Opportunities and Gratefulness

Hello, lovely readers!

Thank you for the opportunity to have my blog read by peoples. It’s really been a pleasure writing for you and hearing your comments on what I have to say. This school year has flown by so fast, and I’m not sure if I am ready to let go of being a Freshman yet, but I’m also excited for the prospects of what will come in the future.

I’ve got some exciting news! I will be traveling to Congo and then to the Canary Islands (owned by Spain) and serving on the Africa Mercy. This is a wonderful opportunity for me and I hope to learn more about myself and how I can best use my abilities to serve others. I thought that this is the perfect ending to my blog, because it is a wonderful opportunity and I will be serving others in a way that is just as great (if not much greater) than I can here in State College. The Mercy Ships organization is a hospital on a boat that stations itself along a point in the African coast and serves the people who come from miles and miles away to get dental, physical, and eye surgeries. See http://www.mercyships.org/home/ for more information on what they do.They do some absolutely wonderful work, and the stories are amazing. I will get to interact with people from all over the world and see what kind of an impact people who give themselves over to God and also give themselves and give a lot of their time to serving others can have. My goal for this trip is, as I said before, to learn more about myself, work on my relationship with God and my service to Him and to others. I’m very, very excited, but also a bit scared. I keep thinking of all of the terrible things that could happen, and while I don’t necessarily think that any of them could actually happen, you really never can tell and that makes me a bit nervous. Another thing that I am nervous about is that I will not be able to see my family and friends for so long. While I won’t be alone, I will very likely be a bit lonely for the first few weeks before I get to know people. I could use a lot of prayers or/and positive thoughts, as the case may be, towards my serving on Mercy Ships and all of that craziness.

Even though I have all of these worries, I know that this experience will really help me in knowing what I should do with my life, and also I will get to know a lot of people, broaden my scope and view of the world, and I’ll get to know myself better.

Thank you all for your support, and I hope that you will keep me in mind over the summer from May 17 to July 31.

Thanks for reading my blog!!! Have a blessed day!

~Laura Kathryn Winifred Searles

Final Post: Comparisons

Hello for the last time, lovely readers,

Yet again do I have to admit to you that I have failed in my mission to make this whole thing about homeschooling compared with the other school systems, however, I hope that you take away with you more knowledge about homeschooling and hopefully some of your misconceptions have been allayed. Since I did not get the chance to talk to people again, I will be discussing my own views on the public school system and the private school system from my knowledge, and I welcome any disagreements or corrections to my undoubtedly different and biased views on public and private school comparatively.

The first major difference between the public and homeschooling is that of class size and accessibility of teachers. In homeschooling, depending on whether you do online classes, college classes, co-ops, or classes at home, you have the opportunity to be involved with the teacher as little or as much as possible. In the younger years, it might be a bit harder for the student to find good study habits without some coercion from the teacher (i.e. mom or dad) at hand, but as the student grows up, there are a lot more chances for there to be close interactions between students and teachers. Though not all homeschoolers are like this, it is interesting to me, how most are very interactive and thoughtful as well as have a perspective on the student-teacher relationships that differ from the “norm” where the teacher is viewed as an overseer instead of an interactive participant.

~LKWS

Smile! You’re Beautiful!

Hello lovely readers,

It’s getting so close to the end of the semester! I don’t think I’m too excited for that to be honest…but that means warm weather is coming! And we certainly are having that today and yesterday as well. You’ll have to forgive me for the grammar and syntax of this post, as I am writing this at 2 am and am not exactly fully coherent as far as words go….Thanks!

This week was very eventful. Well, it was mostly just on Thursday, but that’s ok. 🙂 The first thing that I did that I loved doing was writing letters with Mike the Mailman in the HUB to people who had made my life at PSU super amazing. I was literally standing for an hour just writing letters at the table in the HUB that was dedicated to PS I love U week that is leading up to Blue and White weekend. (I heard there were fireworks somewhere, but I’m not too sure about all of that, although it’d be awesome…) I loved just thinking and being thankful for all of the people who had made a difference in my life especially at PSU. It made me realize how awesome life really is. (Oh and thank you all for reading my blog every week and commenting. It really does mean a lot to me, even though you’re required to do it 🙂 ) There were so many letters that I didn’t write that I wanted to so badly, but I had matrices to go to, so I went over and had class.

After class, I came back over to the HUB and spent an hour with the Clown Nose Club (we were having an event called “You Matter Day.”) and I spent an hour just standing out and telling people that they were awesome and that they were beautiful and that they rocked and that I liked their scarf or smile or shirt. It was wonderful to think of everyone in such a beautiful way. I stood at the top of the stairs where normal people hand out those annoying fliers and instead of fliers, I handed out compliments. I received some grunts of thanks, strange looks, and some people walked away more quickly, but mostly I received lots of smiles and blushes and happy people and faces. I loved it so much. It made my day so much better to see a smile on someone’s face and know that my words had put it there. Even if it was a slight smile or if they turned around and said “you’re beautiful too!” or “you’re awesome!” back at me, I felt wonderful and loved taking some awesome positive social risks. I’m so glad that I am in CNC or else I would not have gotten that opportunity for learning more about people and giving myself and my words to and for others. Overall, I had a wonderful day, even though I am up working really late, and I’m looking forward to tomorrow. 🙂

I challenge you this week to say something positively risky to someone, write a letter to someone that you love or appreciate, and also to remember that words are very powerful both in the positive direction and negative direction as well. Have a blessed day!

~LKWS

Some Suggestions for Homeschooler’s problems…

Hello, readers of my blog,

This week, I did not really get a chance to talk and interview people about their different school experiences. Next time, I promise I will spend some time comparing school perspectives! 🙂

While this was an unfortunate thing on my part because I was not as busy as I normally am, I could not find tons of time to talk to people individually about the issue and record their thoughts. I think I may resort to texting or asking what everyone’s favorite and least favorite thing about their school system was.  This week, I will be talking a bit about the options pertaining to what changes could be made in the current homeschooling system to improve the lives of the parents teaching and also talk about some of the different problems that I have not really touched on that much in my posts.

First off, one of my most major qualms about the Montgomery County Public School system is that it does not allow homeschoolers to easily take classes or do the sports that are offered at the school. Most schools in the DC/Metro area that are public schools do not allow students to take classes in their system claiming that it is a liability because the students are not registered in the school system. Now, I get why that might be a problem, particularly if there is a case where someone gets hurt (which, as far as I can tell, has not actually happened in the school system recently at all.) However, there are many preventative measures that could be taken if schools were really worried about that issue such as having everyone sign a waver saying that they wouldn’t actually sue the school if something bad happened.

Homeschool students are also not allowed to be involved in the sports programs in schools for multiple reasons such as liability again and also the lack of ability to hold the students to a certain grade point average. Again, though, there are many ways to get around the fact that the homeschoolers “can’t give the grades.” This is actually not true at all in our area, because as mentioned earlier, we are required to keep a record of our grades in classes either with an umbrella program or with the state. Some schools might assume that homeschooling corresponds with easier grading systems for the students, and while this may be correct in some cases, it is not necessarily true to any extent especially in the DC/Metro Area in Maryland. In areas of Virginia, there is access to sports but not to classes which is an interesting dynamic according to my cousins who are currently involved in one of those programs.

Much of the time, the parents are fighting the school systems to get their kids to participate in the school’s programs, and by the time that parents “get up in arms to fight the system, your kids have graduated.” (as Susan Searles says). The other thing that homeschoolers don’t have access to, are the resources available in the school system to all of the students that are not available to homeschool students. Searles also says that this is kind of ridiculous because the families are paying taxes, but don’t get any access to the programs available for the other students.

In my opinion, parents and their homeschooled students should have access to just as much as the public school system students, and they should also get a stipend for books and activities.

~LKWS

Candy!

Hello, wonderful readers,

I hope you are having an awesome week, and I hope that tests and homework assignments aren’t killing you too much! It’s been an interesting week, what with seeing multiple professors for office hours, hanging out with friends, seeing people randomly that I wouldn’t normally see, writing papers for classes (at least it looks pretty right now!), and trying to come up with ideas for this blog and also for my Advocacy Project. As you all may be able to tell, I love to give people things and make people smile, even if it’s just for a few seconds. As I was talking with Caroline the other day about our ideas for the advocacy project, it donned on me that I could include a bit of my passion blog into it and do a double-whammy project that had the potential to make people happy and would advocate doing “positive social risks” as the Clown Nose Club would put it.

My original thought was to simply hand out candy in the HUB with a note about why I was “advocating happiness,” but as I talked with Caroline, I realized that a better thing to advocate would be positive social risks. So, we came up with a plan that could potentially help us accomplish that. We will stand in the HUB (with hopefully a few other people if anyone wants to jump on the making-people-smile train!) or get a table there (we haven’t decided yet) and write up a message about what smiling at someone does to you and to other people around you and use some scientific evidence to encourage people to start a “chain of positive social risks.” On those smallish fliers, we will put two pieces of candy marked “one for you,” and “one for a friend.” (or one for someone else, we haven’t decided yet), and write “spread the candy and happiness!” underneath it. It would be a lot of fun and it could also potentially create some positive chains in the PSU community. Plus, people are more likely to accept something if it candy on it!

While looking at fun quotes about giving, I saw a lot of different ways of expressing how to be kind and how to be happy by giving to others, and that want to make others feel good is really one of my favorite things about humans. As Eleanor Roosevelt said, “Since you get more joy out of giving joy to others, you should put a good deal of thought into the happiness that you are able to give.” Giving to others causes not only those around you to be happy but also yourself to be happy.  “Remember that the happiest people are not those getting more, but those giving more.”-H. Jackson Brown, Jr.

Have a wonderful and blessed week and share some happiness!

~LKWS

Using Your Talents

Hello lovely readers,

Another slow week, unfortunately. I thought that I would be able to go and play my violin in/near the HUB, but unfortunately that was not a possibility. Plus, I have to see whether or not I can go and play there without a permit or something…probably something that I need to figure out. Anyways, I just got a great idea that takes into account a lot of things. First of all, I would go and play my violin more and potentially practice more. Second, I could go busking (asking for money while playing an instrument), BUT I would do it for a charity. My violin teacher has been trying to get me to go busking and do some stuff like that, but I never have really been comfortable just playing and then taking the money and doing something for myself. This idea offers an alternative for making myself happy as well as making others happy. I was thinking of making a sign that said, “95% of your money will pay for –blah—charity and the other 5% will go towards a cup of coffee for me and one for the person behind me in line!” I would obviously only do it if that was what I was doing with the money, and I might have a lot of different signs for different charities, but I think that it could be a way to raise money for an issue while also spreading some happy music. I would need to learn some Bach, because those are the best to play with a crowd and the best to play with by yourself. I could even get others if I really wanted it to.

While searching around for a Bible verse to share this week about using each of our individual gifts to better the lives of others around us and to serve God, I stumbled upon 1 Peter 4:8-11 which really spoke to me today. “Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins. Offer hospitality to one another without grumbling. Each one should use whatever gift he has received to serve others, faithfully administering God’s grace in its various forms. If anyone speaks, he should do it as one speaking the very words of God. If anyone serves, he should do it with the strength God provides, so that in all things God may be praised through Jesus Christ.” Whether or not you believe in God, I believe that serving others brings you closer to those individuals as well as those around you. By sharing your gifts, you give another person joy who would otherwise not be able to share in that joy with you and with the Holy Spirit. I really need to devote my time and my energy more towards serving God and towards loving and serving others as well. So, share with great abandon friends! Share your talents and your gifts no matter who you think they are coming from. Do what makes you happy, do especially what makes others happy, and recklessly do what makes God happy as well.

Stay blessed and stay happy!

~LKWS

Homeschooling by the Numbers

Hello, lovely readers!

This week, I’ll be talking more about the effects that homeschooling has had on its constituents! I was originally going to talk to some of my friends that had experience in public schools and private schools to be able to compare the different forms of learning, but I did not get the chance to interview anyone, nor did I get the chance to talk last week about anything other than regulations.

So, onwards to “homeschooling by the numbers” and continuing a bit of what I was discussing last week.

Homeschooling by the numbers

I may be a bit biased on this subject, but I found this wonderful infographic about “homeschooling by the numbers” and how they compare to public schools and private schools. I will discuss this graphic in more details next time, but if you look at these statistics, there is a very interesting distinction between the homeschooled and public schooled students. In all the school systems, each student is different, but homechooling allows you to revise the academics to fit the students’ way of learning in a way that the public school system does not, and that is apparent in the comparisons of scores (though, I do wonder how they got that data.) Also, an interesting thing to note is the education level of the parents and how well the majority of them are educated.  These wonderful, intelligent people are the majority of whom I have run into in my time as a homeschooling student. A lot of mothers especially are quite brilliant and instead of choosing to have a career in the field that they were in originally, decided to stay at home, become the ultimate stay-at-home-mom, teach their children, and become full-time teachers. I definitely consider my mother as one of those brilliant people. She graduated with a bachelor’s degree in Math education and a Masters degree in Environmental Biology, then spent 8 years in the education system of Maryland where she had her best moments as a tutor and not necessarily a teacher. She realized that the school system had major flaws in it and did not allow her to teach the way that she wanted to teach. About 3 years after I was born, she quit her job to teach me, my brother, and my sister. My mother is truly one of the most brilliant people that I know and she loves teaching when she is able to teach to the student instead of to a test. I know this is a lot about my mom, but I will talk about her even more when I talk about the public schooling system.

How has homeschooling affected your lifeNow, onto some homeschooling affecting lives.

The majority of all adults who have been homeschooled were recorded to have been glad that they were homeschooled and they weren’t disadvantaged in any way from reaching their full potential in their educational opportunities or in their career choices. I think that this stems from the fact that a lot of homeschool parents are able to fit the core requirements of the state while focusing also on things that interest the student themselves. Basically, there is free reign in education with some moderation due to the student themselves.

 

Next time, I will delve a little into the public school system and try to compare it to homeschooling overall now that you all know a bit more about the subject. If you all have any suggestions or cool stories from a public schoolers’ perspective or if you have any interest in letting me ask you a few questions, please let me know!

Have a blessed day!

~LKWS

P.S. In answer to your question Alisha, I only had to take the main SATs and PSATs. I chose to take AP tests and classes, and I also often took classes from other places and those test scores from there obviously determined my GPA and grades overall. Fortunately there were no excess tests in my area of the country, and that was/is one of the great things about homeschooling. Not having state-regulated tests and not having to be held up to some standards of comparison to others and just having the check-ups allowed my mom and all of my teachers to not teach “to a test,” but instead they taught for the joy of teaching and having the students learn in the best way possible. As I mentioned before, I think that I grew my love of learning because of that fact. I also found that I took classes from a lot of great teachers who were invested in having us learn the material in way that suited the individual and not just the class as a whole.

A Slow Week

Hello my lovely readers!

This week was a slow one in the realm of doing a lot of “extraordinarily” nice things for people. I had two tests on the same day and I was also overloaded with homework and applications as well. I had a couple opportunities to pay for others drinks at Starbucks but often found myself in too much of a rush to slow down and just pay for someone else, which was very unfortunate on my part. I always get mad at myself when I miss an opportunity like that, but there’s nothing to be done about it now, so I suppose there’s no use worrying about it.

A lot of this week reminded me how I actually needed to be kind to people and go out of my way to do things out of the ordinary because I was very stressed out. I found myself needing to hold the door for people instead of simply thinking that it was a nice thing to do. Somehow my body compulsively found a way to push me into doing more nice things for people. While I didn’t have a lot of time to go out of my way and at first looked back on this week with regret, I have ended up looking back on this week and seeing a couple ways that I would normally be nice to people. For example, I found myself holding the door for people more often than I would have normally. Like I said before, I believe that my body needed the release of seeing a smile on someone else’s face. I spent some time with friends this week and really enjoyed the company as well as learning a bit more about some dear friends of mine, and I believe that it may have helped alleviate the stress to a certain degree that only a smile and laugh can. I also had a situation where I commented on a slowly moving elevator, which usually is met with a weird kind of stare from the other person because it appears usually that I am talking with myself, but the person I was standing to actually laughed and we had a short chat before embarking on the elevator journey to the fourth floor.

Now that there is a lot less stress in my life though, I find myself lagging and being lazy about doing nice things for people again. This is kind of distressing to me the more that I think about it, but I am aiming to get my lazy butt off out of my room and do more things for people.

One of the only things that I can do in my life is give it all to God, and the more that I realize this and actually apply it, the more I realize that He is doing great things for me, and I just want to spread His love more. Sorry about the randomness of this statement, but I thought that it might be relevant to how I’m feeling about this week.

Jer 29:11: For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”

Have a blessed week, guys! Hang in there!

~LKWS

Notes that I just found from the Deliberation

I was trying desperately to find these notes again and it turns out that I had saved it as something completely different than I had thought, but I found them!

Option 2-Diversity teaching moral and values

Emily–Teaching more than just education. Giving opportunities to learn what you think is important.

Brandi- Like compared to the other two. Too extreme. Trying to help society—good. Like the overall goal. Don’t like how they’re going about it.

Margaret—not everyone has the same values and beliefs so it might be like you’re brainwashing kids. Where do you draw the line? Good idea, but how do you do that?

Rose-They talk about trust. Why do they use trust compared to another word? Community service and hyping attitude. Why do they throw the facts about Americans not trusting? Trust lessens from the 70s to the 90s.

Brandi- College is a business that tries to make money. It has their own goals that might not line up with what people want.

Margaret—can agree with the trsut issue, but at the same time, I wish they would give more information. You can measure things and throw out numbers, but there is bias and other things like that. I kind of agree, but they’re so extreme, but they’re very negative

Emily—In college, you have to have trust, take tests wherever-trust purposes. Student would be more responsible, but they may not follow what they want to happen,

Alisha—People will want to work to their best grade, but you also have to learn who you can trust and who you can’t.

M–We don’t trust politicians, lawyers, journalists—all make up stories.

A—Our whole structure is based on the “trust but not really trust system.”

Kevin—We live in an age where people rely on more information. Trust shouldn’t be taught when you’re 20, but when you’re younger around 5.

Other countries are more corrupt than we are, so the trust thing doesn’t work.

M—It’s something you should learn while you’re little. Your parents should be teaching you that, not college. How do you teach people that?

A-But the ploys to stop things like drinking doesn’t work.

K–You should come to college with these values, but we shojldn’t be wasting our time teaching the trust/etc.

A–Why we go to college—we have freedom to do what we want.

K–They can give you experiences to help you learn things, but they can’t actually teach you.

M-You get people to think about what their beliefs and values are. You can’t teach people what they should believe, but they should encourage things like jthinking aboyut what you believe.

R–Should you be given a number of credits for gen-eds where you can choose things instead of having to take like a number of GH, GAs, etc.

A—we should let people choose.

M–I like being able to choose what you want to learn, but you don’t have to feel “guilty”
about taking whatever you want. I like the fact that you have to take a science class, etc. but you should be able to choose.

A—I don’t necessarily like doing all of the different things, for example—I can’t listen to people talk about history. It isn’t what I enjoy doing. I had to drop it because it was so bad!

R—Learning to work with different types of people

M—Something about the first one. Reach across divides etc. Talking to different types of people, and that didn’t exist at my high school. You need to see things from different points of view. You need to be able to express yourself and not be afraid of being shot down…I used to think that if my high school had more things like “race relations” and have different kinds of eople meet with each other. A lot of my fellow students were all pretty prejudiced, and I didn’t like how they were like that. Lower level of schooling to learn race relations.

L-class about race relations on campus.

 

ROSES NOTES

L- race relations seminar. Mixed race group talking about racism and viewpoints on different races from different prospective. I have different ideas than normal people.

M-Was it awkward?

L- Not really. Only slightly.

M- Moderating your view points in order to not come across as racist. You bump into people and go wait how can you think that? Racist jokes are really bad. Its not ok. Sometimes they can be funny but most of the time they aren’t said in good taste

L- Was your high school very diverse

E- I liked being in clubs that didn’t have a lot of my friends in them. I liked meeting all these different people. It was kind of like Breakfast Club.

A- had a diverse and wide variety of friends. Partly because I am racially diverse

K- I did Worldly Operations. I was surprised how many people were the same background as me. Mostly white and suburian

A–I graduated from a small school. If you wanted a different outlook on life, you had to travel. I lived in a really small farming town.

A–Did you all know each other?

B–Yea. I mean we grew up together

A–That sounds awesome. I gradutated with 900

L- What about your town itself?

A–The town was really diverse. Some were really poor. Some were really rich. Some many different levels of education. When I worked at Doimino, everyone was from downtown so I got the whole spectrum.

E- I was from a town where everyone was the same. I think that no matter where you are from, you can still find diversity.

M- I think the community does affect your diversity. Where I grew up was very white. There was some different socio-economic trends but most people were middle class. All my friends growing up was white. My Asian family lives on the west coast so I never got to see them. I don’t know how much the community had affected me. My mother’s side of the family was Japanese and her grandparents were in the internment camps. My brothers are darker than me. I was swam my whole life and people were mean to one of my brothers was picked on for being darker and swimming. I think that I am overly sensitive to it and I know that I have some prejudices but I’m trying to get better. I was always the one in high school to say that’s kind of racist and my friends would generally get annoyed.

A–Did anyone notice that they were from a diverse environment

E- I knew I wasn’t from a diverse place.

M- I mean not really.

Homeschooling Overview Part 2

 

Hello again!

We are on the subject of homeschooling and seeing how the most prevalent different education systems that exist compare. This week I will be delving into the more quantitative side of things and the nuts and bolts about how homeschooling works (or should work), and how homeschooling seems to affect its constituents. There are also many regulations on what homeschoolers can do based on what state that they live in that I will be looking into for a bit.

To start off, I’ll bring in a graph. According to the National Center for Educational Statistics the number of homeschoolers has been rising for the past few years, and while this graph is from 2011, it still shows how many people are now latching onto this more unique way of learning.

 

http://media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/f2/2d/38/f22d3855025820b0d034a28e7e751896.jpg

 

This may have something to do with the fact that homeschooling is getting progressively back into the spotlight as a valid way of learning. Throughout the 1900s, homeschooling was contested as to whether or not a good education was being received by the students. There have been numerous court cases that involved the legality of homeschooling or in some cases had the unfortunate overtone of someone who

 

was abused at home and because of the fact that they were homeschooled, it was able to go on for a long time. This is certainly not nearly the norm for homeschoolers, but it is an interesting aspect to keep in mind.

 

http://www.intellectualtakeout.org/sites/www.intellectualtakeout.org/files/chart-graph/StateHomeschoolLaws.JPG

A lot of the time these court cases result in higher regulation for individual states. Because education rulings are the state’s job, homeschooling has different amounts of regulation ranging from no regulation to high regulation. As explained in the graph, high regulation means that parents must “send notification and achievement-test scores and/or professional evaluation, plus other requirements,” moderate regulation means that “parents must send notification, test scores, and/or professional evaluation of student progress,” low regulation means that “parents must identify students to be taught at home,” and no notice means just that.

I lived in Maryland which had a moderate regulation, but it seemed like they pretty much wanted to know every single thing about what you were doing in homeschooling. To be honest, we didn’t have the best experiences with people working in the field of approving homeschoolers. The preparation for the meeting with a professional required my mother to compile everything of interest and take it to someone that she didn’t know to look over. Some of the people that my mother interacted with didn’t know very much at all about homeschooling and would either not look through the hard work that my mother had done to put everything together for them or they would pick apart every little detail.

In my highschool years, we joined a “umbrella group,” which was a more private-school-system-like system where my mother had to report to Chieftain and they would in turn report to the state for us, called Chieftain Institute which was a Christian homeschool group held out of a church, but it was its own organization. This system worked a lot better because you were dealing with the principal who had gone through the same struggles and the same successes as you had in her years teaching her kids and other students. There were classes held at Chieftain where, if the parent didn’t know how to teach your kids math successfully or didn’t have the resources for a science class, you could take the class there. My mother currently teaches Pre-calculus there.

Overall though, I can’t imagine how the high-regulation states’ homeschool students handle the extra requirements that are laid on them having experienced only a moderate-regulation state. A lot of the times, homeschoolers even have more requirements than public-schoolers do, especially in the states where there is moderate to high regulation. While I do think that people need a structure for their education and an amount of classes that should fulfill requirements, it also in a way defeats the purpose of homeschooling.

Ok. Now we’re going to switch gears to some more numbers, and seeing how homeschool students compare to public and private school students.