Homeschool ~ May/June 2008

Clearly, this was a big travel segment of our ’school’ year. There are also fewer notations of things we talked about (because my record-keeping was sporadic). By the time I filled in the kids’ activities–sometimes weeks later–I was relying heavily on the activities noted on our family calendar and the ‘photo documentation’ of our downloaded digital camera files. Those conversations, concepts explained, and words defined–they’re still happening, but I have to note them almost daily to remember. My head is full these days…

• Watch high school girls’ lacrosse games
• Play with friends
• Asian Festival at the college, including Taiko drumming, Writing in Chinese (Jaja), listening to stories, and baseball with college students (Rico)
• Play at the playground: at least four different playgrounds
• Biking: two playgrounds, one park, around Skytop Lake (Rico), ocean boardwalk, gravel road, and grandparents’ paved driveway
• Define ‘Anniversary’
• Visit the Library: in two states
• Make books: write story/words and draw pictures
• Help Daddy rototill the garden
• Fill up new sandbox
• Attend birthday parties
• Talk about Border Collies and other working dogs
• Plant beans in the garden
• Read out loud
• Cut paper dominoes out of Ladybug magazine and play game
• Jump on a trampoline
• One-week trip to Florida
• Two half-days in Washington, D.C., including riding on the mall carousel, the Air and Space Museum, and the Washington memorial
• Fly a kite
• Swim: in five pools, two lakes, and the ocean
• Paddle ball on the beach
• Skim-boarding
• Visit the Tampa Sciencenter and the local Sciencenter
• Play football in the ocean (Rico)
• Shop for food and deliver it to local food shelf
• Visit art museum; exhibits include masks of Sri Lanka and the art of W. David Powell
• Finish new ‘K’ general skills workbook: 350 pages (Jaja)
• Start new ‘Grade 1′ math workbook (Jaja)
• Work on general skills workbook and ‘K’ math workbook (Rico)
• Hike to the top of a mountain with Dad: more than five miles, with an elevation gain of 1,600 feet
• Play catch and baseball
• Slip ‘n’ Slide
• Play with playdough
• Run in half-mile kids’ race
• Jump off pool diving board and swim to side unassisted
• Puzzles and Legos
• Five-day visit at grandparents’ house
• Help cook meals, including cutting vegetables and fruit
• Scooter
• Walk and train grandparents’ new puppy
• Garden and weed
• Learn how to use a pocket knife
• Measure, cut, and twine string on sticks to support growing bean plants
• Visit Mystic Aquarium, including Sea Lion show, bird exhibit, feed parakeets, and watch three Beluga whales being trained
• Go to Children’s Cheering Carpet Project
• Pick strawberries: domestic and wild
• Catch crabs
• Play guitar
• Visit friend’s farm, including cows, baby chickens and turkeys, grown chickens, and three acres of vegetables and flowers
• Learn how to use a hanging trapeze: put feet over bar and pull self to sitting (Jaja)
• Four-day trip to the Poconos to celebrate great-grandma’s ninetieth birthday
• Play with cousins
• Golf: mini-golf and putting green
• Lawn bowling
• Ping-pong
• Rock climbing: reach the top of a 40-foot wall (Jaja)
• Play kickball
• Dress up and pretend

Photo: Jaja’s playdough pig

More Resources for Multiracial Families

My resource website for multiracial families, MultiracialSky.com, has been updated and the long awaited additions have been made. Check out all the new features:

• New issues of the zines My Sky & Symony Fire
• Talking About Race now includes links to Race: The Power of an Illusion and The RACE Project of the American Anthropological Association
• Updated illustrations in Hair and Skin Care for Children
• And the completion of Finding and Creating Community, including
  • A list of major multiracial family groups
  • Section on education and children’s schooling, with online resources
  • Websites to assist families in exploring new communities

Don’t forget classic multiracial family favorites, such as:

• Glossary of Defining Race and Ethnicity
• Creating a Multiracial Home Environment
• Multiracial Identity: for Families and Individuals
• Resources for Transracially Adoptive parents
• and the Sky Store

Homeschool ~ March/April 2008

• Ice Skating, hockey (both) & figure skating (Jaja): back deck rink, 2 college rinks, rec center rinks, frozen lake
• Downhill Ski Lessons: 90 minutes x four
• Downhill Lift skiing: with friends, with Dad
• Attend friends’ birthday parties: 4
• Talk about birth and pregnancy; tell the pregnancy, birth, and adoption stories of all four kids
• Watch the movie “Arctic Story”
• At least ten (each) 60-300 piece puzzles
• Count out loud from 1-100 by 10s (Rico)
• Tell time on a digital clock
• Set the table for dinner
• Put away own laundry
• Vote with Mom/Dad in the presidential primary
• Help cook dinner
• Fill in Sudoku with Dad
• Compare and contrast the definitions of biracial and multiracial
• Discuss how you might know what color skin a baby will have before it is born
• Talk about ultrasounds and look at ultrasound photos of Jaja and Rico
• Watercolor paintings
• Start new math workbook (Jaja completed all 150 pages; Rico at page 142)
• Play in the snow & sled in the backyard
• Talk about why it is important to brush your teeth
• Help Dad dismantle back deck skating rink
• Watch women’s college hockey game
• Knit with Grandma (Jaja)
• Build with Legos
• Write numbers 1-100
• Play memory with 24 cards
• Visit with friends
• Ride on a zipline
• Play soccer in the yard
• Practice money/coins: names and values
• Scavenger hunt
• Rock climbing
• Ride bikes and scooters
• Dress up (more times than can be counted)
• Dance to music
• Go to a maple sugar house
• Work on general workbook (Jaja: 150+ pages; Rico: 125+ pages)
• Play with playdough
• Spend an afternoon at the playground
• Draw and cutout birds for a friend’s birthday party
• Cut out and assemble a bird/birdhouse mobile from Ladybug magazine
• Watch a college track & field meet
• Trip to Boston
• Visit the New England Aquarium; watch 3D dolphins & whales movie
• Swim in the hotel pool
• Visit the Boston Children’s Museum
• Play a harp and a grand piano
• Read words off the wall menu at restaurant while waiting for our lunch (Jaja)
• Read books out loud: I can read with my eyes shut tight (Jaja), I am a Tiger (Rico)
• Jaja loses second tooth and writes second self-spelled letter to tooth fairy
• Visit the midwife with Mama
• Talk about growing babies; look at the books It’s NOT the Stork & It’s So Amazing
• Visit the local Science Center
• Talk about what a ‘secret’ is and is not
• Draw and write on little chalkboards
• Dig in the garden
• Help Dad put up the new swing set; play and swing
• Attend downtown Earth Day gathering
• Play lacrosse
• Addition & Subtraction cards
• Build a sentence cards
• Jump on our babysitter’s trampoline
• Play baseball
• Play new board game (gift from friends)
• Talk about miscarriage, death, & grief

First Blogiversary

One year ago today, I began My Sky ~ Multiracial Family Life with the post Kindergarten, documenting the beginning of our search for a school (a community, really) where our multiracial children could blossom. We are now nearing the end of our first year of homeschooling, and preparing to being our second.

I began writing this blog with the idea it would have laser beam focus on one corner of my (and my family’s) life: living in the United States as a member of a multiracial family, and being a multiracial person raising four very different multiracial children. In the beginning the writing came easily: I had a lot to say specific to these issues that I had been storing up for quite a while. After a few months had passed, I found my prolific output waning. I’d start posts and stop them, usually for the same reason–mission creep. I’d start writing about transracial adoption but it would turn into a post about open adoption, birthparent rights, or adoption ethics (which can each be related to transracial adoption, but are also connected to all adoptions). I’d start writing about one of my White-appearing multiracial children and it would turn into a post on tribal rights or the diversity of Native American tribal cultures and the way in which we have clumped them together into one falsely-monolithic group (the Cherokee and the Shawnee are about as culturally alike as the French and the Germans). I’d start to write about racial passing and I’d censor myself because I wasn’t ready to talk about all the other ways I was also passing.

During the unplanned blog break I took over the past month, I thought a lot about the blogs I love to read, the ones I check nearly daily. The narrative blogs that draw me in are mostly focused on an issue or two of importance to me (multiracial families, multiracial people, antiracism, transracial adoption, adoption as a first choice, adoption from foster care, adoption reform) but there are also other pieces of the blogger’s life that I connect with (homeschooling, multiple young children, gardening, writer-mom) and also places where our lives are very different (religion, where we live, mom working-outside-the-home). It means a lot to me to read about Los Angelista’s family member who committed suicide, to know that Baggage has her own complicated personal history and is still a successful mom and foster mom. I know these bloggers only through the stories they chose to share with me (and you) online, but I am interested in what they’re reading, what they’re eating, and the funny things their kids said at dinner last night.

So, I am taking this blogiversary opportunity to tweak my blog. All the essays and reflections on multiracial family life will continue (I don’t know that I could stop thinking and writing about this if I wanted to), as well as the bi-monthly multicultural homeschooling updates (I know, I’m overdue), and periodic Life Links.  I will also be folding in Sky Family Adventures, stories and kid quotes that were temporarily housed in a separate blog. I plan to write more often, including what I’m reading (White Like Me, by Time Wise), what we’re eating (just joined up with a local CSA again), what we’re watching (my kids have been loudly throwing their bodies around since I showed them the dance portions of How She Move), and more about race, adoption, school, family expansion, and other plans for the upcoming years. I haven’t forgotten about the adoption series or the long overdue post on cultural appropriation. I’m just taking it as it comes, which today–since I have the house to myself for a rare few quiet hours–completed thoughts and writing are coming fast and clear. Tomorrow, however, may be a different story.

Peace, blessings, and looking forward to another year.

Tricky Statistics

We’re still figuring out our moving plans, still aiming for Ithaca–or at least the Ithaca City School District. We’ve returned to a plan that focuses on self-sufficiency and farming, which is why we’re looking outside of the town of Ithaca, but this revisits the school issue.

One of the reasons we picked Ithaca is because of their schools. There are two high school options, including an alternative democratic-style high school (yes–it’s a tuition-free public school!) that my kids could choose if they’re not really into traditional sports. About a quarter of the kids at both of the high schools are kids of color. Ithaca–and its school district–has significant Black, White, Latino, and Asian populations, and a small Native American population as well.

We’re enjoying homeschooling and the kids seem to be getting a lot out of it, so we’re comfortable thinking about doing it for several more years (i.e. possibly until high school). So if we bought rural property that was in a small-town mostly-White elementary school district–but fed into the 15 minutes away Ithaca City School District for high school–well, that seems like it might work.

We found this piece of property we were interested in, about 20 miles outside of town. It’s not in the Ithaca school district, but I looked it up and found the ‘town’ that houses the local school district (sparsely populated upstate NY ‘towns’ can include sizable portions of an entire county). Fact Finder told me that the town had about 4000 residents, 20% of which were Black and 10% of which were Hispanic. I was beside myself–where had this town been? Was it possible we had missed a pocket of POC just outside Ithaca?

My next stop was the school statistics website, where I found out that the town’s schools are 98% White. Hmm. Something’s going on here.

My partner and I started brainstorming why there could be such a racial discrepancy. Had the school district strategically cut out a corner of the ‘town’ with a high concentration of POC? Was there a military base within the town lines? We researched both those questions. The answers were no, and no. My partner found an aerial photo map of the town and we scanned over it, looking for something that the numbers weren’t telling us. And there it was. Right in the downtown of the single real town within the ‘town’ boundaries.

“That looks like a prison,” I said.

We found a website listing New York state prisons. This prison houses over 1000 inmates, 50% Black, 25% Hispanic, 25% White. The inmates make up a quarter of the ‘town’ population. The prison is the biggest local employer, and the primary contact and knowledge the locals have with POC is felons. I can only imagine what that school would be like for my kids (or any kids of color). I think this might actually be worse than an all-White community and school.

As the statistical discrepency became clear, I remembered something I learned at my Undoing Racism training last fall. Census statistics (which allocate both State and Federal Congressional representation) count population by the physical location of people–including prisoners–which is ironic because 48 states prohibit current inmates from voting.

Just remember to keep your eye on those tricky statistics.