You know what bugs me the most about this story?

It’s not the fact that this fifth-grade teacher sent 3800+ emails over the course of 169 school days. (At a rate of one minute per email, that’s 57 hours of paid work time.)

It’s not the fact that her emails often referred to her drunken exploits and sexual encounters.

It’s not the fact that she was on prescription drugs for anxiety, bragged about them and even referred to one drug as her “security blanket,” according to my local newspaper.

It’s not the fact that she and her coworkers often shared these prescription drugs with each other, even in school, where they’re supposed to be teaching children.

It’s not the fact that most of her fellow teachers were afraid of her, with one stating, “This woman is capable of doing anything.” (Again, this from my local newspaper.)

It’s not even the fact that she complained about teaching being “just such a waste of time with the dummies,” or that her comments about her job included a list of phrases she used to refer to her job, such as “hate it here today,” “really do wish I cared” and “this is a day of torture.”

No, what really gets me is that school officials investigated this woman for a full year, through January 2010, suspended her from teaching in February (when they escorted her out of the building), but never fired her! Instead, they pussy-footed around until they finally got her to resign last week, after postponing a meeting where they had planned to “consider” terminating her.

Good grief! School officials were so concerned about playing CYA that they put their personal protection against lawsuits before the protection of the students. This woman worked for the school district for 14 years. Yet it took a year and a half to get rid of her, and in the end, school officials didn’t have to do the dirty deed themselves.

Where is the concern for the children? Considering this woman’s attitude toward her job, not to mention her drug and alcohol issues, how likely is it that she treated her students kindly and fairly, much less taught them anything? Is it any surprise that parents continue to pull their children out of the public schools and homeschool them?

I’m not bragging on our shared genetics, because he’s adopted. He’s been in preschool the past couple of years where he quickly absorbed everything they taught him and then some. And then he got bored.

His mom (my sister) recently moved back to Illinois and decided that her little guy is a good candidate for kindergarten this year because he needs to be challenged. But in Illinois, kindergarten students are supposed to be five by Sept. 1 and his birthday is in October.

So before they moved, she called up the school district and described the situation. This set her off on a ridiculous journey through the labyrinth of public school administration.

First they insisted on checking out the credentials of the preschool our nephew attended in California. When they discovered that the preschool is run by a certified teacher but that the woman who taught our nephew’s class is not a certified teacher, they rejected his preschool experience.

They decided instead that our nephew should meet with their school psychologist once he got to Illinois. This visit would cost my sister, an unemployed single mom, $300. They also insisted on a meeting between my sister and the school principal as soon as she and the boys arrived in Illinois.

As it turned out, the purpose of that meeting was so the principal himself could tell my sister that her son would need to meet with the school psychologist and that it would cost her $300.

Now that my sister and her boys have moved to Illinois, the school district has informed her that our nephew will have to take an IQ test, and that he will only be allowed into kindergarten this year if he scores at or above 145.

All this because his birthday is six weeks past the cut-off.

I’m thinking these school officials are the ones that need an IQ test. And I’m thankful that homeschooling kept me from having to deal with public school administrators when our kids were growing up.

Can’t argue with that! So the winners of a fresh new copy of Shovelhorns and Black Bruin  are Tammy and Bev. Congratulations, ladies! And many thanks to everyone who entered. I loved reading your responses  

Sadly, I’ve also been asked why I chose to include girls in my target audience for the book.

Now, I realize that many homeschoolers are even more conservative than I am, enough so that they plan to keep their daughters at home until and unless they marry. But to keep them in the dark about financial matters seems so misguided to me.

In the past, many women were uninformed about their finances. Men kept track of the money, and their wives kept track of the cooking and cleaning. But if their husbands died before they did (which is statistically more likely to happen), they often found themselves wondering if they were rich widows or poor widows, because they didn’t know. They had to rely on other male family members to help them find the paperwork needed for probate and figure out where they stood financially.

Unfortunately, marriages also break up, and women who are unaware of financial matters can find themselves left with children to support and no idea of how to prudently handle the income they now need to bring in. The pain of an unwanted divorce is thus compounded by the need to learn about money. It’s hard to learn something new when you’re emotionally distraught.

My grandmother raised four children as a single mom during the Great Depression, and the stories my dad told me about what she went through taught me that girls need to know about finances every bit as much as boys do.

Recently, I was reminded of that again when I read yet another article about people losing their homes because they weren’t knowledgeable about the mortgages they applied for when they bought them. The combination of ignorant consumers and greedy mortgage companies has resulted in some single moms losing thousands of dollars that they really can’t afford to lose.

In the stories quoted in the article, the women now losing their homes didn’t understand that buying a home without putting any money down is a warning sign that you’re going into a loan with some danger zones. They saw it as a lucky break, when it was anything but that. It usually means that you have an adjustable loan, and in the current climate, your house payment may continue to rise, even if the value of your house drops. You’re responsible for the amount of money borrowed to buy the house no matter what the house is now worth.

Even if her loan did not have an adjustable rate, one woman mentioned in the article seemed like a great candidate for a house because of her high income level. She also thought she was making a good purchase because she didn’t borrow as much as she was approved to borrow. Big mistake! Pneumonia and then a broken wrist made her miss work, and she was forced to spend what cash she had paying bills. But she ran out of money, and could no longer make her mortgage payments. She not only lost her house but ended up owing the bank $32,000.

These women were also apparently unaware of how stressful it can be to have a huge house payment when you’re the head of a single-income family. Had they been taught about financial freedom and the joy of being debt-free, they might have never become homeowners, but they wouldn’t have lost their homes, either. When you look at everything through the mindset of minimizing debt, you have more control over your financial situation, especially as the years go by and the good habits you’ve developed bear fruit.

Reading these women’s sad stories has reminded me yet again how important it is that we educate our girls as well as our boys about how to handle money and how to aim for financial freedom. Judging by what’s going on in our economy right now, this kind of education is more important than ever. We homeschooling parents have the time and the opportunity to do it right.

Children learn what they live.

Put kids in a class and they will live out their lives in an invisible cage, isolated from their chance at community;

interrupt kids with bells and horns all the time and they will learn that nothing is important;

force them to plead for the natural right to the toilet and they will become liars and toadies;

ridicule them and they will retreat from human association;

shame them and they will find a hundred ways to get even.

The habits taught in large-scale organizations are deadly.

That’s by John Taylor Gatto, and he cuts right to the chase, doesn’t he? Here’s a quote from a review of one of his books over at Amazon:

I wish I’d read this while I was in school; I’d have seen then that there was something wrong with the system, not me.

That’s heartbreaking. How many adults were wounded by school when they were children? Gatto knows. He taught in the public schools for thirty years. When he was given the New York State Teacher of the Year award, his acceptance speech (pdf) was not exactly what they were expecting! It was a criticism of the institution of school.

If you have any time in what’s left of summer, you might want to check out Gatto’s books. He gives all parents, not just homeschooling parents, much to think about:

Our new book, Shovelhorns and Black Bruin, is selling like hotcakes! I think more and more parents are realizing that the classic books are the best; these novels by Clarence Hawkes (circa 1908-9) are definitely classics. With two classic novels in one book, it’s also a great deal.

To celebrate, we’re giving away a hot-off-the-press copy to a lucky winner, and it could be you! Just leave a comment here answering this question:

How do your children benefit from reading classic books?

By commenting, you’ll be automatically entered in the drawing for this giveaway. Deadline for entries is midnight, August 19, 2010. Don’t miss out: comment now!

8-20-10 Please note: contest is now closed.

“…they had to have been married for more than 25 years and have had three or more children, as well as a brilliant career.”

She turned her findings into a book, The Compleat Woman: Marriage, Motherhood, Career – Can She Have It All? Her conclusion was that it was very rare for a woman to be able to successfully juggle a husband, children and successful career.

Now, a British newspaper has marked the twentieth anniversary of the book’s publication by going back and interviewing some of the women whose lives were chronicled in it to see if they think it’s gotten any easier to “have it all.” The very interesting (and lengthy) article is worth reading, but if you’re pressed for time, I’d like to share a couple of key points these women now make, as they look back on their lives from the vantage point of old age.

1) Women try too hard to give their children the perfect childhood.

Author Faye Weldon, 77 and the mother of four sons, says:

“Today, we try to fight that destiny and give our children the perfect childhood in the hopes that it will make them perfect. I think children are the better for a little healthy neglect. Mine certainly were.”

I don’t think she means neglect in a bad way. What she’s saying is that if we give our kids more autonomy and stop trying to micromanage their activities, they’ll do just fine and we’ll be less exhausted. This is a point we homeschooling moms, who are already involved personally in our children’s daily education, need to take to heart.

2) Women should realize they can have a career while raising children, but it won’t be easy, and the children must come first.

Shirley Hughes, 80, the mother of three children and a well-known children’s author, recalls writing at home with children underfoot:

“…despite publishing more than 50 books, Hughes managed without a nanny.

“I would have been too jealous of her relationship with my children,” she explains.

“We did have au pairs to help out domestically, but I would never have left them in sole charge of the children all day…..But fractured concentration due to interruptions from children is the bane of a working mother’s life, especially if you work from home as I did.

“But it was the right thing for me. I was able to be there for my children, and so glad I was self-employed and did not have to disappear off for long days away from the home.”

3) Women expect to have too many material things that don’t matter in the long run.

Sheila Kitzinger, 80, a mother of five grown daughters and honored by the British government for her years of work for the National Childbirth Trust, says:

“Women now think they need so much more. Everyone must have a second car in the family.”

She also seconds Ms. Weldon’s concern about providing a wealth of perfect educational experiences:

“But also, we feel the need to do so much more with our children. There are constant educational trips – must see the Tutankhamun exhibition, must see the Chinese warriors at the British Museum.

“It’s relentless, exhausting and very expensive.”

Ms. Hughes agrees:

“Perhaps women think today they need to have too much. We all say we work because we need the money, but are there sacrifices to be made.

“Perhaps not having a second car; maybe moving to live somewhere cheaper.

“It’s very sad when people think they cannot afford to have more children. What do you regret at the end of your life? Is it the expensive stuff, or not having a child?”

According to the article, these women with such successful careers look back over their lives and see where their time was best invested: in their husbands and children. As Ms. Hughes put it:

“My only regrets are that I got too bogged down with getting the shopping and household chores. I should have let it all go to pot a lot more than I did.

“What I wish I’d done more of is sitting and talking to my children round the kitchen table.

“And conversations with my husband, too, now that I’m widowed. Once your husband dies, that is what you long for above all.

“But when you’re young and busy with work and family, you are always rushing on to the next thing. That’s life.”

We can all learn from those who have come before us. And with that, I’d better go make dinner and spend some time enjoying it with my family

We have a new book out just this week. And my husband painted the cover art! Learn more about this “new old” book below:

Do your boys enjoy reading? Do you have trouble finding books that catch their interest and are good for them to read? Then you’ll love Shovelhorns, the Biography of a Moose, and Black Bruin, the Biography of a Bear, two classic novels in one new book.

These two wildlife animal stories will captivate your boys. These aren’t namby-pamby tales but realistic adventures written by naturalist Clarence Hawkes in the early 1900’s: classic stories which boys will enjoy.

Best of all, you’ll get two of Clarence Hawkes’ wildlife adventures in one book. Readers of all ages will love these stories, but especially boys who enjoy the outdoors and stories that don’t hold back from telling about the life and death struggles that occur in the wild.

Shovelhorns, the Biography of a Moose, first published in 1909, is the story of a moose in the harsh woods of New Brunswick, Canada. Relive the life of this moose as he grows from a small calf to a great bull moose. Learn how his mother protects him from a fierce wolf pack. As he matures, he experiences his own adventures and battles, including his be­friend­ing by the son of a Northern hunting guide, and the inevitable time in his life when he must prove he is deserving of the title “King of the Wilderness.”

Following this story is another exciting adventure. Black Bruin, the Biography of a Bear, first published in 1908, is the story of a black bear in northern New York. You’ll be hooked from the start as you read the exciting circumstances of how Black Bruin becomes part of a young farmer’s family. This black bear from the wild desires freedom, and his strength and appetite bring him constant conflict. You’ll be enthralled reading the many trials Black Bruin faces as he strives to be “King of the Mountain.”

Clarence Hawkes’ storytelling will keep your boys (and you) turning the pages and wanting to read more of his wildlife adventures from this exciting era. Both stories are beautifully illustrated by Charles Copeland.

DOWNLOAD TWO FREE SAMPLES FROM THIS BOOK HERE: http://www.cardamompublishers.com/stories-for-boys.htm