Creativity is the name of the game

I hate Vocab. Except that’s not really true, I love vocabulary, I love words and the way they form in my mouth and the things I can do with just the right word at just the right time. I hate vocabulary lessons. HATE THEM. They are boring, and repetitive, and mind-numbing. It’s difficult for young minds to retain the information if they are so bored they can’t focus, it all goes in one ear, drips down their gullets, and puddles on the floor, kind of like drool. I dread them; the boys dread them, so we put them off until the teacher calls and starts to pester about them. Until yesterday. Yesterday, I was brilliant. Yesterday I proved my worth as their teacher.

They have twenty words each week, they have to learn the words, learn their sub words, and figure out which word goes with which sentence. I typed up their list, complete with definitions, and gave them a project to do with their words. They have to complete a short story, using all of their words and use them correctly. Minimum word count is 500 words, and they have one week to complete their story. Both boys took off like their hair was on fire, and spent time outside of class time, willingly, to work on their stories.

There are two stereotypical views of homeschooling that I have encountered, the militant mama who settles her kids down at the kitchen table for hours on end, drilling facts into their children’s heads, and the free-range chicken mama who expects her children to absorb their education via osmosis during the day to day activities. Neither view is correct, but both have a grain of truth to them. The point is, there is an entire spectrum of methods homeschooling parents employ in order to educate our children; we spend time at the table, the couch, the living room floor, the master bed. We go outside, we play in the snow, we dance in the rain. We use the world around us, our experiences, our passions, to lead our children to their own education. We hand it to them in a schema of colors and sounds and tastes, we give them the tools they need to find their own way into educated society. And we can be as creative as we want to be and our kids still get to learn. Even in my world, where my kids attend a virtual school and aren’t 100% homeschooled. They go to school, and they do it from home, it’s not a traditional method by any means, but it’s the method that works for us. I still get to be their teacher, but I have back-up! I have a curriculum, but I have the freedom and option to implement that curriculum with creativity.

The Bitter Homeschooler's WishList

The Bitter Homeschooler's Wish List
by Deborah Markus, from Secular Homeschooling, Issue #1, Fall 2007
1 Please stop asking us if it's legal. If it is — and it is — it's insulting to imply that we're criminals. And if we were criminals, would we admit it?
2 Learn what the words "socialize" and "socialization" mean, and use the one you really mean instead of mixing them up the way you do now. S...ocializing means hanging out with other people for fun. Socialization means having acquired the skills necessary to do so successfully and pleasantly. If you're talking to me and my kids, that means that we do in fact go outside now and then to visit the other human beings on the planet, and you can safely assume that we've got a decent grasp of both concepts.
3 Quit interrupting my kid at her dance lesson, scout meeting, choir practice, baseball game, art class, field trip, park day, music class, 4H club, or soccer lesson to ask her if as a homeschooler she ever gets to socialize.
4 Don't assume that every homeschooler you meet is homeschooling for the same reasons and in the same way as that one homeschooler you know.
5 If that homeschooler you know is actually someone you saw on TV, either on the news or on a "reality" show, the above goes double.
6 Please stop telling us horror stories about the homeschoolers you know, know of, or think you might know who ruined their lives by homeschooling. You're probably the same little bluebird of happiness whose hobby is running up to pregnant women and inducing premature labor by telling them every ghastly birth story you've ever heard. We all hate you, so please go away.
7 We don't look horrified and start quizzing your kids when we hear they're in public school. Please stop drilling our children like potential oil fields to see if we're doing what you consider an adequate job of homeschooling.
8 Stop assuming all homeschoolers are religious.
9 Stop assuming that if we're religious, we must be homeschooling for religious reasons.
10 We didn't go through all the reading, learning, thinking, weighing of options, experimenting, and worrying that goes into homeschooling just to annoy you. Really. This was a deeply personal decision, tailored to the specifics of our family. Stop taking the bare fact of our being homeschoolers as either an affront or a judgment about your own educational decisions.
11 Please stop questioning my competency and demanding to see my credentials. I didn't have to complete a course in catering to successfully cook dinner for my family; I don't need a degree in teaching to educate my children. If spending at least twelve years in the kind of chew-it-up-and-spit-it-out educational facility we call public school left me with so little information in my memory banks that I can't teach the basics of an elementary education to my nearest and dearest, maybe there's a reason I'm so reluctant to send my child to school.
12 If my kid's only six and you ask me with a straight face how I can possibly teach him what he'd learn in school, please understand that you're calling me an idiot. Don't act shocked if I decide to respond in kind.
13 Stop assuming that because the word "home" is right there in "homeschool," we never leave the house. We're the ones who go to the amusement parks, museums, and zoos in the middle of the week and in the off-season and laugh at you because you have to go on weekends and holidays when it's crowded and icky.
14 Stop assuming that because the word "school" is right there in homeschool, we must sit around at a desk for six or eight hours every day, just like your kid does. Even if we're into the "school" side of education — and many of us prefer a more organic approach — we can burn through a lot of material a lot more efficiently, because we don't have to gear our lessons to the lowest common denominator.
15 Stop asking, "But what about the Prom?" Even if the idea that my kid might not be able to indulge in a night of over-hyped, over-priced revelry was enough to break my heart, plenty of kids who do go to school don't get to go to the Prom. For all you know, I'm one of them. I might still be bitter about it. So go be shallow somewhere else.
16 Don't ask my kid if she wouldn't rather go to school unless you don't mind if I ask your kid if he wouldn't rather stay home and get some sleep now and then.
17 Stop saying, "Oh, I could never homeschool!" Even if you think it's some kind of compliment, it sounds more like you're horrified. One of these days, I won't bother disagreeing with you any more.
18 If you can remember anything from chemistry or calculus class, you're allowed to ask how we'll teach these subjects to our kids. If you can't, thank you for the reassurance that we couldn't possibly do a worse job than your teachers did, and might even do a better one.
19 Stop asking about how hard it must be to be my child's teacher as well as her parent. I don't see much difference between bossing my kid around academically and bossing him around the way I do about everything else.
20 Stop saying that my kid is shy, outgoing, aggressive, anxious, quiet, boisterous, argumentative, pouty, fidgety, chatty, whiny, or loud because he's homeschooled. It's not fair that all the kids who go to school can be as annoying as they want to without being branded as representative of anything but childhood.
21 Quit assuming that my kid must be some kind of prodigy because she's homeschooled.
22 Quit assuming that I must be some kind of prodigy because I homeschool my kids.
23 Quit assuming that I must be some kind of saint because I homeschool my kids.
24 Stop talking about all the great childhood memories my kids won't get because they don't go to school, unless you want me to start asking about all the not-so-great childhood memories you have because you went to school.
25 Here's a thought: If you can't say something nice about homeschooling, shut up!

Obey Gravity, It's the Law

Obey Gravity, It’s the Law

I received a phone call from my 6^th grader’s B&M English teacher this morning regarding the confiscation of a shoulder satchel. According to the middle school rules, the students are not allowed to carry around bags or backpacks, for the safety of the other children. The students are required to carry their binders with them to each class, stopping periodically throughout the day at their lockers to retrieve any material for another class, they are not allowed to carry material for one class to another however, so they have to make a mad dash to pick things up or put them away. This got me thinking about the other rules that make the compulsory education system here so irritating to me and my children.

B&M: No backpacks. No carriers of any sort. One binder that weighs up to ten pounds.

Home: Grocery bags, laundry bags, overnight bags, all required and standard equipment

B&M: 3 minutes between class, to go to their locker, go to the bathroom, get a drink.

Home: 15 minutes between subjects to play tag with the dogs, act out Great White Hunter scenario’s on flies, feed the rat in the cage or a pair up a sock that went missing two weeks ago. Plus go to the bathroom.

B&M: Obey gravity, it’s the law…you will drop your pencil/pen/binder/pants at the absolute wrong time.

Home: Obey gravity, it’s the law…if you drop an egg from four feet into the air, it will break and isn’t it great that we have tag-playing dogs who will clean up the mess?

B&M: 6 hall passes per semester, after that, you are responsible for the mess.

Home: One hallway that resembles an obstacle course more days than not, and if you pass it, you can swap laundry after you use the bathroom.

Don’t even get me started on the homework requirement. They are in a school setting for 7 hours a day, then are expected to complete 3 to 4 hours of homework a night. I understand that they (the teachers) have more than one student in their class, but I have more than one kid at home! His homework requirement kills my afternoon and evening time, when I could be doing other things like actually having a conversation with him or his brothers! Or cooking dinner, or reading a chapter in my book with a glass of wine.

Our children learn the rules of society from the moment they enter the world, we take them out into the world and we expect them to behave a certain way, they learn. And there are rules for everything, from dating to driving to picking your underwear out of your butt when you stand up at the restaurant. My children all attended public school for their elementary years and learned certain things, some positive, some not so positive. One thing I don’t want them learning is to suffer through a miserable situation if there is a better alternative to achieve their goals. My son will be leaving B&M this week, and beginning a clearer path with his education. I don’t want to teach him to just give up if the situation is bad, instead teach him that there are usually better means, that not everything in this life has to be a fight, and that confrontation isn’t always the solution to a problem.

Mentor Circle

Last night was the mentor circle, and I had a lot of fun interacting with other mentors as well as new families coming into the program. Because most of the concerns discussed were things I had issues with last year, I felt comfortable talking about them, and what solutions I came up with. There were a lot of really good suggestions on how to deal with the beginning of the year, including take it slow, start with one subject and work your way up, be patient, be patient, be patient. This is a scary undertaking, you are assuming responsibility for some pretty major challenges, and it is daunting! There is a ton of information and a ton of material to go through, and some things just get lost in the shuffle. Backtracking is a part of the process, regardless of how frustrating or time consuming, this isn't something you get right in the beginning, and you aren't going to get it right everytime. Laugh at your mistakes, but learn from them, and don't let them become obstacles!

Mentor!

I have been invited to participate in the K-12 mentor circle program, which means I get to interact with new homeschool parents as they come into the program. Two things that I have been asked to share are area of expertise and a piece of advice. Oy! So of course I had to think about this.

The easiest is the piece of advice...be patient, be flexible, and be ready to be amazed! When I first started this journey, I had this shiny image in my head of getting D.C up with his brothers, getting the younger two off to brick and mortar, then sitting down at the kitchen table to begin 'our day'. We were going to follow the lesson plan exactly, we were going to be structured, consistant and efficient. And that worked for about 2 seconds, because I went back to bed! We actually spent the first few days just trying to get everything organized in a way that worked for us, we tried to put his supplies in his room, as thats where his computer is, but I spent as much time retrieving things as he did, and he spent more time in the living room on my computer than he did on his own. The only thing we did consistantly was stray from the lesson topic, as they would usually lead into branching discussions that took us away from the objective, but were valuable nonetheless. It took us about a month to come up with a system that worked, that usually included a lot of time on my part to get things organized and to think of how I needed to present the information for him.   I had to learn all over again how my child thought and how he processed new information. My learning process is scattered all over the place, I make intuitive leaps where I can connect one concept to another without all the middle stuff, D.C. however thinks like a turtle...not slow, but very methodical. One step at a time, and do not, under any circumstances, leave anything out. I finally understood why his teachers would get so frustrated with him, and he with them. At the middle school level, they expect a certain amount of leaping, and he just does not think that way. They were giving him new concepts, but not showing him how they connected with earlier ones, just assuming that he would. Math was very difficult for us, I love math, he doesn't, just for this reason. Elementary school provided him with visual aids for fractions and groupings, middle school assumes that those visual aids are now imprinted. D.C couldn't make that distinction without working it out for himself. One turtle step at a time. He could draw a pie chart for adding fractions, but he couldn't write down two fractions and add them together at the beginning of the year. His classmates at b&m were flying past him, and he just kept getting more and more behind. By the end of the year, however, he had made the transition from visual to cerebral, he gained the ability to visualize it in his head, quickly and correctly, and was beginning to make conclusions about math that was beyond his grade level. So be patient and be flexible with your child and your schedule. How you think it's going to work isn't how it's really going to work!

The not so easy is my area of expertise...how do you define this? My best guess for us would be maintaining a balance between homeschool and brick and mortar. The younger two children had a lot of school programs last year, and in the beginning D.C. was hesitant to attend. He had attended this elementary school for 6 years, and was very well known to all the teachers and students. The first time he was confronted with the question "how is middle school going", he about fell apart. We had just begun K-12, and his perceived failure in himself was still very fresh, he was humiliated by his middle school experience and was not prepared to discuss it with anybody outside of the home. He simply responded "I go to K-12 now" then fled to the bathroom. His former teacher confronted me about it (her timing was completely inappropriate, it was in the middle of my youngest child's performance) and basically asked me if I had lost my mind! I (somewhat) calmly explained that he had had what amounted to a cascading catastrophic failure at school, and for his sake, I had to get him out of there. D.C. now has an answer when confronted about his decision to homeschool, "I get the same learning at home that I did in public school, but I don't have to deal with bullies, lockers or bell schedules". I also had to learn to balance education and socialization with his friends. We did a lot of work in the mornings, saved research and reading for night, spent time getting to know each other again, and let him play with his friends. I didn't realize how much of a stranger my child had become until he was home every day, or how much I had missed out on with his development. He was becoming a young man, and I was missing some very important stages of his life. I think I learned as much last year as he did, and as many important things, both about him and myself, and I will carry these lessons with me for the rest of my life.

Starting from scratch

Well, we are heading into our second year of K12, supplies have arrived and are all organized, and we are both anxious to begin.

I guess some background first, might make whats coming a bit easier!

I have three amazing boys (I know, what mom doesn't have x amount of amazing kids!), 13, 11 and 9. Last year, my oldest started middle school, not without a fair bit of trepidation at such a massive change to his world. The first couple of weeks were horrible for both of us, missed busses, tardy to class, late assignments, then everything seemed to smooth out and I assumed we were in the clear. Boy was I wrong! Turns out, my son was so dissapointed in himself, that he quit sharing his problems with me until there were so many problems, he was ready to explode. The bell schedule at his school only allowed for 3 minutes between classes, the kids are not allowed to carry their backpacks with them, and the class schedule put first period and second period on opposite sides of the school. My son spent half of first semester in detention for being tardy to his second period. He would be so upset about this, and afraid he was going to get in trouble at home, that he would miss instructions from his teacher, or miss assignment due dates, his teacher quickly became frustrated with him, which made my son feel worse. At that point, the day would be ruined, and he would walk around in a fog of misery and fear. At the end of the semester, he was so far behind, it was like he hadn't attended school at all. The school was already talking holding him back, and my son had gone from a happy, confidant, brilliant child to a sullen, mean creature. The final straw came when we spent 4 days attempting to complete required assignments for English class, only to miss one and be told that because of that one missed assignment, he was going to fail English. I checked him out of public school that day and he hasn't been back. We enrolled in K12 at the beginning of the second semester, he completed all the requirements within the academic year, and he made the Honor roll. It took a lot of very hard work on both of our parts, I made sure he understood that he wasn't doing this alone, and that made a world of difference in his academic achievements. He is once again proud of himself, confident of his abilities, and trusts that no matter what, I'm going to be there for him. I have my kid back!

The purpose of this blog is to document our adventures, to chronicle what I learn, and to interact with other homeschooling parents around the world.