Starting School a Different Way
Aliyah started her school year just like any other kid moving between districts. Her sister, younger than she, has no problem running into school and enmeshing herself in the classroom setting. I have no beef at all with the Whitley County School District. I am a product thereof, and will remain a Whitley County Colonel forever. So will Maya.
But Aliyah is different. It seemed there was no problem until the second Thursday after school started, after which it was apparent she had needs that were greater than what a school district should be expected to provide, but we could.
That first two weeks was cohesive, but we lacked the materials from Oak Meadow, the progressive, Vermont-based school whose curriculum we follow closely, with some improvisations. I teach Aliyah using the Socratic method, and challenge her on her critical thinking to ensure she has read the material and understands it.
Prior to the curriculum arriving, I was certain to cover all her core topics. Many of these exercises were interdisciplinary, as academic separation of subjects is a matter of convenience, but she had the resources at her disposal to begin to think three-dimensionally about issues.
For instance, we covered the "discovery" of America and she wrote about whether that was a true statement. This incorporates history, English, writing, social sciences, and critical thinking. A similar exercise came on "Movie Friday," when we watched Apollo 13. I tailored questions concerning what force "grabs" the rocket so that it circles along with its atmosphere (gravitational pull), but we also discussed generally the geometry concerning their re-entry into the earth's atmosphere.
I wanted to see how she would react to being asked about whether, firstly, that ship should have been sent given the social strife of that time, and two, whether we should continue the space program.
Some of the other subjects we covered included readings of classics of American literature, identification of flora and fauna (with a dissection of the flora), free writing and stream-of-consciousness writing about a subject she enjoyed, long division, multiplication of larger numbers, addition and subtraction of decimals, and basic algebra.
