Meds from Canada

Some time ago I mentioned that I was considering buying Qvar inhalers from Canada. I went hunting on the internet and found a pharmacy in Winnipeg that sounded reliable, and two days ago my order came in the mail.

Comparison:
(I use 4 doses a day)
Harrisburg Pharmacy--100 doses--$64
Canada Pharmacy—600 doses--$100.50

Now I am all for supporting a small-town pharmacy, and I will continue to buy Steven’s pre-dentist antibiotics in Harrisburg, but for these numbers, I’ll buy my Qvar in Canada.

Quote of the Day:
"It’s just a total crop failure this year."
--a guy at a Mennonite Bible school, referring to the girls, to his cousin who told his mom who told me

Mr. Smucker Posts

I, Paul have been coerced into writing my first blog post. Please forgive me if you are one of my wife’s faithful readers and you find my post boring compared to hers.

The subject of teaching our children from a Christian perspective has always been close to my heart. I spent the first 8 years of my schooling in public schools, and my high school years in a Christian school. My four years of college were in a Christian college. I have taught 11 years in an individualized setting and 4 years in a classroom setting. I am currently in my seventh year as principal and part time teacher in an individualized setting. We have homeschooled all our children for first grade and one of our children for the seventh grade.

With this experience in mind, along with a lot of observation, let me make some statements about the three different types of Christian education: home, individualized, and classroom. Please realize that these are general statements. To every statement there are exceptions, both on the pro side and on the con side.

Pros:
Home:
Under the complete control of the parents. The parents are able to tailor an education that is best for their child
Usually the least expensive
Gets parents the most involved

Individualized:
Works best for small schools
Gives children the opportunity to work at level and speed that fits them
Makes easy allowance for children of different skills and placement
Provides a good setting for children to interact across a broader range of ages

Classroom:
Children learn to be taught
Discussions and group leaning can be utilized
Teachers have a better opportunity to pass the knowledge they have in certain subject areas
Teachers can supplement and tailor classes to the students they have

Cons:
Home
Some home schooled children have socialization difficulties
Some home schooled children suffer academically
Sometimes the focus is on having school because the state requires it rather than for the sake of learning

Individualized
The curriculum tends to be the focus and if the curriculum is lacking it takes a lot of effort to overcome it.
The student’s focus can become just completing the work and passing the test rather than learning the material
Listening, note-taking, and writing skills are all areas of weakness

Classroom
Some students can just float along and get lost in the crowd
Slower students slow down the whole class
Faster students can get bored

I will stop with these pros and cons and make some more statements in general

Of the three, all can be wonderful or good or okay or poor or terrible. I don’t believe any is ordained by God as the best or the only. What makes a certain type of education wonderful is not the method, but the people who put it into practice. Some parents make wonderful home school parents. Some do very poorly. Some individualized teachers are wonderful, some are only mediocre.

The individualized schooling has suffered from the misconception that the teachers do not need to be very knowledgeable because the curriculum does the teaching. That is true to a certain degree, but I have encountered students who have one year really struggled with a subject, but the next year when they have a teacher who is competent in that subject have suddenly become proficient in that subject.

In recent years is seems many individualized schools have been changing to classroom. To me it seems they hope that changing systems will somehow let them overcome the problems their school has which are deeper than the type of teaching method used.

Some parents use Christian school as a way to absolve themselves of their teaching responsibility to their children

Some parents use homeschooling as a way to keep an unwholesome control.

I admire parents who are willing to realize that for some of their children homeschooling is best, for some individualized is best and for some classroom is best.

I believe that about 95% of children can learn well in either homeschooling, individualized, or classroom. Some in this 95% will have their preferences on which would be best for them, but they can still learn well in any of the three settings. Of the other 5% because of their learning styles or emotional make up or any of a host of other reasons, one of the three is about the only way they can really learn.

The curriculum is important in the learning experience, but of far more importance is the teacher. It is sad to see schools who spend a lot of time and effort to get good curriculum, but little effort to have good teachers.

I have lots more I could say, but this is too long already.

My "Christian" Cats

Our black and white cat, Katzie, reigned as queen here for years. She did what all queen cats do: lay on the porch in the sun, got fat, and caught mice only when she felt like it.

Then Hansie came and her life changed completely. Instead of living in peace and plumpness, she was on the run, flying headlong around the corner of the house and scampering up a tree with Hansie behind her taking the corner on two wheels and woofing ferociously.

Katzie began to spend most of her time in the pine tree or on the porch roof. Instead of nibbling whenever she was hungry, she ventured to her food dish on the porch early in the morning and late in the evening when Hansie was locked up. And if Hansie had eaten all her food and no one remembered to replace it, she went hungry.

I was feeling worse and worse about this but didn’t know what in the world to do. The final straw came late one evening about a week ago when I went out late to feed her and saw that she had already been there and left, a line of timid, disappointed, wet pawprints leading across the porch to her cat dish and back off the porch.

Then she disappeared. We figured she had finally had enough. I felt like we had somehow betrayed her and she was out there starving in the rain. Paul said I must be desperate for something to feel guilty about if I was this guilty about a cat. The children and I prayed about her, acknowledging that in the grand scheme of things this cat was nothing compared to children dying of malaria and starvation around the world, but still, she was our cat and we were worried about her.

Paul thinks one house cat is far too many, but I announced unsubmissively that I don’t care what anyone says or if she smells or sheds, if Katzie ever shows up again she is going to be a house cat until we can train Hansie to stop chasing her.

Meanwhile, Pigga, who as you recall was saved from an oily, wet death under the oil tank and/or being eaten by Hansie, continued to prance around the house, eat well, and leap for backpack straps and anything else that dangled.

Then about two days ago while Paul was driving his truck to Kropf Feed, he called me and said he just saw Katzie beside the road, alive and licking herself, between our place and Coffeys’. He thought I might like to know.

Awwww, what a softie he is inside that stern exterior.

I walked down the road and there she was, sitting on a piece of wood down in the ditch, skinny and wet but ok.

Now she eats all she wants, sleeps on top of the freezer, and gets all the love she can handle.
But she doesn’t get along with Pigga. They arch and spit and swipe at each other, circling around the food dish and glaring at each other.

I don’t get it. Both were saved from a cruel enemy and a miserable fate and brought into a place of peace and plenty. I thought surely their shared gratitude would make them friends for life.

How like some of us Christians, rescued from a merciless enemy and a terrible end, and in our shared salvation we cannot find the gratitude that makes us get along.

Quote of the Day:
"I don’t have any potential energy much less kinetic energy."
--Emily. (I feel like that in the morning too.)

Rain

Normal Oregon rain is drizzly and drippy, making you thank whoever invented the 5-second-delay feature on windshield wipers.

But lately we’ve had relentless, steady, keep-the-wipers-going rain that has filled up creeks, fields, and ditches and shows no sign of stopping. Muddy Creek normally glides along politely, almost hidden by the trees. Now it is nearly out to the road and all the trees are poking out of the water.

The water is over the road in many places and over the old bridge at the warehouse. Paul went over before school to make sure it wasn’t up to the machine shed. (Not yet, thankfully)

At our last writers’ meeting we were discussing Seasonal Affective Disorder which, it turned out, affects most of the group—including me. That black cloud descends every October and hangs on til April, making us tired and unmotivated and wanting more than anything else to eat chocolate and go hibernate.

Jessica said, "I didn’t used to think I had SAD but then one day the sun came out accidentally and I had this sudden burst of energy."
Carol said, "You know you’re living in Oregon when the sun comes out ‘accidentally.’"

Meanwhile, I keep telling myself:

Quote of the Day:
"At least it’s drowning the mice."

A List of Possibilities

Global warming
Premillenialism
Immunizations
Reiki therapy
Home schooling
Women's role in the church
Republicans
Absolute truth
Dating
ANWR drilling
Islam

Quote of the Day:
"You need to write about something controversial so you get some comments."
--Paul, reading my blog last night

Updates

My January column is available at www.registerguard.com, look under Oregon Life or do a search for Letter from Harrisburg. It looks like they might make you wade through a registration process. Sorry.

And Amy has a new update from the Emirates/Oman. Here's my favorite sentence:

I’m standing under the "23" sign, and these people start coming up to me and stuff, and they’re all taller than me, and most of them are like, seriously towering over me. I introduced myself to this one girl, and she’s like "You’re Amy???" and looked at me like "you look way too young/small to be our group leader."

Quote of the Day:
"Mom, if you heated a can of pop in the microwave, would it explode?"
--Jenny