Book: Education Uncensored

A new book by Laurie Block Spigel, Education Uncensored, takes readers through one mother's homeschooling journey to a career as a teacher of group homeschool classes and educational consultant in New York City. Education Uncensored is full of creative ideas for teaching and learning.

My daughter was lucky enough to attend four of Laurie Spigel's classes and we are so impressed with all her educational ideas (I previously wrote about her "Create Your Own Board Game" class here). Please see my full review of Education Uncensored -- it's a great read.

Sibelius & Beethoven

Last night we had a wonderful evening at San Francisco Symphony, courtesy of SF Art & Film for Teenagers, about which I have written here before. It was a great evening for strings, with a modern piece by Sallinen, the incredibly demanding Sibelius Violin Concerto, and two pieces by Beethoven (Coriolan Overture and the Eighth Symphony).

We listened to various recordings of the music to be played before going, and Miss C announced she was most looking forward to the Sibelius concerto. At the concert hall, we listened to a pre-concert lecture by Susan Key, who directs the education component of Keeping Score, the Symphony's multimedia project. Keeping Score includes PBS specials (and DVDs) hosted by SFS music director Michael Tilson Thomas. Ms. Key was wonderful, really illuminating for us what to listen for in the pieces to come.

I loved this comment in the program notes about Beethoven's Symphony No. 8: "...Beethoven's symphonies alternate between two categories of artistic impulses...[which Friedrich Nietzsche traced to] ancient Greece and the fragile balance between the Dionysian and the Apollonian. Dionysus and Apollo were sons of Zeus, though by different mothers, and they came to typify diametrically opposed aesthetic ideals. Apollonian standards focused on clarity, balance, control, logic and classically accepted modes of beauty, while Dionysian inclinations lay in the direction of excess, chaos, even the orgiastic and the irrational. [...] As applied to Beethoven's symphonies, Dionysian characteristics tend to dominate the Symphonies Nos. 1, 3, 5, 7, and 9--the more obviously extroverted and even violent of the bunch--while the cooler forces of Apollonian ideals inspire the Symphonies Nos. 2, 4, 6, and 8. You can learn a lot about the person sitting next to you by asking one simple question: 'Evens or odds?'"

Miss C and I agreed that we like both evens and odds, which reminded me that I confounded the testers doing a personality profile of her at the Gifted Development Center, by insisting that she had equally strong extrovert and introvert characteristics, at different times.

Miss C was able to go up to the stage before the concert and say hello to the father of the family she babysits for, a cellist with the orchestra. We love being part of this town!

The big hit of the concert was indeed the Sibelius Violin Concerto. The soloist Vadim Repin was amazing. In the three movements of the concerto, he played so hard and so fast, and so incredibly beautifully. The audience jumped to its feet when the concerto was finished...and they don't do that lightly there. For example, they did not stand for any other piece in the concert, although all were wonderful. It's just that the Sibelius was magnificent.

Shakespeare's Love's Labour's Lost

Miss C and I read Shakespeare's "Love's Labour's Lost" this week, in preparation for seeing a performance of it by the Globe Theatre Company next week at UC Berkeley. Today, we were lucky enough to attend a 1.5-hour lecture at Cal by Hugh Richmond, professor emeritus in the UC Berkeley English Dept. and its former Shakespeare Program director, about the play. It was a most excellent addition to our study of the play up to now.

But before he went into discussing the play, he regaled us with stories of the reconstruction of the Globe Theatre in London, for which he was an academic consultant. He had many great photos of the theatre, including its opening performance. The man has produced many Shakespearean plays, and it was a delight to listen to him talk about sets (or the lack of them) in the highly decorated theatre, lighting in the open-air theatre, costumes, staging, and blocking.

Then he gave us great insights into "Love's Labour's Lost." In the audience was a man who had performed in one of Prof. Richmond's productions of the play as a student, in 1978.

We had read online study guides about the play, but they didn't give anything close to the perspective of Prof. Richmond. He told how the 3 years that the King of Navarre and his lords plan to spend "studying" and away from women and feasting were Shakespeare's analogue of the 3 years one spent in university studies at Oxford at the time. He was thumbing his nose at Christopher Marlowe and other "University Wits" who had been educated there as Shakespeare had not.

It was fascinating to hear Prof. Richmond identify the real historical characters upon which the characters in the play were based. For example, the King of Navarre was Henry IV (Henri), who later did become king of France (Navarre was a small region of France before that). Biron was a real person who was later executed for his disrespect toward the king. And so on.

He had excerpts from Kenneth Branagh's movie version of the play, which was a critical and commercial failure, but Prof. Richmond explained what Branagh was trying to do in particular scenes and why it was correct in its interpretation of the play.

He quoted the director of the current touring company from the Globe Theatre as saying one reason he expected this production to be popular with American student audiences (it's playing on university campuses) is that it has a "Girl gang" who take on the men in it (that would be the Princess of France and her ladies).

We are very excited to be seeing this production next week, and so glad to have experienced Prof. Richmond's insights in between reading the play and seeing it.

Having Fun with Biology Lab

Yesterday we seemed to really hit our stride with our AP Biology lab, which Miss C and I are doing with another homeschooling mom (a former lab tech) and her two sons.

This one was on Cellular Respiration and Fermentation (two separate experiments). We do not find the College Board AP Biology Lab Manual to be compelling, so instead we are using Investigating Biology Laboratory Manual (6th Ed.) by Morgan & Carter, the companion to the text Biology (8th Ed.) by Campbell and Reece. This is really a lovely lab manual.

Still, I can't be happy with its plan alone (my partner in crime, the other homeschool mom, says "Homeschoolers never do anything the way they are 'supposed to'"). For the respiration lab, I felt much of the interesting science was in the preparation for the lab, the instructor's job. There was putting our soaked-overnight lima beans in the blender to break down the cell walls; running it through cheesecloth to extract the solids; and then doing cell fractionation in a centrifuge to isolate the supernatant containing mitochondria (to be used in the actual experiment). So instead of doing this prep myself, this was the first part of the lab for our students.


We named our new centrifuge "R2D2" (see photo above for obvious reason). The students had a lot of fun using this to first pull out heavy solids (nuclei, etc.) and then collecting the liquid containing mitochondria. They then added succinate to this liquid (an intermediate in the Krebs cycle, or citric acid cycle as it is now preferably called) and DPIP (which served as a proton/electron receptor instead of FAD, as in intact cells). The DPIP offers the advantage of being a brilliant blue, but when it is reduced, it loses its color. And it loses its color gradually, as it gets used up. You can measure the change in color (and thus the progress of the respiration, or at least the step involving the conversion of succinate to fumarate) by repeated measurements in a spectrophotometer.


This the students did using the ancient Spectronic 20 (see above) that I bought used via eBay. It's a blast from the past (classic '50s look?), but it works fine. And that was just the first experiment -- they also constructed respirometers to measure fermentation.

A wonderful component of our labs as we have designed them is that after the day's experiments are done, the students then make presentations of their lab reports from the previous lab to each other. By then, they have had a chance to write them up (and we are trying to hold them to a high standard of AP-level lab reports), so they take turns presenting them, and then we ask questions, make comments, and discuss them. I think some of the best "science" we do happens in these discussions. This is where we really think through the principles demonstrated or discovered in the labs.

What fun.

Moving Online for Latin

Miss C has been lucky enough to have two great teachers for Latin so far. She started out studying with a friend and his grandmother, and they covered Minimus, Minimus Secundus, and Cambridge Latin 1 together. Miss C had been asking me to study Latin since she was 7, and she enjoyed finally getting to it.

When we needed to find a new teacher, Miss C wanted a more rigorous study of Latin grammar. So we found a grad student in the classics department at UC Berkeley, a Ph.D. candidate, as teacher, and assembled a class of four homeschool students including Miss C. They have been using Learn to Read Latin from Yale Press, which is the introductory text used in Latin classes at Berkeley. We really like that book and accompanying workbook. The teacher is fun and inspiring and the mix of students seems just right.

Alas, it must come to an end. In January, this teacher will move to Paris to write her dissertation. Wonderful for her, but a sad loss for us!

So, we're following the recommendation of a gifted homeschooler friend and have enrolled Miss C in an online course in Latin with The Lukeion Project starting in January. This new course will use Wheelock Latin 6th Edition, which is comparable to the text she has been using (both are heavily grammar-based and translations are of original Latin, not made-up pieces).

We're very excited about this transition and that she'll be able to continue with Latin online, while taking Spanish at the community college. The community colleges do not offer Latin, so this seems to be a good combination. Stay tuned for our thoughts about the new course in the spring.

To Not Suffer Fools Gladly

Of all the problems associated with being a highly gifted person, the difficulty associated with "suffering fools gladly" must be one of the toughest to crack, across many different kinds of gifted people.

This has been one of the hardest tasks for both my husband and me, and it's also hard for our daughter. People think it is not hard for our daughter, because she has such a pleasant personality -- smiles and is cheerful -- but we hear what she really thinks when we get home. I am glad she has the excellent coping ability of not showing her distaste in real time. I just hope she can remain an authentic and true person, considering all the fools she will encounter in life.

I am a WYSIWYG person. That was an acronym in common use back in the early days of desktop publishing, when it referred to what you saw on a Macintosh screen -- "What You See is What You Get" -- vs. the monotonous green characters on a black screen of MS-DOS. But anyway. It's not hard to tell what I am thinking because it pretty much shows on my face. Life would have been a nicer experience for me if I were more of a chameleon like my daughter.

Apparently, back in the 1930s, Leta Hollingworth identified this as a major problem for people in the upper tiers of intelligence. As quoted by Kathi Kearney in her article, "The 10 Most Commonly Asked Questions about Highly Gifted Children," Hollingworth wrote, "Of all the special problems of general conduct which the most intelligent children face, I will mention five, which beset them in early years and may lead to habits subversive of fine leadership: (1) to find enough hard and interesting work at school; (2) to suffer fools gladly; (3) to keep from becoming negativistic toward authority; (4) to keep from becoming hermits; (5) to avoid the formation of habits of extreme chicanery."

Okay, extreme chicanery I have avoided (see WYSIWYG paragraph above). Negativistic toward authority? Please! I grew up during the Vietnam War! I questioned authority while having cereal in the morning. Hard and interesting work was difficult until I headed off to college early, and later I became an entrepreneur, inventing plenty of interesting and difficult stuff for myself to do. Hermit? Yes, somewhat, but with a select group of humans I dearly love, so not completely. But, it's always been a problem that I do not suffer fools gladly.

The fact that they exist on the planet doesn't bother me. It's when trying to interact with them to accomplish something meaningful that problems occur.

Do I have a solution? Obviously not. But sometimes recognizing that there is a difficulty, and defining the nature of it, can help tremendously in dealing with it.

Early College for Homeschoolers

Our homeschool group held a wonderful presentation by Wes Beach about early college options for homeschoolers this past week. Wes always has great information to share.

Perhaps the best part of the evening was the "Early College Student Panel" after his presentation. This was a group of seven students, ranging from age 10 to age 16, who talked about their experiences in accessing college courses.

My daughter was one of the panelists, one with the least experience, since she is taking her first course this semester. She had a great time being part of this panel. I think it was affirming for all of them, to be among other young people on a similar track. It was especially encouraging to meet a 15-year-old senior at UC Berkeley and to hear his perspective.

And it was very inspiring for those of us in the audience! We're excited to continue on this path. My daughter will be taking two college courses in January, while we also continue with the challenging work we are doing on our own.