The Accidental Conference

Thank you Robin D. Owens. Thank you John Harrell. If it weren't for the two of them, I would have spent my weekend writing at home instead of being at the Crested Butte Writer's Conference. Attending wasn't in our budget, but when Robin wanted a passenger for the six-hour trip, I mentioned it to John, not expecting a positive response. I'm blessed to have his wholehearted support for my writing. He said it was an important opportunity.

It was. As I mentioned in my last post, I had three appointments to discuss my fantasy novel, A Different Song. Two were with agents, and one with an editor. All three asked to see more of the novel. One asked me to email the entire manuscript. I got all that done today. Not only that, but I honestly enjoyed these people. Yes, they were professionals, but all were unpretentious. I loved the questions they asked. I loved having answers for them.

What will happen? I don't pretend to know. I could have three rejections, or I could end up with an editor and an agent. If so, I know these are people I could work with, editorial beasts to help me improve this novel while writing the sequels. In fact, I need to mention world building.

The most exciting workshop of the weekend, and there were several to choose from, had to be the world building workshop given by Michael Braff, Del Rey Spectra Books editor. His information on constructing your characters' world, from history and customs to religion and a timeline, was amazing. It's a good thing I type over a hundred words a minute. He talks fast and doesn't waste words. My notes are fabulous. I won't be having my characters falling out of context in the sequels. Thanks, Mike.

There are more stories to tell, writers published and not whom I met and enjoyed. I'm going to spend a few evenings sharing the weekend in my blog. I did look down several times today, though, and my feet really are still touching the floor. It just doesn't feel like it.

Just Un-Multiply

Today a friend on Facebook asked for ideas to help her young daughter who is having a hard time learning long division. I suggested she un-multiply until it makes more sense. She didn't understand my answer, so I offered to go into more detail on my blog.

As I child I counted my schools for a while. When I stopped in 7th Grade, Hill School at Fort Belvoir, Virginia, it was my 13th school. My dad was military—U.S. Army to be exact, and during most years I was in more than one school. In case you don't realize it, there is no relationship to what a person is taught in 3rd grade, for instance, in Illinois and Idaho; none whatsoever between what is offered for a sophomore in Virginia and one in Southern California.

I'll discuss another time what this did to my ability to make deep friendships. Today I'm just going to touch on one of the educational aspects of the classroom experience. I managed to learn addition twice, while missing subtraction completely. I left one school just before they started it, arriving at another when they had already finished and were starting multiplication.

We did multiplication and were preparing for division when my family was reassigned again. The new school had just begun multiplication. It was an easy (read that to mean boring) time in math for me. We were gone again, of course, before that class was ready to tackle long division. If you're following the pattern here, you realize that the next class I got to had already finished long division.

I figured out ways to compensate. With double the normal practice on addition and multiplication skills, whenever I hit a subtraction problem, I would un-add. If the numbers were 15-7=something, I would automatically read it 7 and something equals fifteen. Un-adding, I would know it was 8.

Multiplication and division worked the same way. If you had 24 divided by 3, I would say, what times 3 equals 24? I knew that answer was 8. With long division, just write down the answer and carry down the numbers. Then, since subtraction is in order, I would just un-add the balance and bring down the next number.

Eventually I learned how to do it correctly as a student, but I'm out of practice now, so I do it the old way, as I taught myself growing up. I un-add and un-multiply. It works. So it's not the most normal method you've ever heard of. I've never tried to be the most normal person. I've never even understood what normal was, or why it should be deemed important. I found something that worked. I could move every 6 months and still get A's in school.

Now, if I could only remember why that was important...

The Cost of Education

Sometime during grade school somebody mentioned to me that whenever a student missed a day of class, it cost the school $60 in federal funding. That's what the school was paid by the government, per student, to see that we were educated. I'll admit that may seem low, compared to what they're paying now, but I'll bet I was getting a better education. 

I was surprised, when my own kids went through school, by what they didn't have to learn. None of them had to memorize the prepositions. None of them had to learn how to diagram sentences. They didn't have to parse verbs. Essay questions? Most teachers didn't believe in them. After all, if you give an essay question, then you have to read and grade it. That sounds like a lot of trouble for the teacher. True/False or multiple choice are much easier to grade. (Easier to guess if you didn't study, too.)

Foreign language was offered from Seventh Grade on up when I was in school in Virginia. By the time we moved to California, they had to put me in an ESL (English as a Second Language) class to allow me to continue taking Spanish. I was a 4th year Spanish student as a Sophomore. That's all they offered in California, even then. I think they only offer two or three years now. Things are going backwards.

I guess I could follow up by making a big political statement about throwing more money into the education system. I could, but I don't think you're dense enough to need me to do that. What I'd rather do is get some comments on what you remember learning in school that perhaps your kids aren't being taught. Do you think money is the key? I'd sure love to have a few answers.