Monday's Musing

Monday, April 21, 2014

This morning's coffee is Spicy Mayan Chocolate. Not so spicy, but very chocolate-y. Mr. A and I both like it. 


I've given myself until 8am to pitter-patter a little blog post out on my iPad. Please forgive if this ends abruptly. 

Settling in continues at our new home. I think we've made a good choice. 

Down the road Iives The Girl Child's very good friend. The Girl went with the friend's parents and fetched her from university on the weekend. Much catching up has happened and both The Girl and The Boy Child enjoyed dinner over there last night. 

The friend's mom is a high school English teacher and a previous guidance counsellor. She came over this weekend and gave me three giant boxes of her teaching materials. This lady is a very pleasant woman, but she had some fairly pointed questions about The Girl Child's academic progress and future plans. She had some 'words of advice' that were disguised as recounted conversations she'd had with The Girl. I know I'm feeling a bit sensitive lately over our homeschooling. It's mostly personalities and relationships stress, not academics. But my exchange with this lady left me feeling worse than I already do. 


I'm sure she meant well. But when Mrs. Friend is a high school English teacher and I am asked if I'd like to have 'some of Mrs. Friend's teaching materials' and Mrs. Friend's teaching materials turns out to be three dated boxes of elementary school classroom photocopies and unit studies and group activity guides, I'm a little put out. But like I said, I'm sure it's me being over sensitive about things right now and reading more into it. Still, what I'm to do with 25 copies of a dinosaur colouring page, I'm not sure. 


She did seem a little surprised when I mentioned that if I couldn't use any of the materials, I'd pass them along to other homeschoolers in my network. She seems to think I would just keep them. I guess I'm feeling upset about what her actions say about her view of my homeschooling. Especially when she said her other option for 'getting rid' of these things was to take it to the burn pile. So did she give me 3 boxes of garbage? If it's garbage, why is that suitable teaching material for my high-school aged children? Perhaps she just figured since I have more room in my new home, I'd like extra teaching materials?


Those three boxes do kind of blend in to the rest of the stuff I have to find homes for....

I'm off to start the day and do more unpacking, sorting and settling in. I'm sure I'll have lots of time to mull this over...

Mrs. A. 


1 comments:

moominmamma April 23, 2014 at 1:27 AM  

Well that's just bizarre. The level of the materials, I mean. I've had retired teachers give me some of their teaching materials on the assumption that they're passing along the holy grail of education or something I'll feel equally reverent about receiving. But while the things I've received have often missed the mark a bit in terms of interest and level, and have usually been pretty lame and uninspiring, I too would be quite put out at receiving basic elementary materials for a teenager. Truly weird. Sounds like you handled it pretty diplomatically -- more so than many people would have.



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