...In The End

There's so much more that could be said. If we've learned one thing, it's that homeschooling is ever-evolving. New opportunities are constantly vying for attention. It's easy to get distracted by new ideas, books, systems, methods - all are taken into consideration in the constant tweaking that goes on from day to day. But in the end, it still seems that learning only really works when people - adults and children both - are given the freedom to invest in things they find exciting and engaging. Striking the balance between need-to-knows and want-to-knows has been the most challenging thing of all. The goal is not to turn out good students, people who know how to take a test, or a valuable employee. It's always been to guide the boys on their path to learning what they'll need to function in the world, but to do it in a way that communicates and makes sense to them. They've always known what that is better than us anyway.

I've also concluded that the time has come to retire Gypsy Schoolhouse for the most part. For one thing, we're no longer gypsies - we have a home, and we're happy in it. Secondly, I have to scale back blogging to pursue other interests that I had little time or energy for when I started the blog - music and writing. Between this blog, my health blog, and my own website (where I've started depositing personal and family news) there's simply no time to update them all (as evidenced by the scant postings over the last two years). Gypsyschoolhouse stands as a chronicle of our adventure in homeschooling, and doing it on the road, moving from town to town, in the middle of a medical crisis. I'm proud to look back on it and see all the things we were able to do and see despite the obstacles that we faced. Hopefully it serves as an encouragement to those who are just starting down the road to homeschooling. If we can do it, you can too. I think our boys are better for it in the long-run, and so are we as parents. It's given us precious time to enjoy each other's company during these important years to an extent that would have otherwise been impossible. I've probably learned more than the kids have.

So the Gypsy School House finally parks itself in a little house on Oak Street in Lebanon, Pennsylvania, breathing a sigh of relief, looking forward to what's ahead, and to not recording every little bit of it! Thank you all for reading, commenting, and following our journey.

I'll continue to post from time to time but it will be on my blog at www.davejohnsonstuff.com  where the blog will be archived.

BronyCon

As many of  you know, I haven’t posted here in a long time because in August of last year I was implanted with a total artificial heart, came home for a bit on a portable pump, then was admitted full time to the hospital in January of this year to await permanent heart transplant, which happened in May. Most of this is chronicled at my other blog – www.newsofmydemise.blogspot.com as well as at my new website – www.davejohnsonstuff.com under the “LIVE” tab. Most of my blogging efforts have gone there, and school has been pretty routine as our travels and adventures have been very limited. I’m recovering now and wanted to share a bit about our first big family outing post-heart transplant.

So about three years ago, Brennan approached me, very sheepishly, to explain that he’d been watching “a girl show.” I didn’t know what this meant, so he told me about My Little Pony. Which of course, I remember from the 80’s. So I start describing to him what I remember of it (I was more of a G.I. Joe kid so not much) which was something like this:

He’s looking at me like I’m nuts. “No, it’s not like that,” he says, and insists that it’s more like this:

“I must investigate this,” I thought. But not for the reason you’re probably thinking. I guess years ago I might have thought, “Oh no! My distinctly male child likes something for girls! It has the color pink in it! That’s not manly! HE MIGHT CATCH THE GAY!!”

Actually, no. Me, the guy who enjoys interior design, Fauvist art, chai tea, and French cooking, didn’t think that. Christie and I long ago abandoned this notion that there are “girl things” and “boy things.” Things are just things, and they aren’t “for” a particular gender just because someone else says so. In high school, I was staying at a friend’s house and had forgotten my deodorant. He handed me a stick of Secret. “That’s for women!” I protested. “Do I ever stink?” he asked. “Well…no,” I had to admit. “It works,” he said. “I don’t care who the commercials are aimed at.” Confession: I’ve been using Secret deodorant ever since, and I’d recommend that any guy out there frustrated with his deodorant convert, because it does work – way better than men’s. I’ve found the same thing to be true of women’s razors.

Point being, I asked Brennan who told him it was a girl’s cartoon. He couldn’t remember, but I quickly disabused him of the notion that he couldn’t like things that people thought of as “girly.” Everyone thinks female mechanics and football players are endearing and gutsy. I refuse to apply a different standard to men. It’s all marketing and I’m not falling for it.

Even had I been worried, it was for no reason. Three episodes in I was hooked. Fantastic artwork, meta-humor, and the writing — holy cow, the writing! What wasn’t to like. The characters were a joy to watch, the jokes and animation were hilarious, and I came away feeling refreshed, peaceful, happy…almost like someone had pushed a reset button on my day. I’ve been watching it with him ever since – we’re on Season 6 now. Rich loves it too.

Turns out we’re in good company. Little did I know at the time that the new My Little Pony was appealing to guys my age all over the world, a phenomenon that’s become known as the “Brony Movement,” a small piece of the larger, “New Sincerity” movement. Just Google “Brony” for a wealth of mainstream articles chronicling and explaining Brony-ism.

When I got out of the hospital, we were looking for something fun to do, close to home, to celebrate and have fun – like a mini-vacation. BronyCon 2016 in Baltimore (or in this case, Baltimare). Done deal.

To really understand Brony-ism and the impact of MLP,  you’d have go to the Con. You see things like the Addiction Recovery reunion for people who beat addiction and credit MLP, or a lot of huge guys walked around with “Marine/Veteran Brony” t-shirts on, crowds standing in the open spaces singing Journey, Van Halen, and MLP songs interchangeably, and 8,000 people chanting “FUN FUN FUN FUN,” in unison. If there’s one thing I can say about BronyCon, the attendees are bent on having fun. There was no fighting, yelling, pushing, or conflict – just a community celebrating their love of the show and how it’s brought people together from every walk of life.

Waiting for Opening Ceremonies in the ball room at B’more Convention Center

My camera lens wasn’t wide enough – 8,000+ people. This is just one of nearly 100 BronyCons across the country each summer.

Many costumed fans – these aren’t hired characters, these are all Bronies who tend to show up at a large number of conventions each year. I ate lunch next to two criminal prosecutors the second day, one of them wearing a costume like this.

Legit wheelchair fights in the main lobby

There were seminars, lectures, and panels for three days. Rich went to a lot of gaming design and demo events, while Brennan tended toward writing workshops and critique sessions. I found no shortage of lectures by professors flown in from all over the country to discuss the psychology and sociological implications of the Brony movement, gender studies, and popular entertainment’s impact of self-image and identity. Heady stuff, but fascinating. Christie found arts and crafts workshops and generally walked around in amazement at how happy and nice everyone was.

There are of course a lot of online crossovers with My Little Pony: Star Wars, Team Fortress, Counter-strike, Final Fantasy, and all types of Anime. A bit like Comic-Con in that sense, with entire blocks of times devoted to Costume Play.

In the hotel room before setting off the first day. The hotel was overrun with costumed fans. The Hilton was even hip enough to have BronyCon key cards made, and run MLP episodes marathon style over the weekend in the rooms.

With Andrea Liebman, the voice of Fluttershy and Pinkie Pie

The boys managed to get their commemorative cards signed by the “Mane Six” character’s voice actors. These cards go for hundreds of dollars on eBay and fan sites.

Lots of this type of stuff going on in the convention center public areas

Two of our favorite background characters, Mr. & Mrs. Cake – with all the costumes, these were the only Cake Cosplay folks we met.

With Ashleigh Ball, the voice of Applejack and Rainbow Dash

Christie found another Granny Smith!

PonyPalooza – Pop, Electronic, Metal, Punk, Hip-Hop, and Dubstep, every night from 9pm until…..?

There were also certain notorious Mandalorians lurking about

Closing Ceremonies. Somewhere in the neighborhood of $30,000 raised for children’s cancer over the weekend

M.A. Larson hung out a lot with fans. Mitch is probably our favorite writer for MLP. Watch the clip below, for which he wrote the monologue, and no further explanation is needed.

Yeah. I know.

On the way home (after three days), we had our own CrabCon at L.P. Steamers, our favorite little hole-in-the-wall crab place in B-more.

Back to Basics

We've been Cyber schooling. It's all the rage now. The school district provides you with all the books, supplies, a laptop, and printer and anything else you'll need to replicate the public school classroom in the home. It's school at home. A totally different thing from homeschooling.

We started homeschooling as unschoolers. Our days were spent drawing in the park, hanging out at the library, budgeting for groceries, cooking, doing chores, playing games, building Legos, and generally learning naturally from real life. You know, like humans should do.

I'm not sure if it was the restlessness of traveling or lack of motivation or both, but over time, the boy's taste for this type of learning started to fade, as did my enthusiasm for introducing them to new things. By 2012, we'd fallen into a very bad cycle. I would assign worksheets, reading material, math lessons, and so on, and they would slog through them, unhappy with me, learning, and life in general. Rich is especially resistant to this type of "learning" because he leans so much more naturally when doing things with his hands. He's become quite the writer and blogger himself and is still honing his skills, but he'd rather be taking apart a hard drive or building a game from scratch. Brennan is much the same, though more content to do traditional schoolwork.

Either way, not the dynamic we were hoping for. I openly admit that my health greatly affects the learning environment because there are days where I don't feel like interacting much at all, much less doing fun, creative things. But it had gotten to a point where trying to drag the kids away from their laptops to do anything "normal" like cooking, or building a model, or painting was like pulling teeth, and even worse if it involved writing or math. Restricting computer time worked to a point, but I was having a lot of bad days last spring, we were busy trying to plan a move from MA to PA, and they didn't have much of a social life at all except for hooking up with friends online.

We started cyber school in September in an attempt to give them contrast. We wanted them to see what the average public school student had to do each week, and boy did they get a taste. 6-7 hours of book work every day, followed by 1-2 hours of homework. It. Is. Miserable. Especially when my idea of homeschooling is at the other end of this spectrum - copious amounts of free time, pursuing your own interests, spontaneous learning by being involved in real life. Buy I think cyber has accomplished what we'd hoped. It has given them contrast. It has taken me out of the role of dictator, teacher, and authoritarian as it relates to learning. As the boys have observed unschooled friends doing what we used to, they are seeing things a little differently. I don't know how long it will last.

They finish up their cyber semester this week. From there, we'll put together some reading lists, goal charts, and I will engage them in purposeful activities - watching documentaries, volunteer work, cooking, community events, strategy games, real world math...there are so many ways to learn without being slave to a curriculum. I want them to experience that again. Maybe they were too young to appreciate it the first time around. Maybe I was too heavy handed trying to make it work. But I think they're willing to give it a shot again, and with their friends influence, and me having learned a few lessons myself over these past few years, I hope it will be successful.

We finished out experiment with Cyber school in early January to return to our original plan; a mix of un-schooling and structured learning. There's tons of info about un-schooling on the web, so I won't rehash it here. One friend mistakenly called it "unlearning" a few weeks back. It is, of course, the opposite of that. It's adopting the mentality that learning happens all the time, whether invited or not. Our job is simply to notice it when it happens, expand on it when needed, and create opportunities for it as often as possible. There's the idea floating around out there that un-schooling equates to letting the kids do whatever they want, whenever they want, for as long at they want, a phenomenon that our friend Mark calls "un-parenting." Obviously not what's happening here, though we try to pay a great deal of attention to natural interest and let the kids invest in those.

Part of our return to this involves more reading time, individually and as a family. After some deliberation over what we felt were "important" books, poems, and documents (you can pry my Oxford comma from my cold, dead hands) and some help from The Well Trained Mind and A Thomas Jefferson Education, we compiled a reading list for the boys and for ourselves. Additionally, Christie and I are discussing working through some classic books that we've missed along the way.

 

We've always read a lot but never methodically, and we enjoy the idea of having a goal for this. Of course, we all four have books we're reading that aren't on the list, but we're spending about an hour a day reading and writing about a classic book on our list. We started with The Emperor's New Clothes, and just finished Tom Sawyer. The boys have both written reviews for Tom on their blogs: Rich's is HERE, and Brennan's is HERE. We're going to read The Declaration of Independence next, followed by A.A. Milne's Winnie the Pooh series. I'm especially looking forward to The Count of Monte Cristo and some of the Verne and Dickinson books on the list.

We've had some great discussions with the boys as we've read; it becomes a bit of a reference point for us throughout the week. And there's something about sitting in a room together, experiencing the same story. Since Christie's been off work from gallbladder surgery, we've had a lot of time to watch movies, work puzzles, cook, play games, work on projects around the house, and enjoy being together. It's going to be weird when she starts working again at the end of the week.

Birthdays Galore

Birthdays all around, here in Hershey land. Mark surprised Stacy with a night out at Houlihan's featuring her mom and several other friends. Happy Birthday to Stacy, and all of that, but honestly, does anyone really need an excuse to eat at Houlihans?

Sherri & Christie, both avoiding pork for different reasons.

Stacy's a big Lucille Ball fan

Brennan requested that his party be held at Jack's house, because, well Jack's house is cool. He's gotten into My Little Pony lately (well, all the men in our house have, actually...more on that later), so we went full-on MLP for the party.

Everyone made their own hat of their fav character (and poor Jack was like, "what the heck is a my little pony?")

Pin the tail on Pinkie (do not attempt in real life: pony becomes violent)

Big Mac & Granny Smith

What's Going On

Hey, everyone. Long time, no post. I (Dave) have an extended hospital stay so I thought I'd update you on what's been going on with us of late.

First, homeschooling is probably the best it's ever been. People are always asking what curriculum or method we use. The answer has varied depending on our season of life and the boy's interests. We all feel like we've finally found a good balance of freedom and learning that fits our schedule and the boy's needs.

• Math - about 6 months ago we discovered the fantastic Life of Fred series, chronicling the adventures of a little boy who teaches math as a professor at Kittens University. It reads like a chapter book, but incorporates math concepts for the kids to work through, as well as logic puzzles, financial philosophies, and a smattering of geography, grammar, and humanities. The boys love them and are flying through the series. They extend all the way through early high-school so we're set for awhile. The books are a bit pricey but we were fortunate enough to have a friend who tracked down a used set in near perfect condition, so we're sharing the books.

• Reading - We've been circling something called "The Thomas Jefferson Method" for years, but didn't really know it until our Foley friends loaned us a book with that title. The idea is to follow the example of Thomas Jefferson - arguably one of the most intelligent and well-rounded people in human history - by reading lots and lots and lots of classic works, working through the tough texts, and writing about them. So we're reading like crazy. I read a classic work to the boys at breakfast (so far we've done Tom Sawyer, Winnie the Pooh, The Declaration of Independence, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Sherlock Holmes and the Hound of the Baskervilles, The Prince and the Pauper, Rip Van Winkle, Joan of Arc, The Count of Monte Cristo, and currently Robin Hood). Most days, the boys write a bit in their journals about what we've read - opinions, reflections, or just summarizing the chapter(s). When we finish the whole book, they post reviews and/or reports on our review blog (LOCATED HERE). Additionally, they both have different classic books they spend time with during the day for an hour or two (Rich has read the Lord of the Rings trilogy, Homer's Odessey, etc., Brennan is reading The Great Brain series, and has read several other classics for his book club during this time). The idea is to read all types of classics - fiction, non-fiction, math and history classics, scientific works, etc. and to reflect on them deeply and often. In essence, by focusing on classics, they study a variety of subjects and it informs further studies or interests that grow from them, which brings us back to the more project-based style that we started out with years ago. Plus, they both have their own age book-clubs once a month, and we always read something fun at night - we're currently on the last book of Brandon Mull's excellent Fablehaven series. PLUS, they just started a book/game club (called the Lemoncello club, named after the book the activities are based on) which has them reading at least one other piece of classic fiction between meetings (currently, Agatha Cristie's Murder on the Orient Express). So when I say we read a lot, I mean A LOT.

• History - We're enjoying John Green's Crash Courses on Youtube. We're just finishing up the World history series and starting into the Big History series. American history is soon to come, then we'll watch his science course - biology, chemistry, etc. These aren't in depth, but entertaining, and they cover enough ground for the boys to latch on to certain aspects for deeper reading and research at later time.

• Misc. - Art is still a huge deal to us, but the boys seem to express themselves creatively through Minecraft, Robocraft, and Terarria projects more than anywhere else, though they both still avidly create and illustrate game boards and cards for games they make themselves or collaborate on with other homeschoolers (our co-op has a popular game design club that Brennan meets with once a month to flesh out ideas and beta test games).  They attend a more traditional art class every other week. They are involved in a small meal-prep business we started this month, as well as chopping, sauteing, searing, grating, and other things for family meals.
  
  So that's homeschooling for us at the moment. It's fallen into a nice rhythm and the kids can carry on with their studies even when I'm in the hospital - part of their education, as we all see it, is teaching them to set their own goals, be self-directed, and manage their time between academics, play, and chores appropriately.

Secondly, it's been a pretty busy and scattered time for our family since I last posted.

• Christie has changed positions around the hospital once or twice. She tried cardiology for a month and found it a rough ride, seeing transplant (and failing transplant) patients every day. She's since moved back to her original position, but is serving as charge nurse many nights and helping with the schedule, which has made life a bit easier for us all. As a result of that transition she was able to travel to Arkansas in July and be there during the final weeks of her Granny Lucy's life. This was a huge thing for both of us, as Granny was such an integral and important part of Christie's life, and mine as well since before we even dated. She passed peacefully a few days before Christie and the boys had to return here for her to start back to work. Best timing ever. Her parents were here for Christmas which really helped us to get through the holiday season after that loss without as much melancholy as we would have experienced otherwise. A few weeks ago she hurt her back lifting a 500 lb. patient and is off work for about about a month while undergoing physical therapy. It's been nice to have her home, but as usual we have to juggle bills until worker's comp catches up.

• Rich is really stepping up around the house to help with things I can't do. He takes care of the lawn in the summer, the snow in the winter, and takes the physical exhaustion out of grocery store trips and errands for me - he does all the bending, loading, unloading, lifting, and running in and out of places when he can. He continues to be a formidable opponent in online and board strategy games. He spends an inordinate amount of time undertaking huge projects in Minecraft and playing with friends on the server he hosts with Brennan. The rest of his spare time is spent reading, which he does voraciously on his Kindle. He's fallen in love with the BBC's Sherlock series and can't wait for the new season - a whole year away. I love that he's at the age that we can start sharing things like Big Bang Theory and Firefly with him, as well as certain movies we love - Lord of the Rings, Indiana Jones, etc. Of course he has his own tastes, especially in music. Unlike dad, he's not much for hip-hop or metal, but gravitates toward bluesy rock like The Winery Dogs, Sheryl Crow, and 80's new wave like Steve Taylor and Simple Minds.

• Brennan is also addicted to Minecraft, but spends an equal amount of time with Legos, board games, reading, and writing. He's finished his second real novel and is in the process of revising it  - the only one of us to successfully complete NaNoWriMo last year. He's become a huge fan of the cult classic game, Psychonauts, and wants to have a Psychonauts themed birthday party. He's great in the kitchen and around the house - he's responsible for all the dirty dishes and laundry, he takes care of Blitzy's needs most days (except walks, which are still on Rich). He continues to be mellow, easy-going, and up for a good time wherever he is. Change doesn't seem to bother him too much and he's just happy to be watching cartoons, eating together, reading, or hanging out with friends. He enjoys math more and more these days and is (as near as we can figure) almost 3 years ahead of the standard curriculum (as is his reading level). He's still a huge Michael Jackson fan and likes to listen to Public Enemy when we drive. I think he also discovered that he likes Bluegrass this week so time to pull out the New Grass Revival, Bonepony, Pure Prairie League, and Union Station. He's a huge Bronie (My Little Pony Fan) and has gotten Rich and I (and a few of his friends) sucked into the show.

•  I'm in and out of the hospital from time to time, banking hours and days on the transplant list. I find that despite the visits being spread out further, each one seems to have its own challenges and things I have to adjust to. My activities both in and out of the house have become more limited as the symptoms of my heart failure become more pronounced. Nevertheless, I've delved deeper into cooking and creating my own dishes, and a few weeks ago, Christie and I started a very small meal prep and delivery service for a few of the nurses she works with. We just cook a few extra meals along with ours and charge materials and labor. It's nice money to have on the side with minimal effort as we continue to fight medical debt. But at least I'm healthy enough to do it every week, help the kids with homeschooling, and finish little projects around the house. I'm also finishing up a concept album I've been working on for a little over a year, while working on new songs with a view to selling them at some point. I'm illustrating a comic for a friend that will be available online in April and continuing to lobby agents and editors to publish any of my three finished manuscripts, which I keep fiddling with and revising from time to time. I'm enjoying some great new progressive rock and pop albums by Transatlantic, Flying Colors, and Mastadon, and well as working my way forward from 1983 with significant hip-hop albums. I've also discovered trip-hop and trance music which is a whole new world for me, so I'm trying to get my brain around the mechanics of its song-writing and instrumentation.
  
  
  That's about it. I'll try to post more often now that I'm not writing as much, but life gets busy and I myself don't have a lot of time to cruise the blogosphere. Hope everyone is doing well, feel free to leave us a note in the comments, and as always, thanks for reading.

Folson Crue

(I wrote this post several weeks ago, but just getting around to adding all the pictures and publishing it).

There are so many references to the Foleys on this blog that I won't bother linking to them. They have become family to us since we met during our first stay in Hershey back in 2011. We do so many things together that it's become laborious to say "the Foley's and the Johnson's" so we refer to the 10 of us (including dogs) as "The Folsons." We use it for wait lists at restaurants and for reservations, and just in general conversation.

In all their glory

So our anniversary of meeting them three years ago was on February 22, 2011 (give or take a day or a week - Stacy will correct me in the comments if I'm wrong. Because I'm horrible, horrible, horrible, at remembering dates as can be attested to by all of you who have received birthday wishes from me on the wrong day, week, or even month. Why can I retain the names of all 17 members of Yes since 1968 as well as the release date for all 19 albums, their producers, road crew managers, and who wrote each of the gabillion songs, yet have trouble remembering anniversaries and birthdays? Yes, I suck). We know it's our anniversary because there was an INCH homeschool activity that day - one of the first we attended after settling in for a three month stay back then.

We talked a bit at the roller skating rink while the kids did their thing and realized we had A LOT in common. On our way out, they recommended a nearby Japanese place for lunch, but alas, couldn't join us because they had out-of-town company in tow. They've mentioned many times that they wish they could have/would have just went with us and spent the day. Us too.

So for our Folson anniversary, we decided to recreate the day, and right the wrong. We started with lunch at Tokyo Diner, the place they recommended that day. Much sushi was eaten. We went a little nuts.

After that, back to the same skating rink where we met. We stayed for about an hour.

Kate always looks out for Brennan like a big sister. He thinks she is the greatest person on the planet.

We even took a picture in the same booth where we first met.

 

 

The Foley's have kind of sucked us into board gaming, and we really love all the new, creative games being published. After years of boredom with Clue and Monopoly, we've finally discovered a whole new world of strategy board gaming that's right up our alley. So as an anniversary gift, we made a Folson board game for them. Knowing we desperately need more recent family photos, they bought us a session with a local photographer that we are very impressed with. Can't wait!

The game board is comprised of pictures from various Folson trips, the player pieces have everyone's face on them, and the cards are all made up of locations where each of us have lived or traveled to at one time, as well as penalty and bonus cards from some of our shared experiences, and likes and dislikes. 

Full and skated-out, we headed back to our house to play the Folson game and a few others. 

It was getting late and we were hungry again (we're ALWAYS hungry), so we headed back to Hershey to eat unhealthy food at Red Robin, another favorite haunt of ours. It was great to just have a whole day together since we've all been so busy lately. We used to have days like this all the time when we lived here before or when we'd visit -meaning the Foley's would have to cram everything they put off into the next week. It's nice now not to have to pack everything in over a weekend, but days like this are much needed, and we had a great time just being together. We're so thankful for friends, that our kids get along, that we like some of the same things, tolerate each other's quirks, and enjoy each other's company. We feel often that the relationship is one-sided because they do so much to help us out when I'm in the hospital or having a bad week - Mark is always willing to pick up the boys for INCH activities, Stacy always invites them to come play so I can rest, and their home is still open to us even though we live here now. We appreciate them more than we can say. Our lives have become intertwined is so many ways. We cook for each other, give each other much-needed breaks from the day-to-day, date nights for the parents, play days for the kids...the list goes on and on. This time last year, our one wish was that we could live closer to them. Now we're here, six minutes away - and I'm receiving the best medical care of my life to boot. In the immortal words of Ross Gellar, "Everything's just WERKIN' OUT!" It really is. We are all FINE.