Kids in Business: The First Day

This morning I was feeling the need for business colleagues. Oh, I have plenty, really. But none that I see face to face.

As I was writing about this in my business journal, it suddenly occurred to me that maybe I *do* have colleagues, right here in my own home. I just need to think about them that way. Thus, our new Friday afternoon routine: Kids in Business.

The girls (12 and 14) and I will meet for one hour on Fridays and sometimes host guests. We are really looking forward to speaking with Claire Burge next Friday, for instance. And today, spur of the moment, Lyla Lindquist has graciously agreed to Skype with us.

I don't know where we'll go with all this, except that today we'll start to think about our direction together. I'm coming to the meeting with a a list of ideas. I'll share these with the girls and ask them to come up with more ideas.

So far, this is what I've got. It's just messy thoughts:

—read business articles or a chapter from a business book and discuss; maybe watch a TED Talk or other interesting video

—host fun entrepreneurs who can chat briefly with us

—teach skills like bookkeeping, how to run a meeting, how to use accounting software

—share our business dreams

—have the girls share some research they might do about other kids in business—or anyone in business, for that matter

—cover a host of important topics like financing, branding, marketing, selling, Internet meeting and connecting tools

—share about our respective business goals and accomplishments (the girls have a few non-income-producing "businesses," so we could start with these)

Both girls are happy with the idea (so far :) and they are even dressing up for the meeting. Sonia felt that it was important to look "creative," since we are dealing with entrepreneurship. Thus, her nail polish. In different colors. Sara is set to go too. (Look, she's already doing phone work in her fancy meeting clothes. Gotta love that desk, too. First benefit of working for yourself. You get to choose your own office equipment. ;-)

The Power of Goodreads

It started when I read that Goodreads has about 8 million users. I might have that number wrong, but tonight it doesn't matter.

What matters is that I have two Goodreads members sitting in my living room, rating books, writing reviews, and starting book clubs.

That's right. I told my kids they should join Goodreads. (If you want to tell your kids to do this, and you feel nervous about how to do it safely, read these Guidelines for Setting Students up on Goodreads).

Honestly though? I didn't read the guidelines. Because my kids and I are always discussing Internet etiquette and safety, as a matter of course.

So far, the features that have wowed my "non-reader" (she's only rated 56 books, while her sister is topping 150...um, since last night :)... anyway, so far the features that have wowed are:

- rating books (for a student, it's fun being the one to give out the gold stars)

- friending "real-life" friends, especially the ones who live at a distance

- recommending books to those same friends (because when you are together you forget about books and are always making funny videos)

- taking and making literature quizzes (one quiz is called the "never-ending quiz," because people keep adding to it)

- being able to give your mom's own poetry book 5 stars (no, I didn't pay my Littlest off; she just did it)

- marking books to save for later, by clicking "want to read"

- keeping track of what page you have read up to on a book you're currently reading, and seeing a little thermometer-thing rise (and translate your progress into a percentage)

- getting your mom to happily teach you how to write a review—she did this by making you read a bunch and decide why you liked them (or not)

- writing the review and having your mom be astonished (yeah, my Littlest's Clementine review simply tickled me)

___

Join me on Goodreads?

Home-Educated Students the Winners?

Created by: College At Home

Kind of interesting. The language is a little self-satisfied for my taste.

And of course home education is no guarantee of success. Nor is public school a guarantee of non-success (says the public-schooled woman :).

My guess is that there are nuances not covered here. For instance, if a parent of a public-schooled child is as involved as a home-educating parent, this might be an important indicator of overall success.

Thoughts?

Where Do You FInd Words?

My youngest daughter is always the champion. When she sees a new idea and loves it, she takes off at top speed.

I showed her the WordBowl, 2011, and she was enchanted. She started gathering woven bowls from around the house. Bowls that came from Kenya. Starting cutting slips of paper and plying me for words.

"Sparkly," that's a good word, isn't it, Mommy?"

"That's a great word."

"Is this how you spell threaten? T h r e a t e n."

"Wow, you spelled that right!"

"I know how to spell a lot of things, Mommy. Don't you know?"

And she fills her bowl. And she writes a poem about playing ball with the moon. And I laugh when the ball goes bop-bop-bop, and I get emotional when the moon and she must part. She's found her words, and she's filled me.

Should We Force People to Write?

I admit in Rumors of Water: Thoughts on Creativity & Writing, that I never made my daughters write (they are home-educated, and I do it how I want).

In our education experience together, we've done a lot of other things that I believe turned my girls into writers, but mandatory writing was not one of them.

I am thinking about this today especially, after reading a quote at this wonderful place:

But what if the reading problem isn’t as simple as forcing students to read and write more (which we should also do)?

Really? Should we force students to write? Here's a poem from Sara, age 14, which she handed me today. She made up her own form for it. This, from a girl who has never been forced to write...


The Pirates and the Sun

Once upon a long ago time
When lemon trees fell in love with lime,
And all the fairy tales were true (if only in your mind)
A pirate sailed the seven seas to find the treasure.

The treasure sat on the rim of the sun,
At the edge of the sea, number 101,
At the edge of the night, just before it’s done,
And there sat the treasure, the only one.

The pirate’s flag was big and black,
It billowed and whipped and sometimes lay slack,
It was made of (don’t tell) a regular sack,
But it was the flag of a pirate.

The pirate smiled and twirled his moustache,
He grinned and rubbed his hands at the sight of the stash,
And one gold tooth in his mouth did flash,
And every pirate got gold, from the first to the last.

Now the pirates sailed back, for a year and a day,
And they met an old monk, who taught them how to pray,
And they had many adventures, don’t ever say
They weren’t the greatest pirates who lived.

Yes they sailed away, and now they came home,
With a bag of gold, and a horse from Rome,
And a parrot, a stick, and a wrinkled old gnome,
A drum and a harp and a broken trombone.

But the world had changed when they sailed to the sun,
To the last ever sea (number 101)
And the pirates’ fleet was sunken and gone,
And the world was round in the minds of everyone.

So the pirates took one look at the cities of the day,
From London to New York to the coast of Malay,
To the skyscrapers high and the waters grey,
And they turned right around, and went back where they came.

And now they do sail, past the coasts one by one,
Forever looking for the treasure, the only one,
And the edge of the sea right next the sun,
And the time they left behind long ago.

For what use is gold if your world is gone?
What use is a ship when it’s old and down-run?
What use is a crew of pirates who come
To the deck always looking for the thing which they long?


If we shouldn't force students to write (and I believe we shouldn't), what is the key to getting them to a place of excellence in reading and writing? Well, perhaps to answer to that question, you'll need to read the book. ;-) But I'd also love to hear your ideas right here today.

Choosing (or Not) to Play the Game

This year, as some of you know, my older daughter is in a distance-learning program. It's been a struggle in many ways. But the biggest difficulty has been my girl's impatience with a system that sometimes "doesn't get it."

By this she means, the balance of inside and out has sometimes not been well-understood or successfully addressed. Being home-educated her whole life, this is a shocking experience. The rhythm of our lives has always been to cultivate what's inside the girls with appropriate outside helps. The balance has been (mostly) simple to achieve.

There are days when I almost despair over how simple it *has not been* in this new situation, though the distance-school has tried to (mostly) be accommodating.

The other night I told my girl that this is how it is in life. She'll encounter people and systems who "get it" and those who don't. And she will have to choose whether to play their game or assert her own game. I told her stories of times I've played the game and times I determined I could not. I want her to know she has a choice.

Steve Jobs Comes to Lunch with Creativity

Over lunch the other day, I was talking to a friend of mine. He's working on his PhD in the area of user experiences, mostly technology.

His opinion of what Steve Jobs did best? Take stuff that already existed and find ways to put it together. This fascinated me; after all, we think of Jobs as the one who "created" some of these technologies. My friend said it wasn't like that. Instead, Jobs often saw possibilities in disparate pre-existing technologies and put them together to create beautiful user experiences.

This reminds me of today's chapter in Mindfulness, which focuses on creativity. Creativity doesn't necessarily create out-of-nothing. It simply does a quarter-turn and says, "Ah, look at it this way."

If this sounds easy, it may not be. My friend laughed as he put his iPhone on the table and said, "Isn't it beautiful? And even when other companies had it sitting in front of them, they still couldn't create a decent knock-off. That's genius, don't you think?"

I often wonder how well we are cultivating this kind of genius in the way we teach our young people, giving them, as Langer notes, too few choices in how they interact with materials and information; I know that my own daughter is chaffing against her distance-learning program this year, because it prescribes more than she's used to (we're working on that... maybe later this week I'll share her next assignment, which she took *more* than a quarter-turn with).

How much are we willing to do the quarter turns? How much does creativity matter to us? It might mean a "bad grade" or some commercial failures along the way. Will we risk it?

The Power-Point Embraced

Yesterday I shared how I encouraged my daughter to take her anger and channel it into a reasoned response. One reader asked to see that response. I asked Sara if it was okay, and she kindly said yes...

_____

I read all the stories and excerpts.

And I come to this question: why does the Literature book have mean, depressing, senseless stories? It’s just meanness and meanness and nothing has happened. Nothing has changed. I once read somewhere that writers have a responsibility for their stories—you have to think about the readers, and if your story will harm more than it will help. I wasn’t sure what I thought of that before, but now I agree. Some stories you shouldn’t have to read, unless you choose to. That’s why there are so many in the world—so everyone has a type of story they find fun, or interesting, or true, or wise, or perfect. Forcing someone to read story after story that is depressing does not have any use that I can see.

The ancient Greeks thought that writing comedy was a greater accomplishment than writing tragedy. William Faulkner, in his Nobel Prize speech, seems to agree. He doesn’t talk about comedy per se, but he notes that we need stories that “are not merely… the record of man…[but] one of the props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail.” If a story lacks the universal truths of the resilient human spirit, he says it is “ephemeral and doomed.”

Some of the stories in the Literature book seem to lack these universal truths, as if they were a commentary on hopelessness instead of an experience of humanity—not merely the good or the evil, but the will to hope, even when there is no escape, to try, even when they can change nothing—like Anne Frank. I believe that stories like some in the Literature book will not be remembered in a thousand /200/300/500 years—unless it is for something other than the stories themselves, like their virtue as cultural artifacts. The oldest piece of literature in the world, Gilgamesh, is still being retranslated and retold and read. The Lord of The Rings is the same, Sherlock Holmes is the same—they have the life and energy now that they had when they were first written. Why? Because they tell of a story that is as true now as it was then, a story that transcends the boundaries of language and time.

_____

On Hopeless Literature Essay, by Sara, age 14. Used with permission.

Don't Be Afraid of Your True Writing or Work

Such an interesting convergence this morning. I am having three conversations about the same thing. One is happening in my dining room. One on Twitter. And one in email.

The thing?

People are nervous about their true condition.

It has been framed slightly differently in the three conversations. One person thinks her style needs to change before she can step out. Another is concerned that she can't use a life circumstance to mold an activity she needs to work with. And the third, my own daughter, began by refusing to write an assignment, because she was so angry about it she could just about spit.

Let me reign this in to the conversation with my daughter. "Embrace the anger," I told her. "It's your strongest response. Don't be afraid of it. Use it."

She is just now finishing an essay she decided to write, on the reason that hopeless literature shouldn't be the focus of a high school curriculum. She has brought in the Greeks' opinion on comedy being more important than tragedy, and she has quoted Willliam Faulkner's Nobel Prize speech. She has taken the anger of her first draft and turned it into an incisive, insightful, profound essay that should make any teacher take a second look at what he or she is using for a literature program.

Which is to say... don't be afraid of where you are. Embrace the strongest point of your experience. The thing that is consuming your time or your emotions. It is your power-point.


Signing Rumors photo by Kelly Sauer. Used with permission.

Penning a Story

I had to share this whimsical little story with you. Sara wrote it while experimenting with calligraphy.

Here's the beginning...

______


The Story of the Little Ink Pen's Journey

My, oh my. Look, Paper! This is how I write.

Once upon a scratchy time a little pen said, "let me go to the great inkwell to find ink for us so we will not run out."

And the others said, "You can do this, but you will not come out alive!"

And the little ink pen said, "But I will go nonetheless. And I will bring us back so much ink we could become all fuzzy in our words and still not run out."

So he set out on a far and dangerous journey...

[to finish the story, click to view the large-sized image]


Story and calligraphy by Sara B. Used with permission.

Writing Comes from Reading

Soon I'll be sharing my writing-teacher secrets, as part of Rumors of Water: Thoughts on Creativity & Writing.

Oddly, many of my secrets look like living. And reading. A lot.

My sweet Sara reads about a six hundred (unassigned) books during a school year and a great deal of poetry. All that reading, I'm convinced, has shaped her writing. Here, for instance, is one of her contributions to the sonneteering we've been doing over at Tweetspeak. It makes me think... I need to read... a lot more sonnets if I ever want to catch up with her abilities.

(Though not a perfect sonnet by any means, she wrote this one in 10 minutes, while I was also bothering her about coming to answer a phone call. Yeah, I'm proud of her. Forgive me? :)

The Narrator

I'll tell you now a tale both sad and true,
the story of the cuckoo in the tree
across the endless, vast, and wave-filled sea.
And of the flute, the crying notes it blew
to break and make a spell with one bright tune,
and what it did to everyone, and me,
a girl who only wishéd to be free
of the wicked witches, and now you

say that I know nothing of all that time.
Well, I'll tell the tale both loud and clear.
I'll even tell it—listen now—in rhyme.
And then I'll take from you, all you hold dear
and we will know the truth, and know the lie.
I'll make you beg on bended knees with tears.

— Sara Barkat, age 14


This poem is offered for The High Calling and Tweetspeak's Random Acts of Poetry/PhotoPlay celebration.

Portfolio on Demand

So it's official. My girl will still be home for high school, but she'll be "attending" the Laurel Springs Gifted and Talented Academy.

On Monday, the Academy asked me for a description of Sara's 8th-grade year (scope, sequence, assessment explanations, quarterly reports, complete with samples for every quarter for every subject, standardized test scores).

Um. :)

Because I'm an unschooler more than a classical schooler, and because I live in a State that doesn't require portfolios as part of the reporting structure, I was overwhelmed by the request.

I spent more than seventeen hours gathering materials, writing descriptions, trying to find my old teacher certificates in the attic. I took a day and a half off from work to make it happen (including a 5 am rising because my mind was racing over the question of where to find all the "proof" I needed).

When it was all said and done, I actually felt a great sense of accomplishment. But it sure was intensive.

Watching this process, my sweet second daughter decided that she's going to keep a portfolio, so we don't face this kind of thing in two years when perhaps she'll do a similar kind of program. I appreciate that. :)

Since I spent so much time on the whole thing, I wanted to share with you just one section of the Art portfolio I created: an excerpt of Sara's Princess and the Pea graphic novel.

Let's just say, I identified with the Princess's sleepless night (check her out below)...



























Phew. :)


Graphic Novel by Sara Barkat, at age 13.

Resist! Your Creativity Depends on It

When I was a new teacher, I remember reading Vygotsky. His thoughts about the Zone of Proximal Development were particularly intriguing, suggesting that we learn best when we are pushed to the edge of our competencies.

Being pushed OVER the edge? Not so useful. Finding the balance, the "cutting edge," or the "learning edge" as it were, is the challenge.

For this reason, we need others. Not huge disassociated groups of others, but others who engage with us closely and dynamically.

While I have gotten very excited about Piaget's ideas, which focus more on self-initiated learning, I'm just now coming back to Vygotsky and the thought that social interaction is critical for learning.

In regards to home education, this means I'm looking for ways to get my girls closer to the edge of their competencies, through new social opportunities. Most likely I'll sign them both up for Comedy Improv classes this Fall. My younger daughter tried Comedy Improv in a camp a few weeks ago, and it has such wonderful possibilities, offering "learning edge" experiences on both the cognitive and social levels. (Plus, it's collaborative, which I love. :)

Resistance, which Psyblog notes is best for optimal creativity, is built in to a "learning edge" type experience. So this Fall, we shall resist (albeit alongside laughter).

____

For more thoughts on the value of Resistance, but in a work context, check out my post today at Bibledude.net. Call Me Glinda: Tension and Relief for Successful Work Teams

The Lady Gaga Approach to Education

I tell of it here: how Lady Gaga influenced my spiritual practice for the upcoming year.

It has something to do with the surprising complexity of her music. (Frankly, I never paid attention to her, until she broke Amazon.)

What struck me about the Lady? Her influences. You can listen to her music and hear an over-the-top, rather naughty lyricist, or you can listen and hear the past: Rock, Classical, even Spirituals. She's paid attention to details. She may play the counter-cultural naughty girl, but she's got creative roots. And they're what make her music so fascinating. (Even if you don't catch it at first, because all you see is black leather and bleach.)

It occurred to me today that I take the Lady's approach to home education. I have taken my girls to the past and around the world, whether it's through history, architecture, food, science, or literature. They've developed roots through a complex array of details and experiences.

There was a time that this approach to education made me nervous. What if they missed something important that could be provided in a pre-packaged curriculum? What if all our uncharted reading and looking and touching and eating and listening wasn't enough?

By now, it is too late to be nervous. The core of their education has been provided. They are 12 and 14.

But I look at their writing. I listen to their improv music. I hear their opinions. And I realize it is okay. They have what they need to be creative, interesting people in this world. And, if all goes well, they won't break much. (Unless it's Amazon for a day. That would be all right with me. :)


Blue Bottles photo, taken at one of our favorite places: Kitchawan Farm.

Writing Randomly

I like to remember that Random Acts of Poetry doesn't need to follow a prompt. You can post random poetry, just because, and we like that.

In honor of randomness, here is one from my girl Sonia. She gave it to Sara for her birthday (along with the flowers pictured above)...


Over a yard with a view of the bell,
is a sky as blue as the forget-me-nots below,
with white clouds moving slowly on
the strings of a marionette...


Poem by Sonia, 11. Used with permission.

What to Do During Harry Potter

My Littlest finally made her way into Harry Potter. I figured it was about time, so we got the listening-CDs from the library.

She has always preferred listening to reading, and I don't make an issue of it. While she listens, she creates art. This is the garden that grew from her time with Harry. I love how it gives me a simple window into her spirit.





Garden, by Sonia, 11. Done in Quark XPress. Used with permission.

I Need a Simple Conversation Starter

I loved this brief article about Conversation Starters. And I still plan to buy the book it references. Seems to me it could be a good way to teach kids how to engage in their own attempts at the art of conversation.

In the meantime though, I decided I need a simple conversation starter. One that could make us laugh and think. So I've turned to TED talks.

It's only been a week, but my girls are already hooked. "Which TED talk are we going to listen to tonight?" they beam.

I leave the computer in the kitchen, turn the speakers towards the dining room, and it's like going back in time... to radio days. We listen, we laugh (the other night we cried).

And when it's all over, the conversation spills out non-stop. It's invigorating.

So far, one of our favorites was J. K. Rowling's discussion of the fringe benefits of failure. Frankly, I don't think any parental talk I could have given would have gone as far as that one graduation speech crafted for Harvard graduates. My Eldest sat wide-eyed, taking it all in.

Do you need a simple conversation starter too? An after-dinner TED might just be your answer.


(Note: some of the TED talks include very serious, potentially too-mature material. Watch first. My girls are 11 and 13, and I don't regret having listened to Rowling's talk with them, but you might feel differently about such things. :)

J.K. Rowling Speaks at Harvard Commencement from Harvard Magazine on Vimeo.

Can I Do You a Favor?

Once again my kids were crying over their math. I didn't feel much sympathy, though I'm not so keen on math myself. Just do it, was my frustrated answer.

But I've always felt that when kids get to this point, fussing and crying, they're not being rebellious. They're telling us something important. So I had to step back and admit the truth: if they could just do it, they probably wouldn't be crying.

So I did my kids a favor. I hired a math tutor.

In Chapter 5 of Henry Cloud's book Integrity: the Courage to Meet the Demands of Reality, he discusses how we can build trust through extending favor. It's the kind of favor that looks out for the other person's interests, not just our own. It is, says Cloud, grace.

"Leaders without grace," he asserts, "set [a] demand and do nothing to help people meet it." Like me, when my kids cried over their math and I said, Just do it.

There's nothing wrong with requiring the do it part. It's the just part we need to reconsider. As leaders, we would do well to drop the just and use these words instead: with, through, by.

My kids now do their math with a tutor. They do it by being with someone who loves math. Through the guidance of a person who has both math-patience and math-passion, they are more than meeting the standard. My Eldest will finish her course almost six months early this year and have time to do Logic and Physics math. My youngest admitted confidentially to the tutor, "I guess I really like math now."

If there's an area in your business or work life where people are "fussing and crying," maybe what they really need is a favor. Maybe you (or I) should just do it.


Chinese Boat photo, by J. Barkat.

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Being Nice is Not Enough

The Child Philosopher

It never ceases to amaze me what children have on their minds. Why do we think we have so much to teach them? Why don't we trust?

For me, home education has become, more than anything, a challenge to remember that children are not little pieces of clay we are supposed to mold. Or, if they are in some way, well they bring their own form inherent in the clay, and we would do well to let it inform the way we hold and shape.

Today I found this from Sonia. I didn't tell her to write it. I didn't ask her to pose big philosophical questions. She did it on her own...

The Beginning or the End

A question that can't be answered
by anyone, but can be answered
by everyone,
which is better, the beginning
or the end?

The beginning is a new baby
born, a new friend,
an end is when things
stop.

Which is better,
the beginning of a book
or the end?

The beginning is when you
are intrigued, when you know
it keeps on going,
the end is when you're satisfied
and slap your book down on
the table with a triumphant
BANG, or sit alone thinking
or cry.

Which is better, the beginning
or the end?
There can be a new beginning,
yet a new beginning is the end,
the end of the old beginning,
they're the same.

Which is better? Neither?


Poem by Sonia, 11. Ruby Falls underground photo, by L.L. Barkat.

Write from Your Life

I found this in the car (see below). It made me chuckle. Did it happen? I don't know. I'm thinking it's probably an amalgamation of experience and imagination. The red and yellow black-eyed Susans are in Tennessee. We gave them to my father's wife for her birthday. They are indeed supposed to be deer-proof, fuzzy leaves being a bit unappetizing.

As I experiment with fiction, I realize that my daughter's approach is one way to go. Write from your life. But feel free to make things happen that you haven't done yourself. Because, if you're unwilling to travel untrod ground, you risk holding your story captive. In that case, you'd just as well stick to non-fiction, if you can't stand the anxiety of following your characters around, letting them do what they want to do.

Anyhow, the paragraph I found in the car this morning, compliments of Sonia...

A moth flew around her head, then started to descend. She kicked at it, forgetting she had only slipped her sandal on. The sandal flew and landed upside down in her mother's new deer-proof (but apparently not shoe-proof) red and yellow black-eyed Susans.


Yellow Black-Eyed Susans photo, by L.L. Barkat. Fiction by Sonia, age 11.