Why My Children Learn at Home

Chameleon Monsters "blending in" with the couch.

I am a homeschooling mother, which means I am my sons’ teacher.  I have two boys, one is three, and the other is six.  As a family we didn’t plan to homeschool.  I am currently working towards a Masters in Elementary Education and had planned on working in a school once both of our kids were of school age.  Now that we are homeschooling, we want to continue for as long as we can. 

There are many issues and inadequacies in public schools today that I have observed during my time spent in my son’s classroom in the Fall of 2012 and through informal talks with friends in the teaching profession.  These include mandated curriculum, high stakes testing (and the classroom culture that it creates), developmentally inappropriate time and classroom structures, and the punitive and shaming method for behavior management.  This – the punitive and shaming method of behavior management witnessed in my son’s classroom– was, for me, dismaying.

When our six year old, Julian was in Kindergarten he was constantly getting into trouble.  Every day after dropping him off at school we would not only wonder, but worry about the day he was having.  Is he getting in trouble?  What will the teacher talk to me about after school?  How pitying will the teacher look at me as she describes his unacceptable behavior?  Why was it I could take him to a grocery store without being embarrassed, but it seemed to take all of his will power to stay within the acceptable parameters of a kindergarten classroom? 

So, my husband and I each took time to observe and help in his classroom, to see what was going on.  Maybe there were certain triggers we could identify or certain times of the day that were problematic. 

What we discovered was the way the school day was structured was developmentally inappropriate for five and six year olds, in that there was a lot of sitting and writing.  The sitting and writing was mandated to the children from the teacher (which was mandated to her from the government).   No one had a choice in what to learn, and those who did best were those who wanted desperately to please the teacher, not necessarily those who best understood the content. 

How does a teacher get students to behave in a developmentally inappropriate way?  From what my husband and I saw, they shame them. This particular school uses construction paper circular faces of red, yellow and green.  Green is good, yellow means you had some trouble that day, and red means the teacher and parent must talk.

At first, I thought these circular faces were meant as an easy way to communicate to parents about how their child’s day went.  While observing in the classroom, I learned these colored faces are used to get children to behave.  As in, “You don’t want your mom to see that you got a yellow face, do you?”  Or, “If you can sit quietly and write your numbers I’ll take you off of red for today.”  Of course, the only children this reliably worked for were those eager to please the teacher, and even then it didn’t create lasting change, it was only in the moment. 

When we decided to homeschool our children – Julian 6 and Oliver 3 - we excitedly left these problems behind.  We also brought upon ourselves new problems that cannot occur in the public school setting, as it exists today.  Problems, such as: What do I teach my children?  How do I teach it to them? And generally, what do we do all day?

This got me thinking about how, in public schools, children are made to learn certain things, whether or not they have any interest in it.  I also began to catalogue all the things I learned in school that I have needed in my life, which led me to think about all the things I’ve needed in life that I didn’t learn in schools. 

Before homeschooling, I thought that a teacher should force a student to do their work no matter what, because it was “good for them.”  But after having children, and being witness to and participant in our wonderful, open and trusting relationship, I can more clearly see how poorly students are treated in schools.  It is evident that forcing children to do their work “no matter what” flies in the face of their humanity.  They are required to learn what is dictated to them, in the way it is dictated to them.  Not only are they not expected to have (or be capable of having) passions, they are not given any time to pursue nor develop them.  They are learning content and subjects that are said to make them “well rounded,” but some kids have “sharp edges.” 

When we began homeschooling, out of fear my child would fail in his life because he wasn’t going to school, I attempted to recreate a sort of school at home.  It wasn’t all day, but it consisted of me sitting Julian down at the dining table to do number drills, practice writing letters or words, reading something specifically because I thought it was educational, and even doing workbooks when I felt we weren’t being “academic” enough. 

This felt awkward because I was acting (or trying to act) like a teacher during “school time” and like mom during the rest of the day.  My son hated it, so of course I hated it.  He would refuse and I would entice, he would refuse and I would cajole, he would refuse and I would threaten.  Threatening usually worked, at first.  After a while it stopped working too.  So I began to shame him, just like his teacher had.  This only sometimes worked, but it always felt horrible.  It felt like I had broken the most important promise I had ever made to at least help him grow into himself with compassion, patience and love.  I can’t do everything, but can’t I at least be strong enough to give him space and time to be human?

Realizing that I was using shame to shape my son’s behavior led me to wonder, “Is the end result worth it?”  And, “What end result would have to be guaranteed to make me feel ok with doing what ever it takes to get my son to do well in his schooling?” 

After a lot of thinking and journaling, I realized that the end result would have to be my children knowing themselves well enough to know how to make themselves happy or satisfied, and having the tenacity to make that happen.  So then I began thinking about how to do that.  

So how does a child with “sharp edges” learn “what he needs?”   After assimilating everything I had read and recorded about our journey, I realized that before Julian went to school he was an eager learner and he absorbed everything easily without any formal instruction (at least not planned).  So I began to step back, to watch.  It seems like he has more intense and longer periods of focus when what he is working on is his idea, when he is working his way, at his pace.  It also seems that his learning and understanding are deeper when his project is fully his.  In light of these insights, I began to wonder how far this could go.  

Drawing a story.