How Was Your Day?

Yesterday I read a blog post by Glennon Doyle Melton, who is more commonly known as the author of the blog Momastery.  The post was really about asking questions that build relationships but the way she started it, spoke deeply to me.  

"When Craig returned each day at 6:00 pm (he actually returned at 5:50 but took a STUNNINGLY LONG TIME TO GET THE MAIL) he’d walk through the door, smile, and say

“So! How was your day?”

For us it isn't checking the mail, but that Paul uses the ride home to touch base with various friends and coworkers.  Once he pulls into the driveway he has to finish up the call before coming in.  But the question is the same and I have never known how to respond.  She goes on to explain why this question is so hard for me to answer.

"The question would linger in the air for a moment while I stared at Craig and the baby shoved her hand in my mouth like they do—while the oldest screamed MOMMY I NEED HELP POOING from the bathroom and the middle one cried in the corner because I NEVER EVER EVER let her drink the dishwasher detergent. NOT EVER EVEN ONCE, MOMMY!!!

And I’d look down at my spaghetti stained pajama top, unwashed hair, and gorgeous baby on my hip—and my eyes would wander around the room, pausing to notice the toys peppering the floor and the kids’ stunning new art on the fridge . . .

And I’d want to say: How was my day?

Today has been a lifetime.

.... and it is not done yet.  The problem with the question is the past tense "was".  By dinner I am still a long way from knowing how it "was".  There is still a decent chance that dinner will be burned or that at least one of my kids will refuse to eat it.  In all likelihood we will discover chores that were left undone or half done.  Then there will be all sorts of moaning and gnashing of teeth.  And lets not forget school, it is a rare day that I actually get the grading done before dinner.  Surely if one of the kids failed an assessment or didn't understand an assignment they would have let me know during the day, after all that is the great part of homeschool, I am here to help ALL DAY.  But my kids like to surprise me with these things, when I finally get a chance to sit down and go over their school work.  
       I think a better question would be, "What can I do to help with dinner?" or "Would you like me to check the school work, while you finish cooking?"  
       Now I want to be sure you understand.  I  am NOT saying that stay-at-home parents work more or harder than their spouses.  It is just that our day can't be as easily divided into nice home/work/home sections and it is a lot harder for us to analyze how it was because it is all one big chunk.  It is impossible to stop two/thirds of the way through and decide how it was as a whole.

"How was my day? Today has been a lifetime. It was the best of times and the worst of times.... I was both lonely and absolutely desperate to be alone. ... I was simultaneously bored out of my skull and completely overwhelmed with so much to do. Today was too much and not enough." - See more at: http://momastery.com/blog/2014/01/16/save-relationships-ask-right-questions/#sthash.45LcLvk9.dpuf

EGG-cellent News

    Yesterday, while I was working outside there was a racket inside the coop.  When I went to investigate, I found the dog in the coop and Mrs. Cluckers having a fit about it.  I told the dog to get out and had my daughter check the inside to make sure everything was alright.  She opened the coop door and found this:

Our First Egg!

    I know it looks more white in the picture but it is actually a green color.  The color means that it had to have been laid by Ninja as she is an Ameraucana, the other two chickens are Orpington's which will lay brown eggs.  So after 26 weeks of waiting we finally have an egg!
    The strangest thing about it was Mrs. Cluckers behavior.  Once the egg was removed from the coop, she kept looking for it.  She would go in and scratch around, then come out and search all over the run.  She went through the yard, then back to the coop over and over all afternoon.  The other two chickens were completely unconcerned and ignored her apparent distress.  Seeing her that worked up over Ninja's missing egg, makes wonder how she will respond to our egg gathering once she starts laying her own eggs.  It could get interesting.

AWANA

      My biggest weakness as a parent, wife, friend, and member of the human race is inconsistency.  Many times I have great plans but completely fail in following through with them.  (insert rant on living with ADHD)  For the most part I have come to accept that this is just something I have to deal with and try not to be too hard on myself.  However, when it comes to parenting the price of inconsistency can be very high and the guilt of knowing what you should do and just not being able to do it can be overwhelming.  That is why programs like scouts and AWANA are so important to me.  They provide the structure and accountability, I need to help me be the parent I want to be.
      AWANA stands for Approved Warriors Are Not Afraid.  It is a children's bible memory program that is put on by many churches.  My oldest 2 kids started participating in it when we were still in Texas.  When we moved to Oregon, finding a church with an AWANA program was very important to me.  I believe that programs like this are instrumental in creating a strong foundation for a child to grow in their faith.
     Of course you don't have to have a program like this to give your kids a good foundation.  You could discuss scripture at the dinner table and have weekly family memory verses.  I know families who do this very consistently and successfully.  Unfortunately, I can't seem to be consistent without a program for accountability so this works very well for my family.  Baylor University did a study of AWANA alumni and found that "Church attendance – 92.7 percent of Awana alumni continue to regularly attend church as adults,".  Considering how many kids drop out of church after high school, I think these numbers are significant.

John & Keturah getting awards for completing their books this year.

Starving Homesteader

       All I can say is that I am really thankful that farming is a hobby and not a way of life for us.  If we had to depend on my ability to get food from the ground in order to survive, I am not sure we would make it.
      So far this season I have planted spinach, kale, broccoli, green beans, carrots, zucchini, potatoes, tomatoes, and egg plant.  In all honesty, most of these haven't been planted long enough to know how they will do but the early results are not encouraging.  The first round of spinach and kale were eaten by the chickens and had to be replanted, but of the 50+ seeds planted of each we currently have 4 of each growing.  The broccoli sprouted well but the bugs seem to be eating the sprouts faster than they are growing so I am not sure if it will make it.
       Even my back up plans seems to be failing this year.  I planted 30 green beans outside, but after several weeks only about 4 had sprouted.  I "suggested" to my daughter that she grow green beans for her science fair project on germination rates (back up plan).  Once her project was complete we transplanted 15 of the plants outside to replace the ones that didn't sprout.  The transplanting went well and they started growing quickly.  Now they look like this:

This SHOULD be a row of 15 green bean plants nicely climbing the trellis.

     I am really starting to wonder if this whole grow your own food thing is even possible for me.  Maybe I am just ungifted in this area and should spend my time on other things.  Oh, it could be any number of other things, but when I read Facebook posts like the one below that a friend of mine posted yesterday, it makes me wonder if this just isn't in my skill set:

"Just needing to seed some lettuce and spinach and the garden is fully planted . . . planted the 9 tomatoes and 4 bell peppers today!  The green beans and peas are popping through the ground along with the 4 types of squash and cucumbers. The broccoli is already producing . . . the cauliflower and cabbage are forming heads. The brussel sprouts are growing rapidly! The kale should be ready to start harvesting in the next 2 weeks. The leeks and celery are really taking off. Carrots are breaking through the ground. The 4 types of potatoes are about 3 to 6 inches high already! I feel we are going to have an amazing harvest this year!

 — feeling thankful."

      As a teacher I had an instinct as to what would work with each kid.  I worked with a lot of new teachers and it wasn't hard to tell which ones had it and which didn't.  I had great people who truly loved kids but just couldn't figure out how to manage a class or reach the checked out kid.  Most of these people gave up on the profession after a couple of years.  Statistics show that 40% - 50% of teachers leave the profession within the first 5 years.  You don't have to have this natural instinct to teach.  I know a few teachers who have worked really hard and learned the skills they needed, but it is a lot harder for them.  I am beginning to believe that just like teaching, there is more to this kind of gardening than you can learn from books and such.  A lot of it is just a natural instinct that I seem to be missing.   
      I am not giving up, I have more green beans sprouting in cups in my living room as I type this and will continue to sprout and plant them until I run out of seeds.  However I think I need the reality check that sustainable living isn't an easy lifestyle choice.  It is not sitting in an orchard watching the kids play outside and sipping fresh lemonade.  It is making a choice to do all the work yourself and crashing in an exhausted heap under a tree for a few minutes, while blocking out the whine of children protesting that they can't be constantly plugged in to an electronic devise. Is it worth it? 
     

Garden Under Siege

   I knew we would have to have a plan to keep the chickens out of the garden but I do not think I fully understood the lengths the chickens would go to in order to get to the garden.  When I discovered the half eaten strawberries we covered them with bird netting.  A few days later, I went out to find this:

Omelet strolling through the strawberries UNDER the netting.

It was obvious that stronger measures were going to have to be taken if we are going to get anything from the garden this year.  The most effective thing would be to put a fence up across the garden area, however that is expensive and our budget for the garden has already been stretched.  Limited to materials that we had on hand this is what we have come up with:

The first time I covered the garden box I just put the stakes on the sides, however the chickens ignored all of it and just stood on the netting to eat the emerging seedlings.  I replanted the garden box and learned to tent the netting, which seems to be much more effective for that and the strawberries.  The round things behind the strawberries are protecting the zucchini seeds. 

 Along the fence we are growing pole beans and they are protected with netting until they are taller than the chickens.  The wire mesh arches are covering the broccoli seedlings and the posts in the front are holding netting over the carrots that were planted last weekend.

It is my hope that once everything has started growing well we will be able to remove most of these protections, but I am not sure that is a realistic hope.

Education - Standards

    Can you imagine a place where teachers were given no guidelines as to what should be taught?   A student could go all the way through school and never learn fractions because the early teachers considered it too hard for their students and the later teachers considered it too basic for them to spend time on.  Students in one school would be pushed to work well beyond their peers in another school, yet they would all compete for the same colleges and scholarships.
     State standards were put in place to ensure students in all schools in a state were being taught a minimum level of material at each grade.  This worked well for many decades, however as society has become more mobile more and more kids are moving across state lines.  A middle schooler moving from Texas to Oregon would find themselves at the top of the class with nothing much to learn for a year or two.  Whereas a middle schooler from Oregon moving to Texas, could easily find themselves in remedial classes, even if they had previously been an A student.  This discrepancy between states paired with a much more mobile society created a need for a national set of standards for all states to follow.  Thus Common Core was born.
     Common Core is simply a set of standards that has been adopted by all but 7 states.  As example from 4th grade math is "Find all factor pairs for a whole number in the range 1-100. Recognize that a whole number is a multiple of each of its factors. Determine whether a given whole number in the range 1-100 is a multiple of a given one-digit number. Determine whether a given whole number in the range 1-100 is prime or composite." You can read all of them here:  http://www.corestandards.org/read-the-standards/  They simply tell what a child should be able to do at each grade level.
     I understand that a lot of people don't like the federal government telling the states what should be taught.  I understand that there can be a lot of debate in what is appropriate for each grade level.  However I have been amazed at how a simple set of standards has come to represent everything people dislike about education.  I have personally heard common core blamed for: decreased recess time, too much homework, teaching evolution, and increased testing.
     First of all the standards only cover math and language arts.  They don't have anything to do with science, history, PE, music, or recess.  Second of all they just say what to teach.  The teachers themselves still teach.  There is not a specific set of worksheets or homework requirement that goes with common core.  Thirdly, testing existed long before common core.  The test have changed so that they address what the kids are learning but there is not more testing required by common core.
     I find it appalling that people have fallen for this smoke screen.  Schools, teachers, politicians and everyone in between have been blaming common core for all sorts of problems, that have nothing to do with common core.  It has become an easy target that is keeping everyone from looking for the real problems our education system is facing.  Common core is from the government which is a lot easier to blame than looking at the issues in our local schools.  

Oregon Education - History of The Test

     Everywhere I go I hear people talking about "the test", referring to the state tests given to students in 3rd-10th grades every spring.  Most people consider these tests a necessary evil for public education, although there is a growing trend to opt students out of the tests altogether.   However when you look at the history of these tests, it becomes apparent that they serve a necessary purpose for the good of students.

       Standardized testing was begun at the request of teachers for the benefit of students.

"1912 - As teachers began to see the discrepancies in subjective grading practices, it became clear that a more scientific method of testing students would be necessary as standard performance was impossible to gauge.  Educators who expressed concern regarding the assessment process, such as Whipple, Finkelstein, Strong, and Doll felt that marks given for the same subject, to the same students from different instructors varied so greatly that the grading procedure was an injustice to students (Giordano, 2005).  "

                       From: ruby.fgcu.edu/Courses/.../Timeline%20High%20Stakes%20Testing.doc
Teachers realized that the system was not fair.  How a student did in school was based on who their teacher 
was more than how much they learned.  The only way to equalize the grade was to give students the same
test and have it graded in the same way: to standardize. 

     After the great depression and world war 1, parents wanted to ensure their kids had every possible chance
 to succeed.  They began demanding standardized tests as a way to ensure all children were being given 
a quality education.

"1935 -The standards movement in the United States begins to emerge as a solution to the public’s demand for scholastic accountability.  The push to set and enforce teaching standards meshed well with the emphasis being placed on standardized tests (Giordano, 2005)."

                       From: ruby.fgcu.edu/Courses/.../Timeline%20High%20Stakes%20Testing.doc

     Not much changed in education for several decades, then the great space race began.

1958- Congress passed the National Defense Education Act (NDEA) in response to the Soviet launch of Sputnik.  This financial support made it possible for states to launch large scale testing programs through the use of standardized tests (Heubert et al, 1999).

1962- California legislators passed a mandatory testing law, acting on recommendations made by Governor Edmond G. Brown, who felt the state needed to measure the effectiveness of their schools (Giordano, 2005).

As a country we became focused on improving education, especially in math and science and the only way we could ensure students were learning was to test them.

        In the mid-80's business got involved.  They wanted to ensure that the students coming out of our high schools would be employable.  It was this Committee for Economic Development that suggested states intervene with low performing schools.  The purpose was not to punish schools or teachers but to ensure all students are given the best possible education.
 1985- The Committee for Economic Development, a research and educational organization by their own account, urged an alliance between educators and businesspeople who were concerned about students’ falling test scores.  They asked educators to recognize that for the students in their charge to become employable, they needed to possess problem-solving skills, a command of the English language, self-discipline, and the ability to acquire and apply new knowledge.  They encouraged states to “set standards, monitor achievement and intervene if schools fail to perform” and supported national standards of what students should know and be able to do in every subject area (Giordano, 2005).  

Thirty-three states had mandated some form of minimum competency testing (Heubert et al, 1999).

        Over and over again we see a continued concern for kids who are not succeeding.  Regardless of where the fault lays, there are groups of students who are not able to master the minimum expectations for a grade level and the only way we have to find them and provide help is to test them.

1997- President Clinton challenges the nation in his State of the Union address “to undertake ‘a national crusade for education standards – not federal government standards, but national standards, representing what all our students must know to succeed in the knowledge economy of the twenty-first century. . . Every state should adopt high national standards, and by 1999, every state should test every fourth-grader in reading and every eight-grader in math to make sure these standards are met. . . They can help us to end social promotion.  For no child should move from grade school to junior high, or junior high to high school until he or she is ready’” (Heubert et al, 1999).

2002- President Bush signs the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) into law.  NCLB was created to ensure the neediest children were not left behind in failing schools.  The new law increased accountability for states requiring them to set up curriculum standards, and mandated testing of all students in grades 3-8; schools required to make adequate yearly progress or face restructuring measures to get them in alignment with state standards; gave parents of students who attended low performing schools more choices of public schools their children could attend; allowed states more flexibility in the use of federal funding; and placed a greater emphasis on reading (Executive Summary, 2004).

       As you look through the history of standardized testing, the heart of the matter becomes clear.  These tests are supposed to identify the kids who need help so that they can be given the best possible chance of success.  Tests are the affirmative action plan of the education system.  Although they are not perfect in their construction or application, without them we would have wide spread discrimination in the quality of education students receive.  If we refuse to allow students to take them, or put so much pressure on kids that they freeze up the testing becomes invalid and those who need the most help won't get it.