Parent Summary
Samantha M. Weber
10th
Grade, 2007-2008
“It was the worst of times, it was the best of times,”
summarizes the year. The worst of times
has to do with the actual series of unfortunate events Samantha faced –
continuing aftermath of her brother’s death in April 2007, then the series of
soccer injuries that first robbed her of her “place in the sun” in high school
soccer, then entirely swept her away from her climb into the national spotlight
of classic Olympic-development soccer, separated her from the friends she had
finally gathered around her during her first year of public school, and made
accomplishing her sophomore academic requirements a herculian task. The best of times? The best of times was in overcoming the
obstacles that continually fell before her.
Naturally a positive and optimistic, hopeful person, Sam now consciously
and purposefully chose to be hopeful, not lose heart, and never give up. Right now, even though doctors are perplexed
and somewhat embarrassed, that a 3-month old ankle injury is still unresolved,
Sam is moving forward to July 9th when she takes an 11-hour bus ride
to the University
of Rhode Island where the
Olympic Development Identification Camp will be held over 4 days. She knows she will have to endure pain, and
taping, and a brace, probably blisters on her softened heels, but she’s
picturing how she will perform and put all of her talent and especially her
hours of performance training to full benefit once she gets there.
I am glad that Dr. Lovell’s wisdom held her back from trying
to push through school during the first semester when she was enrolled at
Freeport although only attended in the neightborhood of 11-17 days, and that he
provided for many adaptations to her curriculum for the second semester – Jan
20- Jun 30 2008 when she would attempt to cover everything needed for full
credit in all of her subjects. As I
observed her daily, I concluded that she did not truly recover from the effects
of the concussion until sometime in May.
She was taking a drug called amantadine to “clear her mind” every
morning until the first of April, and now continues to take a mild sleep aid.
One of the benefits of the year has been an increased
self-awareness which has blossomed into a better awareness of the needs and
issues of others as well. She is growing
out of the habit of “forgetting” things that don’t interest her but benefit
others. I find myself thanking her for
little things she now helps with w/o being asked.
She also makes friends wherever she goes. Her doctors and physical therapists keep in
contact with her beyond their professional relationships. One physical therapist, Jen, left UPMC Sports
and moved to California
and maintains an email communication, encouraging and advising her to explore
career and college options. While her
neuropsychologist has called upon her when a concussion patient has been needed
for an interview, and will bring her up-to-date on concussion-related work he
thinks she might have an interest in.
More of the plusses of the year will be mentioned as I
comment on the subject areas, Sam has worked in.
English
Reading – Samantha
especially enjoyed Cissy Space’s interpretation of Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird, which we listened
to on our trips back and forth to UPMC Sports on the Southside in January and
February. We were helped in our
discussion of the book by use of an online study guide I printed out. Samantha is an excellent listener and learns
well in this manner. We also both read
(sometimes together) Tilly by Frank
Peretti. This is a book that we have all
read, and Alexa wrote a very sensitive piece for the LAL contest based on this
book about aborted children that we went back and read also. We both also read (partly) and listened (partly)
to an audio book of The Scarlet Letter
by Nathaniel Hawthorne.
Sam read several
books in the Bible: Romans, Esther, and 2st and 2nd
Peter. Romans was also the subject of a
series of lectures by her Youth Group leader at our church, who introduced her
to John Calvin and reformed, conservative Christianity, and I read the books of
Peter aloud to her. (I should mention
that Sam has been faithful in her participation in her Youth Group’s Sunday
morning Bible studies and in the Sunday evening youth group fellowship meetings,
where they have had a series of speakers on topics such as abortion, how to
study the Bible, and the drawbacks of cell phone communication. In the hour-long drives home, she usually
shares these for my edification and enjoyment.)
Samantha also read and listened to a selection of short
stories by the following authors:
Mark Twain, Stephen Crane, Ambrose Bierce, and Jack
London. In primarily listening to these
and discussing them, we felt that the story lines were truly reflective of the
time period where survival was more of a pre-occupation than it is with modern
man – so far. In Crane’s the Bride Comes
to Yellow Sky, we laughingly remembered a newly wed, odd couple, who boarded a
train from Venice
with us. The bride was an older, large,
comely woman in a big yellow flowered dress and large-brimmed hat and the man
was a bit of a cowboy and seemed to be from an earlier time period. Sam noted the availability of short stories
online and realizes that she does not have to look to full length books for reading
pleasure.
Writing Club – Samantha was very happy to be able to return
to the Pa Homeschool Writing Club this year.
She has participated in this writing club since she was 2, when she
started bringing colored pictures with short stories to share, with only the
one-year absence while she was at Freeport
for 9th grade. The backdrop
of the Writing Club audience has always pumped her up to produce her best work
and continuedto do so this year. She produced papers that were both sensitive
and entertaining and, sometimes, inspiring, such as her winning entry in the
LAL contest.
Samantha had hoped to complete a 10-page research paper and
studied the guidelines for doing so at a website designed by Purdue University. She also brainstormed and did research for
two topics she was considering, one that she hoped would result in a pamphlet
for soccer parents in Freeport on what to do if your child receives a blow to
the head while on the field, and the other having to do with the benefits of
proprioception in recovering from an injury, particularly to the ankle and
foot. She did considerable reading of
current literature on these subjects and discussed what she was reading with
professionals, such as Dr. Lovell, her neuropsychologist, and her physical
therapist, especially Jen Swanson, both of whom had authored some of the pieces
she read. She also read a series of
articles that were published in the NY Times that were relative to sports
injuries.
Public Speaking and Communication.. Samantha has made significant improvement in
being able to speak in front of others and on the phone and with adults,
especially professionals. During the
first semester, she participated in a mock trial in Mrs. Boring’s English class
having to do with the book, Lord of the
Flies, and Mrs. Boring has provided a letter complimenting her on
this. Sam also had numerous occasions
when she dealt one-on-one with doctors, psychologists, and physical therapists,
providing information on her progress and asking questions and making
assessments of information she was being given.
She was also responsible for contacting and making all arrangements with
her soccer coaches and keeping them apprised of her recovery and status. This involved introducing herself to several
teams and multiple coaches, from California, Virginia, Canada,
and Kentucky,
in regards to invitations to her to guest play with them. She also had to develop a Soccer Profile
and begin introducing herself to college coaches at schools of interest to
her. In early June, she and I visited Princeton and Sam met with the Women’s Soccer coach there
for an hour or more. This served as a
dry run for the following week, when she traveled with a music-major friend
from our church to visit Yale. Sam made
all of her own arrangements and got a meeting with the head coach there, on
short notice, and went one-on-one with him for an hour-long interview and
introduction to the school. During the
Spring term, she visited not only Princeton and Yale, but also George Mason
University, University
of Virginia, University
of Arizona, and the Penn State. At Christmas, we took a walking tour of
Stanford and Santa Clara University while visiting Alexa and Seth in San Francisco. She is in contact with these and many more
schools via email and many of the schools have had coaches out to watch her at
the tournaments she has attended. She
also attended two “Meet the Coaches” programs, one in Pittsburgh
and one in Phoenix,
where she asked questions about recruiting procedures and such.
Two of the most difficult public speaking tests she faced this year were
arranged by her concussion doctor, Mark Lovell.
Dr. Lovell asked her to participate in a program public television on
concussions with Jim Lehrer and “The
Newshour,” and to also do a radio interview with Katherine Fink (http://www.wduq.org/news/newsaudio2.html “Sports Concussion Research May Apply to Military Broadcast
Date: February 22, 2008.Pittsburgh has been at the forefront of research into sports-related concussions. Now that expertise may be used to help the military. DUQ's Katherine Fink reports: LISTEN)”
In the TV interview, a full crew came to our house and talked with Sam “under lights” for several hours as she conveyed to them her experiences with a concussion and the possible impact it would have on her life. The interview with Sam provided a lot of background information for the program although there was only a brief segment with her that was aired since her prognosis at the time of the interview was good and others in the greater Pittsburgh area were in much more dramatic situations. See the website http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/health/july-dec07/concussions_11-26.html
Sam also introduced the TV producer to Freeport’s sports trainer, Bill Siegel, who now fields questions on the concussion forum on the pbs website http://www.pbs.org/newshour/forum/health/july-dec07/concussions_11-265.html
During the first semester while Samantha was instructed to
not “do school” and especially to not “push through” with any mentally taxing
activity, there were a few things she accomplished. She read Lord
of the Flies for Mrs. Boring’s English class and Elie Weisel’s Night.
She also wrote a winning entry for the 9th-12th
grade PA Letters About Literature contest.
This book and paper were of considerable help in her personal processing
of her brother’s death the previous April.
The writing of the paper took place over several months and she truly
implemented the “writing is a process” concept and appreciated the value of
being able to step away from her work and then be able to look at it
afresh. She also learned the value of
getting input from others and being open to others’ opinions and critiques. For these, she thanked her Freeport teacher Mrs. Boring, who continued
to encourage her throughout the year, and her homeschool advisor, Mrs. Susan
Richman, and her Homeschool Writing Club participants. She received her award at a luncheon in State College in April.
She had received two previous honorable mention awards in past years.
Sam also completed the online SAT Writing course (through PA Homeschoolers) and
secured the top grade in the class!
The class environment fed her competitive nature..
Grammar. From a
grammatical standpoint, Sam’s writing is much better each year. She has her own “checkpoints” for vocabulary
usage, eliminating meaningless words, varying sentence structure, etc. She’s working on getting the use of “not
only” and “but also” straight. She
usually forgets to save a draft where she’s made grammatical corrections and so
has tried to illustrate what she does for this in the writing of her summaries
for her subjects.
Vocab – Word Smart
Sam worked on vocabulary when she started school in January and was
faithful and successful in doing SAT test prep questions in English in the
beginning weeks. Math and Chemistry took
so much time that she found it hard to keep up but did get back to this in
May-June. She is excellent at putting
new words into use and to recognize them when she hears them, which she finds
exciting. She will hopefully continue
working on this beyond the school year.
Honors Algebra II
After the first test, Sam got very serious about math and
put to good use all the great techniques she’d learned from Mr. Unks last
year. After this, on her tests, she
never transposed a number, wrote out every part of every problem, and received
basically perfect scores. She had a
tremendous sense of accomplishment from being able to teach herself a subject
she would have anticipated being very difficult for her. I’m very proud of her efforts and
accomplishments. She also coordinated
with Mr. Unks and students in her Honors Alg class at Freeport so that she covered basically what
they were covering in school. When she
ran into difficulty, she also sought assistance from two students that were
excellent tutors for her.
Chemistry
This was another subject which she attacked, though she
found it difficult. She persevered,
sought help when needed from her tutoring peers and once called the author of
her text for assistance. She mostly
planned her own program, sometimes wanting me present to assure she was
understanding the lab setups correctly, but became more independent and
confident as the months went by. She
very seldom missed any review or test questions. Again, I was very proud of work ethic in this
course in particular. This course was
very heavily lab-oriented and also emphasized safety.
American Cultures
Samantha completed an online AP course at Hippocampus.org
that was recommended by her homeschool evaluator, Mrs. Susan Richman, who has
also taught AP US History for many years.
Samantha began studying the Civil War in Mr. Stell’s class and continued
that using the hippocampus curriculum.
She then went on to study Reconstruction through the Great Depression
and the New Deal (1929 -1941).
Altogether, according to the organization of the hippocampus curriculum,
she completed 9 chapters and 25 lessons.
Following the adaptations
recommended by her concussion doctor, she did not do written work for this
class. The online work involved reading
text , listening to audio/visual components – the “lecture” portion of the
course, and an explore activity, where, for example, two positions on a
subject, using original source material, was reviewed and the student would be
required to consider these and take a stand herself. During the many hours we spent in the car
traveling to UPMC Sports on the Southside, Sam would tell me about what she was
learning and I would ask questions. At
home, we would review key terms and events and sometimes speculate on how
history had contributed to our present day experiences. Sam enjoyed this course tremendously. Being an auditory learner, this curriculum
was perfect for her and she became truly interested in American History – her
interest level meant that she usually initiated conversations about what she
was learning.
To augment her study of this period, she concentrated her PA
History exploration on the same period and read/listened to a selection of
short stories by late 19th century authors as well.
PA History
Throughout Samantha’s elementary and middle school years of
homeschooling, we were always interested in learning about our state and Sam
kept a compilation of this in her PA State Notebook. She began her 10th grade PA
History unit by reading and reminiscing through this notebook, that included
many wonderful memories of trips to various places in our beautiful Pennsylvania. After that she decided that she’d like to
know what was going on in PA during the time period from the Civil War through
WWI, the same period she concentrated on in American Cultures. She was fortunate to find a website that
addressed this particular time period (http://www.legis.state.pa.us/WU01/VC/visitor_info/pa_history/pa_history.htm). We read from this site together and explored
various connections that occurred to us at the time and she took notes. She also spent considerable time perusing
the http://www.explorepahistory.com/index.php
website and read some short stories from our collection of Pennsylvania Profiles by Patrick M. Reynolds, which is a series of
comic-style illustrated booklets of PA history and little known stories.
In our many, many trips to Pittsburgh, Sam also started her own
collection of original photographs of the city. There’s always construction and changes
going on and viewing this gives us some understanding of the changing nature of
a city and helps us to understand the evolution of Pittsburgh from early on.
Health
This was realtime health class as Sam learned
about her body and the areas of health care that related to her series of
injuries: hamstring pull, damage to manubrium, concussion, microfracture of
orbital floor bone, severe ankle sprain, ligament damage in the ankle, severe
bruising of talus bone, subtalar spraining, midfoot sprain, ganglion cyst in
the midfoot, tendonitis, especially of the peroneal tendon, spraining of all the ligaments in the
thumb. In the treatment of all these,
she dealt with many orthopedists, a physiologist, a neuropsychologist, a sports
psychologist, performance trainers, emergency room personnel, radiologists and
technicians, and a myriad of physical therapists. She had multiple x-rays, three mri’s
including one functional mri on the brain, a CT scan, and one midfoot injection
of steroids under real-time xray (called fluoroscopy), and took the IMPACT test
numerous times. Surgery on her right
foot is now being discussed.
Sam had 35-40 medical
visits and she had about 60 sessions with physical therapists or performance trainers. She received a very unique health education
as she questioned and listened to those who worked with her to understand her
medical problems and what was necessary to get better. She was given many articles to read that she
would then discuss, sometimes with the authors.
She learned about mri’s and was very good to understand what she was
seeing/reading on them in the follow-up visits.
She learned about quite a few medical professions and especially about
how life experiences led people into their chosen careers. She learned
human anatomy and some of its pathologies, such as how ganglion cysts
develop.
French III
Samantha arranged with her high school French teacher
exactly what she should learn and accomplish for French 3 this year in order to
be able to move into French 4 at Freeport
next year. I’ve helped her with some of
these lessons and found that she had good retention although moving fairly
quickly through the material. Time
became a real issue as I hope is understandable given all the medical attention
she was requiring. Although she did not
work on spoken-French, her written French is improved.
Worldviews
The primary curriculum for this course was “The Truth
Project,” a Christian worldview class taught at the Focus on the Family campus
in Colorado Springs, Colorado, by Dr. Del Tackett. Tackett’s bio is attached. The website description of the course is as
follows:
In a recent study, the Barna Research
Group revealed a stunning statistic that continues to reverberate throughout the evangelical world. Only 9 percent of professing
Christians have a biblical worldview.1
Because of this, today's believers
live very similarly to non-believers. A personal sense of significance is
rarely experienced, we spend our money and time on things that fail to satisfy
and we begin to wonder what life's ultimate purpose really is. We are, in
short, losing our bearings as a people and a nation. The Truth Project is developed to help
Christians develop a consistent view of the world.
The Truth Project is a DVD-based
small group curriculum comprised of 12 one-hour lessons taught by Dr. Del
Tackett. This home study is the starting point for looking at life from a
biblical perspective. Each lesson discusses in great detail the relevance and
importance of living the Christian worldview in daily life.
There have been quite a few
surveys that reveal the inconsistencies of beliefs that the majority of people
hold today, not just Christians. The
latest Pew Forum (http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/06/23/BATE11AKBJ.DTL)
survey on religious beliefs says that 21% of self-defined atheists believe in
God! That’s crazy. And, as Christians, we’re crazy too when we
say we believe in the God of the Bible and then think we can live to ourselves
and, for example, not love our neighbors.
So, this is basically the purpose of the Truth Project curriculum and it
asks the question, “Do you really believe that what you believe is really real?I’ve taken this class myself with a group of women, and then have co-led it for a mixed group of adults. When I said that I was going to do it with my 16-year old daughter, my friends said she wouldn’t like it, it would be over her head, and definitely beyond her interest level. I was very pleased that she was truly interested and looked forward to each lesson. The lessons cover a lot of material and are at least 60 minutes long and require serious mental activity. I’d liked to have had Sam write some papers and do some research and really pursue some of the topics that were covered, but time just did not allow. I think that in the future, she will probably go back through these. The Truth Project website also has abundant material for follow-up. I am extremely pleased that she was able to critically process most of the information and draw her own conclusions as to what she believes about God and Man, Truth, Creation, Darwinism, etc.
Samantha
also watched the Ben Stiller movie, Expelled,
that shows the extreme bias against those who believe in not only the
Christian view of creation but also the possibility of intelligent design. Stein confronts the many assumptions in
academic circles that deny the possibility of conjecture and open study on the
origins of life. The Truth Project course consisted of 12 lessons
For each of the 12
lessons there were Tour Guide notes, a lesson outline, key terms and people,
biographical sketches of key people, video slides, lecture, recommended
reading, questions, and Scripture. Also
in each lesson there were cutaways to three noted theologians, R. C. Sproul,
Ravi Zacharias, and Os Guinness, and then cutaways to random “people on the
street” for their answers to the big philosophical questions posed in the
study. The same people appeared in every
segment and one drew conclusions as to whether they had conflicting beliefs,
how they came up with what they believed, etc. – was fascinating. They included an engineer, a young college
girl, an older probably, low-middle income black man, a tattoo artist, a 13 yo
autistic boy in a wheelchair, a 20-something musician, and more.
With lessons 5 and 6 on the origin of life and all matter,
Sam also watched the DVD, “Unlocking the Mysteries of Life.”
Because of time and the adaptations given her, Sam and I
mostly discussed the lessons as we rode in the car. Some of the lessons we watched multiple times
as we shared them friends and other family members. This material has certainly established a
foundation for her to question what she believes and why.
Photography
Samantha read the book, How to Photograph Your Life, by Nick Kelsh, and read the manual for her new Sony cybershot
as well as the online manual for my Nikon D40 and learned to use both cameras
and understand their settings.
She also experimented with all the suggestions for capturing
quality photographs with these digital cameras by changing viewpoints, various
settings, and lighting. A comparison of
her pre-class pictures and post-pictures illustrates great improvement in the
quality of her pictures.
She entered one photograph in a contest sponsored by the Pittsburgh Technical
Institute in Moon
Township. She did not win and was disappointed she
hadn’t realized she could have entered more than one photo.
She’s also started a photo-journal of Pittsburgh.
Community Service
During the past academic year, Samantha spent a week in
Appalachia/Kentucky with Jim and I and various members of our church. During this time, our group worked on
improving a house where a single mom and 4 teenage daughters were living. A water line was run to the house from the
road, a new kitchen and porch were built, and the house was sided. This was actually a 2-summer project and Sam
was present the summer before when the work was begun. This past summer, she learned to install
vinyl siding. The week also included
devotional and worship time and singing, and a separate community service
project where we showed a film, sang hymns, and had a speaker. Sam will be returning to the same area again
this year but on a new project.
Sam has become increasingly interested in going into the
medical field and did what was necessary, on her own, to arrange for the
training and opportunity to volunteer at Alle Kiski Medical Center. She’s completed 30 hours of volunteer work in
the physical therapy unit. She has some
interesting stories to share about her experiences there -- a long conversation with a Pearl
Harbor survivor, being able to bring some cheer to some elderly
women, helping clean up from unfortunate, yet common, “accidents” as well. She’s happy to be asked to do more and more
in terms of the actual rehab that is performed.
Places Visited
San Francisco – toured the
whole city with Seth and Lex at Christmas, including Alcatraz, UC Berkeley,
Stanford, Santa Clara
University
Lancaster
– went to see the Living Theater production of “Creation”
Bodies Exhibit at the Science Center,
Pgh
Phoenix
– and surrounding area for college showcase tournament, played for CA North
State Cup Champion team
Richmond
– for Jefferson Cup, where ankle injury occurred
Cincinatti – for Blue Chip where she guest played for a
Canadian team, Burlington Sting – players spoke French
Southside—several times/week to UPMC Sports – combination
museum and medical facility
Washington
DC—to visit relatives and friends
at Thanksgiving
Yale—college visit
Princeton—college visit
Buffalo—indoor
tournament with ODP before ankle injury
UPMC Sports
Convention Center, Pgh, where Sam participated in Community
Service project, filling gift bags for the USYS National Convention and
Conference. She also participated as a
player in a training demonstration and teaching session for coaches
Penn
State—met coaches and
watched spring opener
Two college-recruiting talks—Phoenix and Point Park Coll, Pgh
Upbuilding seminar at church, North
Park
Physical Education
Samantha has recreated her body in the past 5 months to the
point where she actually “looks” different, bigger, stronger. She has done an incredible amount of physical
therapy for an ankle injury that involved strengthening exercises. She did these for both legs and ankles so as
not to become unbalanced. She also took
a series of 24 classes in performance training at the Center for Performance
Training at UPMC Sports on the Southside.
Her instructor was the developer and director of the program, Ron
Deangelo. She worked on technicque in
running and movement and agility and did core strengthening and muscle-specific
strengthening exercises. Ron also put
together a strengthening program for her to follow at home when she had to be
non-weight bearing after her ankle injury on March 30th. Sam has worked very hard on all of this and
has reason to be proud of her accomplishments.
She can also now do 25 pull ups
on our chin-up bar we have in the kitchen!
Great job!
Normally, Sam would be training in soccer 6 days a
week. Her series of injuries this year
has made that impossible, but she did manage to do indoor training with her
Beadling team for several weeks, and made a great showing while guest playing
with the California North state-championship Deanza Force team at a college
showcase tournament in Phoenix earlier this year. After that, she guest played at two other
tournaments but played injured, and made an appearance at the prestigious ODP
tournament at Rider University in New Jersey in June, but was still injured.
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