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Merry Christmas from Matt and Lee and staff at The HomeScholar!

I saw this ad on Facebook.

Be a Homeschool Teacher Train to become a better Homeschool Teacher by earning an accredited Teaching Degree online. Flexible scheduling. Learn more today.

Excuse me?  A degree in teaching will NOT make you a better home educator.

My friends who are certified teachers tell me that their teaching degree gave them training in crowd control, educational philosophies, grading criteria, and classroom strategies.

Home education is about parents strongly motivated by the love they have for their children.  No crowd control, educational philosophies, or classroom strategies needed.  If you want to become a better homeschool parent, then love your children more.  Become students of your student.

Learn about homeschooling, not teaching.

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Welcome Stephanie!
I am delighted to introduce Stephanie as the new member of The HomeScholar.

Stephanie is the Office Manager in charge of keeping my office running smoothly so I can answer calls and emails from panicky parents.  Stephanie is a homeschool mother with one daughter at home.   Stephanie is on the right, and her daughter Caitlin is on the left. This photo was taken of us at the Midwest Homeschool Convention in Cincinnati.  (You can see my husband in the background working hard while I’m goofing off!)  She lives with her family in Ohio, and telecommutes to work.

If you have technical or non-homeschool questions, you may be receiving emails from Stephanie.  She has decades of experience as an office manager, administrative assistant, and executive assistant.  With her experience as a homeschool parent, her technical expertise, and her organizational skills, I’m just thrilled to have her on board!

Stephanie says, “My husband and I started homeschooling in 2000 with an 11th grader, a 9th grader, and a gifted preschooler (who is now in 9th  rade!) My family is very active in our church and in activities such as geocaching and genealogy, and we still enjoy the lifestyle and family  elationships that homeschooling provides us.”

I’m so impressed with Stephanie’s enthusiasm, knowledge and willingness to help with any project.  She is a wonderful addition!

Stephanie’s new email address is HomeScholarManager@gmail.com

Please leave a comment to welcome Stephanie to our team!

Do you have a homeschooling high school question?  Send me an email!

As you can imagine, I get a lot of “interesting” press releases.   Recently I received information about how grades improve when the house smells good. Here are the very important statistics:

We’re working with homeschooling mom and the founder of Mom Bloggers Club, Jennifer James, to let people know about this new study which shows that 84% of students reporting GPAs of A or B reported positive childhood home smells, such as lemon, mint or “clean.” In comparison, 34% of students with an average GPA of C or less reported remembering negative smells in their home. Because homeschooled children spend so much time inside their homes learning, it is even more imperative to keep a clean and fresh smelling home to help foster children’s academic success. Jennifer James is available for interviews if you’d like to speak with her further about how she thought about this study through the view of a homeschooler.

Additional materials can be found on our Internet press kit, www.pinesolipk.com, including full study findings here. The study was conducted by Dr. Alan Hirsch and the Smell & Taste Treatment and Research Foundation, and was commissioned by Pine-Sol.  The above chart visually explains the top-line study results.

Now before you start recommending the book “How to Lie With Statistics” by Darrell Huff, let’s look at the positive side of this study and just run with it.  If positive household smells can increase grades (I’m not saying they do) then it’s your responsibility as a homeschool parent to make your home smell as good as possible so your children will grow up smarter and have a higher GPA and attend the college of their choice and get a fabulously high-paying job, right?

Naturally that means you should put the books aside right now and make some chocolate chip cookies.

Statistics never lie!

Are you ready to get serious about homeschooling high school?  Send me an email and let’s talk!

Letting go is hard work.  Watching your children leave for college brings all sorts of emotions to the surface.   That’s when you truly do the hard work of separating. Separating is horrible, and the work is hard, but it really pays off!

I’m reading all my home educating friends talking about starting their new academic year and I’m thinking…I am so not ready to not be a home educator any more. I wonder what my cat wants to learn this year?  Another strange week ahead, of trying to adjust to our new lives and routines. I’m also meeting with someone who wants to know more about home educating her daughter today and we have a Life-Songs meeting tonight.  You know all those ‘life events’ that cause people huge stress, like bereavement, divorce, moving house, having a baby? I’d say finishing long-term home-schooling, and transitioning out of that… era, can be almost as dramatic and  stressful a change for a family. Not in the top 3, but definitely up there.
~ Dorothy

It’s a hard stage.  Some stages of parenting are just more difficult than others.  Sending children off into the world is difficult.  It’s not merely difficult for homeschoolers, however.  It’s difficult for every parent. There are many articles in the media about parents having difficulty saying goodbye to their children.  Don’t worry that this is unique to homeschooling, because it isn’t.

The process of saying goodbye take a long time – roughly four years. Once the goodbye’s have all been said, what is next?  I have watched my children leave home, done the difficult work of letting go.  Now I’m left with just joy. When Kevin got married, I was completely prepared.  All my goodbyes had already been said. I didn’t shed a tear. I was just happy and joyful.

In a way, it’s a good that you can go through this NOW.

Sort of.

In a way.

I know that doesn’t really help!  It is VERY stressful.  It does really hurt.  Eventually, you’ll just be left with joy.

I’ve recently been connecting with friends on LinkedIn.  I invite you to send me an invitation if you want to connect with my business.

I haven’t read this book by Charles Sykes, but I love his “11 Rules” list! “Dumbing Down Our Kids: Why American Children Feel Good About Themselves But Can’t Read, Write, or Add” by educator Charles Sykes

11 rules your kids did not and will not learn in school

Rule 1: Life is not fair – get used to it!

Rule 2: The world doesn’t care about your self-esteem. The world will expect you to accomplish something BEFORE you feel good about yourself.

Rule 3: You will NOT make $60,000 a year right out of high school. You won’t be a vice-president with a car phone until you earn both.

Rule 4: If you think your teacher is tough, wait till you get a boss.

Rule 5: Flipping burgers is not beneath your dignity. Your Grandparents had a different word for burger flipping: they called it opportunity.

Rule 6: If you mess up, it’s not your parents’ fault, so don’t whine about your mistakes, learn from them.

Rule 7: Before you were born, your parents weren’t as boring as they are now. They got that way from paying your bills, cleaning your clothes and listening to you talk about how cool you thought you were. So before you save the rain forest from the parasites of your parent’s generation, try delousing the closet in your own room.

Rule 8: Your school may have done away with winners and losers, but life HAS NOT. In some schools, they have abolished failing grades and they’ll give you as MANY TIMES as you want to get the right answer. This doesn’t bear the slightest resemblance to ANYTHING in real life.

Rule 9: Life is not divided into semesters. You don’t get summers off and very few employers are interested in helping you FIND YOURSELF. Do that on your own time.

Rule 10: Television is NOT real life. In real life people actually have to leave the coffee shop and go to jobs.

Rule 11: Be nice to nerds. Chances are you’ll end up working for one.

Excerpt from the book “Dumbing Down Our Kids: Why American Children Feel Good About Themselves But Can’t Read, Write, or Add” by educator Charles Sykes

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Big warnings about Fosamax, the drug used to treat osteoporosis.  Like many medications, apparently there can be too much of a good thing.   As a nurse, I know that all medical intervention has side effects.  But this news about Fosamax has a homeschool lesson for all parents.

In a nutshell, osteoporosis is a disease causing holes in the bones that make them easy to break.  Often the first symptom is a broken hip.  If recognized early, the treatment may include medications that make the bones stronger  and fill in those holes with healthy bone tissue.  Sounds great, right?  Unfortunately, after using that bone-strengthening medication for four years, they have identified that the bones become TOO strong.  Filling all these porous spots has caused the bones to become rigid and inflexible. Unable to bend slightly with movement, these overly rigid bones can break suddenly.  Often the first symptom of this condition is a broken thigh bone.

Too many holes and you break.  Too rigid and you break.  What a great analogy for homeschooling!  For homeschool parents, it’s important to remember that we have to be both strong AND flexible.  We have to fill wholes and gaps in education, but without filling every moment of time with inflexible schedules and rigid timeliness.  We need to seek flexibility and strength.

One of the best ways to accomplish that is not through self-medicating, LOL!  Instead, make sure that you have filled holes by covering core classes every year;  reading, writing, math, science, social studies.  Then make sure you provide additional opportunities like foreign language, fine arts, and PE while at the same time proving free time.  Check your schedule and count the number of hours of schoolwork you require.  Is it too much?  Not a sustainable amount?

To find the balance, remember that there really CAN be too much of a good thing. As homeschooling becomes more popular, there are more and more wonderful opportunities.  The wise parent will recognize there are too many wonderful opportunities to do them all.  Limit your activities, and keep some time free to allow for delight directed learning.  That’s the best way to avoid broken bones – or in homeschool terms, “Burn out!”

Let’s be friends on Facebook!

My husband found this ethical dilemma online at http://ethicsscoreboard.com/  and I thought it would be an excellent tool for homeschoolers (especially those with kids in little league) to engage their kids in a real life ethical discussion.  After you read the story and before you read the discussion, please add a comment with your vote and a brief explanation.  Then read the analysis and let me know if you change your mind.  This is really interesting and engaging material.

Take the Little League Baseball Ethics Challenge!

Last month’s tournament leading up to the Little League World Series included one game with an unusual series of events that set the stage for a fascinating ethical debate. The Situation: On August 11 in Bristol, Conn., a Little League team from Colchester, Vt., only had to retire its Portsmouth, N.H. opposition in the top of the sixth inning (Little League games are six innings rather than nine) to win the game 9-8 and move on to the New England regional championship game.

But there was a problem. The Vermont team had made its third out in its half of the fifth inning before player Adam Bentley got to the plate. The Little League has a strict rule that requires every player to bat at least once a game, and the penalty for violating it is forfeit. Vermont’s coach Denis Place realized, to his horror, that even though his team had the lead entering the last inning the only way it could avoid losing by forfeit was for Bentley to get an at bat. For that to happen, the New Hampshire team would have to tie the score or take the lead, requiring the teams to play the last half of the sixth inning.

Place held a meeting of his players at the pitcher’s mound and instructed them to let New Hampshire score a run. The plan: walk the first batter, and ensure that he made it home with the assistance of wild pitches and intentional errors so the game would be deadlocked at 9-9. Then, hopefully, win the game in the bottom of the sixth inning, with Adam Bentley getting his mandated turn at the plate.

Not so fast. The New Hampshire team’s coach, Mark McCauley figured out what was happening and ordered his players not to score. So after a walk and two wild pitches allowed a New Hampshire runner to reach third base, the  player refused to advance to the plate despite another wild pitch and a fielding error. McCauley also told his players to strike out intentionally, preserving Vermont’s lead but guaranteeing a successful New Hampshire protest that, under the rules, would require that New Hampshire win by forfeit.

This obviously led to a ridiculous spectacle: one team trying to give up a run while the other team was trying to make outs and avoid scoring. The perplexed umpires understandably chose to end the debacle by ejecting  Place and his pitcher from the game. Vermont won 9-8…and then New Hampshire was awarded the victory by forfeit, because Adam Bentley never got his turn at bat. The New Hampshire team advanced to the next round.

The Question: Whose conduct was unethical?

Possible Answers:
1.      Place, the Vermont coach
2.      McCauley, the New Hampshire coach
3.      Both coaches
4.      Neither coach.

So what’s your analysis?  Before you read the discussion below, enter a comment to this post.  If you change your mind after you read the discussion, please let us know.  And remember, neither coach had much time to consider their options.

Analysis:

A pair of sports ethicists (yes, there actually are such people) chose 3. Both coaches.  Both coaches acted unethically, said Richard Lapchick, director of the Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport, at the University of Central Florida. “Anytime a coach changes how the game is played and orders his players to do something that’s not a natural at-bat or pitch, it crosses that line.” Daniel Doyle, executive director of the Institute for International Sport, in Kingston, R.I., agreed. “The lesson is anytime you’re coaching kids, you never make a decision to use strategy to impair the integrity of the game. You follow that principle and you’re going to be fine.”

The Ethics Scoreboard emphatically does not agree. Denis Place not only did not behave unethically, he made the only ethical decision open to him. But his rival manager, McCauley, indeed was unethical.   Ethics Scoreboard Analysis: The dilemma arose in part because of the special objectives of Little League baseball, which are embodied by rules that occasionally work at cross purposes. Winning is important (remember that the game in question took place during an international tournament designed to determine the best team), but excellence of play is even more important, and excellence includes good sportsmanship. Co-existing with these straightforward objectives are the organizational goals of ensuring that all the young participants have a rewarding experience that includes the opportunity to play, learn and improve. Looming over all of this is the Little League Pledge, a statement that dates from the Eisenhower administration and is recited with reverence by the players before every game:

I trust in God
I love my country
And will respect its laws
I will play fair
And strive to win
But win or lose
I will always do my best

The most important aspect of the Little League’s values is this: the kids…their health, safety, happiness, development, socialization and growth, physical,  mental and emotional… come first. This is why the rule that caused all the trouble exists. Coaches, particularly in games like this one in which the winners are rewarded, will naturally want to put their strongest team on the field (recall Walter Matthau’s moment of truth in “the Bad News Bears”). The rule ensures that even the weakest players will get a chance to play in every game, and it establishes a hierarchy of values by the proscribed penalty for violating it. The kids come first: if all of them don’t play, your team loses no matter what the score. The problem with the rule, like some laws, is that the punishment is effective as a threat but unjust and excessive in execution. If a game is really forfeited, the coach isn’t the only one punished; so are all the kids on the team and their families. Worst of all, perhaps, is the fate of the unlucky child whose failure to come to bat resulted, through no fault of his own, in his or her team losing a victory. The guilt and blame that will follow from the enforcement of this rule are far more damaging and long-lasting than the pain of sitting out one game.

Nobody thinks Coach Place intentionally kept Adam Bentley from batting in the fifth inning. It was simply bad luck; a hit or two by his team mates and Bentley would have come to the plate. When Place realized that his team was doomed if he didn’t find a way for the game to last into the home half of the sixth, he had three options, all of them bad:

- He could explain his plight to the umpires and the other team, and ask them to waive the rule. In seeking this result, he would have been invoking a Reciprocity ethical analysis: “Wouldn’t you want me to be generous and merciful to you if our positions were reversed?” This would be futile, and should be futile. Changing a rule mid-game, even by consensus, is both bad practice and a bad lesson for the players. It is inherently unfair. It is not a proper application of the Golden Rule.

- He could go ahead and let his team win in the top of the inning, have victory taken away by forfeit, and take full responsibility. This is apparently what the sports ethicists and the League felt he should do. It is essentially an Absolutist approach: a pledge is a pledge, and not even unanticipated and unique circumstances justify going around it. Teams do not, can not and must not intentionally let their opposition score. No exceptions.

- He could instruct his team to allow New Hampshire to tie the score, and hope that his team could win by scoring in the bottom of the sixth or in extra innings.

In choosing the last option, Coach Place was applying the balancing approach of Utilitarian ethical systems. Using that method of analysis, his course was  obvious. True, allowing the other team to score intentionally was superficially a violation of the League’s “strive to win” ethic, but in this odd instance it was really the opposite: only by allowing a run to score could his team win. The Scoreboard would like to hear the argument that he
was telling his players not to “strive to win” when what they were doing was
essential to having any chance at victory. They were not throwing the game.
Doing nothing would be throwing the game.

On the positive side, extending the game meant that Adam Bentley would bat, an objective so important to the Little League that it had passed a rule mandating a forfeit if it wasn’t met. Getting to play would be a benefit to Adam, and an even greater benefit would be that he would not feel responsible when his team missed a chance to advance in the tournament because of him. It also would give his team a chance to get credit for a victory it had earned by outplaying the other team. (It is worth pointing out that Adam’s failure to bat did not give Vermont any unfair advantage or contribute to the team’s lead. One therefore cannot argue that Vermont’s coach’s miscalculation in any way entitled New Hampshire to a victory.) It would avoid the anomaly of an inferior team advancing over a superior one, and avert a forfeit, always an unsatisfactory resolution of a game except to the beneficiaries of it, and often not even them.

Place made the right ethical choice. The arguments of the sports ethicists quoted above are oddly detached from the actual situation of the Vermont team. Lapchick: “Anytime a coach changes how the game is played and orders his players to do something that’s not a natural at-bat or pitch, it crosses that line.” That is an invalid lesson for both baseball and life, and faulty ethics: an unconventional response to an unusual situation is not necessarily unethical. When a baseball player laid down the first sacrifice bunt some time in the 1880s, he was intentionally making an out…”unnatural” perhaps, but a valid and intelligent tactic that is now commonplace. Before something is declared unethical, there has to be a violation of some ethical principle. What is it in this case? The rules of baseball do not prohibit intentionally allowing the other team to score. Place was not failing to “strive to win;” on the contrary, he was striving hard, if unconventionally, while also  striving to obey the Little League’s participation rule.

Doyle: “The lesson is anytime you’re coaching kids, you never make a decision to use strategy to impair the integrity of the game. You follow that principle and you’re going to be fine.” Mr. Doyle, don’t you think a result where the team that scores the most runs loses by forfeit “impairs the integrity of the game”? I sure do, and I’ll bet everyone in the stands that day agrees with me. The Little League rule that requires a player to bat at least once, while laudable in many ways, also impairs the integrity of the game (and it isn’t “natural” either, Mr. Lapchick). Following Doyle’s version of integrity in this case wouldn’t make everything “fine” at all: a victory overturned after the fact, victimized kids, a traumatized player, the inferior team advancing, a rule broken. That’s “fine”? Fine for whom?

Interestingly, Coach Place later said without elaborating that he could have accomplished his goal in a more subtle way, and he was correct. For  example, he could have had all his players play out of position; a non-pitcher struggling to get a ball over the plate, his slowest players in the outfield, his weakest arms at third and short. Presumably playing an inferior team wouldn’t offend Lapchick’s definition of “natural” or Doyle’s version of  “integrity,” which shows how shallow their analysis went. (Lest this sound too harsh, I should note that it is likely that neither of the ethicists were given much time to consider their opinions, and I think their AP quotes reflect that.) I regard this as a cosmetic difference only, what lawyers call “a distinction without a difference.”

He also could have waited to see if such strategies became unnecessary as a result of New Hampshire scoring a run without assistance. But the only way to make certain that his team would avoid a forfeit was to be proactive. Or so it seemed at the time. He was proactive, and his team still forfeited. Still, his plan was not unethical What about the conduct of the New Hampshire coach? Easy call: unethical:

1. His actions were aimed at ensuring that the rule would be broken, not followed.
2. He was ensuring that a young player would not get the opportunity to bat, which his own League had decreed was crucial.
3. He was asking his players to lose the game, while Place was seeking only to extend the game…a critical difference.
4. By doing the above, he was attempting to advance in the tournament through forfeit rather than merit, thus exploiting a technicality in a contest that is supposed to be a measure of skill.
5. His instructions to his team constituted an effort to block a colleague’s good faith attempt to avoid breaking a rule for the good of his team and the league.

McCauley could have reacted to Place’s desperate strategy by having his  team play it straight, and either win the game by scoring as many runs as possible in the sixth inning or by proving its superiority by winning in extra innings. He wasn’t willing to take that chance, and preferred to win by forfeit. That’s bad sportsmanship. It violates the spirit of the Little League Pledge. And he was trying to lose the game.

Whose conduct was unethical?

The Scoreboard’s answer is
2. McCauley, the New Hampshire coach.
________________________________________________
Such situations are rare but have even occurred in major league games. Some managers have walked sluggers like Barry Bonds and Willy McCovey with the bases loaded, sometimes pushing across a tying or even go-ahead run, to avoid a potential grand slam. There have been games in which a home team  was trailing by many runs in the top of the fifth inning with a thunderstorm approaching, and the home team’s manager realized that if the inning wasn’t completed before the rains came, it wouldn’t be an official game and the score wouldn’t count. So he instructed his team to stall, walk opposing players and refuse to make outs until the rains came.

The HomeScholar Gold Care Club will give you the comprehensive help you need to homeschool high school.

What do you really need in order to be a “great” homeschool?  What will happen if you don’t get to Socratic dialog?  What if you mess up teaching state history, like I did?  Can you really provide quality college preparation without a public school guidance counselor?   Your homeschool CAN be a great homeschool – even without any of those things!  Focus on the LOVE of learning, you you will be successful.

Hi Lee,

You’re newsletter introductory paragraph reminds me of my relative’s recent experience. She’s a public school teacher in California; due to a recent move she’s been working as a long-term substitute. When the regular teacher returned from maternity leave, my sister stayed on for a few days to help with the transition. She was dismayed to watch the teacher make mistakes about which hands are which on an analog clock and which side is which of the “greater than/less than sign.”

Homeschooling parents should remember that classroom teachers are people too and make plenty of mistakes. The Progressive movement in education has sold our society the lie that if someone has a government certificate, they have somehow “progressed” beyond the rest of us. It just isn’t so.

Very cordially,

~ A homeschool dad

Of course homeschoolers aren’t perfect.  We all make mistakes sometimes. But don’t feel too bad – ALL teachers mess up sometimes, even in a public school.  Take a deep breath, dust yourself off, and keep trying.  “Classroom teachers are people too” – and that means they are no more perfect than we are!

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