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14 September 2010
In this issue:
- News: Beat the Clock and Transcript Workshops
- High School Requirements: Are You Asking the Wrong Question?
- Christian Worldview or Christian Content? Which Do You Really Want?
- Cathy Duffy reviews Excellence in Literature; Complete Curriculum now in eBook!
- Invitation to Write for the Website
Dear Friend,
I know that many of you have started back to school, and a little part of me misses that time-- the first day of school
with a new notebook, an optimistic schedule, and lots of delightful new books (or lists of books to borrow from the library). However, I'm also having a wonderful time anticipating the birth of our first granddaughter, so this new season of life will be a joy as well.
In this issue, I'm going to rerun an article from 2008. I've recently heard several conversations that make me think this might be a good time to share "High School Requirements: The Wrong Question?", so if you're thinking about high school requirements, I think you'll enjoy this one.
I'll be doing a couple of workshops in October, so if you live anywhere near Alexandria or Colonial Heights, Virginia, I'd love to see you there (details below). We're also planning for next year's conferences, and thinking that 2011 might be the year that we make it to the Great Homeschool Conventions in Cincinnati, Memphis, Philadelphia, and Greenville. I'll also be speaking at the VaHomeschoolers 2011 Conference and Resource Fair in Richmond.
Around home, we plan to resume our informal studies in Forestry: Woodland Management and Horticulture: Division and Propagation of Perennial Plants. To a non-homeschooler, this would look a lot like yard work, but we know better, don't we;-)?
Blessings,
Janice Campbell
www.Everyday-Education.com
P.S. This is a really long issue, so you may want to print it out and settle down with a cup of something warm to read it!
News
Here's where I'll be in the next few weeks (I'll also be in New York City and northern California, but those trips are not teaching related). I'd love to see you at a workshop!
Alexandria, VA Workshop: Saturday, October 2, 2010
Beat the Clock Essay Workshop 10:30am-3:00pm
First Baptist Church, 2932 King St., Alexandria, VA 22303
Contact Irene Cortazzo at 703-217-3480
South Richmond, VA Workshops: October 2010
A day of workshops is being planned for mid- October, most likely the 15th. The tentative plan is to do an essay workshop for teens during the day, along with a brief talk with the teens on getting involved in high school planning. In the evening, I'll be doing a workshop on creating the high school transcript, with a simple step-by-step overview of what goes where and why it's included.
Contact the Tri-Cities Home Educators for more information.
Great Books Week
Don't forget to celebrate Great Books Week during the first full week in October. Excellence in Literature is happy to co-sponsor this holiday, and a website at www.GreatBooksWeek.com is under construction. Be sure to check back in a week or two for more information.
One-Sentence Error* in Transcripts Made Easy
I just discovered that one of the printings of Transcripts Made Easy has an incorrect sentence at the bottom of page 53. The final sentence on the page should read: "To calculate a cumulative GPA, add together all the grade points earned in each semester, and divide the total by the number of Carnegie units earned."
Fortunately, the erroneous sentence went out in a limited number of copies, but if you own the book, you may want to check your copy and substitute the correct sentence for the one that is there. The correct sentence was switched out during an editing/reformatting, and rather than making the process more clear, the incorrect sentence is likely to cause a mathematical error. The easiest way to calculate a GPA is still by using the calculator on our website at www.FreeGPACalc.com.
*I wouldn't suggest that the book is otherwise perfect, but this is the only error I'm aware of at the moment!
High School Requirements: Are You Asking the Wrong Question?
As you consider whether or how to homeschool through high school, there are a few major questions that may crop up. One of the first questions I often hear is about “high school requirements.”
Parents wonder how many years of which subjects their student must take in order to graduate from high school, and that’s certainly an understandable question. However, there are reasons why it isn’t the most important question you need to ask. Read more...
Christian Worldview or Christian Content? Which Do You Really Want?
Q: I was recently asked whether Excellence in Literature had Christian content, and since I know it's a question that others may have, I thought I'd share my answer here.
A: Excellence in Literature is written from a solidly Christian worldview, but it does not have explicitly "Christian content." There are many reasons for this, but I'll just outline a few:
- I want students to learn to think analytically, so I present the focus texts and context materials so that they will have a large enough body of information to understand worldview as it's seen in literature, music, and art. I believe they will learn more and retain it longer when it's presented in this way.
- I want parents to be able to use the curriculum without worrying about whether specific doctrinal issues are addressed differently from the way the family has been taught. There are many non-creedal issues upon which Christians differ, and it is parents who bear the responsibility for determining what the family will learn.
- Every piece of literature studied is written from a specific worldview, and I believe that students who work through the curriculum will have a deep understanding of the consequences of specific ideas and philosophies. Fiction allows us to see what happens when people believe (or don't believe) in an omnipotent, omniscient God, and I believe that the truths revealed are more powerful when students discover them for themselves, rather than having them spoon fed.
- The curriculum is designed to teach literature and writing, and I believe the focus needs to remain on the literary material presented and practiced. Student essays will inevitably reflect the student's worldview and can open many conversational avenues within the family.
- While I was writing the curriculum, I heard from charter schools which wanted to be able to use the curriculum, but could do so only if it did not contain contain overt religious teaching.
- A great deal of the old literature, especially British literature, is permeated with a Christian worldview and has the potential to be a great blessing. I want students to discover this by interacting with the author and the text, rather than by having me tell them what they should think.
- When I taught this material in online classes (which I no longer do), I was astonished and blessed many times by the profound insights my students would have about a piece of literature I'd read many times. I don't want to rob them of this thrill of discovery, nor do I want to replace it with a condensed version of what I've come to understand about a particular work. It would be like snatching a fresh, sweet orange from a child and substituting a reconstituted orange drink made from powder and water. I wrote the curriculum to provide an alternative to textbooks like that!
If you want to know more about how I chose the books for Excellence in Literature, you can read the post at my blog.
You can also read Cathy Duffy's review of two of the volumes at Cathy Duffy Reviews.
 Finally, the Complete Curriculum (all five levels of Excellence in Literature) is available as an e-book. The binder version is so nice that I almost didn't think you'd want it as an e-book, but I've heard from military families, a reader in New Zealand, and at least one person who is moving and wants an easy way to keep track of it, of so here it is. I hope those of you who have been waiting will enjoy it!
Invitation to Write for the Everyday Education Website
One of the things I'm doing in 2010 is expanding the website to embrace more of the learning areas I believe to be important. For this purpose, we've created a new section on the Everyday Education website, and it's called "Life Management." It's designed to encompass all those things that round out a learning lifestyle, including:
* Home
* Garden
* Time
* Money
* Meals
* Weight
* Clothing
* Travel
* Arts and Crafts
* Caregiving
I have many articles I want to write for this section, but I know that there is a great deal of accumlated wisdom and knowlege among my readers. I'd like to offer you and your older students the opportunity to contribute articles, recipes, patterns, book reviews, or other helpful information to the Life Management section. Think of things that would be helpful to others and are in keeping with home and family values, and submit them, following the guidelines below. We'll publish as many items as possible.
Submission Guidelines
Articles can be of any length, but they must be written by the person submitting them. I ask that each article be spell-checked and proofread before submission. Please submit in.rtf or plain text format, or even pasted into an e-mail message. Please do not submit anything in Microsoft Word. Format should be web-style, with a space between paragraphs, rather than an indention. As always, there should be only one space after each sentence.
If you would like to submit a photo with your article, recipe, pattern, book review, or other submission, please save it as a .jpeg or .gif and attach it to your e-mail submission. At the end of each submission, please include a brief bio of yourself with a link to your blog or website if you have one, and if you like, a small photo. As a sample, here's the bio I include at the end of my articles:
Janice Campbell homeschooled her four sons from preschool into college. She is the author of Transcripts Made Easy, Get a Jump Start on College, and Evaluate Writing the Easy Way, as well as the Excellence in Literature curriculum for grades 8-12. Be sure to visit her website,www.Everyday-Education.com, to get a free writing evaluation rubric and sign up for her free e-zine.
Just write something similar about yourself, and add it, so that readers can read more of your work, or at least know a bit about you. You needn't provide . Thank you to all those who have submitted articles so far!
I hope you've enjoyed this edition of the e-zine. Please feel free to share it in its entirety with others, and invite them to subscribe.
Blessings,
Janice
(c) 2010 Everyday Education, LLC
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