SONORAN DESERT HOMESCHOOLERS
Tucson, Arizona
January 2001 Newsletter
MISSION STATEMENT
Sonoran Desert Homeschoolers is an open, not-for-profit home education network, providing social and creative outlets for homeschooling families. We are not devoted to any one homeschooling approach, political platform, religious outlook, or philosophical ideal. Our homeschooling community supports all families, regardless of their personal lifestyle or educational choices in the area of home education. Our motto is "hozho," a Navajo word meaning "harmony" or "walking in beauty or friendship."
**PLEASE NOTE** Park meetings begin at 12:00 noon **
JANUARY 2001 CALENDAR (check below for related articles)
Tuesday, Jan. 9
Early And Middle Readers Groups
Early And Middle Readers GroupsThursday, Jan. 11 Parents' Coffee Night;
Deadline To Sign Up For Marine Discovery Program
Tuesday, Jan. 16 Informal Spelling Bee;
Informal Spelling Bee; Deadline For All February Newsletter Articles
Thursday, Jan. 184-H Bug Club
4-H Bug ClubTuesday, Jan. 23 Early And Middle Readers Groups
Early And Middle Readers GroupsThursday, Jan. 25Parents' Meeting
Parents' MeetingWednesday, Jan. 31 Crafty Ladies;
Homeschooling Info Night at Woods Library, N 1st Ave, 7-8:55PM.
ARTICLES
MARINE DISCOVERY PROGRAM
The UA Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology offers a hands-on program for students in grades 3-8, and SDH is scheduled to participate!
The kids will work with live marine animals and teaching specimens as well as being exposed to living and preserved organisms found in the Gulf of California. Students will participate in four different lab stations each lasting approximately 30 minutes. The goals of the program are to encourage students to "think like scientists" while they are being introduced to the conservation and biology of the marine environment, especially the Gulf of California, Tucson's closest ocean.
Our workshop date is Wednesday, April 4, from 9 AM - 12 noon. The cost is only $2.50 per child (!), but space is limited to 32 participants. If your child would like to attend the Marine Discovery Program, see or call Michelle Y. THE REGISTRATION DEADLINE IS THURSDAY, JANUARY 11 and must be paid at that time.
HOMESCHOOLING INFO NIGHTS
Because we just can't get enough of this outreach stuff, we have scheduled another Info Night for parents in the community who may be curious about what it takes to "do" homeschooling. This one is scheduled for Wednesday,January 31, at 7:00 PM at the Woods Library (on 1st Avenue, south of Prince). See Karen M. if you'd like more details.
PROJECT REPORT CLUB
Project Report Club will meet under the ramada the first Tuesday of every month (except January, since there is no formal park meeting that day) immediately following announcements. Any child may present a topic they have been studying, and presentations may include pictures, experiments, or demonstrations. This is a great chance for your child to practice speaking in front of a group. Questions? Call Alice G.
CRAFTY LADIES
Meet to sip, talk about the travails of homeschooling and parenting, and catch up on projects. If you have a project you just can't get to, or you just need time to get away and recoup, please join us the last Wednesday of the month at 7 PM at COFFEE ETC on Oracle until the evening weather warms up. Please contact Sybelle V. for more information.
EASTSIDE PARENTS COFFEE NITE
Who: Everyone welcome!
What: A leisurely chat over coffee or tea. Discussion is very informal.
When: Thursday, January 11 at 7:30 PM.
Where: Borders Cafe, Park Mall on Broadway
Why: Why not?
EARLY READERS GROUP
If your child has not started to read on his/her own, then we welcome you to join us for story time. We have rotated the stories by families, each choosing one of their favorites or a seasonal choice. It has also been an option to follow up with some sort of craft, drawing, snack, or activity, depending on the story. We meet 45 minutes before our park starting time.
See Mary M. if you have any questions.
MIDDLE READING GROUP
The first meeting of the new year will be on January 9th at 11:30 at the park. Please bring a poem (or two or three) that you would like to read aloud to the group. It can be something you wrote yourself or something someone else wrote. It can be as short as you want but please make sure it takes no longer than 3 minutes to read. ALSO, please bring 10 xerox copies of the poem (or poems) so that everyone in the group can read along with you and take home with them. That way we all end up with a collection of new poems.
The second meeting of the middle reading club will be at 11:30 on January 23rd. The reading selection for that meeting will be announced at the general park meeting on the 9th.
Any questions, call Brian M.
SPELLING BEE
Jaron enjoyed participating in December's citywide spelling bee so much that he is organizing informal spelling bees for SDH. They will be held on the 3rd Tuesday of each month under the ramada, at 11:30 AM. This month's bee will be on January 16. All ages are welcome! It will probably not be very big at first, but hopefully it will grow. We will do our best to make it fun for everybody!
Questions? Please talk with Jaron or Debbie at the park, or email them at xxxxx@xxx.
PARENTS' MEETING
An evening of discussion, coffee, and snacks is scheduled for 7:00 PM on January 25 at Danetta's house. (Danetta will have maps to her house at the park for those who need directions.) Please come with ideas to share about how Sonoran Desert Homeschoolers can best meet your family's
homeschooling objectives. Specifically, we are looking for your thoughts about three areas:
Decisions
· What decisions need to be made by the group?
· In terms of decisions, are there differences between
individually-arranged events and group-sponsored events?
· How are these decisions made?
· Is electronic polling a valid decision making method for the group,
and how does that affect members who do not utilize the Internet?
Mission
· What are the goals of Sonoran Desert Homeschoolers?
· What kind of group do the members want - social, educational,
recreational, informational?
Money
· How do we best use the membership fees to fulfill the group's
objectives?
The level of participation in the November polling was incredible. Many people composed thoughtful responses to the question of whether SDH should pay for a DJ at the party in November. That level of active interest needs to be encouraged. Over the next month, please take some time to consider these questions, and then attend the January 25 meeting ready for some good discussions.
Any questions, comments, rants, jokes? Please talk with Debbie at the park, or e-mail her at xxxxx@xxx. The more we work to build and strengthen the group, the more rewarding membership in SDH will become, and that will benefit everyone.
4-H BUG CLUB
The Creepy Crawly 4-H Bug Club is up and running once again this year. Children under 8 will be meeting with Alissa, and children 8 and older will be meeting with Debbie and Alayna. We will combine all ages for the field trips.
The next meeting for the 8+ children will meet again the third Thursday in January (the 18th) from 5:00 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. We will have a presentation and begin discussion for the Pima County Fair. Enrollment forms are available by contacting Alayna at 615-0338 or Debbie at 326-1984.
QUOTE OF THE MONTH
A DIFFERENT EDUCATION by Jeffrey S. Cramer (copyright 2000)
"My wife and I knew that the purpose of sending our own children to
school was, first and foremost, for them to received a good education; yet, every mainstream and not-so-mainstream publication has carried articles about the failures of the public school system. Just look at reading skills alone: a 1990 study released by then Secretary of Education Lauro Cavazos reported that 42% of all thirteen year olds lacked reading skills at what is considered, by those who consider such things, the appropriate level and that 58% of seventeen year old were not reading at their appraise age level. Seven years later, in 1997, Secretary of Education Richard W. Riley stated, "Forty percent of our children are not reading as well as they should by the end of the third grade."(1) The following year, in the Fifth Annual State of American Education Address, Riley relegated this failure rate to the euphemism, "Reading scores are not where we want them."(2)
If parents are shown these facts and still send their children into the school, one has to at least question their purpose. If your auto mechanic has a 40% failure rate, would you bring your car to him? If a third of your attorney's client's go to jail, would you want her defending you? If your pediatrician loses a quarter of his patients, would you still put your children in his care? Then why, if education is the purpose of schools and the schools are shown to be failing at such rates, do parents continue to send their children there? This is a question I can only ask. Or perhaps the better, although more frightening, question is: What is an acceptable failure rate where the welfare of our children is concerned?"
Notes
(1) http://www.ed.gov/Speeches/02-1997/StateofED.html
(2) http://www.ed.gov/Speeches/980217.html
This article in its entirety can be found in the Autumn 2000 issue of
Paths of Learning. Many thanks to Jeff for granting us permission to
excerpt it here.
FYI...
URGENT GOOD NEWS!
The Arizona Home Education Scholarship Program is up and operating. This summer, AFHE formed a committee of business professionals to set up criteria and a process for administering scholarships to this year's Arizona home school seniors. There are critical dates that the applicants must meet. For program information and applications, go to http://www.afhe.org.
You can also find information and an application there for this year's Graduate Recognition Night.
ALFIE KOHN SPEAKING AT LA PALOMA
Have we actually lowered our standards by raising the bar? Do standardized tests interfere with meaningful learning? Which children suffer most from "back to basics" education? Alfie Kohn, recently described by Time magazine as "perhaps the country's most outspoken critic of education's fixation on grades and test scores," will address these and other questions at the Westin Las Paloma Hotel, Canyon Room III, on Thursday, January 18, from 4-6 PM. Admission is free, but seating is limited. RSVP by calling 617-6027.
LEADER'S MEETING IN PHOENIX
Arizona Families for Home Education (AFHE) will present their annual statewide homeschooling leadership conference on January 20, 2001. Scheduled speakers include Tom Lewis, AFHE President; Lisa Keegan, State Superintendent of Public Instruction; Mary Gifford from the Goldwater Institute; and Darren Jones from the Home School Legal Defense Association. There will also be a discussion about the impact of the charter school movement on home education. Refreshments and lunch will be provided.
The conference is held in the Phoenix area and runs from 8:30 AM - 3:30 PM. I (Debbie G.) will be attending and am looking for one or two people from SDH to join me in representing our homeschooling group. If you are interested in spending a Saturday learning about the current state of homeschooling both locally and nationally, please talk with me at the park or email me at xxxxx@xxx.
The agenda:
8:30 AM - 9:00 AM Registration
9:00 AM - 9:50 AM Tom Lewis President of AFHE - Legislative update
10:00 AM - 10:50 AM Lisa Keegan - The Future of Educational Choice
Given The New Legislature
11:00 AM - 11:50 AM Mary Gifford -Goldwater Institute - Educational
Choice Ten Years Out
2:00 AM - 1:30 PM Lunch - Highlights of convention and graduation 2001
1:30 PM - 2:20 PM Darren Jones - Attorney - Home School Legal Defense
Association - National & State Issues Affecting Home Education
2:30 PM - 3:30 PM Charter School Impacts on Home Schooling
DO NOT ASK MICHELLE ANY QUESTIONS ABOUT THIS ARTICLE! (She can't
answer
them.)
UPDATED SDH ROSTERS
There are a lot of new families to SDH since the last roster was printed on September 25. An updated roster will be available by January 30. Please send me (Eileen D.) your corrections by January 26. Any new families who have paid their dues to Carol T. by January 26 will also be included in the January 30 roster.
For those of you that have e-mail and would like to view and print updated SDH rosters monthly (we have lots of new members each month as well as changes), I will make the SDH roster available via e-mail in Adobe Acrobat format. The Adobe Acrobat Reader is free, and freely distributable,software that lets you view and print Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF) files. These .PDF files are used all over the web or via e-mail to distribute e-books and many other documents for on screen viewing and in a printer friendly format.
The Adobe Acrobat reader is available free at this link:
If you don't want to use Adobe Acrobat, you can continue to receive the printed roster a couple of times a year.
Also for e-mail people, if you are interested in a formatted and printer friendly version of the newsletter, I will also include the monthly SDH newsletter, starting with this one (attached), in Adobe Acrobat as well. Again, if you don't want to use it, you can continue to view the newsletter in an e-mail message as always. If you have any questions, please let me know.
STORYTIME FOR BIG KIDS
If you think your children would be interested in attending a weekly or monthly Library Storytime for older children (like the Reader's Storytime at Kirk-Bear Canyon Library) on the west side of town, *please* contact ASAP Nanini's Children's Librarian, Julie Hagood at 791-4626 or e-mail at jhagood1@ci.tucson.az.us. Let her know that you are a homeschooler and that you would be interested in attending a story time for older children during the day. She said that Nanini library is getting a new branch manager in January and that they would review feedback on story times. Several of us have asked before but have been told they couldn't do it and now she seems more open, so let her know what you think.
NUMBERS, NUMBERS AND MORE NUMBERS
The statistics from the Pima County School Superintendent's office show that as of October 25, 2000, there were 3,117 children from ages 6 to 16 registered as homeschoolers in Pima County. There were 5,502 registered in private schools. On a district basis, there are 1,589 homeschool children in TUSD, 406 in Amphi, 170 in Sunnyside, 71 in Tanque Verde, 66 in Catalina Foothills and 146 in Vail plus other districts I didn't list.
According to Patsy MacKenzie in the Superintendent's office, these statistics are not always accurate since families don't always fill out the forms to let the Superintendent's office know if they change from homeschooling to private or public schools. The report I (Eileen) have breaks down by school district and age so if you are interested in looking at it, let me know.
FYI, there were 84,082 children enrolled in grades 1 through 8 in Pima County public schools as of October of *last year*. They don't have current public school enrollment statistics available yet.
KID STUFF
THE PRINCE AND THE WITCH by Danielle Tanner, 8
In a palace lived a king, queen and prince. They went to a cave and saw a bat and out of the mist came a witch and they ran as fast as they could!
They found a princess and she said her name was Blue Eyes. "Can you help me?"
"Yes!" said John the prince. "What do you want us to do?"
"Kill the dragon!"
"Where is the dragon"
"Over the Wall!" the princess replied.
"O.K." said the prince
And the queen said, "Do not go over there." But he went with his sword. He came to the dragon and the dragon asked him, "What are you doing?"
"I am trying to kill you!"
"Well boy, if you do that I will try to kill you!"
"Oops!" he said, and he killed the dragon. But he got a golden egg. It was a wishing egg.
Now that witch wanted that egg and she told a bird-a-deer-bat-a. So the bird-a-deer-bat-a came to the prince. "Can I have the egg?" asked the creature.
"No!" said the prince, and he knew the thing was a bad guy so he got his sword just in case and put the thing in the cage. The witch was very mad and said, "I will get you, you just see!" The witch came to the prince and they looked at each other and they tried to fight and he won. And he married the princess and they loved each other all their lives.
THE END
INTERNET INFO
Neat short beginners course in architecture using Legos, for ages 6 and
EDITOR'S FOOTNOTE
"I always strive to have the newsletter to you by the first of the month,barring any catastrophes in my life or Eileen's." Yeah, right. Does Christmas, Hanukkah, a birthday, an anniversary, and multiple house guests all in the same week count as a catastrophe? Then we moved furniture, planted a tree and spread 11 tons of gravel, too.
Many apologies for the late arrival of this issue, but honestly, this is the best I could do without self-medicating. I hope you all were more successful at having a peaceful, relaxing holiday.
Don't forget to send me your articles for the February newsletter by TUESDAY, JANUARY 16.
See you soon!
Michelle
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TO JOIN SDH, PLEASE SUBMIT YOUR $10 DUES ($5 after January 1)
TO CAROL T., COMPLETE THIS FORM FOR THE SDH ROSTER AND
RETURN TO EILEEN D.
Parents' Name(s) ___________________________________________
Address ____________________________________________________
City, State, Zip ___________________________________________
Phone Number _______________________________________________
E-mail Address _____________________________________________
Child Name(s) and Birthdate(s)(MM/YY)_______________________
____________________________________________________________
