dabbling

"Everyone for what he likes - we like to be
Heads down, tails up, dabbling free!" ---K. Grahmm (sp?)

When I was filling out the fs@h "learning plan" I was strongly tempted to skip over the box marked "foreign language". At that time, just out of school, Ray seemed to have no interest in languages other than English. It was a remnant of my own public schooling that prompted me (write anything! just don't leave it blank!) combined with a somewhat more noble belief that everything is connected, and learning is all about connections. So I wrote: Emphasis on global awareness and left it at that.

Six months after moving in, I'm starting to see a transition in Rayan. He's starting to expand his interests and awareness. He's choosing - completely independently - to learn new things. He is currently doing this by the time-honored method of dabbling.

Kids are regularly encouraged to "stick with" new interests, even after the interest wanes. Kids and adults who pick up and put down interest after interest and project after project, leaving older loves and skills behind, are seen as lazy or undisciplined or lacking some other, essential quality. And yet inventors, artists, and autodidacts across history have very often been dabblers. Archimedes and DaVinci are probably the most famous for this, poking their noses into everything imaginable, and going on to imagine new things besides. Franklin and Edison are popular dabblers from US history and much admired. Schools go so far as to attempt to teach dabbling - its called getting a well-rounded liberal arts education. But for all that, dabbling has fallen into disfavor.

Rayan is dabbling in foreign languages and, in the process, is expanding his awareness of other lands and cultures.

Runescape started it (humbling, to realize how much learning takes place as a result of this game) . Its played internationally, and in the pursuit of virtual commerce and less lag time, Ray discovered some servers set up for German users. Its possible to get translations for posts between members, but all the on-screen information is in German. Ray quickly began picking up useful vocabulary, and is probably the only teen in the county who can now shop for weapons and armor in German.

A few months ago, that would have been enough for him but, as I said, he's changing. The deschooling interlude is fading into true autodidacticism. Ray wanted more. George showed him Bable Fish and they looked a few things up together. The boy who still claims to hate reading then proceeded to spend hours researching his topic of choice. Take that, public education.

German's a pretty intimidating language in print, though, so Ray got his fill of it quickly. The desire for more lingered, though, sending him to research Italian, briefly, and spend an entire evening simply looking up different languages and asking to which countries/nationalities they belonged. Mandarin and Urdu, Sanskrit and Yiddish, Arabic - that one threw me. With all the hoo-haa in the Middle East, is it really possible he didn't know one country where Arabic was spoken? He kept searching and pondering. I reassured him there was no need to pick one language or to "stick with it" even if he did. He remained restless and dissatisfied, still wanting more.

Maria Montessori wrote about young children arriving at a state she called "normalization", focused concentration on their work. I've seen this state in Ray playing computer games. Now I've seen it with an "academic" pursuit (take that, again, public schools).

Eventually Ray settled on Gaelic and Ireland as a specific realm of interest. I'm used to those being more favored by hippies and folk musicians than bad-boy metalheads and skaters, so I was a little surprised. Ray's been fascinated by Ireland for some time, but has had little opportunity to learn about it. So he's dabbling in the subject. He'll do some reading and leave it for a day...learn a handful of words and drop it for a week. He's serious and intent, but its not one of those overwhelming passions, like the one that led to Morgan drawing nonstop for weeks and the house looking like an explosion in a comic-book factory.

Dabbling can be a transitional stage of learning. Some people (adults and kids) dabble around in a subject until they reach a comfort or skill level, and then dive in. Dabbling can be a means to finding the right niche. I think it is in this kind of dabbling that Ray is engaged, currently. Others are life-long dabblers, immersing themselves in a subject for a time, and then moving on. Our friend, Mirror, is this kind of dabbler, as are some of those famous dabblers of history.

In the long term, it doesn't really matter if Ray is the kind of guy who dabbles to get his feet wet or occupationally. What's important is that he understands his own natural process and is comfortable with that.

In the shorter term, all y'all family and friends reading and lurking, keep your eyes open for any resources you can throw his way. Given Ray's other interests, anything related to Irish punk music, the IRA, religious warfare or other aspects of Ireland's bloody history might interest him. Just keep in mind what I'm saying about dabbling. In a few months, Ireland may be passe.

Or he may be reading Finnegan's Wake for fun.
You just never know.

artist at work

None of us knew that teenagers aren't allowed to buy spray paint anymore. What's the world coming to? George had some errands to run, and Ray went along for the express purpose of buying spray-paint. Its not like its a secret or something - he'll probably ask for help making more stencils in the next day or so. They wouldn't sell any to him. Apparently there's a big fuss over kids using it as an inhalant and someone has decided that if they're going to be doing something that dangerous they can just buy meth and get it over with.


George rolled his eyes and paid for the paint. He said it took a lot of self-control not to ask for a couple extra plastic bags.


Anyway, here's a look at Ray "doing art". Yes, he is spray painting a pair of jeans, and that's Mo in the background, who has just painted her face, although with tempera. It was a big paint-day here. In the learning plan, I have "Emphasis on visual arts as a means of personal expression with regard to real world political, social and legal issues". Ray accomplishes this mainly via spray paint. The shopping trip was a great example of how real world issues intersect with real world artists - I couldn't design a curriculum that effective! We've also had some great discussions of copyright law and intellectual property rights as a result of looking up possible stencil designs.


He's learned to make stencils and use them effectively, and coming to understand background and foreground, positive and negative space. He is experimenting with layering and fade effects and so learning to manipulate the variables of his medium. He's learning about cost-effectiveness wrt different materials and in time he's going to realize that he's learning about ratios. And he's enjoying himself. That's often not one of the priorities of "education" but its a fairly significant one in autodidacticism.

Allowance

The financial situation seems to finally be turning around, after a pretty rough winter, so George and I have started talking about the allowance issue. We hadn't considered it with Morgan at all, in part bc she's so much younger, but also bc she's right there with me, and often George, for the shopping, so talking about finances, budgets, savings, allocating funds, all that stuff is a regular part of her daily life. Ray's new to the family, and with his vampire lifestyle hasn't been awake for shopping opportunities. That's changing, but still, two kids at the store is often more than I'm up for. Either one of them is fabulous, but for some reason, the two together seem to ping off each other until I feel like I'm stuck in a popcorn popper full of bells and rubber snakes. Fantasies of duct tape.

Anyway, that has left us with a bit of a disparity, bc Mo's wants are still pretty easy to say yes to for a dollar or less, so she tends to get something whenever we go out. That's a big part of what's driving the allowance question. I want Ray to feel like he's every bit as much a member of the family as Morgan, and here she is, getting a bit of candy or a toy every day or so, while he gets... groceries. So far he hasn't said anything about that, but I'd like to head off any sense of unfairness, if possible, before it can start. Its a fair estimate that she gets twenty dollars worth of this kind of spending a month, and that's a do-able sum to give Ray, too, with our usual income.

Another issue has to do with the whole idea of finances as a way of learning about economics on a smaller scale than what he's been doing online. He can't learn about money if he doesn't have any, and he can't learn about making real world financial decisions unless he has enough to make decisions about. So the money is coming out of our "homeschool budget". Since those funds generally come out of my income, that will start next time I work at Morningside foods, and he'll get money on a monthly basis.

We're not tying allowance money to expectations of work. He has opportunities to work both here and jobs his mom sets up if he wants more money. Its possible he'll choose not to work for awhile as a result, but its not like we can afford to give him much. We're talking $20 a month, here. Still, if that's more than he's been used to getting (I honestly don't know) I wouldn't be surprised if he elected not to work for pay for a time.

I admit, my own knee-jerk first reaction to that is "that's not the way the real world works" but it doesn't take me long to see the fallacy of that kind of thinking. Sometimes it is the way the real world works. I've gotten a good bit of money that I haven't worked for and used it to buy property, build a house, renovate the barn, buy power tools. Its not that uncommon, and happens in a lot of different ways - windfalls or inheritances or a good stock portfolio or insurance money or whatever.

So that's the plan. If the family finances take another dip, we'll have to cut back, of course. That's the real life limitation to the allowance thing - its dependent on the family income.

springing forward

The weather change seems to have brought a major shift in Ray's sleep cycle. He'd been keeping to a mostly nocturnal lifestyle, but once he caught a whiff of warm spring air decided that being awake in the day-time might have some advantages after all. So for the past few weeks he's been struggling to shift back to more regular hours.

I'm fascinated to see him making these kinds of decisions so soon. I've been reading lots of other homeschoolers' tales of pulling kids out of school in the early teens and some take a whole year to decompress and be able to start making independent decisions, self-motivate, decide to learn actively rather than passively. A lot of that is just who Ray is - I mentioned that he seems to have a lot of "intrapersonal intelligence". He's really very introspective and thoughtful. I am glad, though, that George and I are already somewhat experienced in the world of autodidacticism - with Mo I mean. We're used to the idea that self-directed learning doesn't often "look like" school learning, so we're not all that tempted to nudge and coax and try to "get him to do things". That's a big hurdle for a lot of homeschoolers who are transitioning from either school or fairly structured homeschooling to interest based learning.

Quick Reference Learning Plan

It occurred to me that it would be convenient to have it all in one place, here on the blog, so voila.

Language arts: Emphasis on language as a tool for communication and learning.
Mathematics: Emphasis on real world skills and applications.
Science: Emphasis on joyful appreciation of the natural world
Social studies: Emphasis on appreciation of cultural diversity and historical change.
Physical Education:Emphasis on carving and the ollie.
Wellness: Emphasis on harmony with self, physically, emotionally, mentally, spiritually
Music: Emphasis on enjoyment and appreciation as a means of communication and a tool for political organization.
Arts: Emphasis on visual arts as a means of personal expression with regard to real world political, legal and social issues.
Community Service: Emphasis on family as a microcosm of larger community.

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!