Pruning

I’m not a gardener. I love seeing green things grow, but I’ve never had the knack for keeping them going. As I understand it, though, there are some plants that require the gardener to cut them back now and then to encourage more growth. Basically, you need to cut away the wimpy, unhealthy branches and the dead flowers so that all of the plant’s resources can be channeled toward supporting the healthier portions of the plant.

Well, we’ve been doing a little cutting back around here, too, especially for Moonheart. We had planned our usual very ambitious schedule for her this year, and I anticipated the usual amount of fumbling and flailing until we found a routine that worked for her. She goes through something similar in the first few weeks of most academic years, so it took me a while to see that there were certain subjects and materials this time around that just were just not going to work at all: things that required pruning.

Eventually, though, we got out the shears and went to work. For those who are keeping track, here’s what we decided to do.

1. She dropped German and (at least for now) Latin. She had gotten to a point in both languages at which she really needed access to and interaction with a teacher who knows more than she does, and that is not me. She already had two solid years of Latin, which is more than more people ever get and which has provided her with a wonderful base in vocabulary and grammar. We decided it was enough. German, which she had initially chosen to start studying because it was fun, had become torture.
   
2. She also dropped the distance learning statistics course. We had opted to try it as a way of giving her a little break from the traditional math sequence, but she found it boring to the point of tears.
   
3. Because she wants to make sure to have two years of verifiable, document-able foreign language on her transcript, she is starting an online Spanish 1 class. I suspect that, with two years of Latin and a year of conversational Spanish already under her belt, this will come pretty easily to her. And the plus is that I studied enough Spanish in high school and college that I may actually be able to be helpful.
   
4. She has decided to go ahead and start the online Precalculus class she was planning to put off until next year. We were afraid that her math skills would go stale if she didn’t keep moving forward. So, next year she will either go ahead with Calculus or just take a year off before resuming math at a college level.

Obviously, because she is starting these two classes so late into the year, she will need to continue working into the summer to finish them. However, by dropping three subjects and replacing only two and by substituting a first year foreign language for the second and third years of two others, I think we will greatly reduce her workload and stress level. This should allow her to concentrate much more efficiently and happily (and to get a lot more sleep!).

I guess, following my gardening metaphor through to its natural conclusion, we could consider these new classes to be seedlings?

Another source of stress has been that she fell quite far behind the required pace in Microeconomics while she was trying to juggle the previous workload. She had earned stellar grades on everything she had turned in, but was in danger of being dropped from the course because she was so far behind. We made the decision to put off having her start the two new classes by an additional week and a half so that she could devote lots of extra time and attention to catching up as much as possible in that one class. She made a deal with her instructor that I, frankly, feared was going to be more than she could manage. However, she came through like a trooper and submitted all the required lessons a whole day before the deadline. She still has some additional catching up to do, but we can both see the light at the end of the tunnel.

All in all, she’s facing this week with much more enthusiasm than she has had for schoolwork for some time now. I’m very, very glad we decided to make changes.

Meanwhile, RobotBoy is going through one of his emotional growth spurts and has been having a lot of trouble getting any schoolwork done at all. He seems to resent any attempt I make to exert what he perceives as “too much” control over his schedule and was rebelling against my carefully constructed lists of daily assignments. So, with much trepidation, we have decided to give him more flexibility and freedom.

As of last week, I have stopped providing him with his assignments in daily checklist format. Instead, he gets the list of all of his assignments for the week, along with a recommended daily schedule of how much to do of each subject. The new agreement is that he is free to deviate from my recommended schedule, with the understanding that he is still responsible for getting the full week’s work done. We have defined what qualifies as “enough” work for one day, and he is not allowed to attend extracurriculars or fun activities scheduled for any day on which he does not complete at least that much. He is also required to put in time on Saturday to make up anything left unfinished for that week.

Truthfully, it was a rough week. He missed dance classes one day and had to stay home with Dad while I took his sister to a movie on Friday night. But it was ever-so-slight an improvement over the previous three or four weeks. So, we’re forging ahead with the experiment. So far, today is going reasonably well, but I take nothing for granted.

It's funny: I know it's fall and that we're all looking forward to Thanksgiving, but around here--with the pruning and planting and sense of renewal and growth--it feels more like spring!