The Sea Cucumber in the Paper Armchair

Homeschooling can look like a lot of things.  It can look like Saturday morning cartoons, a day at the park, a day reading to your kids, a day baking with your kids, a day baking for your kids, a day doing laundry with your kids interspersed with readings from Harry Potter, a day revolving around the hour that your family will go to the humane society to read to cats, a day revolving around the hour that you'll find yourselves at the library looking for books about cats or staring a cat.  It could look like a day spent creating a board game for your family to play based on pokemon characters and real animals and real people.  And economics.  And world history.  And also a little bit of quantum physics. 

Of course, it's easy to incorporate quantum physics into your homeschooling.  I think quantum physics comes naturally to many children.  

Last week part of our homeschooling looked like talking about writing new stories.  One of those stories was named "The Sea Cucumber in the Paper Armchair."

Polyglots, routines and tsunamis

My little family of four went to dinner at a friends house on New Year's Eve. These friends have two kids who go to a local charter school, the other family has three kids going to a different local charter school. As the evening unfolded, my husband and I heard about the endeavors and accomplishments of the other two family's children. Three of them are polyglots learning Spanish, one speaks fluently, two are excelling in Mandarin. One plays violin, another plays cello and has a great talent for it. Two are amazing artists - their work covers the walls of their home. There are self portraits in the styles of influential artists whose names I don't even know.
A growing sense of anxiety builds in my chest. My mind takes me on an involuntary trip to the "you suck's," "just give up's," "you'll never be good enough's," and  "I told you so's."
I think about how my kids hate to write and how our fragile routine has been washed away by the tsunami called "The Holidays." This leaves me building our homeschooling back up through the spoils and ruins of Christmas that have no place yet in our home - while dragging the kids along. No mention yet of groceries, meal planning (ha!), actually making meals, laundry, dishes, laundry, cleaning and family "togetherness" time.
Really? Mandarin?
Our friends were clearly proud of their children and excited to share what was going on in their lives. No one was trying to drag anyone else down, that was my own doing. In the end it was a good push in the pants, a wake up call. I had a renewed vision of what was possible and I followed that vision.
Our routine is back and I'm even more committed to homeschooling than I was before. Not to unschooling, and not to the meeting of arbitrary milestones, but to our little family, our routine, our kids, their growth, and to our daily grind of small, seemingly inconsequential things that build themselves around us to create what turns into our life. Even laundry.

Nine things I have done to improve my life

1. Meditate every day.  I started with 5 minutes, moved on to seven, then 15, now 30 minutes a day.
2. Exercise almost every day
3. Read every day
4. Write every day
5. Tell myself, "I love myself."
Everyday

6. Stopped drinking alcohol (at least for now).
I honestly can't imagine NEVER drinking alcohol again, but for now it feels great to not drink.

7. Taking myself seriously as an artist/writer.
8. Stopped taking myself so seriously.
9. Got counseling from a great counselor.

Seasons

We're at the Santa Fe Children's Museum working with magnets.  I love places like this.  They make me feel like I'm doing homeschooling "right" - especially when I feel like our learning is aimless.  Our life looks so different from the lives of our friends with kids.  While they adhere to the school schedule, our lives seem to gently swing from season to season. There are no high pressure tests or stacks of homework to get through.  So there is no need for decompression at the end of every week or school year.  It's such a different tempo from the one I grew up in that sometimes I get nervous that we're not doing enough, or that we're missing something.

But we're not missing anything. No matter what we decide to do we can only live one life at a time.  We each have our own reality that we know to be true.  Childhood is when we begin to build our beliefs about the world, which create our realities. You don't need school to do that.

five things I love about homeschooling

So, five things I love about homeschooling, and their dark side.

1. We get to make our own schedule.
On the dark side:
I've never had to make my own schedule, I've always had either school or jobs to do that for me. I just used my given schedule to create a life within. Now everything can happen all the time. Chess at 9 pm, wine at noon, groceries at 10 am on Tuesdays at Costco, where I get to say hi to Earl. Honestly, I would love to just read, write, talk, and play music all day, but I think my kids should spend some time outside and with people. So we do, but we don't have much of a schedule. Sometimes it's a good thing, sometimes it feels like I've been floating for too long.

2. We get to focus on relationships rather than content.
On the dark side:
Sometimes I wonder if my kids are "behind." Then I realize that whatever they don't know they can make up for with their love and need for learning. Nobody knows everything, which is so exciting- there's always something around the corner to look forward to.

3. My kids get to spend most of their days doing mostly what they want.
On the dark side:
I want my kids to know "what they're made of." How are they going to learn that without going through some adversity? Today my 8 yo was near tears because he couldn't find his Minecraft Redstone book. Of course, when he found it he followed its instructions for the 10th time to make a tnt cannon. And this time it worked.

4. Once again, we get to focus on relationships rather then content.
On the dark side:
I never spent this much time with my parents growing up. I'd only spent this amount of time with people who were paid to take care of me. It has been a steep learning curve in figuring out how to interact with my own children for 16 to 20 hours a day. And also I go a little crazy. But then I take the long view, I work out, or I meditate, or I drink some wine.

5. My kids are very self directed.
On the dark side:
My kids are very self directed, whether I like their direction or not.
Toilet paper on the floor because it's a project, Legos impossibly scattered, skipping during dinner...

No one should skip during dinner.

Every Day

Make every day a work of art.
Spend some amount of time doing something to push yourself or doing something just for the lovely enjoyment of it.  Everyday.

Make yourself uncomfortable, or surprise yourself, or follow through on a ridiculous idea.

Love yourself more than you did yesterday.  Love everyone more than you did yesterday.

"Everything is vibrating with joy and is kept together by love."
And why wouldn't it be?  Fear, anger, hate - they all separate, isolate.  Love and joy opens, pulls together.

The fact that I fell asleep last night and woke up this morning is a kind of a miracle.
I can consciously pull air into my lungs through my nostrils.  Or not.  Either way, I keep breathing.  

Asking Questions

One reason unschooling works for our family is that I've never loved the idea of following a set curriculum.  Instead, I like to ask questions, listen to my kids' questions about the world, and look for answers, which usually lead to more questions.  Until we get to a point where the answers are more like theories or opinions - of which there may be many.  Then we can start coming up with our own theories based on what we know.  Sometimes we can test our theories, sometimes we just discuss them.

Some Examples:
Ollie was interested in the Grand Canyon.  He had heard it was a huge hole in the ground and that lots of people visited it.  His questions were:
"How did the canyon get made?"  and, "Why do so many people visit it?"

We started researching the Grand Canyon online, in books and asking family members.  We did and erosion project with different colors of sand in layers - I had read about it and it sounded like fun to me.  The kids got a kick out of it too.

We also did a project involving freezing and thawing wet rocks repeatedly to see how they changed.

We read about metamorphic, sedimentary and igneous rocks and tried to identify them based on what we read.

 We visited our Natural History Museum and found more rocks.  Finally, we went to the Grand Canyon.  We actually saw and talked about the layers, about what minerals could make the different colors in the rocks, saw a movie about the first known European expedition to canoe it, and talked to staff who knew so much about its history.

We got a lot out of these "lessons," but there was no set curriculum.  We had questions and we found different ways to look for answers.  I know that not everyone can take a week-long field trip, but you can still get a lot out of asking questions.

Around the same time Julian was interested in the Eiffel Tower.  He wanted to know, "Why was it built," "What was it made of,"  "How did they build it," and "How big is it?"  In looking for the answers to these questions, we found out that the guy Eiffel (who designed the tower) also designed and oversaw the construction of the inner skeleton of the Statue of Liberty.

Caring and Relationships in Education

The education philosopher and writer Nel Noddings asserts that “schools should encourage the development of all aspects of whole persons: their intellectual, moral, social, aesthetic, emotional, physical and spiritual capacities.”  One would have to agree with this view, even if only because children spend a majority of their waking hours in school.  If school doesn’t attend to their development as “whole persons,” then when are they to be tended to?  In the brief morning rush to get dressed, eat and get everyone to school and work?  Or the precious little time children might have to themselves between extra-curricular activities, homework and dinner?  Or if a student isn’t so lucky, they may be more concerned with food and shelter, rather than developing any personal aspects of themselves. 

This view of education would require schools to put the care of children first (rather than their education), how they exist now, not in the way they “should” exist in a theoretical future.  It would also require the system to assist students in discovering what they are actually good at and what they enjoy doing, which one could argue is essential to happiness.  However, this is not the prominent view of education in the United States.  Politicians have argued for every student being “college ready,” but many jobs essential to our society don’t require a college degree.  These jobs are considered “unskilled work” however, from my experience, there is no such thing as “unskilled work.”  As a society, we need people to pick up trash, keep our infrastructure intact, and keep streets and buildings clean.  These jobs don’t require a college degree, but we should be grateful for those who perform these tasks.  Unfortunately, by and large, we are not. 

This expectation that college is the only way has led to misappropriated academic demands on teachers and students that mandate everyone use the same curriculum, without thought to individual aptitudes or interests.  Many of these curriculum purport to be “teacher proof,” meaning they take the individual teachers out of the education “equation.”  Without teachers there can be no teacher-student relation, there is only content and student.  But if Noddings’ assertion that “every human life starts in relation, and it is through relations that a human individual emerges,” then one must wonder what will emerge from this focus on results and accountability.  And if it’s true that individuals emerge through their relations, then it must follow that this is how communities and whole cultures develop, But, what happens to communities when relationships are severed in the name of test scores?  A feeling of isolation and separation from fellow humans results.  Eventually, a feeling of separation from one’s self will occur because importance has continuously been placed on test results rather than on the development of one’s inner world, the inner world that a person needs in order to cultivate the perseverance it takes to do anything worthwhile.

But, What about....

                                              Photo Credit: earthporm.com

Questions from parents about gaps in education, socialization, and learning how to do things one doesn’t want to do come at me all the time, and it’s difficult in the moment to remember that unschooling isn’t about those things, because those things happen when people are in school too.  So many of us don’t have a firm grasp on world geography and political boundaries and world history.  So many of us have known some “weird” or “unsocial” kids in school and have tried desperately to cover any weirdness in ourselves so we would “fit in.”  Many of us know people who, despite all their public school training, still cannot seem to just do as they are told or obey the laws of the land.  The point is that public school didn’t save them from themselves.  If anything, it distracted them from being themselves, so that they had to spend years finding themselves after school. 

While unschooling, for our family, is a healthy way to raise our children and enjoy our lives together, sometimes I have to remind myself of what it’s not.  It’s not a guaranteed way for our kids to “get ahead” in a world where the corporate version of success rules.  It’s not a backdoor ticket into college or a good paying job, or even of any form of satisfaction later on in life.  It also isn’t a cure for abusive parenting or poverty.

But school isn’t any of these things either.  Some might argue that schools provide free food for children and can help them get out of an abusive home life, but the child who needs the food at school still goes home to poverty and the child who is taken away from abusive parents is put into a system that may or may not be much better. 

Some teachers have addressed the social inequality issue with unschooling by telling me I should keep my kids in school for the benefit of those kids who have no choice but to stay.  I had to tell them that my kid was bad at doing school; he wasn’t helping the other kids, except for being on the bottom of the bell curve.  I never believed that putting my kids through school would solve these problems, but I’ve been troubled by the fact that homeschooling, and especially unschooling, doesn’t seem to make room for those already marginalized by the existing systems in place.  

In addressing implications for educators, I would say that educators need to pay attention to the children in their care and do what they believe to be the best for those children.  They need to be a voice to and for parents - communicating the consequences of federal mandates on the classroom culture and standing up against unjust laws for parents who don’t have the time or resources otherwise.  Teachers can be a pivot point, a gate keeper, protecting children from federal mandates that are detrimental to their development and only serve the institution.  We’ve all been led to believe that we need to fit into the system as it exists to do well, but if all we do is work to fit into the system, there’s no one who can think about changing it.  So we work and work and work, many work full time and still need food stamps, many work second jobs to “stay afloat”  – fitting into the system isn’t working anymore, the system needs to change.  And it seems like school is just another way to feed people into this system.  Of course, it was designed for that, but democracy requires that we question the system, and make it work for the people.  Sometimes I  think of our unschooling as a weed tree sprouting in the concrete.  It’s not much to look at now, but in time it will grow big enough to provide shade and hope to other families looking for a different way.  

Do It Yourself!

I just found diy.org through Penelope Trunk's Education Blog. This site looks like so much fun and A great resource.

Workin' for the weekend

Sometimes homeschooling is scary.  Like when we spend a week with no social interaction besides grandparents and librarians.  I'm scared to publish that last sentence because of the stereotype that homeschoolers aren't properly "socialized."  Or when my kids act weird in public.  Sometimes I think, "Maybe they're right!  Maybe my kids would be better off in school."
But then I think about what their lives would be like if they were in school.
Sure, they would be around more kids, but when my older son was in kindergarten he only had one friend in his class, and this friend was also a bit of a bully.
And then I think about schedule, and how much work out side of school the family is expected to put in, but the school itself isn't really working for any child's best interests, because it has to simply contain all those children and try to make them know some of the same things by a certain date so they can pass a test.
I'd rather have two happy weird kids excited about their lives than two worried normal kids waiting for the weekend.
When our oldest was in kindergarten we would wake him up to get ready for school, and he would ask us, "Is it Saturday yet?"

A Day In The Life

Today we all woke up late - like after 8:00.  Daniel had to head off to work, so the boys and I had the responsibility to take the dogs to the dog park this morning.  If our dog Scotty doesn't get enough exercise, then our homeschooling day is spent following him around getting toys out of his mouth. 
The kids hate going to the dog park because there isn't a play structure.  They love dogs, but the dogs are almost always more interested in the other dogs than they are in my kids.
Anyway, Daniel remembers that my car is at my parents' house, so if Daniel drives to work we won't have a car.  He graciously offers to drive us (me, two kids and two dogs) to my parents' place to pick up the car and head to the dog park.  In half an hour.  No one has had breakfast, no one is dressed. 
But I think this will be easier for me than letting the kids take their time eating, getting dressed, etc.  They're going to whine about going to the dog park anyway, might as well get it over and done, rather than drag it out for half the morning while I get steadily louder and more aggravated because my kids aren't putting their shoes on because they need to do "just one more thing." 

We went to the dog park, no other dogs were there.  I threw a ball around for Scotty to get him to run, then we went home. 
As soon as we get home the kids ask me to help them make a paper toy - from a book our friends just gave us.  We work on that for a while, which consists of them getting pieces ready for me to fold and glue, then the kids play Super Mario Kart while I take a shower and make some calls.
Julian helps me unload the dishwasher while he tells me about Super Mario Kart.  They took a break for us to have lunch together (tuna salad), and we'll probably go to the park this afternoon with our boomerang. 
At some point I'll try to chop some carrots, celery and onions, and put them in the crock pot with a few other things (beans?) and that'll be dinner. 
Or I won't.
Not a focused day, but not a bad day. 
Now I'm going to call the Natural History Museum to see if we can volunteer!

Documenting the Learning

                                                    Racing the 12 Hours in the Wild West!

                                                                The Lego Waterfall

            Documenting the Learning is important so the child can see their progression through time, what they’ve loved, what they’ve avoided, and hopefully a glimpse into why certain things were loved and avoided.  It doesn’t have to be a strict paper trail, it could consist of many photographs, collections of the child’s work, journals the child keeps, journals the parent(s) keep, videos of plays written and performed, videos of musical performances, a record of community service hours, letters of recommendation from jobs, internships or volunteering, or even a record of chores the child has been responsible for.  These things are useful to the learner in seeing how they’ve grown and what their strengths and weaknesses are.  These things can also be useful when applying for college or a job or any endeavor.  Without formal schooling the unschooler doesn’t have the extensive "permanent record" complete with scores and grades that most children will accrue during their twelve years in school, so they need to see and show their growth and passions in different ways.  Of course, if one has been unschooling for long enough, this will be almost effortless (Disclaimer: May not be effortless). 

Capturing Teachable Moments

                                                         Ice cream comes out of here?!

            Modeling Learning All the Time (from my last post) leads right into Capturing Teachable Moments because if the parent is modeling learning and inquisitiveness, the child will be learning and inquisitive, so Teachable Moments will arise habitually.  Teachable Moments refers to direct teaching to the child when they show a direct interest in something.  This does not refer to “teaching them a lesson” when things go wrong or their behavior is somehow unacceptable for the situation at hand.  Often it refers to a child showing an interest in what an adult is doing, the adult slowing it down and walking them through it only as far as the child wants to go.  I know if I try to keep teaching once the child’s interest is gone the material will not get through. 

            In the home this could look like a parent changing the oil in their car and the child asking to help.  Depending on the age, skill level and interest of the child, the parent talks to them about what they are doing, allowing the learner to take part in as much of the process as possible.  Of course, not every single happening in the home can be accommodated in this way, but many things can be, what’s needed on the part of the parent is sometimes a colossal dose of patience.