Are Algebra problems the most important problems we need to solve?

Homeschool Day One

Yesterday was the first official day of school for our family. Our oldest, a senior, is taking all of his classes online through the local community college; technically he started last week. Very grateful NH has this option and he can still graduate with his peers at the local school. Our youngest is in second grade, and she is doing the remote option the school offered. We have a learning buddy coming to the house too, a first grader. So, their first day is marking our first day.

Our middle child, a 9th grader this year, is doing homeschool. The remote option our high school offered for underclassmen is oppressive and inflexible, so we decided to go another route. Yesterday, we started by talking about goals, what would she like to learn. She was a little frustrated because I put it on her.

"Can't you just give me things to do, and then give me points like a regular teacher?"

and

"No teacher has really asked me what I want to learn before, and then I got to learn it. This is why it's so hard." 

You have to add on a 14 year old whine to get the full effect.

We decided weeks ago that she is working on her vocal gift, and she is getting two private thirty minute lessons a month with daily practice. Yesterday, she added piano and ukulele to her musical goals. She's planning on walking for her daily exercise, at least until it's too cold, then who knows, yoga in the living room? Math conversation was a struggle. When she does end up back in a traditional program, through public high school or college, I don't want her to feel behind. I think Khan Academy is the way to go; she thinks math should just go away. Social studies was our easiest conversation. She already does a lot of that just by living with us.

Last night was our first Social Studies lesson of this official school year. NH Peace Action and others organized an online screening of Gaza Fights for Freedom a documentary film by journalists and activists Abby Martin and Mike Prysner. It was a powerful learning experience, and I highly recommend any adult with a heart and conscience watch it. High school students can also watch it. It is graphic, but not out of context. It’s most graphic element is that it is a current event, one that can be stopped, and yet it continues to be fueled by US tax dollars and foreign policy.

Since at least the 70's, students in our district have been exposed to Holocaust education. I learned about it, and so did my mother…from the same teachers too! Eighth graders for nearly the past thirty years, study the Holocaust in depth, coinciding with the school's Washington DC trip. My daughter knows so much about the Holocaust. What she did not learn about in school, in depth, was the genocide our country carried out. The school did not teach her that Hitler came to the US to learn tactics we used to create division, and she certainly did not learn about the genocide being carried out in Palestine, today. Her eyes were opened wide by the film.

We had to stop in the middle of the film so she could ask some questions. Immediately she recognized the hypocrisy and was trying to make sense of it in her head. How can one government that was created to take care of people who were victims and displaced treat another group of people the same way? It is a lot to take in and process. A lot of mental energy. At the end of the movie and the panel discussion, she had two ponderings.

How do you even solve that?

And

I still do not understand why countries just can't print more money.

So, after day one of homeschool I think we've got a pretty good plan. She'll focus on developing her musical gifts and get some exercise in. Our Social Studies essential question is set for the year, “How do we even solve that?” For math, we'll just focus on economics. We're going to forgo the formal Algebra learning; there are more important problems she's interested in solving.

I'm so looking forward to learning with her and from her this year.