Thursday's Child - Don't you quit!

        Don’t You Quit!

               Having a child with a disability can be very wearing on us. My youngest son’s bipolar disorder and struggles can be frustrating at times. Only worrying about one day at a time gets me through. Plus there are a lot of rainbows and sunshine bursting through the clouds each day with his hugs and kisses and humor. Someone asked me – if I knew it would be so hard at times – would I do it again? Definitely! Check out the poem, Don’t You Quit, in Vol. 8 of It's Not Rocket Surgery!, and below.

               When my oldest son died unexpectedly at age 8 in 1990, I was absolutely devastated. A friend of mine cut out a newspaper column from “Ask Ann Landers”, Grieving Mother Seeks Comfort, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, reprinted Sunday, March 3, 1991. I’ve modified the letter (from Barbara Brown) to represent my son, Michael, here.

               “If God said to me, ‘You can choose or not choose to have a son, Michael. If you choose to have a son, Michael, he will have blond hair and shiny eyes and a great sense of humor. He will be a ray of sunshine in your life and cheer you on when you are down.

               “But you can have him for only 8 years. And when he leaves, you must pay a great price for those 8 years. That price will be deep sorrow.’

               “I would choose to have Michael.”

               “And if God said to me, ‘When he goes, you can choose for him to have a lingering, painful death, one that would help you adjust to his leaving and give you a chance to say goodbye ...

               “Or you can choose for him to go quickly and painlessly.

               “But if you choose for him to go quickly and painlessly, you must pay a great price, and that price is deep sorrow.’

               “I would choose a quick and painless death for Michael.”

               I feel the same way about any and all difficulties, physical or emotional, with my children. I wouldn’t miss the experience for anything! When I was pregnant with my last child, the caboose of the 15, people asked me, “But what would you do if she was a Downs-Syndrome baby?” Hug her and kiss her and love on her and celebrate her life every day! I would never give up a baby or child because of a possible ‘problem’. 

In fact when 16-weeks pregnant, I refused to take the amniotic-fluid test for Downs Syndrome to find out. It wouldn’t change my decision, so it was a moot point. (The test could cause a miscarriage of a perfectly healthy baby.)

               Focusing on the ‘MY’ in FAMILY causes us to ‘FAIL’. Always putting self first creates very dysfunctional families.

“No other success can compensate for failure in the home.”                                                     David O. McKay

“The most important work you will ever do will be within the walls of your own home.”             Harold B. Lee

Remember, the question isn’t, How do others show their love for me? The question is, especially with children, How do I show my love for them?

               For every experience, if you can’t change your situation, change your attitude.

                                            Spencer W. Kimball

               “It's been my experience that you can nearly always enjoy things if you make up your mind firmly that you will.”
                L.M. Montgomery

Find something good in each day. Have a cleansing cry every once in a while, then keep going. When you get to the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on. Life is good!

               I just love the poem,

Don’t You Quit:

When things go wrong, as they sometimes will,

               When the road you're trudging seems all uphill,

               When the funds are low and the debts are high,

               And you want to smile, but you have to sigh,

               When care is pressing you down a bit-

               Rest if you must, but don't you quit.

Life is queer with its twists and turns,

               As every one of us sometimes learns,

               And many a fellow turns about

               When he might have won, had he stuck it out.

               Don't give up though the pace seems slow -

               You may succeed with another blow.

Often the goal is nearer than

               It seems to a faint and faltering man;

               Often the struggler has given up

               When he might have captured the victor's cup;

               And he learned too late when the night came down,

               How close he was to the golden crown.

Success is failure turned inside out -

               The silver tint in the clouds of doubt,

               And you never can tell how close you are,

               It might be near when it seems afar;

               So stick to the fight when you're hardest hit -

               It's when things seem worst that you must not quit.

Author Unknown              http://www.thedontquitpoem.com/thePoem.htm

http://thegodfreymethod.com

Thursday's Child - No Child Left Behind

          No Child Left Behind?

               Professional development?! Teacher preparation?! ‘No child left behind’ really means 'all children left behind.'

               Before we returned to homeschooling, at the end of every term, my children got a day or two off from school for the teachers’ “professional development.” I used to think that this meant the teachers were attending training on how to be better educators, or something similar. Not so! Recently someone in the school PTA told me that what happens is this: All the teachers get together by grade level to adjust the curriculum down for the next term.

               For example, all the 4^th-grade teachers get together and look at their students’ scores. They find the lowest-achieving children in their grade, then readjust the curriculum back to that child for the coming term. No Child Left Behind has become ALL children left behind, because schools are afraid of getting a bad rating and fines from the Federal Department of Education.

               Personally, this horrifies me. Why not get special tutors for those that are behind, and let the rest work ahead at their own pace? And many of those who are behind wouldn’t be behind if we changed what/how we’re teaching the teachers to teach in the first place! It’s a self-propagating, downward spiral.

               Although a conservative myself, I realize that not all conservatives have good family values, and vice versa. I was disappointed when President Bush enacted “No Child Left Behind.” The only good part of it was if parents could take vouchers to the charter schools of their choice, but that was never achieved for most people. Here’s what Hartman Rector, Jr., said in the interview referenced previously:

               “They say education has failed. It has not failed, it is doing exactly what Dewey set out to do. He had two major goals: #1 Get God out of the schools; #2 Get mothers out of the schools; and they’ve done it. (John Dewey was the founder of modern public education and a signer of the Humanist Manifesto. He designed an educational system where God and family influences would be excluded and where students would be separated into academic or tradesman tracks.)

               “And that’s where we are today. Today about 3% of the students get PhD’s. Dewey would have wanted a few to get doctorate degrees, and they would do the thinking for the rest of the people. Today 17% of our students are dropping out. Dewey would have felt they were needed to do the more necessary menial tasks like pick up the garbage and dig the ditches. Then he would have wanted the rest of them (80%) to learn how to follow orders, to follow rules. Dewey set out to do what we are achieving today.

               “Dewey set out to implement what Plato taught – the Great Society, completely planned. Nobody has any way to get out of the mold they put them in. [Not so great, eh?] That’s what this ‘Goals 2000’ education is designed to do. The Governor of Texas (George Bush) has got it implemented in Texas already, and he’ll try to do it in every state in the Union if he gets elected. We haven’t got anybody to vote for.”

               Well, Bush was elected and he did implement it nationwide, under “No Child Left Behind”. The crippling continues…

               Just a note: all conservatives are not Republicans and vice versa. According to Jonathan Krohn in, Define Conservatism, the characterization of a conservative falls under these four core values:

1.      Respect for the Constitution

2.      Respect for Life

3.      Less Government

4.      Personal Responsibility

               NCLB actually undermines these values by lowering the educational standards for all children, by government mandate. Homeland Security also undermines them, and undermines our Bill of Rights, big time.

               Even if you don’t agree with my conservative values, you need to understand that what I’m saying about the need for parental involvement in early reading the right way is true, regardless. It’s for everyone and all belief systems or political views, secular, religious, liberal, or conservative. Our children’s futures deserve our best efforts!

               Consider this: more than 22,260 secondary students in Texas were listed as withdrawing to home-school in 2008. Similar statistics are happening all over the United States. Parents are waking up! Every child has a right to be well bred, well fed, and well led. The ideal isn’t always possible, but we need to do our best for our kids.

               What about foster children who don’t have an advocate? As mentioned in Vol. 4 of It's Not Rocket Surgery!, The Godfrey Method can do a lot to help heal the learning struggles caused by the emotional traumas and educational methods faced by these children.

               Oprah Winfrey has magnified our public education failures on several of her television shows and website. She highlighted the movie, Waiting for Superman, by Davis Guggenheim, which opens Sep. 24, 2011. She called it, “The movie that could revolutionize America’s schools.” We shall see…

               On Sep 20, 2010, Oprah reported shocking educational statistics:

• Since 1971, educational spending in the U.S. has grown from $4,300 to more than $9,000 per student. But reading and math scores have flat-lined. [After a constant decline.]
• Among 30 developed countries, the U.S. is ranked 25^th in math and 21^st in science.
• High school dropouts are 8 times more likely to go to prison.
• Approximately 7,000 kids drop out of school every day.
• It is estimated that by the year 2020, there will be 123-million high-paying, high-skill jobs in the U.S., but only 50-million Americans to fill these positions.

               Will your child be ready for the technology jobs of the future? Not if you leave it up to the Departments of Education in our universities and government. Parents are the key!

               On Sep 15, 2010, Oprah also aired a show that focused on education activist Michelle Rhee, who “won’t back down”. Ms. Rhee is the chancellor of Washington, D.C.’s school district. She has been firing “bad teachers” right and left in an effort to improve the District’s public education. However, her concentration on teachers is a bit mis-guided because we can’t improve education until we change what we teach the teachers to teach! State legislatures tie their hands with faulty curricula from the lobbying of erroneous university professors and their political cohorts. Period.

               Yes, there are children with legitimate learning disabilities, but the vast majority of children with LD-diagnoses don’t really have them or would have them to a much milder degree; they’ve been caused by teaching theories that don’t work. Don’t blame the teachers because they often don’t know what they don’t know, having been dragged down the wrong path by flawed mentors in universities. This whole process has been snow-balling since 1967 until now. And it continues.

For No Child Left Behind to be real, more and more parents need to homeschool or get involved in a major way in their children's education.

http://thegodfreymethod.com

Thursday's Child - Is resource class hurting your child's self-esteem?

     The Paradox of Resource Class and Your Child's Self-Esteem      

     

     Is your school's curricula destroying your child's future? Ten ways to stop them now.

               In the 5^th and 6^th grades, one of my sisters was taken to resource classes after lunch every day, along with a handicapped boy. The school thought that she read too slowly, or that her grades weren't good enough, or something. Or they made a mistake and took the wrong girl.

               No one ever explained to my sister that she was going to start resource class nor why. One day a lady just came to her class and said, "I need Leah and Tom to come with me for some special reading time." She was so embarrassed; after awhile, she begged the teacher to let her come to resource on her own after lunch, without being picked up. However, she didn't – and doesn't – have any learning problems. Why my parents allowed the schools to do this to her is beyond my understanding.

               The resource teacher had my sister read out-loud for hours. The teacher supplied tedious little books far below my sister's  intelligence level and attention span. Basic sight-word booklets. She read very well at home all the time, so she was really confused about it and bored out of her mind.

               If she made a mistake, the teacher just told her what the word was and made her repeat it. Look-say at its worst. No phonics or sounding-out was used. My sister rarely made any mistakes, other than reading too quickly and tripping over her tongue. She understood perfectly well.

               The slower a child reads (sounding-out), the more intellectual s/he is; has higher reasoning skills. The faster a child reads (look-say), the less s/he understands; just jumping through hoops. Kids are afraid to read too slowly in front of the teacher and class. Sight-reading may help some of them speed up in the short-term, but they don't learn how to think, just what to think. Is this really what we want?

               My sister's neighbor, a school reading therapist, said she'd take a kid who reads slowly, and may trip on some words, over one who reads quickly but can't comprehend. It's ridiculous that schools push speed over comprehension. The speed naturally comes after the phonics rules are learned, as it should be.

Educational Errors:	Parental emPowerments:	Shannah B Godfrey:
Audio-Sequential Teaching	Find out if Your Child is a Visual-Spatial Learner	Vol. 8 It's Not Rocket Surgery!
Holding Bright Students Back	Gifted Classes, Private or Homeschooling	Vol. 7
Inducing Dyslexia	Early Reading the Right Way – TGM	Vol. 1-4
Lowering Curricula Standards & Remediation	Stopping 'Teacher Preparation' Days	Vol. 4
Mis-Diagnosing Giftedness & Boredom as ADHD	Find out if Your Child is Gifted or Creative	Vol. 7
Pushing Ritalin	Research Nutritional & alternate Natural Solutions	Vol. 4
Student-Led Discovery	Adult-Led Direct Instruction	Vol. 6
Whole 'Reform' Math	Early Math the Right Way - & less calculators	Vol. 10
Whole-Language Sight Reading	Phonics Reading only	Vol. 5
Whole-Music Instruction	Back to the Basics	Vol. 7
	Homeschool

               The paradox of resource class and your child's self-esteem is this, the Self-Esteem-First and Whole Language teaching models have failed to produce either self-esteem or basic academic skills, thereby putting more and more children into recovery, resource, reform, or remedial education. (Or forcing their parents to pay for private or commercial tutoring programs.)

               Going to a resource class usually embarrasses a child and gives other children more excuses to tease him/her. The recovery methods used often don't fix the educational problem, thus not improving the child's capabilities either. So the child is exposed to more ridicule without a viable reason for the class in the first place.

Many behavioral problems in school stem from a child feeling worthless because of needing remediation. What is supposed to help often does more damage. Behavioral problems vs. learning disability is a self-propagating "slippery slope" because each continually feeds off the other, revolving downward to decrease a child's confidence and motivation. Get your child off the slope!

               Without the horrid look-say sight-reading methods, the need for remediation would dwindle to a few needy cases. And naturally self-esteem would rise.

               Phonics deciphering skills build intellect and reasoning skills. Sight-word memorizing doesn't. Quite the opposite, in fact. How many children think they're slow when they're not? Whom does this serve?

               To illustrate, I would like to quote a section from the wonderful satire of former NRRF* North Carolina Director, Cathy Froggatt's, Whole Language at the Fork in the Road, Right to Read Report, February 1998. Read the entire, brilliant article at http://www.nrrf.org/satire_WL_at_Fork.html:

               Paradise or Perdition? "Why, Dr. Goodguess, what is the matter? You look very distraught! What has happened to your self-esteem?"

               "Well, Dr. Sampler, it's these darn words-in-isolation. You'd think there would be at least one picture clue somewhere?!"

               "Hmmm, I see what you mean, Dr. Goodguess. Oh, no! Both signs have words that start with the same letter, and the words are about the same length."

               "Professor Indoctrinate, unwilling to provide any phonics information due to her thorough disdain for such "lower order subskills," encouraged Drs. Goodguess and Sampler to use the Whole Language cueing system they knew so well. In an attempt to reassure them, she said, "Don't be upset if you can't read the signs just yet. After all, reading is developmental. In time it will all begin to click, maybe next year or the year after."

               "Now they knew they were in need of a 'real' reading expert, particularly one who had been intensely trained, preferably at Ohio State. So without hesitation, even though their self-esteem was becoming badly damaged, Drs. Goodguess and Sampler fell to their knees and began praying loudly. As if on cue, a Reading Recovery teacher appeared on the pathway. At first she was a bit intimidated to be in the presence of the founders of Whole Language. After all, she knew quite well that Reading Recovery owed its very existence (in more ways than one) to the theories and strategies taught by these very experts.

               "Fortunately, her extensive training allowed her to quickly regain her composure and to focus on the reading problems the gentlemen were experiencing. "I am sure I need not remind you, gentlemen," she began, "that comprehension and meaning-making are of primary importance when reading a word you have not seen before. You must just answer the question: 'What would make sense here?'"

               "With the path behind them filling up with people impatiently awaiting their turn to pass through the fork, Drs. Goodguess and Sampler cried out in despair, "What we desperately need is more context!" (The context-clue of 'Pandemonium', the capital of Hell in Milton's, Paradise Lost, didn't help. Neither would 'Purgatory'.)

               "Just then they heard the soft-spoken voice of a child. A little six-year-old boy walked up to them, looked at the sign on the right and said with great pride, "I was taught to read with explicit, systematic phonics. I can sound out any word. The sign on the right says 'Paradise' and that's the way I'm going." And off he went."

               "Drs. Goodguess and Sampler looked at each other with knowing smirks. Their need for context had surely been met. Dr. Goodguess whispered excitedly, "Did you hear him say 'explicit, systematic phonics'? The path he took must be the road to Perdition! Quickly now, let's take the other path!"

*The National Right to Read Foundation (NRRF).

               Take a look at spelling bees. Virtually all winners of spelling bees spell by phonics. They are able to hear the sounds in the words and take them apart. They can build words from root words, adding prefixes and suffixes, so they can also deconstruct them for spelling. Phonics makes it easier to remember which spelling goes with which homonym, too. These children don't have to memorize thousands of sight words.

               They have been able to make sense of words on a foundation of phonics rules, and can decode new words, with only about 42 sounds. That is just sheer genius. It is higher-order thinking. It even makes it easier to remember irregular spellings.

               On Twitter, I recently saw a spelling-bee-preparation method based on sight-words, and I cringed. No, no, no! Stop this insanity!

               Have you or your children ever taken piano lessons? Students are taught each note's name, sound, place on the piano and in the musical staff, individually before putting them together into chords, measures, and complete songs. Once those are mastered, they can move on to more complex pieces and learn to add nuances to the music with soft and loud, slow and fast, slurring or staccato, etc.

               Wouldn't it be ridiculous to learn piano the Whole Language way? The piano student would have to learn whole songs by sight, guess through context, cooperation, comprehension, and meaning-making. And yet my Canadian friend Pavel, a music teacher, says this is happening in schools now. How many whole songs can a child memorize by sight? Not many. But any student who has a foundation of individual notes can build up to any and every tune out there. It is the same with phonics and reading.

               A great way to enhance your child's mind is to have him or her participate in the national spelling bee. The deadline is usually in October, each year. Encourage your child's teacher to enroll your school (or homeschool group) for a fee with the E.W. Scripps Company. You can also enroll your child and buy spelling practice supplies. http://www.spellingbee.com.

               The local, spelling-bee sponsors conduct community spelling bee programs, usually in cooperation with school officials for public, private, parochial, charter, virtual, and home schools. The champion of each local spelling bee sponsor's program qualifies for participation in the Scripps National Spelling Bee in Washington, D.C. Each year they grant a limited number of local spelling bee sponsorships.

               Between August and October, schools enroll for participation in the program for the next season. During the fall and winter, schools conduct spelling bee programs at the classroom, grade, and/or school level, and send their spelling champions to the next level of competition as designated by their local spelling bee sponsors.

               Homeschool expert, Hartman Rector, Jr., in an interview with The LDS Home Educators Assn Newsletter, Issue #31, Nov 1999 http://www.ldshea.org/Notes/Hartman%20Rector.htm, said:

               "There's no question in my mind that about 14 minutes with mother is equal to all day in the public school. That’s what they determined when William Bennett was director of the Department of Education under President Reagan. He tried to determine how much time it would take with private tutoring for a child who had been injured and couldn’t attend school. All it takes is 1 ½ hours a week to keep a child up with his class. That’s about 20 minutes per day!" [Children usually learn faster from their own mother than from a teacher.]

               "That's why 14 minutes with mother is worth more than a day in school.  Because of the love and relationship that exists between a mother and her children, she is the best teacher of children." [I'm sure this is true of good fathers, too.]

               "(What about mother burn-out?) That happens because they try to put on a public school in their home. They even use public school materials. That doesn't work. You've got to adapt to what will work. I'm convinced that Glenn Kimber has gone a long way down the road to getting past this burnout problem. He suggests teaching three days a week, four hours a day, and no homework. Homework was devised by Dewey to make kids hate school. He didn't want students to love learning.

               "Don't teach on Monday. You need Monday to get over Sunday. That's when you do your housework, learn about Tide in, dirt out and if you put yeast in, bread rises. Then when [your kids] go on [their own] they're not helpless. …kids who came out [to college, e.g.] knowing how to cook and mend were better qualified to survive well.

               "The afternoon is open for students to play in the band or sports with local high school, if they want to. Friday is field day; you've got to know how the fire department and the police department work. I'm convinced this is a great system."

               "I'm convinced that home-schooled kids can finish high school and be ready for college at an average age of 15. That's too young to go to college, so you take college correspondence courses."

               Even for those of us who aren't currently homeschooling, Mr. Rector's words carry a lot of weight. We can do things at home to help our children, whether they attend public, private, or home school. In fact, all the HELPS at the end of each chapter of It's Not Rocket Surgery! by Shannah B Godfrey can be utilized by anyone, regardless of his/her situation.

http://thegodfreymethod.com