AHA

Hi.  My name is Linda and I’m an American-History-Aholic.  You know, every nerd has their area of passion…. mine just happens to be history.  Seriously, a National Park or Historical Marker sign on the highway causes whiplash in our vehicle if I’m driving.  There is simply too much good information to pass up one of those!  You never know when you might get a Trivial Pursuit question about Wilson’s Creek Battle in southwestern Missouri!  I’m ready, baby.

This year, as you may know if you have read MSJ in the past few months, I’m teaching American History to a group of homeschool nerds students. Even if they are not loving it, I am.  And I know they are learning something from my sheer enthusiasm!  I decided not to be the hard-core teacher that I’ve been in the past.  I figure, any way to get the information into the kids’ heads is good…. whether conventional or not.  I.e., I give quizzes each week on all of the assignments from the previous week.  It is a small percentage of the actual information that is tested.  And there is LOTS of information to cover in a week.  So I devised a plan to make the tests easier.  First if there are 54 or 63 questions on the test, I round down to score out of 50 or 60.  How nice of me. Next I made a set of 15 5×7 notecards that tell the students how much help they get on the test.  One card is drawn each day.  They say things like:  “Phone a friend… seriously with a phone.”  or “Ask the expert.” (That’s me) and all of the kids in the class can listen to the answer.  Another is “Work together.”  And “You may use your textbooks.”  And “Do every other question” and “Skip one section.”  See, easy-peasy.

Today they drew the card that said they could each phone two friends.  I told them if they considered me a friend, they could text me.  Three of them did.  haha.  My daughter asked for one of my friend’s phone numbers.  This is another homeschool mom in California.  The question was ‘What is a chandler?’  Lucky for my girl, the mom was on her computer and googled it for her.  I figure….. it’s all good.  Will my daughter know what a chandler is for the rest of her life?  Yes.  For those not near a computer, it’s a person who made candles.  (haha… get it…. not by a computer!)

Anyway, my students are all doing well in the class and I’m having fun.  Isn’t that what it’s all about?????