Brave Writer

If you were to fill out the questionnaire from the previous blog entry, you may come up with a profile like this (this is theoretical – your answers will vary):

What kind of person am I?
I like structure. I make “to do” lists, I organize my files by alphabet and I empty my email in-box each day. I prefer to have tangible evidence that I’ve gotten a lot done.

What are the learning styles of my kids (look at each one individually)?
The oldest likes lots of interaction and enjoys working hard at things he loves. The second child prefers to know exactly what to do each day so he can check it off. The third child is artistic and will commit to any project that includes markers.

Recall a time when you felt that all of you were happy.
We had a great day when I planned an afternoon for learning how to draw. We had all the materials out, we sat outside, we had interesting objects to draw and I had clear instructions to present. Each one was engaged and the end products were really great to look at.

Recall a time when you all felt miserable.
We had been doing workbooks every day for a month without any field trips or change of pace. By the end of the month, two of my kids said they hated school. I noticed that they got sloppier in their work too.

Begin with the end in mind. Ask yourself: How would I know I had had a successful year of home education?
I would know the year had been successful if I had a handful (5-7) of completed writing assignments and I could tell that my kids enjoyed at least producing one of them. I’m looking for them to improve in both attitude and competence.

What does your partner/spouse expect?
My husband is a school teacher and sometimes I feel like he measures our progress by how many minutes we spent at the kitchen table. That makes me feel nervous about taking the day off to explore something in depth or to go to a museum.

Recall a favorite learning moment of your own.
I loved learning how to quilt. I got books, bought a sewing machine, took a class at the local store and made my first quilt. It felt really good to focus on one thing and to get help. I liked working at my own pace and figuring out how to apply the ideas I learned in class. I liked having a teacher.

How frequently do you check in with your children?
I haven’t done that for awhile. In fact, I don’t know if I ever have. I realize that I expect them to be on board without my ever talking to them about my ideas, asking their input on how they’d like the schedule to look or asking them what they’d like to learn. I’m also wondering if I could ask them what their favorite learning experiences are and when they felt happiest and most miserable. That seems like a good idea.

The overall thrust of this profile doesn’t address classical education or Charlotte Mason, unit studies or historically oriented lessons. What it does is help you to notice your habits, your tendencies and your preferences as they balance against your children’s. When you’re designing your year, you want to take everyone into account (even a spouse who has his/her own ideas of what success looks like). Take each person seriously. Recognize that sometimes you will work outside your comfort zone, accommodating a child’s learning style that is in conflict with yours. Likewise, help your kids to understand that sometimes they are meeting your needs to reassure yourself that learning is happening, that you are making progress toward a goal you see and feel (even though they may not value it the way you do). You need to balance these so that everyone is aware of what is happening.

Remember: the more you share your needs with your kids, the better chance they have of helping you to reach your goals too. You can say something like this: “I’ve noticed that I like to have some physical samples of your work by year’s end that let me see these things (list them: punctuation, nice handwriting, completed math chapter tests, a couple of writing samples that went through the revision process). I realize that you love to have free-flowing days with time to do art, play the piano and get on the computer. Let’s see how we can get all of these done. How about this….?”

Then make a plan with your kids. Remind them when you get off-track or need to adjust the plan. Check in with them to find out if it’s working. The point is, get everyone on the same page acknowledging what they need/want while at the same time sharing what you need/want. The reason so many learning systems fail is that they either major on what the parent wants (often overriding a child’s natural learning style, leading to resentment and tedium) or they focus on accommodating a child’s learning style (meanwhile the mom feels like she’s constantly revising her expectations… until she panics and cracks!). Every homeschool must take each person into account to be successful.

An educational philosophy is about the idea that learning transcends specific methods and tactics. It’s the belief that learning takes place at all times, but that the most effective ways to deliver a body of information will vary child to child, parent to parent, family to family. Knowing how your family functions well will help you sort through the mountain of information about homeschooling you encounter in groups, online and in books.

How do you do it? Read books? Talk to friends? Get online and page through hundreds of websites?

Yes. All of those. For a long time. It helps, though, if you know what you’re looking for. This post is about the kinds of questions to ask yourself as you develop your philosophy of education. Before I list them, let’s look at a few important principles to keep in mind.

• A home education involves both a child’s aptitudes, learning style and interests as well as his parent’s. Both must be satisfied or you’ll either alienate the child or burn out the parent. When developing a  philosophy of education, take student and teacher into account (not just one or the other).
• Homeschool is a lifestyle, not a program of education. That means what you decide to do has to fit with dental appts., soccer practice, parttime jobs (the kids and/or yours!), toddlers, pregnancy naps, grocery store runs, illness, and so on. Depending on how demanding your basic existence is (this will be determined in large part by the size of your family and the stages of their development), your educational approach must accommodate those demands.
• No one approach to teaching will work with every child. (Sorry to break it to you, if you didn’t yet know that!) Just because curriculum X worked for child Y doesn’t mean it will work for child Z as well. Flexibility is not optional in homeschool. It’s a core value.
• Homeschools are reinvented every year. Things change. It’s important for you to change with them. That doesn’t mean your philosophy will change, but it may mean how you execute it will! Ages and stages often determine how involved you need to be, or what your focus is.
• You can’t do it alone. You aren’t meant to either. Include outside support for your homeschool (co-ops, tutoring, classes, athletic teams, music lessons, field trips, lectures, volunteer opportunities, shared teaching with another mother, involving dad or the non-homeschooling parent).

Once you embrace these principles, ask yourself these kinds of questions to help you fine-tune how you select curriculum and how you apply it to a lifestyle routine.

1. What kind of person am I? Do I thrive on order, structure and a schedule? (Not ‘Do I wish I thrived on order, structure and a schedule?’ but do I actually sustain and support a schedule when it’s up to me?) Or am I a person who needs an over-arching routine, with flexibility built in? Alternatively, do I prefer to be led by inspiration?
2. What are the learning styles of my kids (look at each one individually)? Don’t be deceived by how they do or don’t learn grammar or math. Focus on something they love learning. When they want to learn a video game, do they simply start playing and figure it out as they go? Or do they read the instructions first? Do they like to know exactly what they need to do to get ready to leave the house? Or are they more inclined to wait to the last minute and then suddenly take care of business without much prompting from you? Is your child creative and led by inspiration or disciplined, in search of structure? Are they self-starters or in need of companionship and support?
3. Recall a time when you felt that all of you were happy. What were the chief features? (Caution: I remember feeling that I had had the best week of homeschooling when Noah was in 5th grade and that turned out to be his worst week ever. What worked for me made him wilt. Pick a time when everyone – including you – felt that the day or week had been successful.)
4. Recall a time when you all felt miserable. What were the features of that experience? List them.
5. Begin with the end in mind. Ask yourself: How would I know I had had a successful year of home education? What do I want to say to myself in June that would confirm to me that we had had a good year? (Lots of work samples, memories of self-motivated learning, a sense of completion of particular courses of study, a feeling of happiness – that the kids felt good about what they had done that year, a way to measure progress that reassures you?).
6. Think about your marriage (or your partner) if you have one. What does your partner/spouse expect? How does that person know that education is happening? What kind of pressure does that person’s viewpoint exert on you? How do you adapt what you do to that other person’s invisible pressure (if there is any)?
7. Recall a favorite learning moment of your own. How did you learn to bake, sew, enjoy art, learn Excel, understand pregnancy, coach soccer, be married, study literature, garden, snowboard, choose a dog breed? What were the features of that experience? What does that experience tell you about the nature of learning itself? How similar or dissimilar was that learning experience to the way you expect your children to learn? Can you apply any of the insights to the way you lead your children’s learning now?
8. How frequently do you check in with your children? When was the last time you asked your kids how they thought homeschool was going? Ask them now (each individually), if they could change one aspect of their daily routine, what would it be? Ask if they could study one area (any area – Lego construction, Facebook, whittling wood, trapping mice, quilting), what would it be?

Once you’ve worked through all of these questions (take some time alone to do it – at a coffee shop or the library – take your time), you’ll begin to see a picture of your family’s learning style emerge. I’ll post a sample of what this might look like tomorrow. The goal here is to create a framework for how you lead and how your family learns. Then as you look at curricula, you’ll filter the expectations of that product against the style of learning that works for your family. Even if everyone raves about it, if it doesn’t suit how you lead and how they learn, you can confidently discard that option in search of a more tailor-made product for you.

You’re an entrepreneur. Yes, you. Every homeschooling parent is. You create an entire program of education for your children from scratch, ordering your days to achieve goals that live in front of you. You manage curricula, you make decisions about purchases, you budget time and money, you measure successes and shore up deficits. It’s no wonder that homeschooling mothers, in particular, are energized and enthusiastic, particularly in the early years of schooling. They’re caught by a vision every bit as compelling and inspiring as the pair of middle-aged women who pool all their resources to set up a coffee house in the cool part of town!

Being an entrepreneur requires an extraordinary amount of self-confidence (your personal doubts, notwithstanding). You wouldn’t do it if you didn’t feel you could. Every entrepreneur has moments of, “I wonder if I’m doing a good job.” The non-entrepreneur says, “There’s no WAY I could do a good job.”

So as you trundle down the path marked “home education,” the duties pile up. Teaching phonics to one child while breast-feeding the second is an adventure. Teaching phonics to the youngest while the middle kids are learning fractions and the older kids are preparing for the SATs is a marathon! Similar to a business, what started as a chance to exercise your practical gifts (reading to your children, playing games, baking muffins, skip counting to jump rope, field trips to nature centers) quickly becomes a complicated ledger of expected outcomes versus real profits.

Sometimes the shortfall in terms of how you expected education to look when your children outgrew the “fun stuff” is daunting. Entrepreneurs bear a unique burden in business. They only earn what they literally earn. In other words, there are no paychecks for the business owner. Her income is based on what she successfully markets and sells. The feeling of never being finished, of always seeking new customers, of managing the ever-expanding group of employees, benefits, tax requirements and more can lead some formerly happy entrepreneurs to close shop and take a job with a reliable paycheck and fewer responsibilities. Either they fold, or they get help!

Similarly, home educators face the same kind of invisible brick wall of failed enthusiasm, commitment and energy. The big difference between homeschoolers and entrepreneurs is that business owners know they are running businesses! Homeschoolers don’t. They feel like they’re caring for families, and providing education. They see themselves more as teachers, than running mini corporations. As a result, when things get difficult (like, facing one more day of books and equations is identical to signing up to have your teeth drilled without Novocaine), they tend to take one of two paths: They quit (and put their little rug rats in school) or they allow quality of education to plummet (and then indulge in heavy doses of guilt alternating with self-justification because it’s too horrible to bear responsibility for the shoddy day-to-day work that has to pass for education).

Bookkeepers, accountants, shippers, and employees can be outsourced to help flailing businesses.

Teachers, tutors, online programs, and co-ops can be employed to help flailing home educator entrepreneurs!

There is NO shame in letting someone else put in the precious energy to create enjoyable educational experiences for your children. When you set out to home educate, you didn’t plan to leave unattended children at a kitchen table with text books, lined paper and zero interaction. If this is the state of your homeschool, you’re dangerously near burn-out. It’s not fair to your kids (just like it’s not fair to customers in a coffee house to expect them to use dirty bathrooms and to bring their own cream and sugar).

Compared to private school, any outsourcing option is less expensive. Most of us happily spend money on multiple gaming systems, sports teams, music lessons, dance, fast food, cell phones, iPods, and refurbished kitchens. How much more important is weekly math instruction or a program that delivers both accountability and feedback for writing? How much more satisfying is it to kids to know that what they’re doing is real and matters, just like they felt when you first started the homeschooling journey?

If you’re at that burnout point, do something different. Triangle in help! The financial investment is about your children’s future success (in college, in business, in adult life), not about their temporary entertainment (though I understand completely the impulse to satisfy their entertainment demands as it makes them so happy!). I used to exchange writing instruction with a friend who offered math tutoring to my kids when I couldn’t afford straight up tutoring. Best exchange ever! For both of us!

Figure it out. But don’t do it alone. You run a little company. You need some “employees.” Perhaps you have friends with skills you can swap (make them a meal a week while they help you with science experiments), perhaps there are classes at the local JC, perhaps you can purchase materials and online courses from Brave Writer. Do what it takes to ensure that your homeschool stays vital and earning profits for everyone. You’re in charge! Remember: Don’t get trapped into working “in the business.” You can work “on the business” by scaling back and hiring to your weaknesses.