With education, as with many things, I find it's useful to start from basic principles. There are so many options and philosophies, it's easy to get overwhelmed. A good mission statement can cut through all that, or at least give you a place to start.

So, here's ours:

The goal is for Caitlyn to become more awesome. Our strategy for becoming more awesome is to learn new skills and improve existing ones. The only way to learn/improve skills is through practice. Therefore her job is to practice, and to improve her ability to practice (since practicing is itself also a skill).

Practice can be made more effective with:

• Instruction and examples
• Feedback
• The proper tools
• A conducive environment
• Goals and rewards
• Other skills
• No doubt many more things

All of these are worth gathering when possible, but none of them are worth waiting for.

That's it.

I suppose one other question worth answering is, "Which skills should we practice?" To be honest, I don't think it really matters that much. All skills are useful, and all can be translated to other contexts, and at any rate the most important skill is how to practice effectively. That said, some of the most important skills are what you might call building block skills; those that many other skills are based on. Reading, writing, and math are the obvious ones, but there are many more, such as time management, teamwork, research, and experimentation.

Anyway, with this simple mission statement, we can focus on what's important while allowing a broad range of variation.

Labels: Caitlyn, homeschooling

I played a lot of videogames as a kid (mostly on the Apple II, and then later on the Mac). At the time, of course, I just thought of it as fun, but now I realize I learned a lot doing so. Problem solving and resilience/determination are high on the list. You can't get anywhere in this world without being willing to try and fail and try again. Video games are great way to instill that instinct.

Of course Caitlyn has been playing games on the iPad for years now, but computer games are a different beast. In the past, we've focused on puzzle games; they make you think, but there's no time pressure, and not much need for eye/hand coordination. That was good for when she was younger, but now she's ready for more of a challenge.

We started with Return to Dark Castle, which is a remake of one of my favorite games from when I was kid. Now we're playing FEZ, which is delightful. Platformers seem like a good point on the videogame spectrum at the moment. They provide exploration and puzzle solving, but with an added level of arcade action, but not too intense yet.

I'm on the lookout for the next game. Any suggestions?

Labels: Caitlyn, homeschooling

This last summer, Caitlyn made the transition from regular school to homeschool, and so far I'm delighted! I homeschooled as a kid; I'm excited to be diving back in now with Caitlyn. I haven't written anything about it here (unlike Christina) so it's time to catch up:

We always intended to homeschool her, but it was important to us that she got a chance to experience mainstream school for as long as she wanted to (no forbidden fruits there), and that homeschool be her choice. Regular school is something that kind of happens to you; homeschool takes a lot more personal responsibility, at least the way we're doing it. She needs to really want it in order for it to work. We made it clear what's expected of her, so she knew what she was getting into.

Towards the end of second grade she came to us and said she was ready. We insisted she finish out the year, which she did reluctantly. In the end, the last day of school was both exciting and sad, saying goodbye to the place she'd spent so much time for the last three years, and hello to a whole new way of life.

We used the summer to ease into the concept of homeschool (starting with a two-week field trip to Canada), and we started in earnest in the autumn. Of course, even now, we're still figuring out the right mix of activities. A lot of her day is what's generally described as "unschooling", where she's left to pursue her own interests, but Christina is working with her directly on a few fundamentals. We figure she can get into chemistry, history, basket weaving, etc. as the mood strikes her, and she's likely to go deep on some subjects and shallow on others, which is fine. Everybody's gotta get a firm foundation in the three Rs, though. Reading is not an issue; she's already a voracious reader, chewing through 350-page books in a weekend. Math and writing are not as favored, so Christina works with her on those subjects.

When left to her own devices, Caitlyn's favorite subject is art, and her skill is increasing steadily. She's learning firsthand the value of practice! She has an art tutor who comes over every other week, and both Christina and I also mentor her in various ways on the subject.

One of the wonderful things about homeschooling today, at least in this part of the world, is that there's an amazing amount of resources, and a strong support network. She regularly gets together with her friends (other homeschoolers, friends from the neighborhood, friends she met in school) for both structured and unstructured activities. Several of her homeschool companions get together at one house for science, and then back to ours for tea and poetry with Christina.

Of course this means Christina's getting to learn more about poetry, too. This is one of the hidden benefits of homeschooling; the parents get to learn as well. Caitlyn is interested in Spanish, so all three of us are taking a course together. Her interest in art means we all get to practice our art-making more, etc.

Let's see, what else? Circus class continues, and she's doing theater again. She gets quality time at the public library, and she's got a library account on her computer so she can order books whenever she wants. She's also learning general computer use and typing. I'm taking advantage of time to work with her on subjects that were dear to my heart as a kid. We're doing programming together, as well as Legos, of course.

Surely it will continue to evolve, but I feel like we're off to a good start. The three of us have embarked upon a great adventure together!

Labels: Caitlyn, homeschooling

As anyone who lives with kids well knows, they're a potent force of destruction. It's tempting to hide all the breakables and fill their lives with indestructible plastic objects. Of course this means you can't have nice things. Worse yet, your kid never learns how to treat things nicely.

Our strategy has been to fill Caitlyn's life with nice things, breakable and not, which are nonetheless relatively inexpensive and easy to replace. We don't want them broken, but it's not a big deal if they are, and it's a valuable learning experience for Caitlyn. If it's a plate, she helps clean it up, and we get another. If it's a toy, we try to fix it, and if we can't, that's how you lose your toys. These days she routinely handles heavy glass jars full of food, for instance, and rarely is there ever an incident.

It seems to me that this is a good principle in design as well. If you treat your users like idiots and constantly protect them from themselves, then they'll just keep getting dumber. If you give them nice things and help them learn when they break stuff, you're helping them grow, and they'll love you for it.

Labels: Caitlyn, design

I've recently been involved in yet another discussion over whether our nation's school system is broken. I don't know, there certainly are problems, but there's also a lot of good. Of course, this is no longer idle chitchat now that my daughter is of school age.

Caitlyn has just entered kindergarten, and so far she is delighted with it. It's only been a little over a week, but I feel I have noticed some positive changes as well; the additional structure and social interaction is doing her good. As far as I can tell, she's landed in a great school.

As a kid, I completed kindergarten through third grade, abandoning the school system in the fourth grade, toying with it again briefly in the seventh grade, but never attending college. I've now worked over 20 years in a highly technical field, one that generally requires a high level of education. I have, in fact, achieved a good level of fame and respect for my achievements, and not once has my lack of formal schooling gotten in the way.

If I were to sum up the single most important thing in a person's education, I would say it is the development of a voracious appetite for knowledge and mind-play. With that, anything is possible; without it, everything is drudgery, and drudgery rarely achieves anything.

I see the school system as just another tool. Caitlyn will continue to go for as long as it serves her well. If/when it becomes more burden than benefit, she'll leave it behind. All the while, with school or without, the three of us (Christina, Caitlyn, and I) are the ones actually responsible for her education. The teachers are there to help us, but ultimately the one in charge is Caitlyn, and it's our job, as her parents, to make sure she takes this role seriously.

That said, if there's something we can do to help the school system as a whole improve, I'm all for it. But I don't feel like we're trapped in it, because I know we're not.

Labels: Caitlyn, homeschooling

At dinner this evening, Caitlyn calmly announced, "My body is trying to kill me."

Our response was, of course, "Say what?!"

She went on to explain that every day her body was working on making her bigger and more mature, and that someday it will have turned her into a grown-up, and then a grandma, and then she would die, with her body always pushing her to the next step, regardless of what she wanted.

Well, um, when you put it that way, I suppose your body does have it in for you.

Labels: Caitlyn

I was putting away the dishes this morning, when Caitlyn pointed out that I hadn't carried one of the knives safely. "You're supposed to carry it with the point down. You had the point sticking out, you could have stabbed someone."

I thanked her for reminding me and told her that I'd do better next time. She said, "You're just doing what I do when Mama tells me I did something wrong, saying all the right things so you won't get into trouble. What really matters is what you do."

What could I say to that?

Labels: Caitlyn

Caitlyn and I have a game we play sometimes. I don't know how we first invented it, but it was over a year ago. It's quite simple, we just take turns asking each other, "Do you like it when I," with something silly and usually unpleasant at the end. For instance, "Do you like it when I mix bananas and broccoli together and dump them on your head?" Or, "Do you like it when I fly away to the moon and never come back?"

Turns out it's endlessly amusing. I think it's good because it's a creativity exercise as well as teaching some empathy. I think Caitlyn likes it because it lets her talk about gross things and mean things without us getting mad at her. Everybody wins!

Labels: Caitlyn

This evening Christina wasn't feeling well, so I informed Caitlyn that I would likely be reading the bedtime stories tonight. Of course Caitlyn prefers Mama, so she insisted that she would ask her if she could do it, and if Mama said "no", then she would "kiss her and hug her and cry". I surely said something flippant about how it's nice to have plans...

Half an hour later, jammies on, teeth brushed, room clean, she went downstairs to where Mama was resting on the couch and asked her if she could read stories tonight. Mama said "no", and sure enough, Caitlyn first kissed her, then hugged her, then teared up. She told her mama to get better and that she loved her. She then turned around and headed upstairs for her stories with Papa, while I stood there marveling at her follow-through.

Labels: Caitlyn

We dismantled Caitlyn's cardboard playhouse today. She doesn't really use it anymore, and we need the space to make way for more big-girl additions to her room. We'd gone over all of this with her, but naturally she was still quite distraught when the time came to do the actual deed. Once it was all in pieces, she asked to have a quiet moment alone with it. Afterwards she explained that she'd said goodbye, and that she'd told the playhouse that when it had moved on and it found itself in some strange new house with a strange new family, everything was going to be okay, because Caitlyn would still be dreaming of it.

Labels: Caitlyn

I've been meaning to write this up for, well, a year and a half now. An exchange I had with Caitlyn when she was two left an impression on me:

We were talking about her quilt, and how all of her relatives and friends of the family had made squares, and she asked where were the squares that Mama and Papa had made? I explained that we didn't make any squares in the quilt because we had been busy making her.

She said, "You made me?"

I said, "Yes, Mama and I made you together."

She thought about this for a moment and said, "Thank you."

Labels: Caitlyn

Me: "I don't know that word. Is it a word you made up?"
Caitlyn: "No, it's a word the cat threw up."

Labels: Caitlyn

Caitlyn is now two and a half months old. . .

The thing that keeps blowing me away is how intense she is. I guess I've generally thought of babies as being docile and clueless. The funny thing is, she's actually much more engaged with life than any of us adults. She's always 100% there, in the moment, paying attention to every detail. You can see her thoughts and emotions play across her face in a constant parade. It's amazing to watch.

When I think about the situation she's in, almost completely helpless in a strange new world, I'm amazed at her courage. She rushes to embrace life when good sense might recommend pulling away. Even when things seem hopeless she weathers the storm with stoic resolve.

I knew I would love her. I had no idea I would admire her so soon.

Labels: Caitlyn

My daughter is two weeks old, and I've been meaning to post something here for, well, two weeks now. I still don't know what to say. . . It's been a whirlwind, a constant barrage of new thoughts and experiences.

For now, I suppose I would just say she is here, and it is good.

Labels: Caitlyn