My Ideal School

My ideal school
Is part of an ideal community
People aren’t separated by wealth and poverty
The richest have a little extra, the poorest still have what they need
People aren’t pulled apart by race
And they’ve learned to respect the glory of differences
If gender differences still exist, the ones who don’t fit are celebrated
They all mix together in a public school that they,
Neighborhood by neighborhood, control

My ideal school
Is close to home
The kids can visit whenever they want
Perhaps a dedicated mentor lives there
(Can’t say teacher, it makes the wrong image)

My ideal school
Has a garden and a kitchen and hot yummy food
And a beautiful place to sit and eat together
(Is it calm? Or is the excitement of the children too much for ‘calm’?)

My ideal school
Is full of resources that draw the kids’ interest
Is staffed with adults who know
That children have their own ways of thinking
That each child moves through learning in their own way
That there must be safety, both physical and emotional
That there must be affection and loving and hugs

In my ideal school
The children see adults learning
They see adults getting stuck, and then getting it, frustration and joy
Here is a woman learning cello
Here is a man learning to knit
Here are 3 grown-ups talking about a book

My ideal school has traditions
They go camping in September
They make Stone Soup together in January
Each day begins with music, someone is playing guitar and many are singing
Most everyone gathers together at lunch time and shares their food
The day and the year both have a rhythm

At my ideal school
When two kids fight
Bigger kids come help them to use words to solve their problems
The big kids help to build a deck or a chicken house, or a new classroom,
trek through the mountains and fix bikes,
take responsibility for the gardens, chickens, and maybe a sheep or a goat

My ideal school
Is part of a network of schools
That crisscross the community like a spiderweb
And each is different
So each family can find
A haven for their children
That resonates with their values.

My ideal school might not be called a school
We need a break from the past, we need a new word for a new place
Maybe it’s the Children’s Center
Except there are lots of grownups there, too,
Learning as much as the kids

Math Poems

I was in a mood one day, and this was my response to a math question...
(Do you know any math poems?)



Imaginary Numbers Do the Trick
by Sue VanHattum
(written on December 15, 2008)


In an email group of 4,000 homeschoolers,
a member wrote:
   My son asks, “The square root of 1 is 1,
   So what's the square root of -1 ?”
This was my reply to her…

What we call the real numbers
is everything on a number line,
positive, negative, zero.

If you're thinking about those real numbers,
on that number line,
none of the negative numbers can have a square root,
because anything times itself will come up positive
(or zero).

But, once upon a time (for real),
mathematicians dueled
by giving each other lists of thirty hard problems.
The winner got recognition
and perhaps a job.

All this dueling led to
a solution for cubic equations:
these mathematicians
created a formula
that would find the numbers
that would solve a thing
like 2x3-3x2+4x-5 = 0.

But that formula was a problem!
It came up with square roots of negative numbers,
which drove the mathematicians wild.
No, no, no. There is no such thing!
Well, maybe there could be…
and if there is,
what would it look like?

With a wave of the magic wand of imagination,
These mathematicians
made up a new number,
which later got the name i.
(Imagine it written in fancy script.)
i is the square root of -1,
so i squared must equal -1.
i is the first step in creating …
the imaginary numbers.

Picture, if you will, a new number line
of imaginaries
crossing the line of real numbers at 0,
with the real number line horizontal,
and this new one vertical.
(It looks just like x and y axes,
but now it's all one number system,
a bit more complex.)

i sits one step above zero.
Another step up this imaginary number line,
we see 2i,
2i is the square root of -4.
(It is?!
Why yes, 2i times 2i equals 4 times i squared,
and i squared equals -1,
so we get -4.
Cool, huh?)
And on it goes.

Now all of this wouldn't really solve much
if there were no square root of i,
and that seems too weird to think about.
But, once you study trigonometry
(how'd that get in here?!),
the solution to that little problem
is actually quite elegant.