k12, Historically Speaking

I am such a huge fan of the k12 curriculum. My favorite k12 subject by far has been history. Let me tell you why.

k12 is not a Christian curriculum. It is a public school curriculum that is also made available for purchase by homeschooling parents and private schools, although most public schools don't use k12 because it is one of the more expensive curricula.

The history course begins in Kindergarten, in place of the more common "Social Studies", which was a huge selling point for me. Social Studies should be what parents teach their kids every day. Social Studies is just living life. Don't waste time on it in the classroom.

In my opinion, a great start to a great education includes learning how to read and write at high levels, learning deductive reasoning, which for me begins with learning math and science at an early age, and developing a wealth of knowledge of historical facts and references. If that wealth of knowledge can also include a healthy use of another language, all the better. I believe all of these things can be accomplished by 5th or 6th grade, at which point advanced maths and sciences, and specific courses should be introduced, such as Economics and Politics.

(Music and Art and Physical Education I would group together under one category: The Arts. I don't think you need to delve deeply into all three all the time, but certainly having some form of the arts included in your education is beneficial.)

But I digress. Back to k12's history curriculum. I love how k12 handles the topic of religion. Religion is mentioned a great deal in the history course. And why shouldn't it be? A huge component to understanding a culture and their history is understanding their religion. Religion is why wars were fought and why new nations began. Religion has played such a huge role in the course of history, you cannot avoid it.

And yet most curricula dance around religion, especially the Christian religion. k12 addresses it head on. In history this year, Ava has and/or will be learning about Judaism, Egyptian gods and goddesses, Hinduism, and Buddhism. She's learning about how each religion began, and the basics of what the followers of each religion believe. Each religion is treated with respect and with equal time, and none of the religions are promoted as "right" or superior.

I had no interest in finding a Christian curriculum to use for my children. My goal was to find a curriculum that was academically challenging and technologically advanced. In my mind, while you can become a Christian at a young age, you need advanced deductive reasoning skills to really further your knowledge of God.

If you've taught your children how to reason from a young age, you can trust that they'll come to what is real and right on their own as adults. This is why a challenging education is so important. If young children were taught how to think and how to ask questions and how to challenge themselves and others, this country would become a much different place.

History reeks of God. Science reeks of God. Math reeks of God. Literature reeks of God. God is everywhere, in all of education. You can't escape it. So just teach your kids, teach them all of it. You don't need to send them to a religious school for them to learn religion, education IS religion. God shows himself through all of it. Just give them the skills to recognize Him.

Bror Saxberg, the CLO of k12, explains the concepts behind the k12 curriculum. His "Big Ideas" concept was another selling point for me.

More from the k12 team:

My Blog Post, Who Is So Funny

I shall now give you a quick run down of some of the funnier moments of When The Levees Broke.

It started with a gentleman listing his family members who lived in the house with him..."My gramma, which is 81. My sister, which is 43. My cousin, which is 27..." Which??? Really??

Then you've got your wanna be journalist guy, who probably didn't get beyond fourth grade, talking about the horrific living conditions he experienced in the Superdome in the days after the hurricane...."You got sewers backing up, so people got shit and piss all over 'em....you got women with they periods comin' down on 'em..."

Women with they periods comin' down on 'em. Someone actually said that. With a straight face.

Women with they periods comin' down on 'em.

Another highlight was the Rev. Al Sharpton describing one of his visits to speak with the victims waiting in the Superdome. He said it was terrible that these folk had lost their home and their families, and now had to lose their dignity. He said it was "like pouring salt in their wombs."

SALT IN THEIR WOMBS......SALT IN THEIR WOMBS!!!!!!!! I had to pause the video and do some improv for Eric, miming how painful salt in your womb would be, and wondering aloud the myriad ways that one might pour salt into someone else's womb.

You had the public school teacher telling us about how so few children were coming to school now that everyone had left town, but that the reason for all the violence was a lack of education. That it was vicious cycle. A cycle that never resolves. She said it was like a dog wagging it's tail.

Oh yes, a dog wagging it's tail. You know, cause wagging's just so futile. What's the point.

Eric got a couple of good laughs in, too. There was the woman who told us that she'd never leave New Orleans, because generation after generation of her family had lived there. Her great great great great grandparents had lived there.

Eric says, "Um, I'm pretty sure your great great great great grandparents didn't live there. Unless your great great great great grandparents were Cherokee Indians (and from the looks of her, they weren't), you have no idea how young our country is".

He also liked the guy who was talking about the Army guys who came in to save everyone, and how they were carrying AK 47s. Eric scoffed, "Really?? The US Army soldiers were carrying RUSSIAN guns? How about an M-16, dummy..."

But my longest laugh was at the older woman who decided to sing us a song that her mother used to sing to her. A song that got her through the terror of Katrina. She closed her eyes, and sang this song slowly with so much expression:

"Wathe in the water.......Wathe in the water, children......wathe, wathe, wathe in the water...."


You have to watch this film for that moment alone. You just can't believe it's happening. A hurricane that wipes out a city, yes. But someone truly believing that you can wathe in water, never in a million years.

When The Levees Broke, or Whiny Entitled Americans

I'm a huge documentary fan. Whenever I have some time to kill, I check out HBO's documentaries On Demand. The other night I watched Spike Lee's "When The Levees Broke". I have so much to say about it I can hardly contain myself.

Before I regale you with all the funny moments from the film (yes, there are hysterical moments in the documentary about Hurricane Katrina, to me anyway), I will give you my personal opinion on this catastrophe and the aftermath.

Hurricane Katrina, horrifying situation. Obviously. Goes without saying. But I'm saying it, so that you cannot say I'm cold and dead inside.

But folks, weather happens. Hurricanes, tornadoes, hail, tsunamis, all happen. They always have, and always will. You can't stop it. Try as you might, you can't hold back the wind or the rain. If you believe in creation, Man will never beat God. If you believe in the Big Bang, Man will never beat evolution and Mother Nature. You can't have the expectation that the U.S. Government, or the military, or NASA, will ever be able to eliminate the threat of weather. Even before global warming, catastrophic weather occurred.

This documentary is full of people whining. Whining out how they were treated during and after the storm. I can't understand it one little bit.

Here's how it plays out: the mandatory evacuation is ordered. Yes, there wasn't much time to evacuate, and some folk didn't have transportation (except their legs, but I digress...), but there was warning. A lot of folks said their attitude was, "We've weathered many a hurricane, we'll weather this one". Which is a perfectly justifiable attitude. But when you take that route, you are ONE HUNDRED percent responsible for what happens to you.

New Orleans had never issued a mandatory evacuation before, so this was new territory. There's so much to consider in making a decision like that. If you issue that order, and the storm passes over or dies out before landfall, you would get TONS of crap. If you don't issue the evacuation and everyone dies, you'd get TONS of crap. So basically, you don't want to have to be the one making that call, because you know that no matter what, you're going to be covered in shit when it's all over.

But Mayor Nagin issued the order, and that die was cast. I'm sure many lives were saved due to that order.

For the folks who didn't leave the city, nature's fury was unleashed. As the media had reported it would be. The storm itself wasn't that bad, there in New Orleans. I don't think it ever reached category 5 once it made landfall. The trouble came when the levees broke. Major flooding occurred in those neighborhoods, flooding that killed many people. Those who made it to their rooftops had to wait it out until a boat came by.

The folks who hadn't left town, but wanted to leave their houses before the storm hit and move to higher ground, went to the Superdome. The Superdome is in downtown Louisiana, surrounded by high rise office buildings and hotels and restaurants.

That's right, I said surrounded by office buildings and hotels and restaurants. That were empty. Because of the mandatory evacuation. Herein lies one of my greatest frustrations. These folk that were at the Superdome for 5 days post-Katrina, whining about how no one was coming, how they had no food or water, how they had nowhere to go to the bathroom....were within walking distance of hundreds of buildings.

How many high rise office buildings do you know that don't have vending machines? How many restaurants do you know that don't have food?

These people's lack of self-preservation skill was driving me INSANE while watching this film. They were all just sitting around, waiting for Superman to fly in and save them. The sense of entitlement was palpable. They were all expending their energy shouting angrily at the media cameras, "Where is the National Guard??? Why is no one helping us?? No one cares about the Black Man!!!"

And yet there they all continued to lay, day after day. Not helping themselves.

Don't get me wrong, there was something COMPLETELY fishy going on in Washington, DC. The power struggle between the governor of Louisiana and the president seemed ridiculous. She didn't seem to be the sharpest tool in the box, and as for Bush, well...one brain cell plus one brain cell does not a catastrophe solve.

But whether or not the government should have done more, and faster, what you do FOR YOURSELF doesn't change ! When you're on fire, do you stand there until the fire department comes by with a hose? Even if you've called 911 and you know the firemen are on their way, you still stop, drop, and roll. But not these folk.

Once the National Guard made it into town, the compaints just got worse. Complaints of the chaos and the lack of sensitivity...People, there was just a major hurricane! Your entire city was just decimated! THERE'S GOING TO BE CHAOS! It's inevitable.

Then the complaints about being shipped off to different states. Complaints about how long it took to get FEMA trailers and checks...hello, it's the federal government! Do they do anything quickly?

What do you think people did before the Dept. Of Homeland Security? Before FEMA? When a catastrophe struck in ages gone by, people took care of themselves. They were grateful that they had survived, and they picked themselves up and moved on.

Should the levees have held? Sure. In a perfect world, everything would work perfectly and nothing would ever break. And unicorns would fly out of my butt and candy corn would grow on trees. But this is why insurance companies exist. Because we don't live in a perfect world.

Yes, it would be nice if someone helped you. But you can't expect people to help you. People aren't required to help you. You can only control yourself. Instead of whining about how no one's helping you, why don't YOU go help someone?

I'm amazed that humans have lasted this long. In the game of Survival Of The Fittest, Louisianians would have lost out.

In my personal opinion, the media made it worse. Every major network had cameramen down there, interviewing the poor neglected victims. If those folk had been truly neglected, they may have gotten up and found some water. Put a camera in someone's face, work them up with a few well placed comments like, "How do you feel that the government seems to have forgotten you?", and you place ideas into their heads.

Sure, you can't know for sure what you would do in a situation like this until it happens to you. But it's not in my nature one little bit to sit around and wait for someone to take care of me or my children. I can do it better than anyone else can anyway.

My main point in this rant is this: take care of yourself. Period.



I've completely re-irritated myself, so I'm going to wait until tomorrow to share the comedic portions of When The Levees Broke. But don't take any of this to mean that this film isn't worth watching. It's actually well worth your time, very thought provoking (obviously!).

The Cool Kids

It has been made clear to me over the past few months that there is a hierarchy amongst the homeschool community. The "traditional" homeschoolers, those who create their own program, either by ordering a curriculum or creating their own, look down their noses at families who use a cyber charter school. They are the cheerleaders, I'm the nerds, the unschoolers are the stoners...it's just like public school all over again.

My impression is that traditional homeschoolers believe that if you're part of the public school system in any form, you've compromised. You're part of the system. You're one of THEM.

I don't homeschool because I want to stick it to the system. I homeschool because I want my kids to get the best education possible. I don't have time to fight the system, I've got kids to teach. The public school can continue to exist forever if it wants to, and no doubt it will do just that. As long as I have a choice whether or not to send my kids there, no skin off my back. If other people want their kids to get a below average education, go right ahead! Just means more good jobs for mine.

If I hadn't found a great curriculum in k12, and a great online school in Agora, I probably would have gone the traditional route. I was homeschooled traditionally, using a satellite school curriculum, and it was great. I have nothing against the traditional method. For me, I wanted to see what all of our options were. I didn't want to go with traditional just because it was traditional. I knew that there had to be more options since the days when I was homeschooled, and I wanted to look at them all.

I can't do the unschooling thing, either. I don't homeschool because I hate structure. I homeschool because I want my kids to get the best individualized education possible. I love structure. I believe children thrive on structure. Kids are not equipped to know what is best for them. I'm not letting my kids decide what they need to learn when they can't even decide how many squares of toilet paper are appropriate to use when wiping one's rear end...

When I looked at the k12 curriculum, which my Dad had recommended to me years before, I loved it. k12 can be used traditionally, you can just order it off of their site and go at it on your own. But I happened to find the Agora school listed as a participating cyber charter school with k12. I loved the look of Agora's website and their online school. I loved the idea of having all of my lessons organized for me, and all of my records kept for me. You get the best of both worlds; the organizational talents of the public school, which you have to admit are amazing, with an actual academic education! Why would you pass that up?

The only practical tie that binds me to the brick and mortar public school is attendance. Ava has to log in and do school work every day that the public school kids do. But "log in" and "do school work" are very different things. You can log in and record schoolwork that you completed the previous Saturday. So the only real tie that binds you is tied very loosely.

The k12 curriculum is great, and the user interface of Agora's online school is incredible. Ava gets not only a great curriculum, but is also learning computer science at the same time. And let's face it, if you're not highly involved with computers and the internet these days, you're going to be GREATLY handicapped in the very near future. k12 is a mastery based curriculum, if you can show mastery of a lesson topic, you can move on. So my kids who are advanced, when learning that the letter combination "ay" makes the long a sound, can move on in 5 minutes, instead of working on it for 3 weeks so that snot-nosed little Joey Thumb Sucker, who barely made it off the short bus, can really understand this difficult concept. It's a beautiful thing.

And if you really want to argue over who's sticking it to the system more, guess where my school tax money goes? Not to the brick and mortar school...my money goes straight to Agora, who, since they have no brick and mortar building, has less of an overhead and can spend the money on better things! Where does your tax money go, traditional homeschooler?

Let me say, I don't know if I'll continue using a cyber charter school forever. But for now, it's the best option. It's working out beautifully for Ava, and is exceeding my expectations.

So you can take your pom-poms elsewhere, this is one nerd you can't bully. Beneath my pocket protector, we've got the same granny panties on, you and I.

Eminent Domain = Imminent Homelessness

http://www.helpoutyourneighbor.com/