Why Social Studies is Important

(Originally posted to Mom on a Narrow Path blog on Weebly, now deleted.)

This second PowerPoint Show was actually the first one I started working on the other day, and as such it's cumbersome. A lot of text, and for one of the slides, the sheer volume of text isn't meant to be read, but just seen as an overwhelming list of choices. There's not as many cool pics, and there's way too much text, but social studies as a whole is so vast.

It still irritates me that in our daily lives, people think it's a stupid subject for our kids to learn. And look what that public has done to our political landscape by choosing the elected officials they did! If we don't understand even the smallest portion of social studies disciplines, THIS is what we are left with. Lack of education is getting the American Public railroaded hard.

So it's not my best work, but it's something.

School Excitement? Yeah, right.

(Originally posted to Mom on a Narrow Path blog on Weebly, now deleted.)

Still trying to come up with whatever I can to get him invested in his own education. Here's another try.

Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally

(Originally posted to Mom on a Narrow Path blog on Weebly, now deleted.)

As I have said before, I am currently in a college mathematics class and we are revisiting/refreshing pre-algebra knowledge. Our Dear Aunt Sally has shown up repeatedly. In an effort to introduce my son to the types of math he will some day be expected to calculate, I brought up Aunt Sally.

Granted, he is only in the fourth grade, however, I do not think it is ever too soon to share the wonder and awe of higher learning elements. I walked him through what the phrase actually stands for by talking about acronyms. He understands acronyms, of course, from SHIELD (Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division), HIVE (Hierarchy of International Vengeance and Extermination), STAR Labs (Scientific and Technological Advanced Research Laboratories), ARGUS (Armed Revolutionaries Governing Under Secrecy), HAMMER (meaning unknown), and of course TMNT (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles).

PEMDAS, or "Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally", needs to come with a little teaching, not thrown in the garbage. The memory trick worked fine for generations, yet many mathematicians are cringing at its continued use. Google "Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally" and you will come across an Education Week article by David Ginsburg, excusing Aunt Sally forever - forever out of use in Math class.

Most of my fellow college classmates are quite aware of PEMDAS as we are the generations who were still taught order of operations via this acronym. The crazy thing to me, is that somewhere along the way, kids got confused or teachers failed to express a fine point of "Left to Right". I did not want to completely confuse my son, so I left out much of how to use PEMDAS for now, opting to just explain what it is and what it stands for.

I really do not think it fair to toss Aunt Sally to the side. For starters, Aunt Sally did nothing wrong. The teachers were wrong to assume that using her without guidance was okay. You can not just throw PEMDAS at students and expect them to understand every aspect and rule of it.

When I wrote PEMDAS out on my paper with my son, it read as follows:
Please = Parentheses
Excuse = Exponents
My Dear = Multiplication & Division
Aunt Sally = Addition & Subtraction

Now honestly, I do not remember my teachers explaining it in any other way. They told us that you do multiplication and division together from left to right, just like we read, and then addition and subtraction in the same way. For this reason, they did not write the last two-thirds on four lines, but two.

So why, exactly, are kids getting the impression today that they are to do them separately? Why do they think that 4 - 2 + 1 equals 1?

Do not penalized Dear Aunt Sally for teachers' inability to effectively teach.

Parallel Line Equation Given 1 Point

(Originally posted to Mom on a Narrow Path blog on Weebly, now deleted.)

Y=2X Graph

(Originally posted to Mom on a Narrow Path blog on Weebly, now deleted.)

Welcome! & Mathematics

(Originally posted to Mom on a Narrow Path blog on Weebly, now deleted.)

I am trying a new tack with blogging. Simple sharing.
New Weebly site. New look. Just simple sharing.
So without further ado, I'll dive right in.

Right now, I am in the second week of College Mathematics I with University of Phoenix through their online campus. Math has pretty much taken over my brain. I forgot how good it feels to look at a problem, solve it, sit back and just glow.

Last week, our assignment covered maybe 10 topics and should have taken all week to study and complete. Granted, the topics were pre-algebra and designed to be relatively simple so that we were not learning brand new concepts while learning the MyMathLab interface, but this was beyond ridiculous.

When an assignment designed to take several hours a day at the minimum only takes 30 minutes for me to complete, I am shocked I ever had trouble with this stuff in high school. Let alone why I am even taking this class. Why wasn't I able to test out?

We never use algebra in daily life, true. But knowing that my brain can wrap itself around these complicated operations of logic in an insanely quick way after all these years is priceless.

I had not thought of Dear Aunt Sally in nearly two decades, maybe more. I just simply knew that when facing an equation, one must work through anything bracketed first. Inside those brackets, you calculate any exponents, then all multiplication and division from left to right, then all addition and subtraction from left to right. Once the parenthetical calculations are complete, you must move on to exponents from left to right, all multiplication and division from left to right, and finally all addition and subtraction from left to right.
Apparently in grade/elementary school, we learned this as "Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally".

Please = Parentheses
Excuse = Exponents
My Dear = Multiplication and Division
Aunt Sally = Addition and Subtraction

While I must have learned it this way as well as it does sound familiar to me, I think I used it for what it was, a neat memorization/learning tool, and then tossed it out once I knew in which order to do the operations.

All those sweet little word games in order to remember things. Ahh. To be a kid again and learning those things for the first time. But again, what true good is algebra anyway if you do not use it in daily life at all? Maybe it is understanding that every action or inaction as an equal action or inaction that must result. Now THAT we deal with every day.

If you have an equation, let's go easy, say ...
          5x^2*4=16
... you have to remember that whatever you do to one side of the equation, you have to do to the other side. Of course this is a wonky problem and completely solvable for x, but it is not a clean answer for sure.

          5x^2*4/4=16/4
          5x^2=4
          5x^2/5=4/5
          x^2=4/5

Now reverse the exponent of 2 on x by getting the square root of x^2 on one side. This is then x on the left. Then you have to get the square root of 4/5, which is, to say the least, a disastrous, calculator required answer, so the most accurate way to write it would be to leave it be as the square root of 4/5 or the square root of 0.8.

Wow. Knowing how to do the work is half the problem. Frankly, the only problem, which is to remember how to do so.

Now I just have to figure out what "First Outside, Inside Last" was supposed to remind me to do...

~Mom on a Narrow Path

Comment from Carole M. on 2/21/2015 04:15:51 PM

:) good for you for returning to school!! I love math, too... The fact that there's no ambiguity, an answer is correct or incorrect and very little in between. :). And FOIL is for multiplying polynomials. I wouldn't remember myself, but I tutor math and am working with a student on that very topic right now! :)

Narrow Path Home Study About Us Page

Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.

~ Matthew 7:13-14

 I have always been a student. Not necessarily always in a classroom because I believe we are never too old to learn new things. Collecting information over the years has made my brain and my home a knowledge repository. I wanted to share my knowledge with others seeking enlightenment or self-improvement. I created a website called The Narrow Path. Though it was never finished or fully published, it was in my mind and heart. The true path for any person is narrow, for you are the only one destined to take that path. You may have a friend or two with you for short legs of the journey, but their paths split off from time to time.

As Matthew records, 'wide is the gate to destruction' and death. Those who follow mass beliefs, walking a wide path with everyone else, have lost the ability to think and reason for themselves. This was never Christ's intent! He gave us the guidelines for how to live, but also gave us free will to make our own way.

With behavior and medication issues, my husband and I are pulling our children from a brick and mortar public school system to a virtual public school. I feel that with a more hands-on interactive approach to teaching, our children will learn how to get along with other people intimately and better as well as learn the necessary impulse controls they are currently lacking.

I also feel that we can finally add study of God's Word. I was raised in a church while my husband and his daughter were not. My son has spent half his life in church environments and has a good grasp on his beliefs even though he doesn't know why. To him, Jesus just is.

"I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. 

I do and I understand."

                                          -- Confucius

While Christian, I believe that any religious, spiritual, or political leader who has the well-being of the people and the world around them at heart is wise. My role models go beyond the men and women of the bible and I firmly hold to many teachings about love, respect and honor.

Confucius was a wise man. The quote above has proved quite true for myself and my children. Since the three of us have ADHD/ADD, it is far easier to see with our eyes, do with our hands, and say with our tongues than to hear with our ears.

Narrow Path Home Study is a collection of webquests and worksheets I am developing as the summer and 2014-2015 school year progresses. My hope is that my children can use them in conjunction with their public school assignments for extra learning time in a fun and innovative way that also helps them become more comfortable with technology, keyboarding, and social awareness. If you have any questions, feel free to email me at narrowpathhs@gmail.com.