Curriculum Resource: Discovering Music with Carol Reynolds

Today my son and I broke out some new curriculum I bought recently for this academic year.  It is a 13-hour DVD course entitled Discovering Music:  300 Years of Interaction in Western Music, Arts, History, and Culture.  It is a middle school/high school level course that relates music history to the political, religious, scientific, artistic, technological, and other cultural developments that shaped the composers and musicians of each succeeding era.

This is exactly how I like to study subjects.  I don't believe in examining each discipline in isolation; rather, I think you can understand them best when you cover them in relation to the other developments going on at the same time that effected them.  However, music history is one of my personal weaker points--I can do a much better job explaining literature and art, for example, in terms of what was going on in other realms at that historical period than I can do with music.  So I am glad to have this opportunity to fill in some of my ignorance as I take this course along with my son.

We did the first unit, which I think is a lot more "talky" and theoretical than the bulk of the course, because it is laying the foundations and explaining why we should study history via music and study music via history, etc.  But my son enjoyed it enough that he wanted to move onto the second unit right away.  This one also was setting up the big picture, rather than getting into the music itself too much, but we both learned quite a bit and are looking forward to the next session.

The course was developed by, and features, Dr. Carol Reynolds, an enthusiastic and experienced music history educator from Southern Methodist University in Dallas, TX.  She does a good job as a lively but easy to follow narrator of the course material, as well as playing a grand organ herself to demonstrate a piece of music written by Martin Luther (I never knew he wrote music along with all the other stuff he was up to in revolutionizing European Christianity).

This class is also perfect for us because it begins in the 15th century, but really focuses on Western history from the early 1600s to World War 1.  We have already studied World history up to that date, so I'm hoping we will have at least touched on all the major political, scientific, and large artistic movements covered in the DVDs.  That will allow him to concentrate on the new information about the music and hang that onto what we have already covered, as well as helping him get a better understanding of that history.

The curriculum isn't cheap, but you get a lot for it.  In addition to eight DVDs that contain over 13 hours of instruction, you receive a 236 page workbook and three professional quality CDs that contain the works discussed in the course to listen to on their own.  

We've only gotten started, but I'm impressed with the quality of the materials we've looked at so far.  My son is enjoying it, and I'm already learning stuff I never knew....so what else could you ask for from a curriculum?  But I'll give a more informed review of the curriculum in a future blog post once we have completed more of it.

Movie Review: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2

My husband and I just got back from watching what is probably the movie of the year, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2.  Like watching Toy Story 3 last summer, it was definitely a bittersweet experience.  Who wants the wonderful world of Harry Potter books and movies to come to an end?  But I have to say, if it has to end, I think they did an excellent job putting the series to rest with this movie.
(Note:  If, by some chance, you haven't read the book and don't want to know any spoilers, then stop reading here.  And I wouldn't advise trying to see the movie without reading the books, or at least seeing all the previous movies; I think you would be completely lost if you came in blind for this one.)

As always, the movies leave out so much about the nuances and the details and the relationships, and like all the movie before it, there were scenes from the book that I was really disappointed not to see in the film.  But the two medias are different, and we have to embrace them for their strengths, rather than complain about their weaknesses.  There were scenes that presented themselves much more dramatically on the screen than I had ever imagined when reading the book, such as the scenes that showed Hogwarts students being marched in en mass that was chillingly reminiscent of Nazism.

But I think this movie does a great job ending the series because it has that good old archetypal feel of inspiring heroes rising to the call and a pretty black and white good triumphing over evil.  By separating the last book into two movies, this last film shows everyone at their best.  Gone are the jealousies and petty behaviors that our three main protagonists exhibited at times in Deathly Hallow, Part 1(and in the previous books); they are brave and true and clever throughout this movie.  And even the bad guys are kind of at their best this time, gathering for a straight-out test of their strengths rather than the political maneuvering or the simpering, sneaky nastiness shown in the earlier films by characters such as Delores Umbridge or Wormtail.

But for me, I think this movie really works because after it all--after all the years of magic and fantastical creatures and flying sports and all the other imaginative flourishes J.K. Rowling has packed into her work--this movie really centers on the two things that make the Harry Potter books so outstanding:  story and characters.  The biggest scenes are not the one with CG effects or new imaginative animals (in fact, the ones that appear, such as giants and dragons and giant spiders and Cornish pixies have all been seen before), but the ones that complete the stories of all these people we've come to love over the years.  FINALLY, we get to hear Snape's story.  FINALLY, we discover Dumbledore's grand plan for Harry.  FINALLY, the obvious couple gets together.  FINALLY, the disrespected underdog has his big hero moment.  FINALLY... lots and lots of plot lines get tied together in a way that brings us to a very satisfied place about these characters that have been developing in our heads and in our hearts for over a decade.

And I have to say, I really like this movie because I can also see it as the Triumph of the Mothers.  When Hogwarts is preparing for attack, it isn't the Aurors or active leaders of the Order of the Phoenix (who have pretty much been men the whole way along, let's face it) who take charge, it is the "in loco parentis" grandmotherly-looking Minerva McGonagall.  It isn't the handsome and talented Sirius Black who defeats the horrible Bellatrix Lestrange, it is the frumpy, domestic, and usually sidelined Molly Weasley who battles Bellatrix to the death when she threatens Molly's only daughter.  And it is Narcissa Malfoy who helps set up Harry's surprising resurrection to his supporters at Hogwarts when she betrays Voldemort to ensure the protection of her son.

So this movie, like the book on which it is based, offers a lot of life lessons about love and friendship and loyalty and the things that are worth fighting for.  But I think it also offers one other key bit of advice:  Don't Mess with the Mamas!

Curriculum Resource: Where Does Pi Come From?

This evening I attended an absolutely fantastic webinar that was part of the Math 2.0 series that my friend Maria of Natural Math runs.  If you have a high school student (or even a middle schooler) taking Geometry, you and your child should check out the recording of this hour-plus educational lesson.

The session was called "Pi in July," and featured two mathematicians:  David Chandler, a mathematician who teaches at a California public charter school that supports homeschooling families and offers supplemental instruction to major high school math textbooks at Math Without Borders ; and Allison Krasnow, a mathematics teacher at Willard Middle School in Berkeley, CA.  The two have been working together to develop ways to explain to students where the number Pi actually comes from.

Chandler began by explaining, using geometry and especially the Pythagorean Theorem, how the approximation of the number Pi was originally derived by Archimedes in ancient Greece.   He started with a simple graphic that demonstrates why Pi is between 3 and 4, and not 10 or 7 or some other random number.  Krasnow then took his idea and modeled it in GeoGebra, a free open source software for creating geometric figures.   Finally, Chandler worked through the process that Archimedes used to figure out this key mathematical number--except that he used a spreadsheet to crunch the numbers up to millions of points.

I'm not doing the talk justice, but it really is a brilliant process.  My 12 year old son participated and was able to follow everything step by step, and really got the concept of why Pi is what it is.  I think that is so much better than when I learned geometry, when I was just given the value of Pi to plug into formulas with no idea where it came from or why I should believe it.

For more information on the webinar and the presenters, or to access the recording of this session, see the Pi in July page in Math 2.0.

Is American Education Too Competitive?

Is the American educational system too focused on competition? I would say "yes," not that anybody really cares what I think. But this month, I am in good company, as that is the position that Deborah Stipek, Dean of the Stanford School of Education, takes in an editorial in this month's Science magazine.

Stipek argues that the burden to be on top among higher-achieving American high school students leaves them anxious and physically exhausted, makes them prone to cheat, and robs them of the intrinsic beauty and interest of the subject and the joy of learning. The more they fill their transcripts with high test scores, exemplary GPAs, academic honors, and mountains of extracurricular activities, the emptier their actual experience of education is. As Stipek said in a telephone call to reporters, "For the most part, high school has become for many of our students not preparation for life or college but preparation for the college application."

Stipek also believes that the impetus for change must come from the schools--high schools and colleges--rather than from the students. She urges high schools to reduce this pressure by such steps as:
linking subject matter to students' lives and interests
focusing more on active student involvement in innovative solutions, problem solving, and hands-on experiments and activities and less on getting the right answer on a standardized exam;
giving students multiple opportunities to achieve higher grades (by allowing papers to be rewritten or tests to be retaken, for example)
publicizing and pushing a wider number and variety of high-quality educational options rather than merely worshiping at the alter of the top 10 or 20 elite institutions
priding itself on how well it matches all its students to the postsecondary education best to each individual, rather than on the number that were accepted by "name" universities
focusing and celebrating learning at whatever level, rather than test scores
She also states that colleges must do their part as well, and to encourage a student body that is passionately interested in the educational offerings at that school over having a high average SAT or GPA score.

Entrepreneurship in Education

I have been thinking about entrepreneurship a lot lately.  I think this is mainly due to three educational initiatives I'm currently working on:  (1) a summer entrepreneurship camp targeting youth at risk; (2) a summer camp/potential franchise operation to create educational programs for students with attention deficit disorder/ADHD; and (3) an ambitious middle school coop for the next year that will require substantial fundraising and entrepreneurship to raise the money to create some significant community awareness of the topic of the coop (which happens to be preserving our ocean resources).

It turns out that Chris Lehmann has been thinking a lot about this topic as well.  Lehmann is doing so because he is the principal of the Science Leadership Academy in Philadelphia, PA.  The Science Leadership Academy is a partnership high school between the public schools in Philly and the Franklin Institute.  Between what I know about the museum, which I did visit once, and what I read on the school website and on Lehmann's often-thoughtful blog....well, if you have to go to school, this looks like a pretty cool school to go to.

In the opening paragraph to his blog post on Entrepreneurship, I think the way Lehmann defines entrepreneurship is brilliant, especially as it relates to education:

I've been thinking a lot lately about entrepreneurship. People tend to immediately assume that means business, but I don't. Entrepreneurship is part of SLA's mission statement. But it's the part that oftentimes is - I think - hardest to see if you don't know what you're looking for. In the end, its about owning your ideas and doing interesting things with them. And I don't mean "owning" in some sort of proprietary non-sharing sort of way because collaboration is a huge piece of entrepreneurship. I mean owning your ideas in such a way that conveys that your ideas have power and have meaning and have use. Ken Robinson in one of his talks defines creativity as, "having original ideas of value." That's not a bad place to start. Entrepreneurship suggests that when you do something with those ideas.

Having important ideas and doing something interesting with them--that is certainly the basis of all three projects I mentioned above.  But, really, shouldn't that be what all of our educational endeavors should be leading students to do?  To think great thoughts and then to take action on those thoughts in a meaningful way--what a great way to think about the ultimate goal of our interactions with students.

So crystalizing that idea for me is a great gift from Mr. Lehmann's post (which you can read in its entirety here). But another gift was a TED video suggested by one of his commenters on the topic of teaching students to be entrepreneur. This was PERFECT for me, not only because it deals directly with what I'm doing in the entrepreneur camp and the ocean project, but because it makes the link between entrepreneurs and ADHD, which the presenter calls "the CEO's disease." Plus, at the end, there is a 2 minute animation that was so inspiring that it had me in tears. Here is that TED talk by Cameron Herold:

I'm just so grateful for the insight provided by Mr. Lehmann and Mr. Herold that I wanted to pass it on to all my readers.  I think it is a critically important concept that we need to nurture more in our educational endeavors, both inside and outside of school.

UPDATE: I decided to add the entrepreneurship video on its own, because I think it can be a useful educational resource by itself.

How to Get Accepted into Highly Selective Colleges

Last month my homeschool support group had a workshop on Selective College Admissions by Richard Bowden, the executive director of the Summer Science Program (SSP). The SSP is a college residential summer enrichment program for gifted high school students to engage in top-level scientific research. Thus, not only does Bowden lead a selection process that is similar to those of the top colleges (they typically receive applications from only the very top high school students, and accept only 13% of those), most of the SSP students go on to the most selective colleges (in 2010, 80% of the 68 SSP students enrolled in either Ivy League colleges or in Stanford, MIT, or Caltech).

The following are some highlights from Bowden’s comments:

Why Apply to the Most Selective Colleges?

Here are what Bowden says are good reasons to apply to such schools:

• You have a particular passion for that college and/or its programs
• These colleges have large endowments, and so can be more generous with financial aid
• The student body is made up of high achieving students, so you will be going to college surrounded by other smart, motivated, hard-working students
• The alumni network can be valuable
• Why not? Bowden suggests that if you are interested and think you have at least a shot, you might as well apply to one or two of those schools and see what happens

Bad reasons to apply to these colleges are:

• You are applying for the status of these types of colleges, not because you are really motivated to be challenged at that level
• Your parent(s) went to that college
• Your parent(s) want you to go that college

Some General Advice about Applying to College

• The process should be driven primarily by the student, NOT the parents
• Bowden recommends the Princeton Review’s Cracking College Admissions as an excellent resource for information on applying to college.
• Start early. For example, Cracking College Admissions has guidelines for what you should be doing for each year in high school (that is, starting in 9th grade).
• Don’t apply to 20 different colleges. It is expensive, time consuming, and the colleges can see that you have applied to many colleges. Applying to lots of different colleges leads the colleges to believe that you don’t really know what you want and are just applying all over, rather than having figured out what colleges are a good fit.
• Try to see things from the perspective of the college admissions staff. You are likely to be more successful if you are coming from what the college needs/wants, rather than from what you need/want.
• Don’t put too much pressure on yourself about getting into a highly selective college. You don’t need to go to an expensive, big name college to get an excellent education.
• Don’t take it personally. If you receive a rejection letter, remember that the college is evaluating your application, not you. There is a difference, because your complex and rich personality can never be reduced to even the most extensive college application.
• Realize that because of the vast numbers of applications involved, for many students it is largely a matter of luck whether you did or did not get in.

So What Do These Highly Selective Colleges Want Anyway?

Bowden reminded us that each college admissions staff person at top colleges typically reads and considers over 1,000 applications. What is going to make that person read your application and say “Wow! I want this student to come here!”? According to Bowden, there are basically two things these colleges want to see for a successful application.

The number one thing is Excellence. As Bowden put it, these colleges are looking for students who have “academically plastered the ceiling.” That is, they have taken advantage of every academic possibility, gotten straight A’s (or close to it), and made it look easy. They have taken as many advanced classes as possible (for example, calculus is practically a requirement to get into somewhere like MIT or Caltech), and still have time and energy left over for sports, community service, and other extracurricular activities.

Bowden said that colleges continue to stress that test scores, such as the SAT or ACT, are not the biggest factor, but don’t kid yourself--the colleges do look at them and they are important in the overall selection process. Test scores are particularly important in the case of applications from homeschoolers, because colleges are looking for some external evaluations of the students. This can include SAT/ACT scores, AP or SAT subject matter tests, grades in classes taken at community colleges or other outside educational providers, etc.

On the other hand, Bowden states that the colleges do take into consideration the life circumstances of the applicants when considering their performance. Students who come from a more challenging background--for example, those born into a non-English speaking family or one with no college graduates, or someone whose socio-economic level is such that they had to work long hours to help support the family--can have a less perfect GPA or test score. However, students from well-to-do and educated families who have attended private schools all their lives had better maintain a pretty-close-to-the-top level of academic performance.

But outstanding academic performance is not enough for these colleges. The second thing the college is looking for is something about you that is Extraordinary. Your application must demonstrate there is something about you that is deep, valuable, and unique--something that you, and you alone, will bring to their freshman student mix. Colleges look for students who have discovered their passion and have explored and committed to that passion in a meaningful way. Also, colleges like signs that you have grappled with and overcome adversity in some way. It doesn’t have to be a socio-economic and/or poor family background factor, although those can be strong ones. It can also be dealing with health or learning issues, challenging yourself to your limits in some way (academically, physically, psychologically, etc.), or mastering the subject or activity that DIDN’T come easily to you. Ideally, this kind of thing will be reflected not only in your information about school and extracurricular activities, but also in the personal essay you write for your application.

For those of us homeschooling, Bowden said that this is an area in which our kids could have an advantage. The flexibility of the homeschool schedule opens up opportunities for our students to be involved in internships or important projects, etc., in a way that students who are in school all day just can’t do. So homeschooling teens should make sure to take advantage of that to take on something personally meaningful and significant to them that will help their application stand out!

Finally, Bowden pointed out that this overcoming obstacles and/or significant accomplishment has to be something “real” for the student. The idea is not just to have something that looks good to colleges. The real value of taking on a challenge and overcoming it is that students grow and become better, more mature people. The fact that they are better people makes the college want them, not the project per se. And even if they don’t get into a top tier college, they still have created value for themselves through their personal growth. This is an area, Bowden warns, in which parents can either help or hinder their students. It is great when parents support their children in taking on meaningful and calculated risks. Some parents, however, try to protect their children from these kinds of things--which can be scary and painful to go through--and thus rob them of an opportunity to grow.

What About Letters of Recommendation?

Another component of the application packet are letters of recommendations from an adult outside the family who knows the student well. Here, Bowden had a quote that was probably my favorite line of the evening. When talking about these letters, Bowden stated, “They can’t be just good. They can’t even be glowing. They have to be INCANDESCENT.” So pick the people who write your letters of recommendations carefully. Bowden suggests that you ask them if they can write you a strong recommendation, and give them a way to decline if the letter is not going to be... incandescent. Also, make sure to include letters from different perspective--that is, not ALL academic references or ALL extra-curricular references.

There were many other little tidbits and pieces of advice given over the 90 minute workshop, but those were the major categories we covered. It was really a wonderful session, because it is so helpful to hear this information from an insiders perspective. I found it so valuable that I asked Bowden’s permission to post a synopsis of his comments on the web for others to read as well, which he graciously provided.

Many thanks to Mr. Bowden for sharing his expertise with us all!

Curriculum Resource: The Islam Project

We are beginning our study of the religion of Islam, and I ran across what looks like a wonderful educational resource for middle school and high school students.  There are lesson plans and discussion guides for educating tweens and teens about Islam developed by The Islam Project.  

The goal of The Islam Project is to produce multimedia materials and associated lessons to help American youth explore the great diversity among the vast numbers of Muslims around the world (currently estimated to comprise almost a quarter of the Earth's population).  In the wake of the attacks on 9/11, they produced two PBS series:  Muhammad:  Legacy of a Prophet and Muslims, which displays the variety in the way that Muslims around the world practice their faith.

Their latest project is a video program called American Muslim Teens Talk.  In this half hour video, nine American Muslim teenagers discuss the issues common to all teenagers--fitting in, dating, having fun, dealing with parents--and the impact that practicing Islam has for them in these areas.  They also discuss negative stereotypes around being Muslim, as well as demonstrating the difference between teenagers raised under Islam.  

I haven't seen it yet, but it looks like a terrific resource to help this age group understand more about their Muslim peers and to consider the impact of religious stereotypes in general.