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Erin
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| Posted: July 25 2007 at 10:54pm | IP Logged
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Dd13 has expressed an interest in attending Campion College which is a Catholic college with solid authentic teaching offering liberal arts degrees. It is a new college only in its second year.I forsee no problem with her gaining admittance to Campion, our system is very different to America.
I would love to have some advice on how to prepare her. How to ensure that she leaves our home with the skills needed to do well in an environment such as this. What indeed would the skills be that are needed?
Dd is a voracious reader who has already read thousands of books, but her writing skills need work. I would love to have some direction. Advice from those more experienced than I. 
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Erin
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ALmom
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| Posted: July 26 2007 at 1:18am | IP Logged
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Reading, writing, time management, how to balance a checkbook, do chores like laundry, keep track of assignments due and get them in on time, remember to apply for scholarship renewals and check the tuition fees posted every semester (to double check that one of your scholarships didn't get overlooked in calculating the bill), know how to prioritize, memorize if necessary, listen to directions and follow instructions to the tee (if prof says he wants black ink only, don't use blue and always have a black pen with you at his class no matter how trivial you think it is), how to take good notes and be on time, have practice with private prayer time so it doesn't get squeezed out in being very busy, how to plan, learn to catch hints that let you know what the prof is looking for, practice standing on your own against a crowd and expressing your opinions in a logical and respectful way, some sense that prof sometimes give an auro that may seem intimidating but is really simply that gruff first exposure so the class sloths and clowns take him seriously and he really, really is not out to flunk everyone no matter how much he seems to talk like that.
I'd think that most of this is learned in a homeschooling setting rather well. A few things that we had to pay the most attention to as they didn't just happen at home were:
Following directions for different teachers (one wants blue ink only, one wants black ink only and you have to keep them straight) Our dd learned this through a course we audited her Jr. year in high school (the prof accidently graded her first assignment) and took off an entire letter grade because she did not use the correct ink. When she got to college, she kept everyone's different rules straight and had no trouble. Our 2nd dd learned this with her first Latin test under her tutor -she hadn't bothered to read directions just jumped in doing the test. Her grade showed. At home they get so used to mom as teacher that they often anticipate rather than really pay attention to what we want - and I almost never care whether they do an assignment typed, in pencil, pen or purple color pencil. I don't think I could even keep up with what I required if I did require stuff like that   .
Intimidating professors - one dd was petrified of a prof just from his in class persona. I knew him socially so kept telling her we were having him over for dinner after class was done. I wish I had, because history prof at college had her practically frozen in fear that she might get kicked out of school for plagiarism and couldn't figure out the guy was making a point - not trying to petrify them. She was going to write a paper with everything quoted because what if she forgot something or forgot to give credit and she'd rather get a bad grade than get kicked out of school.... Now this is a child who is an excellent writer, does a great job documenting sources, would never dream of stealing someone else's work. I finally convinced her to at least make an appt. with the prof and take her paper and express her fear. Well, one on one with a student who really cared, he was tremendously kind and helpful. She never had trouble after that first meeting. Some teachers can be sarcastic or joking - and depending on child's temperment, it might come across as funny, insulting or total ridicule but if that is the personality of the prof you get, you have to learn to not let it freeze you.
Funny thing, I was most afraid of dd being able to keep track of her schedule and keep history dates straight- she always juggled so many music appointments and other things that I was going nuts when she was at home. I dreaded the day she'd say she completely forgot an important job, because she was overbooked. At home it seemed like she would, if I wasn't on top of the calendar. Now that I'm not around she has never had a problem with this at all. She said that while I was here hyperventilating (well she didn't say it that way, she was much more respectful), she didn't have to keep track of it or even worry about waking up on time. She knows she has to at school, so she does. History, well, even though with me she seemed to mix up the oddest things and everything seemed garbled in her head, at school she went into the practice rooms with her history notes and played/practiced Bach associating her history dates - and came out of the class with an A and impressed the judges at competitions with her Bach - who probably got extra practice just to get that history crammed in her head. Anyways, the academics have been no problem (and we were not great in all academics), neither has social,planning skills, keeping up with laundry stuff, or any of the other things that are generally first year adjustments. Even things like meeting deadlines - which seemed to have us always pulling our hair out at home - was fine.
The only other thing was balancing the checkbook - but that was due to us failing to have her begin this a bit earlier. We got her a checking account in her Senior year which was way too late - and couple that with a flighty music mind that finds details like writing dates on checks superfelous - and failing to void checks in the register. Well spending a couple of days trying to sort it all out - and even mom and dad couldn't help cause you have to have records to sort it back - having to go down to the bank and request copies of transactions,etc. (One thing we did wisely - her checks automatically produced carbons for her records when she wrote them and we did not allow any atm transactions) so after 3 days, she was able to recreate things and get it balanced. She hasn't had any trouble since.
Yet you should see how organized she is about accompanying. She has a written sheet of policies and fees and each time she experiences something new - she figures out a way to handle it and it goes on her next years written policy. You'd have thought she had been in business, self-employeed for years. I guess she knows she has to be organized and she seems to be in demand - especially since folks have found out she is willing to accompany brass concertos. I never saw a hint of this much organization in her entire time at home, seriously, but she just does it.
I don't think I'd stress too much about it all - other than make sure she has the writing skills and some ability to do things quickly if she must by the time she graduates.
Janet
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Erin
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| Posted: July 26 2007 at 7:29am | IP Logged
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Janet
Thank you so much for your post, so helpful. Reading from it I can see a few areas to keep an eye on immediately, time management comes to mind, following different directions is something to be aware of. Laundry I can tick:)
ALmom wrote:
| I don't think I'd stress too much about it all - other than make sure she has the writing skills and some ability to do things quickly if she must by the time she graduates. |
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Ah Janet
These are the things I am worried about more than anything, particularly the writing. This is the area that I feel I am letting her down in big time. She has no writing assingments, no real direction in this area and I am unsure of the road I need to take. Actually I amend that to say she has started and is continuihg to use Lingua Mater this year. Dh feels that will help her with logic. When she does write I feel it is of excellent quality however she hasn't had to write much of different styles.
I know you have used RC History, would you recommend it as something that requires some decent writing assignments? Something that would require analytical thinking, good preparation for the skills required at college? Or would you recommend something else again?
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ALmom
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| Posted: Aug 01 2007 at 6:09pm | IP Logged
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RC History has some excellent writing ideas. My dd needed most work in adequately proving her point and seemed to tend to write in a personal experience type of style, so we did a lot of history and theology papers with her. Kolbe provided most of our paper topics as I didn't know about RC history with her. My 2nd dd does a lot of her paper topics from RC history and a lot from Kolbe depending on the subject or book. I don't think it matters all that much where the paper topics come from as much as that you do require some sort of writing on a regular basis and hold them accountable for it - or find a way that they recognize the need to meet some deadlines. (My oldest learned some of this by working throught a summer). I also think that it is important that they get some real feedback here - something where they see themselves improving.
My oldest dd was laborously slow at writing and this was due to confidence at first. She always wrote well. Once she was confident, we were okay. I'd be more worried if they lack confidence and freeze than if they are simply slow at handing in assignments to you. Both of my older dc have expressed that mom being the teacher makes it really hard to feel a deadline for writing assignments and I always felt like they were dragging these things out way too long. Notice when they actually start working on an assignment. I realized that my oldest could really crank those papers out - she simply was never getting around to starting as other things kept her busy and I was too understanding.
When they are in college, they seem to know that the college prof isn't going to care how busy their other classes were. You either have his stuff or you don't - so you'd better have it. You plan backwards from there as the prof do give you a syllabi at the beginning with all these assignments and tests written on it (something I was not always very great at doing for my dc). My dd then set goals - and planned backwards from there knowing how much time she needed to write a good paper, she knew when the book had to be read and she almost always had the book read well before anyone else in the class. Now with my 2nd dd, I may actually step her through this process some. But the reality is that I lose track of who is supposed to be doing what for me and if we've had a really busy week, I don't press, etc. so my dc adjust. Sometimes I plan to review papers and I end up with doc appts or ER visit or a sick toddler or everyone else out of sorts and interrupting so it doesn't ever happen when it is scheduled and dc learn that I won't notice if "deadlines" aren't met. When our dd took the English class with a tutor (5 girls in the class), I saw for the first time that she really did and could get things done on time.
I will say that at home, she always seemed to drag about getting an assignment done - but when it simply had to be done, it did get done and she began to be able to crank out assignments rather quickly. I think it helped her to have a tutor and class - not because she couldn't write, but realistically, it was hard to be serious about handing in papers to mom. It was much easier handing them in to someone else. Some of writing is just doing it often enough. We went with Kolbe her Junior and Senior year of high school just to have paper topics on a regular basis. We didn't do it all or hand it in to Kolbe - but I did send in a few for comments. She still didn't hand me stuff in a timely manner and I remember agonizing that she never did a research paper her junior year of high school - she just didn't get to it and I wanted the summer off but felt she needed some confidence here before going off. Kolbe's advice after asking me some great questions was basically to skip it for the year. If we did it in the summer, we'd be in a hurry to be done and not focused on learning what I wanted her to learn from it - but then make sure the dc knew at the beginning of the year that she would NOT graduate until she had given me a research paper and stick to my guns and be sure she knew that this was very serious. Well, there was some stalling at the beginning of the year, then I really let her know I was serious. If she wanted to graduate, she would give me the paper. I gave her a few hints about chosing a topic (ie chose something you are passionate about and if you want you can taylor it knowing the teacher's weaknesses - but the paper had to be a history research paper - other than that she needed to pick the topic, narrow it down, etc. In the end she picked "the political,... influence on the development of the classical and romantic styles of music" or something like that. She did an excellent paper and since it was something I knew nothing about, I was able to help her see where she needed to express herself more clearly, etc. She learned some history by default which was my other scheme.
She had one college English prof ( a professional journalist) who told them forget all the stuff about 5 paragraph essays, etc. and he told them what was expected, she adjusted and actually was relieved as she is a more natural writer in areas of creativity. She did really, really well with this class. In history, they really expected the standard 5 paragraph essay and she was one of the better writers in the class. She did take her first paper to him and discuss it and get some pointers as to expectations, etc. The big thing for her here was planning enough in advance to have her reading done to give herself adequate time to write knowing the music demands on her time. She did well with this class as well.
We did not do a ton of different styles of writing in high school. We did do a Win program on writing essays - and they did talk about different ways to organize based on what you were trying to do and it did include a personal essay in it. It was very cookie cutter and step by step, but it suited this dd. I think this helped her a lot. We did Seton one year - they are big on the standard 5 paragraph essay with introductory paragraph, etc. I think that because they only looked at one way of doing introductory or concluding remarks that hurt her in terms of her own natural style - but the fact that she had to hand in those blasted papers to someone helped her buckle down and just get over her fear and do it and learn to crank them out if she must. Kolbe provided the same direction in terms of your standard essay - but with a lot more flexibility for personal style. At the time, they did not have enhanced evaluation services so we just were able to hand in 1 per quarter for in depth evaluation, but they were very helpful. Our other dd has been sending a number of assignments in to Kolbe. Having someone else read the work does inspire them to take the writing more seriously. I think our oldest really gained confidence having the tutor that one year but she really learned to write well long before that.
Now she still does freeze temporarily with scholarship essays because she wants them so badly (she wants to go to graduate school at a big conservatory at the moment and she needs money now to save for this later) but she can do them. There are some books that step them through writing the college entrance and scholarship essays. That might be worth doing as is making them write on a regular basis and holding them to it.
I love to write. Research papers were my favorites all through school, but I do not teach this subject well as it seems as if I've always written and I don't quite know how I learned. When I read something that my dc do, I sense when it isn't quite right, I just don't know what to point out so I am a frustrating reviewer of papers. My dh hates to write but is great at editing for grammar, spelling and punctuation. I'm a lousy speller and usually wrote anything I did with a dictionary at my side. We decided that paying for evaluation services is worth it for us. Others have found friends to trade off with or an occassional tutor or bravewriter or... It really is a matter of comfort level and resources.
Janet
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CKwasniewski
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Erin,
Its interesting that you ask this q. My dh (who is working for Wyoming Catholic College-- a new liberal arts college--very similar to Campion College) has gotten this question several times this year. We have talked about it.
Writing is important, being organized is important, but I think another thing to say would be learning how to think things through logically. How to ask the right questions, and how to analyze what a text is saying. Of course, they will go into this more in college, but to begin doing that now would be a great advantage.
Mortimer Adler's "How to Read a book" is a good place to start. There are a number of good logic texts available too.
I hope your dd can go to Campion! It looks great and its so exciting for Australia to have a Catholic liberal arts college!
God bless,
Clarissa
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Erin
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| Posted: Aug 03 2007 at 6:52am | IP Logged
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Janet
Thank you for your post, much to ponder, but then you always make me ponder
CK,
Very interested to hear of your dh's position. I really feel called to do something with dd's writing, just praying for guidance there, actually I have just started reading The Well Trained Mind by Susan Wise Bauer so maybe... I have also been pondering a logic text for her in fact dh suggested it recently, he thinks she will be a natural, I agree, (do I want to give her more skills for her 'debates'  )
My brother is at Campion which I think has inspired my dd listening to her uncle.
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Erin
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4Real Forums : Living Learning
Topic: Preparing for a liberal arts college...
