Teri's 30 days of "First Day of School"

[Pretzel]

Maybe Teri would have benefitted from doing school the German way. Six weeks of summer break tops, but more breaks in between to have a rest during the school year and ease things up a bit or skip a week of vacation in between to catch up if there are significant delays. Dear God (or dear Steve?), I thought homeschooling was the laid back alternative to public school because it leaves so much room for individual time scheduling.

Not in the Maxwell House apparently. :whistle:

[nokidsmom]

This post gives us more insight into life at the Maxwell house than anything we've seen since the Moodys. And it scares the shit out of me.

Poor Teri. Really, poor Teri. She was so clearly in way over her head. Figuring out that she could start school prep before the actual first day of school is like finally realizing it's easier to get the toothpaste out of the tube if you take the cap off first.

WTF was Steve thinking telling this woman she needed to have MORE kids to populate his cult? Maybe he really is one of God's Chosen Ones, because there is nothing he did to prevent a Yates tragedy from occurring in his own family. He just was very, very lucky.

It's been scary to see how this family really functions as reflected by the Moody books and now this tidbit about Teri's handling of homeschooling.

It's really showing Steveovah's disturbing descent into the rabbithole, taking that family with him.

[mango_fandango]

Holy poo balls. Nathan looks TERRIFYING in that first picture. Sarah looks so cute in that picture. Little did she realise what would lie ahead.

[Grimalkin]

Holy poo balls. Nathan looks TERRIFYING in that first picture. Sarah looks so cute in that picture. Little did she realise what would lie ahead.

He looks terrifying and excited at the same time. Perhaps homeschooling schedule was better than "vacation" schedule.

[Jana814]

This post gives us more insight into life at the Maxwell house than anything we've seen since the Moodys. And it scares the shit out of me.

Poor Teri. Really, poor Teri. She was so clearly in way over her head. Figuring out that she could start school prep before the actual first day of school is like finally realizing it's easier to get the toothpaste out of the tube if you take the cap off first.

WTF was Steve thinking telling this woman she needed to have MORE kids to populate his cult? Maybe he really is one of God's Chosen Ones, because there is nothing he did to prevent a Yates tragedy from occurring in his own family. He just was very, very lucky.

Agree w/ everything you just wrote!!

[16strong]

Maybe Teri would have benefitted from doing school the German way. Six weeks of summer break tops, but more breaks in between to have a rest during the school year and ease things up a bit or skip a week of vacation in between to catch up if there are significant delays. Dear God (or dear Steve?), I thought homeschooling was the laid back alternative to public school because it leaves so much room for individual time scheduling.

Not in the Maxwell House apparently. :whistle:

From all the time Ma Moody spends alone in her bedroom, I think "schooling the German way" is essentially what Teri did. Honestly, they should never have had 8 kids. They should have stopped at three (or even better, 1), and Steve should have kept his real world job and hired Teri a nanny to help out while the kids were young school children. She also needed a doctor to monitor her depression, and a therapist to help keep her on track. Steve is a lousy husband.

[Handmaiden of Dog]

Wow! this goes right to the top of Bizarro posts from the Maxwells. Teri has inhabited her insular world for so long she doesn't even realize how crazy and overwhelmed she sounds. If Stevehovah really pays attention to what she has written he may end up scrubbing the whole entry because this is most definitely NOT an endorsement of scheduling or homeschooling.

Have a special breakfast – more prep and clean up

How much more elaborate is this breakfast than their regular breakfast. Are we talking 10 extra minutes? 30? 60?

Have first-day-of school surprises at the breakfast table – needed to be put away before school started

Toys? Pencils? What are the surprises and why does it take so long to put them away? Maybe the kids are not as disciplined as we thought if it takes them more than 2 minutes to put their "surprises" off to one side. Maybe Nathan took his first day of school art set to his bedroom and proceeded to paint pictures because otherwise I cannot figure out why putting things away threw her scheduled off by so much she had to cry.

Take first-day-of school photos – more grooming and time necessary plus the time for the individualized photos for each child

The time for the individualized photos? From what she posted they would have taken less than a minute per child and she could have had the waiting kids groom each other "Nathan, brush your sister's hair for me." If she could not do the whole picture thing in 5 minutes (including time to locate the camera) why not do it after school or the next morning? Was it so extremely important to do them on that first day? Most public school kids have their pictures taken sometime in the fall after school has started. If Steve thought it was so freaking important she could have had him take the pictures after he got home from work.

Hand out new school books – not part of accomplishing the day’s lesson

Set up school notebook – very time consuming

This is where she loses me. She is the one making the schedule and she could have easily scheduled in these activities for the first day. Otherwise if she really, really has to teach the first lesson on Day One then, yes doing these sort of things could be scheduled in the week before or the Saturday before.

Discuss assignment sheets and daily assignment expectations – more time not given to the day’s lesson.

I don't understand why her very rigid teaching plan allowed for no discussion or question time. And how hard is it to answer questions about their first assignment when giving out the first assignment?

It is so clear from looking at what she wrote that she was inflexible, unimaginative, and overwhelmed-- in short a truly terrible person to be teaching children with various requirements. She claims that the children felt behind when they started which is because she had unrealistic goals and expectations. I imagine their homeschooling days must have been awful in part because they must have been constantly reminded of their mother's shortcomings as a teacher.

[socalrules]

I don't understand what is so overwhelming about the first day if homeschool. Who cares if you don't get a lot done that first day? You are at home. You can make up the work tomorrow, Saturday, Sunday, or a random evening. I thought homeschooling allowed you to go at your own pace. Why would the kids feel they were behind if everything wasn't don the first day? They aren't competing with anyone else. They will only think they are behind if Teri or Steve tells them that. Oh, and based on what we have seen and read of the Maxwells kids, they are actually behind everyone else education-wise.

[mango_fandango]

I don't understand what is so overwhelming about the first day if homeschool. Who cares if you don't get a lot done that first day? You are at home. You can make up the work tomorrow, Saturday, Sunday, or a random evening. I thought homeschooling allowed you to go at your own pace. Why would the kids feel they were behind if everything wasn't don the first day? They aren't competing with anyone else. They will only think they are behind if Teri or Steve tells them that. Oh, and based on what we have seen and read of the Maxwells kids, they are actually behind everyone else education-wise.

Exactly. I know this sounds crazy coming from me, but Erika Shupe of Large Families on Purpose actually has this whole "first day of school" thing done better than the Maxwells. Erika sets up a new schedule a few days beforehand. She allows for the fact that not a huge amount will be done on the first day/first few days, but she knows that eventually they'll settle into the routine and get things accomplished. And Erika has more kids (ok, 9 as opposed to 8) and they're spaced much closer together. Then again, Erika is about 20 years younger. But the point remains.

Holy shit. Did I just WK Erika *chucklefuck* Shupe? *sends self off to prayer closet* :?

[happy atheist]

Wait, Mary got chocolate? :o

[PrairieGirl]

How in the world are we supposed to take advice on scheduling or homeschooling from someone who was so baffled by both?

Tears? Frustration? OMG, what kinds of punishment did Steve have for not getting things done "correctly"?

A lifetime of being married to him?

[blessalessi]

Wait, Mary got chocolate? :o

She got chocolate for agreeing to pose as a homeschooled student for an extra year after she finished her final assignment, because 30 YEARS OF HOMESCHOOLING. ;)

[Eternalbluepearl]

She got chocolate for agreeing to pose as a homeschooled student for an extra year after she finished her final assignment, because 30 YEARS OF HOMESCHOOLING. ;)

Yeah, I thought I remembered Mary being done and then all of a sudden she was doing another year. No WONDER she didn't needs books or school supplies... :whistle:

[Brittany15]

I feel like I had read this post before. Was this a Mom's corner a while ago?

[fundiefan]

That post made me very sad for Terri and the kids. She was clearly not capable of the responsibilities of homeschooling - hell, even raising - her growing brood of children.

I cannot comprehend how much life must totally suck when you are overwhelmed to the point of tears by a day that doesn't perfectly follow some pre determined schedule.

[JemimaPuddle-Duck]

Yeah, I thought I remembered Mary being done and then all of a sudden she was doing another year. No WONDER she didn't needs books or school supplies... :whistle:

It's so nuts.

[sparkles]

I think Mary's last year of school was school in name only. They probably just tacked it on so that Terry could claim she homeschooled for the nice round number of 30 years rather than 29.

[rosalitta]

Does anybody know what Teri means about setting up school notebooks? Apparently it's very time consuming, but I can't think of what this would be, past writing subjects/headers on them or something. I tried to search their website, but searches for "notebook" only yielded results about prayer notebooks.

[16strong]

Yeah, I thought I remembered Mary being done and then all of a sudden she was doing another year. No WONDER she didn't needs books or school supplies... :whistle:

Worse was the fact that they said she was working on finishing up EARLY.

The Maxwells (like so many other fundies) are lying liars who lie. They read the bible, see that it says not to lie, and do it ON PURPOSE, anyway. It wasn't even a reputation-saving type lie. There wasn't much of a reason for it, especially since the Maxwells seem to have scaled back the Titus2 ministry lately. :doh:

[sparkles]

Does anybody know what Teri means about setting up school notebooks? Apparently it's very time consuming, but I can't think of what this would be, past writing subjects/headers on them or something. I tried to search their website, but searches for "notebook" only yielded results about prayer notebooks.

When I was in school, and the same for my daughter, setting up your notebook meant labeling the divider tabs with the name of the subject. It took, oh...tops, two minutes.

[HerNameIsBuffy]

Tears? Wow. Now I'm not a professional scheduler peddler or anything, but I'm thinking if I were homeschooling everyone in this thread I could put a couple of piles of books on a table, ask everyone to grab one, and you'd all have one in a minute or so. And she had 5 kids tops at any one given time?

No wonder these people don't celebrate Haloween. It's not ideology, it's the insurmountable effort and enormous amount of time it takes to toss some candy bars from bowl to open bags.

I desperately need to know what she thinks preparing a notebook entails. Because I was able to write my name in bubble letters and doodle my first Van Halen logo in under a minute. Done.

Seriously what is wrong with her? Do they not get this isn't helpful except as a cautionary tale?

[HerNameIsBuffy]

Anna didn't get a name caption under her pic - how are Steve and Teri going to know who she is if not efficiently labeled?

I have some serious questions for Teri about this, I know sounds snarky (and kind of is) but really am curious:

Why couldn't she deal with whatever extra dishes there were from the social breakfast while they did their independent work? Getting right into the hard hitting academics they'd have to have some quiet time to do their math problems, read, write, whatever?

After the first year or so didn't they know how the assignment sheets, expectations worked? Did expectations vary so much from year to year it needed to be covered in depth? And since their teacher is their mom wasn't she available for clarification as needed?

How do you explain to your kids that THIS brought you to your knees and assure them that your issues are your own and it's no reflection on them? That they aren't causing your frustration and angst...because kids blame themselves for this stuff and you have to make sure they know they aren't the cause. If this were me thats the lesson I'd need to make sure hit home before getting back to long division.

One of the most important things we can teach kids is how to learn. How to figure out the way they absorb info best, how intelligence isn't knowing a lot of facts but in knowing how to get the info you need and apply it. The best teachers are the ones who have a passion for teaching and can reach kids ...if you don't love to teach how do you teach kids to love to learn?

We've all had that awful teacher who was going through the motions but you know they didn't care if you got it or not as long as you wee quiet, did what you were told and didn't create more work for them. Imagine never being able to escape that teacher next period, next year, or ever...

the biggest question is why I'm a grown woman with a life and I'm sitting here wondering what strangers ate for their special breakfasts years ago and what their surprises were ...and why they took so long to put away. (I blame handmaiden of dog for putting that one in my head.

[MamaJunebug]

HerNameIsBuffy wrote,

We've all had that awful teacher who was going through the motions but you know they didn't care if you got it or not as long as you wee quiet, did what you were told and didn't create more work for them. Imagine never being able to escape that teacher next period, next year, or ever...

This probably has been said before, but if ever there was a woman who was NOT cut out for teaching, it was Teri Maxwell.

Her dramatic narrative is full of the lamest of lame excuses: First day of school photos required extra grooming. Give me a goshdarn break.

When you meet or watch Teri in person, she has an alto voice, speaks very authoritatively, does not appear at all "meek" except when something's gone wrong with the canned presentation and she's nervously watching Steve to see how he's going to regroup from the setback (I witnessed this at the Friday night session of one of their infomercials shows 3 or 4 years ago).

She's no pansy, no pushover.

Yet Steve had her agreeing to homeschool 8 children when education was NOT a natural nor joyous thing for her, it would appear.

I could only look at the kids' photos for a few seconds. The older three, what self-confidence, what spark they showed! The five reversals .... poor little things seem borg'ed from the get-go, same plastic smiles and unnaturally stiff posing from little on up.

As infuriating as many of these self-styled patriarchs and their ess-for-brains matriarchs are, at least in some families, the children have grown, moved a bit farther away than 0.6 mile, and started families of their own. Even the daughters. Steve and Teri Maxwell win hell's internet, jmho.

[Coconut Flan]

I found another article by Terri about the first day of school. One of the "special breakfasts" was donuts from the grocery store. Yep, tons of extra clean up right there. :shock:

Then I found this gem about the school notebooks. Why this woman was writing anything about organizing or anyone was reading mystifies me.

Each child from fourth grade on up has a school notebook. This year we finally got them organized. We have used notebooks for organizing schoolwork for several years, but I am generally frustrated with them. We hadn’t taken the time to plan how many tabs each child needed and what the tabs should be labeled. Then the history tests and quizzes were mixed in with the daily history work and difficult to find come “study-for-nine-week-exam†time. The writing was somewhere in the spelling section because we didn’t have enough tabs. You get the picture, I am sure.

This year I made a list of what each child would need as far as number of tabs and what they should be labeled. I bought enough tabs for their notebooks and for my notebook. I included the children’s tabs in their school supply surprises. During our one-on-one meeting we labeled the tabs and alphabetized them, too. That was another problem. With three children (four this year) with schoolwork in notebooks, I was always struggling through the tabs to locate the right one. Every child had the tabs set up in a different order. I don’t care much for checking schoolwork to begin with, so anything I can do to make it easier is a benefit to me. Even having readable tabs that are in order helps.

[BigSandy]

Ohmygosh, that whole thing about the notebooks and tabs - why is it SUCH A BIG DEAL??? I have taught a lot of music lessons over the years and sure, a lot of the time the kids' music folders are messy and it takes an extra 15 seconds to find the etude we need or whatnot...but who cares??? It's not really that long of a time. I feel like Teri is one of those people who needs things perfect all the time and if it's not perfectly how she expects...watch out!