Snow Play!

If my kids were in public school, they would not have had the opportunity to drop everything to go outside and play in today's first stick-to-the-ground snow, which both arrived and melted within about 2 hours.  I did have to cut their snow play short, though, because we had to leave for a playdate with my friend and her 5-year-old twins... but if they were in public school they would not have had that opportunity either because in school 6-year-olds only spend time with other 6-year-olds and 3-year-olds only spend time with other 3-year-olds.  So ages 6, 5, and 3 would not have been permitted to mix and have three and a half hours of free play together.  That would be anarchy, right?  :)

PS.  Sorry again that I haven't written much lately!  My hard drive is full and I can't fit any new pics onto it to put onto the blog until I back up some crap and delete it to make room.  I've also reached my limit on free online photo storage for the blog, so I am going to either have to pay a small monthly fee to be able to add more, OR find time to learn how to somehow host images elsewhere for free.  So I have been procrastinating on dealing with that.  Sorry!

TEDx talk: What if We Trusted You? (Jerry Michalski)

When people we care about (there are plenty whose opinions we don't care about!) are confused by, or even blatantly disapproving of, our educational choices, I wish I could get them to sit down and watch this video.  Explaining why we do what we do is so complicated, and this video does an amazing job of it.  It's also a good pep talk for those of us who occasionally need a bit of encouragement, to remind us why we've chosen the path we've chosen.  Brilliant.

As a bonus, here's another favorite of mine.  I've shared it here before, but I'm sharing again, for anyone who may not have seen it.

Feel free to direct your next critic to this post, and refuse to discuss the issue further until they have watched both videos.

MetroPark visit: kind of a bust.... or was it?

Yesterday we went to yet another MetroPark program. This one was all about compasses and orienteering. It was really interesting and very well put together, and the naturalist who led the class was great. The extent of my knowledge of compasses was that the needle points North, but I had never learned what to actually do with one.


First, the guide handed out compasses for everyone and taught us the basics of using them. Then we were off on a scavenger hunt. She'd give us the heading and we had to figure out which direction to go in and pick a fixed object to walk toward, and then she'd tell us how many paces to go and we all walked and counted out loud together. The scavenger hunt included several different canisters containing clues indicating what kind of animal lived in the particular area where we were. I thought Max would really like this but unfortunately he was not nearly as into it as I was. (BTW, this brings me to one selfish reason for why I have chosen homeschooling - I love to learn stuff & am totally psyched about learning things along with the kids.) I think it was a combination of factors - it was pretty hot out, and the pace of the class was just a bit slow for him. He quickly started to get bored and wander off to look at other things. I was doing okay with just accepting that this wasn't something he was ready for yet, and I figured at least he was out enjoying nature; he observed turtles, fish, a couple great blue herons, and was especially fascinated by all of the dragonflies. As the program was nearing the end, I was starting to get frustrated with him because he had wandered way ahead and was refusing to stay with the group and listen to the guide. So I turned in our compass and we left. I was disappointed, thinking that he hadn't gotten anything out of the class. On the way home, he looked up at the van's digital compass and said, "Hey Mom, we're going West." (!!!) He was right, the "W" was lit up. When we turned onto another road and changed direction, he said, "Oh look! Now we're going South!" Right again. My frustration vanished and I started laughing... I guess he did get a little bit out of it after all!

Announcing the decision

Just curious - how many of you out there have had this same conversation? This is sort of an idealized reenactment/compilation of conversations I've had with my mother-in-law (Disclaimer: I adore her. She just doesn't get the homeschooling thing... yet.) Well, except I wasn't this articulate in expressing myself in my conversations with her because I tend to get a little flustered when I really want to say something just right.

PS. This post was totally inspired by Free Homeschooling 101's Facebook page, where she posted a bunch of these xtranormal videos. I thought it would be fun to play around with and it really was!

Short Answer

I finally thought of a satisfying short answer for why we are choosing to homeschool our kids (though I am probably not the first person to say this): Because raising them is too important a job to outsource.

Big Picture

Here is a thought-provoking video looking at the big picture of the educational system. It was posted in one of the homeschool groups I follow - just had to share. Very well done... WOW.

From the "Experts"...

I have to vent about this before my head explodes. I just watched the following clip from PBS's "Need to Know" series, entitled "Big Thinkers on How to Fix American Education". You can watch it here:

Watch the full episode. See more Need To Know.

Or, if you like, I'll give you a summary of what I heard. Basically, each "expert" thought that the problems with the education system can be resolved by focusing in their own particular fields. The head of the American Museum of Natural History thinks we need to focus on science. The President of the New Teacher Project and the head of the National Education Association (Teacher's Union) both think we need to focus on teachers, the former on teacher evaluations and the latter on recruiting, training, and hiring practices. The head of the Asia Society thinks we need to "partner with Asia" and focus on "cultural literacy". Do you see a pattern here? None of them had any specific, concrete suggestions, just vague generalities. The most baffling comments were from a professor at Stanford University. She says that states that have been successful have "forged a consensus... set a path... and kept it going." What does that even mean?!?

While I did agree with a few bits and pieces of what these people said, I really didn't see any evidence of "Big Thinking" going on here. Everyone considered the problem in terms of their own focus areas and didn't go any further beyond. I didn't hear any talk of HOW TO ACTUALLY HELP CHILDREN LEARN. The only person who almost touched on this was the representative from Kids Count, an organization for disadvantaged kids. She thinks we need to focus on birth through age 5, and prepare kids better before they start school. While I agree with that statement, I strongly disagree with her assertion that educating kids is a "pocketbook driven" thing, and that people with more money prepare their kids better. I assert that people who care about learning prepare their kids better, regardless of income levels. My pocketbook is pretty darn tight, and I am doing a fine job of teaching my kids, thank you very much. SO many parents nowadays just wash their hands of any responsibility for facilitating learning in their kids and just expect the school system to do everything for them. THAT is the problem, and dumping more money into the school system won't do a darn thing to change it.

In my opinion, the flaws within the system lie in the rigid institutionality of it. There is no flexibility to adapt to different learning styles, skill levels, or interests. Teachers have zero flexibility on what they teach or how they present it. You will learn what everyone else your age is learning, in the same order, by the same method, at the same time. Period. I think that school, for many kids, is simply tolerable, tedious, or outright tortuous. I would love to see some real experts address that.

Awkward conversation that I had tonight

I recently became a consultant for a company called Usborne Books & More (if you are not familiar with their books, they are FANTASTIC! Check them out here.), and I was working a book fair at an elementary school. Afterward, I happened to be walking out at the same time as the principal and we were chatting:

Principal: Do you have any children in school?
Me: I have a 1-year-old and an almost 5-year-old.
Principal: Oh, so the 5-year-old will be starting kindergarten.
Me: Well no, actually we are going to be homeschooling.
Principal: Oh.
*sound effect of crickets chirping*

And that was the end of the conversation. It was a tad awkward - I had to chuckle on the way to my car. Whenever I come out of the educational closet to someone, I always want to throw in, "But I'm not doing it for religious reasons! I'm not one of those "The earth is 6,000 years old" type of homeschoolers! I'm not one of them! I love science and reason!" I feel like that is the general perception of homeschoolers, and while I know there are indeed many who do fit into that category, I am really hoping to find some who are more like-minded to me. I will expand my thoughts on the subject sometime soon, but I'm not quite ready to come out of the spiritual closet yet...

In a nutshell...

(via reddit)

Why? Part II

I have been thinking about it, and I have a few more "why's" to mention. Almost as strong as my excitement and enthusiasm for homeschooling is my distaste for the public school system. Both my husband and I agree that we are less than impressed with the public school educations we received. I remember finding most of my classes boring, tedious, and unchallenging. My younger brother, on the other hand, found it extremely challenging - he just couldn't physically sit still and focus - a problem that is often remedied nowadays with medication, but which I believe could also be remedied by just letting the poor kid MOVE throughout the day. I have read lots of stories of mothers who struggled to get their kids to sit still and listen, and then one day tried just letting them run around while being read to, and amazingly the kids were better able to answer questions about what they heard. They were actually able to focus and absorb the information better because their attention wasn't consumed by trying to be still. Having the flexibility to pick and choose tools and methods that will match my kids' individual learning styles, and allowing them the freedom to learn in whatever way is natural for them, was a very strong factor in my decision to homeschool.

My problem with the public school system is not with the teachers, but with the framework that they must work within. It's a system that was originally developed to create good, obedient assembly-line workers when the country was becoming industrialized. Not to teach people to think and love learning, but to teach them to respect authority and tolerate drudgery. There is little emphasis on innovation and creativity, rather, it's just a list of things some bureaucrats have decided kids must learn, and exactly when and in what order they should learn it. Little to no deviation is permitted. Teachers are under so much pressure to get their students to perform well on standardized tests, that the tests become the sole focus of everything, with the students cramming in tons of facts to be regurgitated and then quickly forgotten. This is not true learning. Many people are unhappy and frustrated with the current public school system, and it really baffles me when some of them think I'm crazy for deciding to reject it.

And so little of what is learned in school is actually useful in real life. I think kids should be able to function in the world after graduation; to do math, follow a budget, balance a checkbook. I know 18-year-olds who don't know how to cook themselves a meal or do their own laundry. What about acquiring marketable skills, or how to write a resume, or how to act at a job interview? I think the very most important thing a person needs to learn in their education is how to remain curious about the world, how to form questions and then research to find their answers, how to find ways to teach themselves what they need to know. Basically - that learning is not something that ends on graduation day.

I often say that the only thing I took with me from all of high school, that I use every day, is what I learned in 9th grade typing class. Well, that and my love of reading which stemmed from all the books I devoured in my free time. My very favorite school memory is of this sunny windowsill, in the back of the middle-school library, where I would hide out at lunchtime and enjoy some peace and solitude and escape into a good story. I remember actually feeling annoyed when my friends finally discovered my hiding spot, and then kept showing up there to talk to me!

Patting myself on the back just a tiny bit...

So in our local paper, The Post, they have a relatively new feature: Guest Columnist. You can write 750 words or less about whatever topic you want, so I submitted a column about homeschooling. And they printed it! I pretty much just cobbled the article together from my first couple of posts on here - this blogging thing really helps me organize and clarify my thoughts. But it was really exciting to see my name in print!

A Few Statistics

In a letter to the editor in my local paper, someone criticized homeschooling and wrote that although she has met some "wonderfully polite, educated, social children... most of the time it does not turn out so well." So I started looking up some statistics and here are some of interest:

• Currently, there are somewhere between 2 million and 2.5 million home schoolers in the United States and they are growing in number by somewhere between 5% and 12% per year.
• Home schoolers score higher on average than public school students on both the ACT and SAT tests
• "On average, homeschool students, grades 1–4, perform one grade level above their public and private school counterparts... by 8th grade the average home school student performs four grades higher than the national average." (SADC)
• More than 74% of home schooled adults have taken college classes as opposed to 46% of the general population. (HSLDA) Many colleges are now actively recruiting home schoolers because they have a more well-rounded education, stronger work ethic, and better study habits.
• In a study of home educated adults, Dr. Gary Knowles of the University of Michigan found that "None were unemployed and none were on welfare..." (emphasis mine) The overwhelming majority said home education "prepared them to be independent persons", that it "helped them interact with individuals on different levels of society", and that they were glad they were home educated and planned to home school their own children.

So I would argue with the writer in my local paper that, "most of the time it does not turn out so well" might be a statement that more accurately applies to public school instead.

WHY?

I've been having this conversation more and more often lately, as my 4-year-old gets closer and closer to being school age:

Random Person: "So your kid will be going to school pretty soon..."

Me: "Actually, we are going to homeschool our kids."

Random Person: "Oh... awkward silence / insert sound effect of crickets chirping... Why?"

It's such a tough question to answer, because there are so many great reasons and it's hard to sum them up in a quick, concise statement. I guess the best short answer I have come up with so far is: Because I think I can do a better job and because I firmly believe it's the very best thing for my kids.

This does NOT mean that I think I'm better than all of the schoolteachers out there - I have the very highest respect for them and I think they have an incredibly hard job. However, I do know my kids better than anyone else on the planet, and as I've been watching them grow and learn, I think I have the best insight into what will excite them and help them to learn. And I just don't think the public school system is "it". With homeschooling, I like that I'll be able to adapt the curriculum to their interests and learning styles. They will be able to learn each subject at their own pace, spending extra time where needed, or moving on quickly if they already understand a concept. It's a level of individual customization that is just not possible in a regular classroom of 30 kids.

The next inevitable question is, "But what about SOCIALIZATION!" This is something I am absolutely NOT worried about. Nowadays, homeschooling is growing more and more common, and there are TONS of groups and activities out there for homeschoolers. To be truly "socialized" one must be able to get along with other people of all ages and backgrounds, and homeschooling is actually more conducive to this. Someone asked me the other day, "But if you're going to get together with groups of other kids anyway, why not just send them to school?" A good question. The answer is, in these particular groups, I will be assured that my kids are interacting with other kids whose parents have the same high level of involvement in their kids' lives, who hold learning in the highest regard, and who want to instill strong values and morals in their children. In public school, as anyone who's ever been there or watched the news or read a newspaper knows, the type of socialization that occurs is not always of the positive type - there is a thing called "negative socialization" too, and I think a lot of that can be avoided in the homeschool environment. Besides, school should be primarily about education - it's not meant to be social hour! Homeschooling will actually allow us more free time for social activities after the formal "schooling" part of the day is done.

I don't think homeschooling is for everybody, but I really think I am suited for it. I love learning, and I know that I will be learning a lot right along with my kids... and I am so excited about that! More than anything, I want to instill a love of learning in them too.