this woman’s work

First we’ll talk about homeschooling

Sep 1, 2006 Homeschooling

Since that seems like a popular topic! (And thank you so much for the questions because now I’m all revived. I’m like the guy in Caps
for Sale; I am “refreshed and rested”!)

Ok, back to homeschooling. When I first had Noah I was all about homeschooling with all of the passion of a new mother who has not yet become a parent to an actual school-ager. This passion I had for homeschooling was because I couldn’t imagine him out of my sight at all and that I wanted to protect him from the evil, cruel world. Then he hit three and I most definitely did NOT want to homeschool him. I remember talking to a friend of mine about it because all of the other women in that playgroup were totally going to homeschool and I was crazy against it and I felt like I was being this terrible mother that I didn’t want to do it. (Irony alert — of that playgroup I am the only one homeschooling. Yeah. Life is funny like that and let that be a warning to those of us who make proclamations.)

I didn’t want to homeschool because I didn’t want to be at home anymore. I wanted to either go to school or get a job. It didn’t seem like I was going to have another baby and I wanted to get the hell out of my at-home motherhood gig and onto something more fun and with fewer new baby announcements.

By then Noah was in preschool and he liked it but it was really hard on him. At the end of his second year in preschool the teachers held a kindergarten readiness workshop for all of us and I was still thinking he’d go that next year. I was worried about it because our then-neighborhood school was bloody awful and the magnet school that everyone in my world uses is very hard to get into. They do a lottery system and some years (depending on the number of kindergarten classes they’re setting up) your kids’ chances of getting in are pretty low. (Every year towards spring that’s the talk on the playground — who made the lottery?) There were a couple of other options because our old district had open enrollment but none of them were great.

Anyway, I went to the kindergarten readiness unsure and I left absolutely positive that Noah wasn’t ready for school. I also talked to one of the teachers in his classroom who felt that Noah would “benefit from an extra year at home.” Code for: Do Not Send Your Child to Kindergarten. Her reasons echoed my own concerns about Noah. He was academically ready but socially he was still very introverted and found even fun group events very difficult and stressful. I knew from talking to Brett’s mom that all three of her boys had terrible times in school.

The teacher was great — she didn’t label Noah or make it all sound alarming; she simply argued that an extra year might give him the cushion he would need to deal with full-day school. (All Columbus district schools are full-day kindergarten.)

So that cinched it for that year but it set up a bunch of other problems. Namely that if we kept Noah home another year then he’d be six going on seven in kindergarten so that meant that what we would actually be doing would be homeschooling for kindergarten. And getting into the magnet school for subsequent grades is much more difficult so that left us contemplating the other Columbus Public Schools, which again, aren’t so hot.

What we decided is that we’d try out homeschooling for kindergarten and see how it went. And it went well enough that we kept at it. Noah has totally come out of his shell and — given the challenges of saying this without a control Noah to prove it — I think he’s happier and more confident than he would be if he’d gone to school. (I use Brett and his brothers as my sort of control Noahs and elementary school was not a good time for any of them.)

We came to unschooling slowly (I wrote this our first year homeschooling — early on as you can see) but surely. I reread John Holt (the father of modern unschooling and the man who stoked my passion when Noah was a wee babe) and started seeing this less as a concession to a prickly boy and more an extension of our family values. Not that I don’t have doubts (not that I didn’t feel a pang of jealousy when I watched the neighbor walking her boys to school this morning) but so far so good.

As to how I get things done? Well, like I said, Noah is easy to unschool. And unschooling is unschooling, so we don’t use a curriculum or a schedule. It would be much harder (maybe too hard) with a child who wanted more direction or more structure. The other thing is that frankly I feel like I’m losing my mind about 95% of the time and the house is never clean and I’m constantly dropping and picking up new projects/ideas/plans because I feel so scattered and unfocused. (Thus the jealous pang when I watched the neighbor.) I just keep lowering my standards and giving myself yet more goal extensions.

I try to stay flexible about it. The thought of homeschooling for another 15-ish years (including Madison here) makes me want to cry but I don’t have to homeschool for 15-ish more years; I just have to homeschool this year and then it all feels fine again. (This has been working for me from the get-go as evidenced by this early entry here).

And here is what I wrote last year about a typical day and that’s likely what this year will look like, too although Madison is needing much more focused attention. (And someone who will listen to her talk.) Also he is adding Junior Great Books again this year. Wow, reading that last post — I guess I am as busy as I feel. But you know (I’m editing to add this) I do love having him around and I do love unschooling/homeschooling. I just wish there were two of me so I could try things the other way, too.

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• An unschool entry (2)
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