Slamdunk: What Happens When You Confront Your Student With the Facts of Life

Yesterday I warned Coral about this semester's workload. I informed her that we would be spending the majority of our time reading and writing. She is behind the curve in the reading department because I haven't pressed her as hard as traditional schools press students in this area.

She has a few very strong innate abilities--art is her life, math is becoming one victory after another for her. She loves learning science--her questions never end.

"Why do we cough?"
"What happens if we get too much blood inside us?"
"What kinds of animals hibernate?"
"Where are the birds going?"
"What do fish eat?"
And on and on.

I love this about her! She makes my life interesting with all the wonderful questions she asks and we learn so much following her trains of thought. But I haven't pressed her to do her own reading. I was so focused on enjoying her ride that I let it slip. I became aware of how behind she is this Christmas when she and her friend wrote a letter to Santa. I should say, Coral dictated to her friend. Coral does write, and she reads, but she isn't much more than a beginner at either.

This semester I am going to lead her through her beginning stages and into the wonderful world of reading for delight and information. This is going to be a challenge for her because she gets her letters mixed up frequently. We are going to work it hard, and my lovely daughter surprised me when I informed her of the plan. She said, "Sounds good!"

Stop. Breath. Reboot.

"Sounds good!"

This is the face of a beautiful mind.

Self-Publishing the Slamdunk Way

Recently, I self-published to Amazon. By recently, I mean I published on December 16, 2014. It was a bit of a rash decision. Naturally. I've had a steep learning curve since I unthinkingly decided to put my book out there.

First of all, I have to say, I WIN at Twitter. Seriously. It took me about three days to figure it out and get it going. My account has been snow-balling since. I get retweeted, favorited, and followed in these bursts of notifications to my phone that sometimes take all my battery power and leave me stranded without a phone. Not a bad problem to have, but it is a full-time job keeping up with my twitterverse.

Second, did you know there was a way to have your own author page on Amazon? I didn't until today. Three weeks into self-publishing and I only just learned this. This is what I'm talking about when I say a steep learning curve.

I made a Facebook fan page and it was an uphill battle to get it to be what I wanted it to be. But I figured it out when I set out to like some other indie authors' fan pages with my author profile. I put step by step instructions on Goodreads for my new friends there.

Speaking of which, Goodreads. Did. Not. Know. It. Existed. Until I published. I went searching for places to promote and found Goodreads.com. It has become my refuge from the self-promoting and advertising around the web. I am part of the Read Romance, Write Romance group (among others), and those authors and readers have helped me so much just by being a fun group I can talk with about my book, their books, publishing, social media obstacles, and nothing at all. I've fallen in love with that group. I don't think I would be writing this blog post without them.

I am still learning, jumping into this self-publishing business with both feet and finding myself learning more today about social media than I have in the last decade. It's the Slamdunk way: fake it til you make it!

My Identity as Your Fat Friend

I weigh in at just over 300lbs. I have successfully managed to maintain my weight for over six years. Oh! You thought I was going to say I had lost weight? Well, yeah, I lost 40lbs after my son was born three years ago, but I don't count that. No, I am managing my weight with success. Maybe you think I should lose 150lbs, and yes, maybe I should, but I am happy with simply not gaining any.

The most recent selfie.

Wait, you mean you can't imagine being happy with 305lbs? Well, of course not, you can't imagine it because we are surrounded by thin people telling us we should be thinner, and doctors telling us we are obese, and the government telling us we are epidemically fat. And be that as it may, it's difficult to imagine being fat and happy. 

So please, let me explain why I am able to be both fat and happy.

I've been obese since I was in grade school. I started wearing my mother's hand-me-downs in fourth grade before bell-bottoms had come back and I had to wear them to school.At the time, I really hated them, I hated that I had to wear my mother's old clothes instead of my older sister's whose old clothes were amazing and cool (she was three years older than me so everything she did was amazing and cool, including those huge, standing up bangs, remember those?).

In fourth grade, I had one friend, a social reject like me. She was short, thin, and an utter tomboy. The kids in our class didn't like either of us for one reason or another, and we weren't too concerned with them either. We were however, best friends. Our friendship bloomed overnight. We went from strangers to inseparable in a matter of days. I didn't know it then, but now I know it was because I was fat.

Ok, So that was in fourth grade and how could I know it was because of my size?

How about seventh grade?

I really started understanding my role as a human in middle school. I knew I would never be a part of the popular kids clique; I was too interested in learning, too much of a reader, too much of a Christian, and I was too fat. I heard the phrase "fat bitch" a lot during middle school.  A lot. But it never bothered me because I began to understand that I had intrinsic value without having to be valued by every other person in my school. The one person who did value me was my new friend, Nichol. I spent the second half of sixth grade trying to weasel my way into her friendship. I liked her, I liked her friend, and I made my application to her friendship known. I would say hello, see what she was up to, try to be friendly. She wasn't unfriendly with me, but she had her own world she lived in and I was not a part of it. Besides, I was the fat kid and I was grouped with all the rest of the fat kids and social rejects, and she was definitively not in that group.

The thinnest I have ever been.

Things changed in seventh grade. Her best friend moved away, and Nichol was left with me. Suddenly I became a life-preserver to her while she was at school. I couldn't have known at the time because I was too young to understand, but what made our friendship then turn into my longest-lasting friendship now, was that I was comfortable to be with. I was fat, so I couldn't judge her, I would accept her as she was because I had no other social option. She didn't have to work to make me like her, or even really make a huge effort for me to be her friend, and that was a relief! Who wants a friendship that is hard to maintain? Especially after something as traumatic as losing a lifelong friend at an already difficult stage in life (middle school is the worst, isn't it?). Who wants to be required to impress someone else in the name of friendship. I was fat, so I didn't have to be impressed, I was a social reject, so it was a movement up from the losers table to Nichol's company at lunch.

That's just the beginning though. I make friends easily with most people because I am so comfortable to be around. Being fat, people assume I don't judge (which is a safe assumption in my case), and they feel comfortable opening up to me. I don't look like the kind of person who is going to look at you and make all sorts of judgements and assumptions about you. I look matronly, motherly, kind; my roundish face instills people with a sense of ease. Then, after that initial, "Oh, this woman isn't a threat," comes the next stage, where my sparkling personality and wit capture my new audience. Ha. Ha. Actually, I am a really good listener and I empathize well. this skill makes my new friends like me even more, because I am able to make them feel genuinely valuable by hearing them when they speak about themselves.

My listening skills are a result of being fat too. During high school, I thought people didn't want to hear what I had to say because I was fat. So I learned to listen, really listen. It took me going to college and practicing speaking my opinion with my friends before I got over the idea that I wasn't worth listening to. 

A friend posed me and took this picture of me. Beautiful.

After capturing my friends with my pleasant appearance and listening skills, comes the reward, the reason I am ok identifying as your fat friend. So. Much. Love. I love my friends, and they love me, and it is an intense affectionate love all around. Loyalty abounds, compliments fly, entangled lives ensue. I have never had a friend who made me feel less than utterly beautiful. I have always had people in my life who assured me of my value with their words and affection, I can identify as your fat friend and not feel like a clump of worthless mud because you have always made me feel beautiful, at my thinnest and at my fattest, and you have always made my life brighter with your friendship to me as much or more than I have with my friendship to you.

A group of my closest college friends on a spring break in Tampa.

Slam Dunk School: Math is Beautiful

Recently I told Coral it was time to start school (it was about 11 am--late mornings are a Slam Dunk specialty). She replied with, "No, I don't want to do school. Math isn't fun."

I realized immediately I needed to nip that in the bud. Here's why: when Coral was nearing three, before her speech solidified into comprehensibility, she watched a Micky Mouse Clubhouse episode in which Goofy becomes a superhero and saves the day from muffins. By believing in himself he learned how to be fast, strong, and how to "fly." After that episode, I caught Coral running around the back yard, rope in tow across her shoulders, yelling, "I'm a Superpose! I'm a Superpose!" She meant that she was a superhero. It was funny and endearing. Later, it was the reason for a soul-crushing moment between her and me.

She wanted to play dress up and so I dressed her up as Super Coral the Magnificent! She got on my bed and jumped off, realizing a split second later, dressing up like a superhero doesn't give her the power of flight. She said, "Momma! I can't fly! What's wrong with my super suit?" So I had to tell her that people can't fly without the help of machines. I explained helicopters, airplanes, and space shuttles. She was crushed. She cried for a long while in my arms. She wanted to fly. She took off her super suit and decided to never dress up again because there isn't any benefit to it.

She did eventually get over the problem with make-believe and she does play dress-up still, although her dress up has evolved into taking my wireless headphones and pretending to be a pilot. So, when she told me that math wasn't fun, I kind of freaked out inside. I told her that we were going to do math all day.

Here is what we did:

A matching game,

that she spanked me at;

the Golden Ratio:

 Everywhere.

We repeated the Fibonacci sequence so many times that Coral had the first six numbers memorized by the end of the day. We looked at shells, pine cones, our own bodies. We did the addition, the measuring, the drawing. We did everything I could think of to make math fun again. 

And it worked.

Coral hasn't complained about math since then; she does her addition as well as she can and is getting better day-by-day. We do a lot of art reinforcing the beauty of math, and she loves it. She may never be a pilot, but she will have that opportunity if she wants it. I will make sure she has every opportunity to explore as much of the world as she can take, even if it's from our home computer and using Google Earth.

Slam Dunk School of Cooking part 2

Sometimes I have epic failures that fail so hard they become wins.

The other day I ran out if breakfast foods of all sorts. I had turkey bacon and that was the extent of my breakfast foods. So I decided to make biscuits and gravy. I had all the ingredients for biscuits which also happen to be the ingredients for gravy. As I previously mentioned, I don't use recipes except as guides; sometimes the works for me and sometimes...

I slapped all the ingredients together for biscuits and came out with a nice dough ball I rolled out and cut into circles. I put said biscuit circles on a cookie sheet and slid them in the oven. After about fifteen minutes I didn't have anything close to biscuits unless we are from Great Britain, and we aren't, so I failed. What I did have were the most delicious, crispy, and melt-in-your-mouth cookies ever. They were slightly sweet, not over-poweringly so, and so scrumptious I could not keep them on the plate. What did I do with the gravy? I dipped those cookies into it and had a delightful cookie and gravy breakfast that everyone agreed was worth doing again. 

Next time I made biscuits I added a bit more water and baking soda and achieved perfect drop biscuits. Lesson learned, new cookie found. 

I love the Slam Dunk School of Cooking.

                                                    The newest student of the Slam Dunk School.

Slam Dunk School and the Value of Zero

When I chose to homeschool, I knew that there would be times when my daughter would have trouble understanding a concept and I would have trouble teaching it in a variety of ways. I knew that this would happen, but I could not have prepared.

Math has had many up and downs in the last semester. Coral's understanding of shapes and size is fantastic. She gets the concept of first, second, last without any trouble at all. She had no difficulty learning how to tell time. As for addition, she has practiced and made a lot of progress using different methods for adding including counting blocks, fingers, pictures problems, skip counting, and rote memorization.

Everything was fine and good with her progress until we had to start adding zero. As soon as zero as a number was introduced, suddenly nothing made sense any more. She couldn't add 1 + 1 anymore. Zero befuddled her and frustrated me because there was no way I could convince her that zero was "no objects" or that "nothing" existed.

I tried to demonstrate how to add zero with her fingers, with counting blocks, with pictures. I tried rote memorization, I tried every tool I had used before with zero success. She just was not able to understand the concept of zero as a number. My husband mentioned that he had had trouble with zero too until his dad had explained the value of zero.

I mulled that over for a while, a month in fact. I put addition aside for the entire month of December and instead concentrated on temperature and other science math concepts. I had decided to try adding zero after the holidays. I thought long and hard about zero all month long. I made no progress on a learning plan for Coral until December 29th--well, 30th.

I was in bed, unable to sleep because both of my kids were in my bed and I had zero space for myself. It occurred to me that I ought to learn as much as I can about the number, so I got on my phone and looked up the history of zero. Four-thirty a.m. history lessons stick with me.

In the morning, Coral and I had a history lesson and I used a completely new math concept to explain zero: strikes. I struck out five, ten, and hundred. I explained zero as a place holder, and then I put zero as a number up and showed her that zero did not get any strikes. I explained that every number has a value and then we went through many numbers and talked about their values including zero.

As suddenly as she had become confused, my daughter's understanding blossomed. Now adding zero is as easy as it seems it should be.

I too learned something about the value of zero in this whole adventure. Zero space on the bed, zero privacy, zero moments without my children interrupting, and zero regrets. I love my kids and I even love the many zeroes that having kids brings to my life. The value of zero in my life, is infinite. without the zeroes, I wouldn't have such a fulfilling life.

Slam Dunk's Candypocalypse

The day after Halloween, known as All Saints Day, or as The Candypocalypse in my circle of friends, has long been a day of dread for the parents of the students of the Slam Dunk School of Everything. Today, parents have a choice: let the candy flow freely, or ration out the candy over the next few weeks or months. As for me, I choose to let the candy flow freely and here is my reasoning...

My daughter is hyperactive, the diagnosis is ADHD, although I am convinced that medicating her personality out of existence is not the answer to a diagnosis that way too many children have gotten. Here is a blog post about it that I appreciate. For Coral, candy is a stimulus that brings out the hyperactive monster in her. She turns into a screaming, emotional child who cannot control herself. One piece of candy will do this to her, although chocolate is worse than non-chocolate. So the question I have to ask myself is, should I deal with a monster everyday for the next few weeks, or one or two days this week? I choose the latter. She's going to be a monster regardless of how many pieces of candy she gets, so I am going to let her be a monster today and maybe tomorrow and then the candy will be gone and I will have my normal child again.

Candypocalypse: here we come!