Showing posts with label homeschool. Show all posts
Showing posts with label homeschool. Show all posts

Friday, March 12, 2010

Dear New Oxford American Writing Thesaurus

Dear New Oxford American Writing Thesaurus,

This morning, our homeschool family was finishing up a writing assignment and we used the dictionary feature on our MacBook Pro to find a synonym for pitfall. Imagine our surprise and disappointment to open the thesaurus and read:

pitfall
noun
home schooling has its pitfalls: hazard, danger, risk, peril, difficulty, catch,snag, stumbling block, drawback.

Homeschooling? That's the best example you could come up with? Alienating 1,273,089 registered Americans who are the very people who still use dictionaries and thesauruses seems poorly thought out.

I'm wondering if when looking up a synonym for stingy we'll find a reference to judaism or when exploring intelligence we'll see, " Men exhibit greater intelligence than women". What other biases and prejudice should I expect to find within your pages?

Your example is offensive and does hard working families like my own a disservice.

Perhaps you need to look deeper into the homeschool movement. It stands to reason that if home schooled youth are courted by all the best post secondary institutions then perhaps this mode of educating is not as hazardous and rife with peril as implied.

Warmly,
Nicole

Monday, November 9, 2009

Not

Not. I'm the Queen of Not lately.

Not blogging.
Not creating.
Not participating.
Not answering emails.
Not contributing.
Not submitting.
Not.....

I'd worry that I'm depressed, but it's not that. The bare basics - homeschool, home cooking, discipline and housework (HA!) take up every second of my day. Making lunch doesn't sound like a big deal, but when walking across the room takes four times as long and often leads to falls and or more meds ... I kind of have to triple my time estimates on every single thing. It's making me crazy.

What I am doing is readying our family to manage without me. I've been preparing my sweetheart for the rigors of a more active parenting role and am trying to standardize my "dash-of-this", "glug-of-that" recipes into something you can follow and then run Chris through making them so he knows what pots to use and where to find stuff. I've filled out homeschool forms, lesson plans, worked on making everything I can run as smoothly while I'm out as is reasonable to expect. No fun.

Now the postponement of my surgery feels less like a stay of execution and more like torturous waiting. Last week I was thrilled to not have it hanging over my head. This week - not so much. Just get it over with, please.

In other news:

* My FIL is in the hospital. He had another stroke or two last Thursday and we've been terrified that we're going to lose him. Dad is the sweetest, funniest guy in the family and the thought of life without him is too big to work through. Fortunately he's stable and might even get to go home in the next few days. Yay, Dad!

* T is signed up to write the SAT on December 5th. I've moved his school around to accommodate test prep and he got 72% on the online test he wrote this morning. It was the english section though - math will probably be a whole different story. 72% at 13 gives me great hope for him doing well when he's old enough that the test matters.

* I need to have a very scary coccyx injection before we schedule surgery. I'm calling about it as soon as I post this. I'm terrified. Hitting the bone during the nerve root block was one helluva nasty experience. I'm guessing punching right through the bone will be worse. Ick. Ugh. *faints*

* Bubby is tumor free and his surgery went really well. He's wearing the cone of shame until his stitches are out. Poor stupid creature. He keeps getting his head caught on things and then he decides those parts of the house are scary and he won't go there again. I had to make a trail of corn pops to help him realize he can go to his mat for food and water. He's such a wimp. The first day after surgery he'd cry if you didn't have your arm or hand in the cone so he could rest his head on a person. Since that isn't convenient for hours at a time I worked with him to get over it. First he laid on the cone with my leg underneath so it was warm, then we put his favorite blanket in it, now he's fine. It's going to be a long two weeks *grin*

* My MRI at the University Hospital was wonderful. They use Pandora so I could listen to great music, the blankets were soft, the staff friendly. I couldn't have asked for more. It makes me feel a lot better about having surgery there. To top it off, the hospital smelled like pancakes. I KNOW! Usually hospitals have that scary smell; pancakes are a huge improvement.

* I was one of the runners-up for the Crafty Chica Shrine Challenge. Woo-hoo! Making our Day of the Dead ofrenda was such a great experience. I'm mentally planning remembrance pieces for our other relatives who have passed on.