Some Sci-Fi

I heard that SciFi.com is getting rid of their short story archive, so I went over to have a look and found this great story. I don't know how long it'll be there, and I can't seem to find it elsewhere on the net, so enjoy it while you can.

Voice of Steel by Sean McMullen


Hat tip to Speculative Faith.

Princess M

She dressed herself to go out and play - can you tell?

First Day of Summer

We commemorated the day with a long walk, Italian Ice, a game of frisbee, some relaxing in the backyard and catching fireflies.

Miss M insisted on taking her favorite toy car (a camper) with us on our walk. She's so fond of that camper that she even gave it a name - Phantom of the Opera (?) As it got dark and we went in, I pointed out the moon to her - a bright, perfect half-moon. She asked, "Why is that moon broken? Did Jesus break it?"

Twenty Years Ago

This is a little late - our 20th anniversary was actually last month. I had planned to post, but finding and scanning a wedding photo took some time and other things came up, etc., etc., etc. And then I didn't want to stop at a wedding photo . . .

Here we are the day we got engaged. He had been divorced for about three years and had two adolescent children living with him. We didn't think we'd have children of our own because he'd taken steps to prevent that during his first marriage. But I didn't really think I was the maternal type, anyway.

Our wedding; I wore the dress my mother had worn at her wedding almost thirty years earlier:

Our miracle baby (after a reversal that the doctor wasn't
sure would work because the time gap between
the original operation and the reversal had been too long).
I discovered that I was the maternal type - I enjoyed motherhood
more than I ever dreamed I would!

A second miracle baby!

Surprise! A third miracle baby!
This was at the peak of Tim and J's cowboy phase.

And a surprise fourth miracle baby!

The Conference

Okay, so I've had a few days to rest, recover and reflect after the conference.

I didn't attend as much of the conference as I'd thought I would. Last year I brought Miss M, and I spent most of the conference chasing her and trying to keep her quiet. This year I left her home with Daddy, but I missed just as much because I was busy doing other things. I had brought along a modest amount of books to experiment whether they might sell, so I spent any few minutes of free time I had checking in at the vending area (about half of them sold; the experiment was a failure and I won't be doing that again! Fortunately, another vendor took the rest off my hands to sell in her homeschool bookstore, so I wasn't out any money!) I was scheduled to "preside" at three breakout sessions (the only three I got to attend, except the one on assessment), and some chats with AO members, and private counseling sessions with AO members (the private counseling was my favorite part of the conference.)

The first day of the conference, the rooms were freezing - the AC was at 60 degrees, and that night I wasn't able to get warm, which led to leg cramps and a miserable, sleepless night, so I was bleary-eyed on Thursday. I've been doing lots of reading (3 books and lots of internet searches) since I got back, and I suspect that I have a magnesium deficiency, so I'm trying a highly absorbable form of magnesium. Leg cramps have been an ongoing problem for me the past year.

This conference was about assessment - in other words, testing and how to grade tests in a CM education. I've been wanting to have prepared tests like the ones CM used in her PNEU schools, only with questions that pertain to AO books, so I was anxious to learn all I could from this conference. And, although the assessment session was geared for school settings (complete with lots of official-sounding educational-ese jargon), I did have a revelation. One thing that public schools are criticized for is that they "teach to the test." But guess what? Charlotte Mason can be "taught to the test," too! By having your exam questions already laid out, you as the teacher know what to bring out in discussions after the child narrates, or what to write on the board before the child reads. The teacher who spoke about this called it "guided instruction," but it simply means that, if the teacher knows what concept she wants to emphasize in a reading, she can bring it up as she discusses the book with the child. AO Moms sometimes ask about lesson plans, or "shouldn't my child be getting more out this book, like the theme, or something?" and I think that this "guided instruction," directed by knowing what question will be asked on the test, is the answer.

The difference between traditional "teaching to the test" and CM's "teaching to the test" is that the traditional way has kids memorizing facts so they can fill in the right blanks on a test. But a CM exam question is going to be open-ended, designed to make the child think about "essential" issues, so "teaching to the test" will look more like getting him to think about big issues like hypocrisy, or the role of religion in government, or the topical geography of an area as he reads. It means that the parent has to have an idea of what concept is being brought out in a book - why is this book important enough to be used as a school text? So, creating AO exams will partially take the form of figuring out what major concepts are in the books, and why they're being used. In year 7, for example, The Once and Future King is scheduled because it considers different approaches to leadership (I never would have gotten that by reading it myself; I happen to know that because of a post that Wendy C. sent to the HEO list!) I think that will be harder than just coming up with questions that are like the questions CM used (which is what I had originally planned to do!)

How are these tests graded? With a rubric! A rubric is a grid. An essay/answer is graded on a scale of 1-5 according to how correct the student got his facts, how thoroughly he understood the concept, how well he spelled and used grammar, etc. If he understands it well enough to compare it to something else, or make up a story or example based on it, or apply it to another situation, he would het points for comprehension. Then you total up the points. On the grid I just described, with three facets scoring 5 points each, a student could earn a possible 15 points on a question. If he got a total of ten points, he'd have a 10/15 for that question, which would give him a 66 percent for that question. An average of his percentages for all the questions would give him his grade. Brilliant, isn't it? There is reason to suspect that CM herself used some kind of percentage to grade exams - her students were graded. At the conference, they showed us a teacher's grade records of her students with numbers beside them that looked very much like percentages.

The "Book Club" discussion (remember the book Being Human that I've been blogging about?) was a highlight of the conference. Did I mention that already?

Of course, seeing AO people was great, and being around people (both homeschoolers and school people) who know who know what CM is and can appreciate nature and art is always an encouragement.

The sessions were taped on tiny MP3 recorders, and there are plans to make MP3 downloads available (probably for a fee, which I expect to be extremely reasonable) so I'll be catching up with what I missed that way.

[Tammy Glaser is also blogging about the conference; hers are more complete than mine. See here and here.]

Being Human, a quote from ch 5

A look at the balance between faith and works.

"Because of the supposed antithesis between God's sovereignty and human responsibility, some have taught that the Christian must be passive in sanctification. But if one stresses the necessity of the Spirit's internal work in the believer without a corresponding emphasis on the equally important biblical teaching on the responsibility of the individual, the result can be the stunting of growth.

The stunting may take one of several forms. For example, a person may insist that because the Spirit is sovereign he is free to do what he likes, saying, "It doesn't matter what I do; I know that I am elect." [I've never actually met a person who genuinely believed this.]

Another person, taught that the Spirit will do everything to sanctify her, may begin to wonder at the lack of change in her life Having built up a series of expectations as to what the Spirit will do in her, she may even begin to blame God because these expectations have not been met . . .

A third possible result of a lack of emphasis on the believer's role may be unhealthy introspection. He begins to ask himself, "Am I elect?" . . . introspective questions and continual searchings within for signs of the Spirit's presence and work will only have the effect of undermining confidence in salvation." [Charlotte Mason said too much introspection was self-focused instead of others-focused.]

Being Human - ch 6 Balancing Our Lives with Needs of Others

This is something I've always wondered about. It's from chapter 6. First of all, the authors establish we're responsible for taking care of our own needs so we don't burden others.

"But it must be balanced with an equal emphasis on the interests of others. . . But another set of delicate and difficult questions arises. We live in a lost world, we are part of a fallen humanity. On every hand spiritual and physical needs, near at hand as well as distant, cry out for attention. In which direction does the Christian choose to move? Are the needs at hand more important than the needs far away, or vice versa? Care must be taken not to produce a continuous state of guilt. Every experience can be a source of self-recrimination: "Here I am eating this food when someone else is hungry." "Here I am in a comfortable bed when many are homeless" or "Here I am indulging in a luxury, going to a concert, when the money could have been used for those in physical need or for the spread of the gospel." Such guilt comes easily to any who feel deeply the needs of the world.

The opposite tendency, however, must also be guarded against. We are sinners still and, being selfish, we know only too well how to take care of our own interests. . .

How can we fulfill our responsibility to care for others, without allowing this responsibility to become oppressive? When is it right to give away money and when is it right to keep it? When is it right to take the energy and time to help someone who is going through a difficult experience psychologically, and when is it right instead to sit by the fire at home and read a book?

The most important thing to say is that there are no rules for such conduct. Scripture does not give us any, nor should we as Christians try to establish any. . . . Rather, what we must do is present with equal stress the two principles mentioned above: on the one hand, the validity of a proper interest in one's own experience and, on the other, the need to see and take care of the needs of others. . ."

That isn't a clear-cut answer to the question, but it's interesting nevertheless.

Went to a CM Conference

And now I'm back; I'll post about it later when I'm more alert. There was so much information, it's like information overload.

This is the conference where we were going to do the "Book Club" about the Being Human book, and that was fun, a highlight of the conference. I was telling Tim about it and the discussion we had around the table and the people there who had been influenced by some L'Abri teaching, and he said, 'It's nice to know there are people like that out there in the world.' The funny thing is - I had that exact same thought as I was sitting at the table during the book discussion!

I'm taking a break today, this is my "catch up on sleep and don't do anything mentally challenging" recovery day, so I won't be posting anything from the book today.

Being Human ch 4 Active Obedience

I somehow overlooked ch 4. It's about the need to walk in faith and actively strive to do the right thing rather than passively waiting to produce Christian fruit without doing anything. We're supposed to put in our own effort - and that effort is our attempt to do what the Bible says: to obey God's Law as outlined in both the Old and New Testaments.

"Why is it that practicing God's law brings freedom, blessing, life and peace? As we stressed in chapter one, humans are made like God; and the law, which is holy and good, describes what our lives are to be like in order for us to reflect God's character.* The law describes the way we are intended to live."

That means that the Law isn't a negative limit to our freedom and fun. Instead, it's what fulfills us. It's a positive thing.

* Chapters 1 and 2 established that reflecting God's image is the goal of the Christian life. Sometimes other things are emphasized as our goal (good works, street evangelism, suffering, etc) but those are secondary. Our purpose is to reflect God's image in all of its fullness and various facets.

One more from chapter 3

"Someone will say to a Christian, particulary a young Christian or one in difficulty, 'This is good, you've believed in Christ. But now, in order to show that you really have a relationship with God and are really living a spiritual life, you must experience. . . .' Depending on who is speaking, the blank will be filled with speaking in tongues, the baptism of the spirit, the second blessing, brokenness or what have you. The spiritual counselor continues, 'Then you will be sure of the Spirit's indwelling and have power. You will be able to witness and pray freely. Then you won't just believe that you have the Holy Spirit in you, you'll know by experience.' The result of this is exactly as Paul describes. The Christian is disqualified, robbed of assurance in Christ, and made to feel unspiritual, unfaithful, and in need of something extra--something more than and higher than the cross. . . by stressing a higher spiritualty beyond faith in Christ, this teaching implies that Christ and his death are only the gateway to a superspirituality."

This is the wrong way; the right way is to take God at His word, accept our new standing in Christ, and then attempt to live holy lives with the help of the Spirit. Our focus shouldn't be on seeking spiritual experiences, but on getting down to the business of living. At least, that's what I'm getting out of this.