Why we chose to homeschool, Ephemeralization and Classroom assessments

Canva lets me do impressive graphic design work!

Why we homeschooled

For about a school year, we enrolled our kids to a homeschool provider. These are our primary reasons:

1. To provide the best education to our ADHD-suspect kid
2. To ensure the kids don't only learn knowledge, but grow godly characters which we value more in our family
3. To ensure the kids apply all they have learned in all aspects of their lives - no double lives
4. Last line of defense - gave up career, homefront and kids are the only turf I would like to triumph on and I am not happy with what I am seeing
5. To accommodate the location transfer of our family

Guess what, after a school year, our family realized that it is not for us. Why?

1. Our kid turned out to be normal and fit for traditional schools
2. Our walk is more important than our talk, and I am worst at both. Really, there are times when I am so terrible that I don't even want to be me.
3. Our kids are still young that there are no secrets yet. Plus living within the same community as the school and their classmates' family allows us to know their classmates' families too and vice versa.
4. The kids have grown up to the point that they need more independence and therefore more time for me to pursue what I am passionate about
5. We have found a verdant and booming place and are choosing to calling this home

Buck Fuller's ephemeralization

ephemeralization to describe the notion that over time, the cost of producing anything approaches zero while its quality continues to increase… until eventually, we can do everything, with nothing ~Buckminster Fuller

I came across this great polymath during my early web design days. I hope that all basic education teachers and students know about him.

Classroom assessments
My undergraduate course for this semester is Assessment of Learning. My former college classmate is my professor. I'd say he is doing a great job. For this class, he asked us to write a reflection paper on classroom assessment. Here it goes.

Assessments are like medicine. They are necessary, but their intended users do not like them. 

Just like a bitter pill, I personally do not like classroom assessments because most of the quizzes, exams, recitations, reportings, research papers, group activities, and tons of homework I encountered involved heavy memorization of information that were stored in the short-term memory of my brain. These information, a semester or school year after, were forgotten and replaced with other memories.

Half of me considers this cyclical process an easier way out, a required compliance in order to further one’s goals in life that is still attainable to those who chose to take a different, less structured path of becoming a self-made man or woman without the necessary educational background. The other half trusts, relies and thrives on this established norm.

My former teachers used different forms of assessment to accomplish their work requirements. My friends and I have been blessed to have several teachers who valued us as individuals more than our assessment results. They remained helpful friends even long after graduation.