it turns out that she handles most of the discipline - usually with extra chores or homework, sometimes with restrictions.  He doesn't remember the last time she spanked him, but maybe when he was around 10 or 11.  Every once in a while, though, instead of sent to the principal, he gets 'referred to Dad'.   "Dad uses a belt instead of a paddle, though."

No more details, but it was still a cute conversation, since I didn't have to pry for many details.

As I said, I don't mind the atmosphere getting occasionally rambunctious, when it's because the kids are excited (as opposed to deliberately disruptive).  From time to time, I have had to settle them down, and some of them are more prone to having to be called down than others.  If things get too bad, I've occasionally asked someone to step out into the hall with me for a short talk.

Now, I had one talk with a parent early on that led to some trouble.  I just wanted suggestions from her on how best to handle her kid and help direct him, but (based on his reactions at the next meeting), she must have come down on him like a ton of bricks.  I don't want kids who are cowed and afraid to participate (or even those who feel like they have to be there, whether they want to be or not).  I'm trying to run this as something to help kids find the joy in reading.  Since then, I tried to talk to all the parents about tips to re-direct their kids if I needed (harder to remember specifics that way, but better than stirring up trouble).

The other thing I've done is, if there's a situation where a boy won't be subtly re-directed, I ask him to step out in the hall with me for a moment.  Now, while I don't have permission to paddle or spank any of these kids (besides off-handed comments from a couple of the parents, which I'm not taking seriously), they know I'm still in charge, and I'd imagine most of them have been warned about acting up before their parents started leaving them here.

Usually, once a get a kid in the hall, it makes them realize they've gone over the line.  While that was the point, I usually push it a bit.  Some of the boys try to stay vague, but it's pretty obvious that most of them at least still worry about getting spanked, and three of them have very specifically admitted it.  However, the most fun was Hudson.

Hudson is my youngest student, and he won't be 9 until next fall (he's come over a couple of times, and he gets along with Curtis and my younger grands).  He's smart and a very good reader, but that doesn't make him any more mature than other boys his age (maybe a bit less in some ways).  I really like Hudson, but I've had to take him out in the hall several times.  The third time was just a couple of days before Zyngaru asked about an update, and is the main reason I put it off.

Hudson had previously admitted that he does get spanked, but this time I pushed a bit more, reminding him that I'd already asked if I needed to have a talk with his mom.  This time he was obviously a bit worried, and I think he might have been going for sympathy.  I said something like 'I know you said you'd probably get spanked if I had to talk with your mom, Hudson, but I'm not sure what else to do, if I need to keep bringing you out here to talk to you."

"I'm sorry," he said, trying to look miserable.

"I'm sure you are, but maybe your mom's spankings aren't that bad, if the idea of me talking to her isn't making an impression on you."

Let me pause to say I know Hudson wears briefs - super hero ones both times I've seen them.  He's about the same height as Curtis, but maybe slightly skinnier, so maybe 5'3" and 52 lbs.  He has dark blond hair, brown eyes, a Caucasian skin tone that looks lightly tanned, and a mischievous little smile.

He very definitely didn't like the idea that I didn't take his mom's spankings seriously (or that I might mention to her that he needed one).  He rushed to mention that both his parents spank hard - bare bottom, but Mom's were worse, because she uses this 'clear ruler', which I'm guessing to be an acrylic one, which I can only must sting his little bottom like crazy.

Well, he shaped up after that, and I haven't complained to his mom yet.  On the other hand, the reason I'm sure he wears super hero briefs is that he's actually spending the night with us.  While I do have the grands here, this weekend, Thanksgiving is going to be crazy in a couple of ways, so I let the younger kids (the ones who need more supervision and are unlikely to get to do things on their own - mostly Connor and Curtis) have a couple of friends over as well, and Hudson was among those invited.       

I don't know a lot about how Dwayne used to deal with it, or how he was trained.  I do know that he tends to use a straight edge - often an index card or book mark - to mark each line and help him keep his place.

As I've said before, estimates seem to range that 70 to 80% of parents still think spanking is acceptable in at least some circumstances.  Bransom is definitely one of the places that keep that estimate up, and yes - I would expect homeschoolers, especially those choosing to do it for religious reasons - to be more likely to spank.

I don't really have spanking rules, except as a lose 'rule of thumb', I suppose.  In this case, because I don't know Hudson's family well, and haven't interacted with him in another situation (like school) where discipline was an issue, I probably wouldn't spank him.  If he gets in trouble this morning, I'd be most likely to call his parents.  As recent as 10 years ago, I might have given him the choice, but between things that have been in the news over the last decade and the fact that he's only 8, I wouldn't do it anymore.