Unschooling | this woman's work

Comparisons

Apr 192010

We went to a bar mitzvah on Saturday, (which was lovely) and I thought again about how religious school is really the only activity my kids have done on a regular basis where they’re so age segregated. Most of the classes and workshops they’ve taken (especially Noah who has taken away more than Madison being seven years older) are more loosely grouped by age (for kids, say, 7 to 10) or are grouped by ability. In homeschooling, kids tend to play across age groups a lot more.

I think this is great. I think it makes more sense for kids to be grouped by ability or general development because then it’s easier not to see someone as behind or as ahead. Everyone just is what they are. Noah has had friends who are way ahead in some things and way behind on other things and from what he tells me, they tend to see each other’s gifts and appreciate them while making way for their challenges. So he has one friend who is an amazingly skilled artist and craft person, who can glance at a shirt and design a pattern for it and create it from scratch, but who doesn’t read well. The kids all admire and acknowledge her fantastic creations and they help her with the games they play that might be harder for her. They don’t think of her as ahead or as behind; they think of her in terms of her abilities first and foremost. I hope that makes sense, what I’m saying here.

But that’s not the part I’m talking about. The part I’m talking about is that I can’t make comparisons between my kids and their same-aged peers because I don’t have a large group of same-aged peers to compare them, too. Which is a little weird. Nice, but weird. It’s only when I see them in religious school or in sports activities (where ages are more regimented) that I see them as part of a “grade.” Like Madison in kindergarten and Noah in seventh grade. In the sports, it’s not really an issue but I definitely notice the absence of understanding them this way when I see them at religious school.

Not that I can make comparisons then either because religious school isn’t much like school. I mean, I know that Noah does well on his tests and I guess I could find out how the other kids did on theirs (if I cared) but it still wouldn’t be a comparison because all the other kids are doing religious school on top of regular school and homework and extracurricular activities so if Noah is doing better than them, it might say more about his wide-open schedule. So I take his performance (and Madison’s performance) as a measure of this 2.5 hours every week that they have religious school and that’s it. It’s just so isolated.

Sometimes I wish I could compare them because I am still too caught up in arbitrary measures of “good” and “bad” and “better.” And then I’m glad that I can’t. Sometimes I would like to know if Madison is busier than her peers (I think she is) but really all I need to know is if Madison is successful in her own sphere and she is and that ought to be enough.

It’s hard to explain how much unschooling means unlatching yourself from prescribed expectations. For example, what if Madison is busier than her peers? What does this mean for her right now? If she were in school, I’m sure it would be an issue. She can keep herself still and focused and careful for 2.5 hours in religious school but I know if she were in school full-time that she’d be getting busted for chattering and wriggling and wanting to see what her neighbor is doing. And that would be a real issue and we would need to deal with it. But if you take her out of school, there is no issue. So even though I wonder if she’s busier than her peers, it also doesn’t matter. It only matters that her busyness doesn’t preclude her happy functioning here in her unschooling home.

Anyway, not being able to compare my kids to other kids but only to themselves and their own developmental timetable is a plus for me but I’ll admit that when we get their report cards* from religious school, I eat up the teacher comments.

* Noah was appalled that Madison got a report card. He said, “But it’s KINDERGARTEN!” He thought they should have a free year or two. And for the record, the report cards always say that my kids are bright and enthusiastic. Noah’s usually say that he’s funny and Madison’s said that she was very compassionate. They also both get kudos for class participation, which is no surprise with Madison but surprised us with Noah because for his first couple of years, he was a wallflower.

Homeschool take two

Homeschooling 16 Responses »

Apr 162010

I was just writing this on our local homeschool support list (well, unschool support list) — it’s a whole new world unschooling Madison.

Noah was and is an extremely independent unschooler. The surest way to ruin anything for him was to try to lead him — he is a kid who wants to find his own way and will let us know if he needs our help. Even casually offering help might be enough to make him shut down and in some ways this has made him easy to homeschool because he just wanted us to let him be and so we let him be. When Brett has wanted him to do something more structured, they work it out by making sure Noah has the bulk of the responsibility. So with math, which is the one piece where Brett doesn’t feel good about letting go (I’m more laid back than he is about it — we make a nice team), he gives Noah a loose set of goals and then leaves it to Noah to meet them.

Madison is different. Madison LOVES input. She loves being led. She loves activity. This makes her easier to homeschool in a totally different way because anything you come up with, she will get excited about. I tell you, it’s a nice change to share a project idea and not be met with a stony glare. But I’m grateful that Madison didn’t come first because if she had, I would have pushed her because she is pushable. She is trainable. She is all about parental approval and we could have turned her into a little achievement monster pretty darn easily.

But Noah came first and cemented my theories that were just theories. Like I SAID I didn’t want to raise over-achievers but then why was I pushing Noah academically when he was a preschooler? I’ll tell you why — because I was just SAYING that; I didn’t mean it. As a formerly gifted child whose self worth was wrapped up in having adults make a fuss over me, I had a lot of deschooling to do myself. When I first thought about homeschooling, I had visions of those wacky homeschoolers who prove all the schooled kids wrong by achieving all the the traditional goals untraditionally. (See this book here.) I really needed to have a kid who would say NO to me. I needed a kid who refused to buy into the nonsense I was still buying into and who would remind me that children are not trained monkeys.

Noah rejected all the tricks of the theoretically not schooling homeschoolers. He didn’t want to trace alphabet letters on sandpaper or make letter collages. He did not want me to point to each word as I read out loud to him (he’d shove my hand off the page). He was uninterested in all the Ruth Beechick activities and so I gave up — not on him, mind you. I gave up on making him do things my way. I thought long and I thought hard and I thought either I had to walk my pontificating talk or I may as well send the kid to school.

Noah, so far, is thriving. He’s smart (ask anyone), he’s confident and he’s happy. He’s at the top of his religious school class and he reads a book a day. And he does this in spite of having a mother who still cares way too much out the outcome of the IQ test she took when she was 10.

I’ll admit that I have to TELL myself not to push Madison because like I said, she is pushable. I could probably turn her into a trick pony with very little effort because she has an amazing memory and some serious smarts but with Noah as my proof, I’m trusting in a continued course of benign neglect.

I’ll admit though, it is awfully nice to have a kid who will let you pull out a book about gardening after you’ve been digging in the garden together. (Even that much interference was an anathema to my boy.) And having a children who clearly learn differently is going to keep things interesting, that’s for sure!

Being home is being happy

Homeschooling 10 Responses »

Mar 252010

My on-site job ended early and so I’m back home doing laundry and feeling grateful for it. The on-site work was interesting and fine and all but there wasn’t as much for me to do as they originally thought and I spent a lot of time thumbing through style guidelines and being bored. As a workaholic, I do not enjoy sitting at a desk and doing nothing although I did get some research done for a big article due next week. I just felt guilty the whole time I was doing it so mostly I read Lost recaps and waited for work to come my way.

There’s some interesting discussion about the unbearable whiteness of being in the unschooling community. See, there are lots of wonderful everyday unschoolers and fortunately they are the ones who make up my real life community but there are also some hard-core zealots who make up the institutional community of unschooling. Now to me the fact that there are people who try to act as gatekeepers to a movement that is essentially about shucking off institutional expectations and values is hilarious in its hypocrisy but there you go. There are certainly self-identified Experts who enjoy sitting around and drawing lines in the sand about who is a Real Unschooler and who isn’t. And these people, as zealots often will, dominate the discussion and do a whole lot to make people feel lousy about their choices and defensive about their values. Kristen has called them out here and she’s getting some twitter anger back at her.

(It’s a lot like the hard core Attachment Parenting types who get all hysterical if someone casually mentions that they left their baby in the baby swing so they could take a shower. What do you think they make mesh slings for, people?!? Do you not CARE about your child’s MENTAL HEALTH??? So boring. So mean. So not helpful.)

Debating is all well and good and I’m all for respectful debate but it’s the gatekeeping that gets to me and the disinterest in self-reflection. People who have all the answers tend to have lousy answers, I think. This goes for any movement including adoption reform.

Back to the discussion, the lack of diversity among unschoolers isn’t that surprising and I don’t even know if it’s problematic unless you’re whole life centers around other unschoolers. Which to me seems like an anathema to the whole unschooling ideal, since I feel a vital part of my kids unschooling epxerience is getting out into the great big wide world. And the great big wide world is NOT other unschoolers. The great big wide world is everybody else, too. Personally as a family we get our social needs met by participating in a whole lot of communities, which can be tiring and also make a person feel a bit like Jack of all Trades, Master of None but I can’t expect one group of people to be All People to me and so I have to head out there and find other folks. I also very much WANT my kids to hang with kids who go to regular old brick and mortar school because they are their peers, too, and I want them to know about the mainstream experience even if I don’t want them going to school. Some of our most very favorite people are parents whose kids take tests and do homework and have to sit at desks all day. And even though our educational values may not jive, there’s a whole lot more we have to offer each other.

The hardcore unschoolers have a lot in common with the folks I wrote about way back when in this article on non-coercive parenting right here. Some of them (certainly not all) are fundamentalists and fundamentalists of any stripe are dangerous people.

Anyway.

Turn of the season

Homeschooling 7 Responses »

Aug 242009

Like the rest of the United States, my mind is heading to back to school even though no one who lives in my house is going back to school this fall. Thing is, even if you homeschool it’s impossible not to hearken back to your own schooling memories or get caught up in the back-to-school supply sales. (I love me some new school/office supplies!) Plus even though school isn’t starting for us, all the school season activities are including Madison’s soccer and both the kids’ religious classes.

I’ll be interested to see how Madison does in religious school since she’s not a child all that great at sitting still. Two and a half hours on a Sunday with singing, snack and crayons seems like a nice start though and she may do better than we think.

She is very happy to be homeschooled kindergarten this year and while she’s interested that some of her friends are headed to brick and mortar school she doesn’t feel much inclined to join them.

As a general rule, I don’t even think of doing anything formal with a kid this young (ok I THINK but I don’t DO) because I have this theory that kids don’t need any formal academic instruction until at least eight. And then it’s just math, really. It worked for Noah, who used that free time from 5 to 8/9 to become a hard-core reader and I’m sure it’ll work for Madison, too, although I have no idea what she’ll do with it. Likely more art since that’s her consuming passion right now. And I do mean consuming because that child goes through paper like there’s no tomorrow. (Which reminds me that I need to grab some out of the recycling bin here so she can keep busy with her drawings.)

Both my kids were very into drawing at this age but both draw similarly, which is that it’s not about the drawing so much as the story they’re telling. You can really see this when you compare their art work to my sister’s kids (remember my sister is an artist) and you can see much more attention to composition and color and detail in her kids’ work. I don’t know if this is inherent in our kids or if this is about growing up with a writer in one house and an artist in the other but it’s interesting. Madison does do a lot of other kinds of art and there her attention seems more about process and less about product (age appropriately) so I don’t know if she will continue to be focused on art or if art is a means to another end that she’s too young to have discovered for herself. Meanwhile, we enjoy having the fruits of her labor all over the house, most especially the kitchen where she’s done a nice job of dressing up our drab paneling by the refrigerator.

Noah won’t be going to virtual school this year since the hard-core emphasis on testing last year dismayed us both. He’ll go back to doing a math curriculum and we’ll leave the rest up to him. Brett wants him to think about a subject he’d like to explore in depth and since he needs to do a service project for his bar mitzvah anyway, we’ll likely let that stand only have him do it with more attention than he might otherwise. (He hasn’t picked one yet but needs to get on it.) The biggest change I’ve seen in him over the past few years is much more confidence in what he’s doing and in the value of his interests. He’s more prone to assert himself and happily, to share his interests with us. Although he’s heading into that extreme privacy age, I notice he’s actually less guarded in talking to us about what’s going on in his head around the books he reads, etc. and I wonder if this has to do with that confidence he’s developed. Maybe what he cares about doesn’t seem as fragile and so he’s able to open himself up to our thoughts and opinions? In any case, despite the burgeoning adolescent that can get a little mouthy, he’s a pleasure to have around and is happy to take on more responsibility these days. (Housework has gotten a lot easier recently thanks to Noah’s attention to it.)

I do love homeschooling. Sometimes I think having schooled kids looks like fun, too, but so far it’s all going well so why mess with it?

Quick hits bullet update

Grad School, Homeschooling, Parenting, The Story of My Life, work work work 7 Responses »

Aug 032009

Work has been was funny today on Friday. Not funny odd; funny like ha-ha. Hands down the best thing about my job are the people I work with. I love them but they are bizarre.
The reason that post is all struck through is that I started it on Friday and am just now getting to finish it today (on my lunch hour).
Are you a runner (or like me a stagger-er) and have an iPhone or an iPod Touch? I highly recommend iTreadmill. I wanted a pedometer-type thingie for my iPod so that I wouldn’t have to run on the track and could still pay attention to how far I’m running. This thing is great. Once you’ve calibrated it to your stride, you can use it to record your distance and your speed. You can also set it to tell you when you pass 1/4 mile, 1/2 mile or 1 mile. It’s not perfect but for less than five bucks I can keep track of how I’m doing and I can do while running (staggering) to my own music.
Speaking of running, I keep on keeping on but I’ve backslid even though I’m running with less pain. (It still hurts some but I no longer limp when I’m done so I call that progress!) I can’t believe how slow going it is and realize how much I counted on seeing regular progress to keep me motivated. I’ve decided that running is a mind game and I need to let go of my need for progress and just run for the hell of it.
My hits are up but google knocked me down two notches on my google pagerank. I think it’s because I have text link ads. But the text link ads allowed me to buy my kids their (very modest) Christmas presents last year so it’s a trade-off I had to make. Text link ads are tacky, I know, but so is handing your kids an empty box on Christmas and telling them to suck it.
I‘ve had more caffeine today Friday at work than I’ve had in the last three days combined. I’m I was vibrating. Not in a good way.
I love studying for the GRE! And Noah love quizzing me on vocabulary. I am especially loving this study book: Cracking the GRE by the Princeton Review. What I love about it is the attitude, which resonates with my unschooling homeschooling self because it’s about test strategy. The other two books are about studying, which is good, too, because they have a lot of practice tests for me to try-out my strategy skills.
But the middle school math? I forget ALL OF IT. I’m really going to have to focus on that over the next couple of weeks because I want to take it at the end of this month. (So I can retake it in early October-ish.)
I’m re-reading my whole Anne Tyler collection, which I haven’t done in eons. I was surprised to find that I don’t like a lot of her main characters this time around; I find them selfish and unreasonable. This wasn’t true last time I read her. I’m enjoying it though. It’s nice to finish a book and immediately pick up another one that has a similar tone but a brand new story. (I always wondered how she graduated from college at 19 and now I see she was homeschooled until she was 11. Homeschooling doesn’t always make for brilliant spelling bee champions or university savants but it does sometimes mean kids have their own educational schedules, that’s for sure.)