communication and "wellness"

I wanted to say a bit more on the subject of communication, which is the main emphasis in the "language arts" department, but with reference to another of the categories on the FS@H learning planner: "Wellness". Under this heading I've noted: Emphasis on harmony with self - physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually. That would be a pretty tall order if I were actually trying to impose some sort of curriculum on Ray, but, again, this is his emphasis. These are issues he's working on right now, in his own life. That's pretty gosh-darned spectacular, from my perspective. Its also one of the (many) reasons I think its soooo important to meet him "where he is" at every possible opportunity in terms of learning in general and communication in particular.

Talking with people is how Rayan learns. He learns other ways, too, but as far as conceptual learning goes, talking with people is his biggest, most important strategy. I want to be really clear about my language, here. The key word is "with". He's very very sensitive to anything other than friendly conversation, but he loves that! He's all about sharing what he thinks and feels about the world and getting feedback and ideas from others - as long as, from his perspective, it is a case of sharing, not "being told."

In light of this, creating an environment of free, open communication is really important. That's a challenge for us introverts! Its a challenge for me, especially, bc I have a lot of knowledge on the subjects of learning and cognition, in particular. Sometimes I can drop bits of that into conversation, a casual mention of multiple intelligences here, a word about yoga there.... sometimes he follows that up with a comment or question of his own, other times he's not interested. Conversation.

The very last category on the learning planner is "Community service" under which I've noted: Emphasis on family as microcosm for larger community. That kind of sounds like a cop-out, but it revolves around this whole idea of building communication. If Ray can learn to communicate with us - a family of people he doesn't know very well, isn't really sure of, and doesn't have a lot in common with, he stands a far greater chance of being able to communicate with the many many others in the world who share his passions and views and connect with some of those who don't. Building bridges of communication with this very very social guy is going to be far more important in the long run than any other service we can offer him.

Online education LOL!

I've been filling out paperwork -finally, finally, the Farm School @ Home has forms to fill out! Anyway, included in all that has been a "learning plan", which I really should transcribe onto this blog. Some of that will show up in this post. I'm also sending FS@H the addy for this blog as part of our "reporting" process. Now for the good stuff....

We've subscribed to Runescape! Rayan loves it. He's shifted his sleep cycle so that he's up most of the night. That cuts down a lot of the competition for the computer, which was starting to be an issue. Whew. If you don't know about Runescape, its an online role-playing game- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Runescape. We were actually hoping for the fancier World-of-Warcraft, but at the moment it looks like our dial-up won't support it . Runescape is a simpler game in many ways, but it still has the online, realtime conversational feature that Rayan just adores.

He spends a great deal of his time sending and receiving messages, which I think is a good thing, especially in light of what I've been going on about wrt multiple intelligences. Direct communication is a big part of his learning process. I said something about that in the "learning plan", in the section marked "language arts": Emphasis on Language as a tool for communication and learning.

This is one of those places where self-directed learning gets really interesting, because this really is Rayan's emphasis. We're trying to work with that, rather than against it. Right now, Rayan values reading and writing as a means to communicate. That's great. Its, arguably, the purpose of all reading and writing anyway. There's a bit of Montessori philosophy that suggests that when a kid is struggling with a more sophisticated concept, to look at the subject from a global-historical perspective. I'm not sure I'd describe Rayan as struggling, but he's certainly resistant, at this point, to the idea of making use of reading/writing for anything more than fairly basic communication. Keepin' in touch and, the most basic of all: commerce.

In the "mathmatics" section of the learning plan thingy, I stated: Emphasis on real world skills and applications, and listed a few (like the kitchen) but virtual commerce is one of the totally independent ways Rayan is working in this area, largely on Runescape. I'm not talking about selling virutal stuff for real money, which is of questionable legality at best. I'm talking truely virtual commerce - doing virtual work and trading virtual goods and services. Sounds weird, doesn't it? On a philosophical level, I don't think its any weirder than alot of what goes on in public schools. On a real world "what's up with Rayan" level, he's using the virtual world to explore real world ideas like supply and demand, exchange rates, and market fluxuations. Wow.

But wait! there's more! The beauty of doing this right now in the "virtual" world is that Rayan is enjoying himself, rather than feeling pressured to "behave responsibly" in terms of money. Who cares if he blows a million gold pieces on dragon-scale armor just 'cause its RED? Its all a game, right? So we, boring grownups wondering how to get all the bills paid in the same month, don't have to fuss and stress about wasting money. That's a good thing. It lets him test and try and experience consequences that don't actually hurt him. To learn the kinds of things he's picking up on Runescape he'd have to be doing something pretty amazing and/or illegal in the real world, with all the stress and danger that goes along with that.

Okay, so this is starting to get long, and I have some deep-frying to do, while Ray's at the skatepark fulfilling his "phys ed" requirement . I think I'm going to try to go through the whole learning plan thingy essentially the way I've treated it in this post - that will remind me to post a little more regularly, and also give me some ideas if I'm feeling "stuck" in terms of what to say. I mentioned in an earlier post that the hardest part of independent learning is reporting it - its just a kid living his life!