Get Out of the Way

We've been taking a break from homeschooling the past few weeks for the holidays.  We have been following a year-round schedule, so we have the luxury of an extended winter break.  It seemed we all needed a break from routine and from set curriculum for a little while.  We haven't taken a break from learning, though.

I am always amazed at how much my children learn and how easily they learn it when I stop trying so hard.  Since the beginning of this school year, I had been working with them on place value, multi-digit addition, and telling time.  We had made progress, but I didn't feel like they were really getting it yet.  Then, last week, my 7-year-old daughter woke up one morning, pointed at the clock and informed me that it was 7:35.  A couple of days later, my 5-year-old son pointed at the clock and told me that it was 2 something, but he wasn't quite sure how to tell the rest of it because he "couldn't see the little number where the big hand was pointing".  It wasn't perfect, but he got the concept.  Last night, after a day where I allowed them to play way too long on their new video gaming system that they got for Christmas, my daughter sat down to "draw" and, much to my surprise, decided to do math problems instead.  She started adding 100+100 and 100+100+100+100 and then she tried 1000 + 100.  She needed a little help with that, but quickly understood once I explained to her how to do that.

This isn't earth-shattering in many ways.  This is not advanced level work for a 7 year old or really even for a 5 year old.  What amazes me is that I've been trying to teach them these concepts off and on for months.  They weren't quite catching on and weren't really interested.  Place value work sheets were boring.  Quizzing them on times written on paper clocks didn't hold their interest.  Give them a break, stop trying to teach them, though, and, all of a sudden, this stuff is fun!  Last May, after a year of school where she was forced to do endless worksheets for math, my daughter didn't exactly hate math, but she wasn't too fond of it.   Last week she started doing math problems out loud in the car, asking me to check her answers.   She has even commented a few times lately about how fun math is!

My daughter has also been very interested lately in geography and time zones.  I regularly have to pull out the world map and show her where various countries are located.  I often have to Google what time it is in various places around the world to satisfy her curiosity.  I daresay if I had planned a lesson on this and forced her to sit and learn about this topic, she would have been bored to tears.

So, where am I going with this?  I continue to learn more every day as I observe my kids and continue on our journey of homeschooling.  One thing I'm learning is that kids learn so much more and so much more easily when we let them lead to a certain extent.  Kids, my kids at least, learn best when they are allowed to follow their curiosity with parents or teachers to serve as advisors or tutors when needed.  It is much harder as a parent-educator to give them that freedom.  I worry and stress a bit when we deviate from the set curriculum I had planned out or when we diverge from what their peers in school are learning.  One of the things I'm learning, though, is that they seem to get to it all eventually without my prodding or forcing them to learn certain things.  I certainly never thought my daughter would CHOOSE to learn multiple digit addition!

There are a few things I truly hope will result from our homeschool experience.  One of those things is that my kids will grow to love learning and that learning will be something they will want to pursue and will know how to pursue on their own.  I am starting to realize that the best way to bring that hope to fruition is for me to get out of their way as much as possible.  When they express an interest or curiosity, I will help them find a way to find answers and I will show them how to research it and learn more.  So, in 2016 I resolve to cooperate in their learning more and attempt to force learning less.  I will pay more attention to their interests and curiosity and less attention to what they're "supposed" to be learning.  I think we'll all enjoy the journey more that way.

The ghost of Christmas past

Perhaps this would be better as a New Year's post, but I always find that Christmas is the time I reminisce while New Years is a time for looking forward.  As I put ornaments on the tree, I see the handmade ornaments made by my children in years past.  I see ornaments from my childhood.  My parents started a tradition which I've continued with my kids of buying an ornament with the year on it each Christmas.  I still have many of those ornaments and they remind me of Christmases past.  I'm reminded how quickly life goes by and how uncertain our lives can be.

In the past year, an acquaintance unexpectedly lost her husband, several friends lost parents, friends have received worrisome diagnoses, and friends have moved away.  Many of these things could not have been foreseen last year this time.  Rather than worry and fret about the uncertainty of the future, I try to focus on the present moment and remember to be grateful for all of the people and blessings in my life this Christmas.

Sometimes at night when I'm tucking my children into bed and lying there with them while they try to go to sleep, I stop to think of how truly blessed I am.  I hear their soft breathing and I think how lucky we are to have two healthy children.  Sometimes I find tears springing to my eyes as I realize how grateful I am for all I have.  It is almost scary to me sometimes when I think of how blessed I am and I worry that the future will take away those things.  I try to put those thoughts aside and focus on the present moment.

I think it is so easy as a busy mom to focus on the daily minutiae and let time pass by.  My children are growing up right before my eyes, but if I look only at the everyday I miss it.  I recently had to purge old photos from my phone.  I had over 7000 photos on there that I had taken over the last 3 years!  I was amazed to see how much my children have changed in just a few years.  My son doesn't look like the baby he was when he was 2, he no longer uses a pacifier or sleeps in a crib.  My daughter has a more grown up hairstyle with no bangs now, her face is thinner and her legs are longer.  When I looked back at photos from past Christmases, I saw how much they change in just a year.  I vowed at that moment to try to appreciate and treasure the everyday moments more this coming year.

I also noticed as I looked back at photos from past Christmases just how much my parents have changed.  When we're young, we think of our parents as unchanging and unchangeable.  My parents have begun to decline in recent years, however, and looking back I noticed the changes.  Two Christmases ago, my father was able to walk with a cane and stand with no trouble, now he is mostly confined to a wheelchair.  My mother outwardly looks only slightly older, but she has started to suffer from dementia.  Seeing their decline has also been a sharp reminder of my own mortality.

Seeing my parents aging reminds me that I, too, am getting older.  Someday, if I live long enough, I will also go through the unpleasant changes associated with aging.  Life is finite.  Perhaps that realization is the greatest gift this year, though.  If we live our lives as if they will go on forever, we may fail to see the beauty and wonder of it.  If we have no awareness of the passage of time or our own mortality, then we won't appreciate what we have and treasure those around us.  Remembering that time is fleeting gives us the impetus to make the most of the time we have.

Some excellent advice someone gave me when my husband and I got married almost 11 years ago was that during our wedding reception, we should take a moment to simply step back and look around at everyone gathered there to celebrate with us.  We took that advice and we paused for a moment to look around and be grateful for all of our friends and family who cared enough to share that special time with us.  I've never forgotten that moment.  I think it is important to take those moments throughout our lives.

So, this Christmas, my wish for you is that you will treasure each moment with your friends and family.  Hold those moments close in your heart.  Be truly grateful for your blessings.  I know that many are hurting this Christmas and have lost loved ones over the past year.  I wish you peace and comfort.  I also hope that the loved ones who do surround you this year will bring you a measure of comfort and joy.

Why Did We Decide to Homeschool? (Or, Are You Crazy?)

I started toying with the idea of homeschooling about mid-way through my daughter's first-grade year.  It started with feeling dissatisfied with the education that my daughter was receiving in Catholic school.  Her teacher was fine, but I just felt like her education could have been so much better.  She was coming home from school telling me that it was boring and she didn’t like school.  She said her favorite subject was recess or PE.  She dreaded Mondays and counted down the days to the weekend.  And, she was only in 1^st grade!!  

Homework was another issue.  She brought home very vague homework assignments.  Sometimes I couldn’t even figure out what they wanted.  For one assignment, it had math word problems and the sheet said they should use “problem solving strategies” including acting it out, drawing it, or writing a word sentence.  On the sheet it had the math problem and a small line for writing the answer.  I worked with Claire on all of them and we talked through them, drew pictures on scrap paper, etc.  She wrote the answers on the paper and took it to school, very proud that she had worked hard to figure out the answers.  It came back the next day with a note from the teacher saying “Please re-do and show your work.”  Nowhere on the assignment had it said she needed to show her work!  I was annoyed that she had to re-do something she’d already done and I was even more upset that this made her feel like she had done a bad job even though she had worked very hard and had done everything that was requested in the assignment.  

Homework is another issue I have with traditional school.  I realize they can only fit in so much when they have 25 students in a class and need to teach them all.  But my daughter was DONE with school by the time she came home and she hated doing more school work in the evenings.  I hated the fact that it ended up being another chore crammed into our already busy evenings of after school activities, dinner, baths, bedtime routine, etc.   Also, I think kids need time to just play and be kids and it seemed like there was never time for that during the week once homework was added into the evening plans.  

Another issue I had with homework was the fact that everyone naturally resists that which they are forced to do.  As part of my daughter's homework, she was required to read with us for 10 minutes each night and record the book she read along with our initials.  At the end of each month, she had to turn in her reading form and she was given a reward if she'd read for the required number of days.  Don't get me wrong.  I think reading with children is wonderful and that, in itself, is a great thing to encourage.  What I hated was that requiring them to read for 10 minutes and sign a form proving they had read turned reading into a chore.  On the sheet it said “read for fun,” but on some nights it said “take a break.”  If you are doing something for fun, you shouldn't have to be forced to do it and you shouldn’t want to take a break from it.  

There is a psychological concept that says that when we have to do something or are given extrinsic rewards for doing something, we enjoy it less.  Studies have shown that amateur baseball players often find that they enjoy baseball less once they go pro and are paid to do it, for example.  We already read most nights and having to record and sign off on what we read was annoying.  It turned what had been an enjoyable parent-child bonding time into something required for school that we had to do even when she was too tired or getting to bed too late.  It made it seem like reading wasn't fun so she had to be forced to do it.  

My other concern about homework is the fact that I strongly believe that children of all ages need time for free play.  They need time to play outside, spend time with friends, play with toys or even video games, etc.  The psychologist, Jean Piaget, said that play is the work that children do.  He believed that children learn through play and learn best through play.  In a way, we all do.  Schooling and homework rob children of that time to play.  I’ve heard from friends who have a child in 5^th grade, that homework often takes  their child 3 hours each evening!  That’s excessive especially for 5th grade.  When are they able to play and be kids?  When do they spend quality time with their families and when do they sleep?  If we homeschool, they can get all of their school work done during the day and can relax in the evenings. 

I also didn’t like the fact that my daughter started comparing herself and her abilities unfavorably with her classmates and it started destroying her confidence.  Last year she was a little behind in learning how to read.  Children learn at different paces and she was younger than many of her classmates, so I wasn't concerned.  This started creating problems, however, when she said she hated reading out loud because one of the boys in her class told her she wasn't a good reader.  She got to the point where she didn’t even want to read out loud to my husband or me.   I don't want her to have an unrealistic sense of mastery over everything, but I do want her to feel confident enough to keep learning and keep trying.  I want her to enjoy learning and feel good about the strides she’s making.  Again, my psychology background kicks in here.  I want her to have a sense of self-efficacy, the belief that she can master new skills and that she is competent and capable.  Studies have shown that people with high self-efficacy are more likely to try harder and to choose more challenging courses of study.  I worried that the criticism of her classmates was destroying her confidence.  Incidentally, her reading ability finally kicked into high gear the summer after first grade and she's now reading above grade level.  

I also felt like traditional schooling was destroying her natural sense of curiosity and love of learning.  Before she started first grade, she was so curious about things. She’d find a bug and want to look it up and learn all about it.  She seemed eager to learn how to tell time.   Then, she started first grade and that changed.  She was still somewhat curious, but it seemed like she was starting to get the attitude of only needing to know things for tests or assignments in school.  One incident, in particular, really struck me.  I knew they’d been working on telling time in school, so one evening I was trying to tell her it was time for bed and I asked her what time it was.  I pointed out that the little hand was on the 8 and the big hand was on the 1.  She said, “ we only learned o’clock and thirty and we’re done with time now.”  I informed her that she will never be done with time so she’d better learn the times in between o’clock and thirty!  

I know that this attitude of only needing to learn things or know things for school is a common side-effect of tests and grades.  Over the summer, I volunteered at Girl Scout camp.  The other leaders and I were having a discussion with our group of sixth grade girls.  One of the leaders used a big word and one of the scouts asked what it meant.  The leader defined the word for her.  At that point, another scout said, "No learning!  This is summer and we're out of school!  We will have no learning here!"  I hope that my kids will see learning as something to be enjoyed and something they want to do all the time, not just when it is required for school.  

 

The more I researched homeschooling and thought about it, the more I realized that I could offer the kids so much more in a home school.  Without 24 other children to educate, we can be so much more efficient in our learning.  They don’t have to do busy work while they wait for the other kids to finish assignments.   We use a mastery model where we don’t move on (or at least don’t permanently move on) until they’ve mastered a concept.  In school, they have to move on whether everyone has learned a topic or not.  Some kids just get better grades than others.  For example, my daughter had weekly spelling tests.  Some weeks were busy and we didn’t have time to study the words as much, so her scores on the tests were not as good as other weeks.  Whether she learned them or not, the next week she got a new list of words.  Consequently, there are still words she doesn’t know how to spell.  Now that we're homeschooling, we continue to review words until she learns all of them. 

I know that homeschooling isn't for everyone and I know that many people go through school and turn out happy, productive adults.  Homeschooling was just the choice that made sense for us given all of the points above.  We plan to assess each year to make sure it still makes sense for our family, but, at this point, we're enjoying it too much to even think about going back.  

Outsourcing our children's education

I wrote this post in February of 2015 when we first decided to homeschool our kids.  It helps to explain some of the reasons why we decided to homeschool...  

I was discussing the pros and cons of homeschooling with my husband who is a manager in a corporate environment.  He pointed out that most people have outsourced their children’s education and, as a result, they feel like it is taken care of and no longer really their responsibility.  I think this analogy makes a lot of sense.

Don’t get me wrong, I think many, if not most, parents are very interested in their children’s education and they try to be involved as much as possible.  I was interested in my daughter’s education too.  I’ve found, though, that most schools do not encourage this involvement.  I usually didn’t even know what my daughter was studying in school until graded papers or homework assignments were sent home.  I was invited to class parties or to read to the class, but parents were never invited to help teach or to sit in on classes to see what and how the kids were learning.  Homework assignments were sent home, but my daughter's school either did not send home directions at all (and expected 6 and 7 year olds to remember the directions) or the directions were unclear.  I often felt like the methods I used to teach her those concepts were different from what was being taught in school.  On more than one occasion, I helped my daughter complete a homework assignment only to have the paper sent back for revisions because it wasn’t completed the way the teacher wanted (even though the answers were all correct).  I didn't feel like a partner in her education at all.  In fact, I felt frustrated at my attempts to help out and become involved.

Part of the problem is our mindset and the mindset of teachers and schools.  This outsourcing mindset is not only accepted, it is encouraged by schools and teachers, although that may be unintentional.  When my children were young and not enrolled in school, I worked with them daily to help them learn their alphabet and shapes, I read to them regularly, and I tried to make everything a learning opportunity.  I was their primary teacher and I took the job very seriously.  Once they were enrolled in school, I tried to become involved at their school.  I joined the PTA only to find that they were mostly concerned with fundraising for the school.  I regularly checked the school and the teacher’s web pages only to find that they didn’t really have much information about what the kids were actually doing or learning in school.  If I acted too concerned or interested I was either seen as a “helicopter parent” or the teacher seemed to think I was questioning her ability to teach.  It appeared that I was supposed to blindly send them to school and allow the teacher to do “her job” of educating my children while I simply paid tuition, asked them what they did each day, and helped with homework assignments.  I had outsourced their education.  It was no longer my job to educate my children.  Even on weekends or during the summer, I was mostly expected to just have fun with them or keep them occupied/entertained. I still read to them daily and tried to engage them in educational activities, but I always had the feeling that I didn't have to worry too much because they'd learn most of what they needed to learn at school.  My teaching was just extra.  

This idea of outsourcing our children’s education does a disservice to both children and parents.  Parents know their children better than any teacher could.  Parents care more about their children than any teacher does.  Parents can also provide more one-on-one attention to their children than a teacher can.  Parents are able to teach concepts more thoroughly and they are able to individualize their approach to the needs of their child.  If parents were seen as partners with teachers, this could greatly benefit children.  

The kind of teaching a parent can do is often more meaningful than what can be offered in a classroom setting.  What if homework weren’t just extra work or busy work to be done at home, but rather concepts for the parents to reinforce through real world experiences?  Parents could reinforce basic math skills by taking a child shopping and talking about how much money they have to spend and how much things cost.  They could reinforce fractions by cooking with a child and showing them how to measure ingredients or slice up a pie.  The possibilities are endless and wouldn’t have to involve sitting with a child and forcing them to do onerous worksheets each night.  

I realize that many parents must work long hours simply to make ends meet and they may have limited time.  What I am proposing would actually help these parents, however.  Instead of having to take time out to sit with a child and attempt to help them with homework pages, the teachers could, instead, ask parents to have children help with household activities such as shopping, cooking, etc.  They could be given instructions on how to turn those activities into learning time.  

I think most people and, especially, most children learn better through experiences.  Homework should not just be more of the same type of work that was done in school.  Homework could be an opportunity for children to experience what they're learning in a hands-on way with the guidance of their parents.  It could be an opportunity to involve parents and give them a window into their child's learning in a fun way.  Homework could actually improve and build the parent-child relationship rather than undermine it by forcing parents to become task masters for boring and repetitive busy work.  

I have chosen to homeschool my children partly because of my philosophical differences with the way they are taught in school.  I believe there are ways that traditional education could be greatly improved, however.  Making homework more interesting and hands-on could go a long way to improving things for children and their parents.

Teaching vs. Learning

One topic that often comes up when I mention to others that we homeschool is that of curriculum.  People who don't homeschool often ask how I'm sure I'm teaching them "the right things" or how I ensure that they're staying on grade level with their peers who are in public school.  When I first began homeschooling I bought a boxed curriculum for that very reason.  I wanted to ensure that they learned each subject they were supposed to learn and I was afraid I'd leave something out if I did it on my own.

After several months of homeschooling and closely observing my kids, however, I've learned an important truth.  There is a big difference between teaching and learning.  I can teach what is in the curriculum and what they are "supposed to" learn in their grade level.  They don't always learn it, though.  It seems that they only learn when they are ready to learn and interested in the topic.  This is true in schools as well.

It is not always an issue of when they are ready and able to learn.  Often, it is simply a lack of interest and engagement on their part.  I noticed this last year when my daughter was in first grade at a parochial school.  The teachers taught the kids how to tell time.  She completed work sheets on telling time throughout the year.  She played with a learning clock to try to teach her how to tell time.  She never really learned it, though.  Telling time was irrelevant to her last year.  She didn't really find it interesting or necessary.  This year, however, she's finally starting to understand the importance of telling time.  Now that it gets dark so early, she realizes that she needs to be able to tell time to know if I'm tricking her when I tell her it's bedtime at 7PM (not that I'd EVER do that).  She wants to be able to tell time so she knows if it's almost morning when she wakes up in the middle of the night.  Now, all of a sudden, she's starting to learn how to tell time.  I barely have to teach her.  I can tell her something about telling time once and she catches on and she remembers it.

I've also noticed this with other topics.  My daughter loves cheetahs and she can tell you every imaginable fact about cheetahs.  I've not made any real effort to teach her these facts and she may have only heard certain facts once or twice, but she remembers them because they are interesting to her.  Other topics, such as history, are not as interesting to her and I find I have to repeat the same facts to her over and over before she recalls them on her own.

There is a quote that is often attributed to Buddha, "when the student is ready, the teacher will appear."  No learning can really take place until the student is ready.

Often kids "learn" a topic in school because they have to for a test, but then they forget it shortly after the test if it isn't relevant to their lives.  I know I learned things like diagramming sentences, French grammar, and calculus, but I've long since forgotten them because they weren't relevant to my life and I never used these skills.  What is the point of such "learning?"  

All of this leaves me wondering- do I keep attempting to teach my children what is "on grade level" and what they are supposed to learn based on common core standards or a curriculum or do I focus on what engages them and what they are ready to and want to learn?  I'm going with the approach of following their interests and abilities.  Just don't tell anyone that I'm not going to teach my kids how to diagram sentences!