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A Brave Writer's Life in Brief

Thoughts from my home to yours

Archive for the ‘Homeschool Advice’ Category

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The Value of Follow Through

The value of follow through

I just re-read the title of this blog entry and thought: Ugh. Soft consonant sounds, nothing to crunch or bite. Just the slippery shimmer of a “v” followed by sounds you swallow and forget.

It’s almost as if the words “follow through” defy the very idea they suggest. Follow through needs to get my attention a little more firmly if I’m going to tear myself away from the riveting newsfeed of Facebook and the incessant whining of my dog to be let out the back door.

Even in the days of caveschooling, before the Internet and cell phones, we found ways to avoid actually doing the task of educating our young. The telephone, recently freed from the wall, could wreck an entire morning as we padded around the living room pretending to supervise Explode the Code pages while nestling the receiver between an ear and a shoulder bone.

Sometimes sleep, sometimes a mountain of laundry, sometimes the news, sometimes the radio, sometimes the sheer inertia of not knowing which book to start with, stopped us cold and we let days go by without any meaningful progress in any subject, or household task… pretending to unschool, as a way to salve our consciences and heal our sense of failure.

Doctors’ appointments, piano lessons, grocery shopping, field trips, the bank, the post office, and the library all conspired to crowd out learning, that thing we told the state and our family that we’d happily do 40 hours a week or so.

Imagine how much worse it got when everyone on the planet bought a personal computer and logged onto the Internet. Now the distractions were real in the sense that we were answering real letters (called email), we were updating message boards (called “researching homeschool”), we were reading blogs (called “gathering information and ideas to use with my kids”).

After a hard night with a bed wetter and nursing baby, easing into the day with that zombie-like stare at the monitor screen is soothing. You don’t have to turn your gaze to the dishes in the sink from last night. For a few moments, words, ideas, and images cheer you up or keep you from engaging the here and now.

The rub is—you never quite get to your best intentions for homeschool. And that drives you back to more distracting, to ease your guilt… and to add to your pile of “this would be great to do with the kids” that never gets done.

Follow Through

When I was a kid, my parents enrolled me in endless tennis clinics. Yes, I grew up as a rich kid outside of Malibu. I didn’t particularly like tennis or clinics, for that matter! What I remember with excruciating detail is being told how to “follow through”—for my weak forehand, my two-handed backhand, and my powerless serve.

Tossing the racket in the direction of the ball was not enough. Making contact with the ball, though laudable (and startling!) for me, was still not enough. No, apparently to get the maximum impact and speed on the ball, you had to keep your arm moving even after the ball was already on its way back over the net.

It’s the strangest experiment in physics that the continued motion (the ball’s awareness that your impact on it is still accelerating as you hit it) sends the ball farther and more accurately than if you stop, right as you make contact.

Homeschool is so similar, it’s scary! Okay, not scary, really, but it is similar. It’s not enough to toss a couple of workbooks onto a table, while you juggle a baby on the hip and chat with Liz, who lives two blocks over. That’s barely making contact with the ball.

It’s not enough to spend 3 hours reading about homeschooling and only 1 hour doing it.

Follow through in homeschooling—that long drag of the arm across the body after hitting the ball—starts like this:

  • You prepare,
  • you expend the energy to do the project,
  • read the book,
  • recite the facts,
  • figure out the assignment,
  • study the image,
  • observe the experiment,

and then, THEN, you  follow through—

  • you discuss whatever it is you just did,
  • you display the results,
  • you share what you learned as a family with someone else or each other,
  • you find a field trip that matches the subject,
  • you use what you learned in a real life context.

In other words, you take the learning further!

It’s not enough to barely get cereal bowls off the table to make room for the math book. It’s not enough to know where to find the math book (though it’s a start!). Follow through for math means engaging the material enough to know it happened today, to know that kids in MY family deepened their connection to math, with my presence fully a part of the experience.

We would never enter a tennis clinic with a cell phone, our iPad, and a Kindle handy. We wouldn’t try to hit tennis balls while still in a bathrobe. We wouldn’t practice our strokes on a driveway cluttered with bikes and basketballs. And we certainly wouldn’t leave the court before the clinic ended to get our teeth cleaned for an hour, and then come back to the clinic and assume we’d have the same level of engagement and stamina for finishing.

The most important part of homeschooling IS your presence:
strong, engaged, undistracted,
and able to integrate what happened this morning
into the rest of life.

Give learning your best. Devote, focus, stay home, schedule doctor appointments after school. Don’t assume that you have hours to use any old way. Devote some hours (hours you pick, hours you plan) to being with your kids without distraction come hell or high tennis net! See how that goes. See if you feel a little happier about your life.

Follow through. The ball goes farther, and is more likely to land where you want it to.


The Homeschool Alliance

Top image by Ft. Meade (cc cropped)

Posted in Brave Writer Lifestyle, Brave Writer Philosophy, Homeschool Advice | 14 Comments »

Know Your Kids as They Are

Know your kids as they are

I read a plea from a desperate mother of a nine-year-old girl who hates school. The mother felt helpless, hurt, and angry. She appealed to her email loop for support and advice. The first email reply went through the “nurturing model”—

  • rock her in a rocking chair,
  • don’t worry about school,
  • she’s young still,
  • enjoy precious moments,
  • help her to feel comfortable and happy in your home with less school pressure

…etc.

The very next reply was a 180 degree turn. This mother offered a list of quotes out of a popular child rearing book. The first one said roughly, “Don’t make rules you won’t enforce.” And of course, if you make a rule, require obedience. Suggestions of penalties followed:

  • time outs,
  • wooden spoon spankings,
  • withdrawal of TV or computer privileges.

These two positions were so opposite to one another, I found myself laughing out loud. What kind of parents are we? It seems to me that the real issues are often missed in these discussions. We parents are so quick to evaluate the behavior of our kids and then to look to each other for “tricks” or “tips” on how to “deal with them.” The desperate mother is asking the wrong questions to the wrong people.

The Inner Lives of Our Children

The inner lives of our children ought to be the object of our quest. When they throw routine tantrums and say outrageous hurtful things, why aren’t we asking where that’s coming from? So often we just want to squelch the behavior—extinguish it like a sputtering candle.

Can we know our kids from the inside out? Will they talk to us? Some kids have no trouble telling us their needs or hardships. Others are completely tongue-tied—stuck perhaps in the non-verbal mode of relating to themselves—aware of problems and feelings but unable to articulate them or to even identify them.

Instead of rules enforcement versus nurturing to the point of “catering to,” how about investigation and support/compassion? How about encouragement and understanding? Are we willing to know our kids as they actually are rather than to simply apply labels for behavior, or symbols for their season of life, or rules for their “own good”? What if we become fascinated by the complexity of our kids, rather than worried about it?

Sweet Noah

I remember when Noah (my oldest) was 10-years-old and he struggled with writing. His attitude showed that he was demoralized (even after “all I’ve done for him” to make it easier). My ego got flustered and irritated.

He was violating my system.

He was invalidating my work.

But my spirit knew differently. I suddenly saw that Noah must have had real reasons that made sense to him about why writing was continuing to feel hard… It was a moment. I flipped my point of view away from wondering where I went wrong or why he couldn’t validate my efforts, to what was going on inside of him. So I asked him with gentleness and true interest:

“Noah, what’s wrong? What is bothering you?”

Do you know that for the first time, tears of shame and earnest self-displeasure surfaced? He felt badly that he couldn’t please me by “getting it” more quickly. This reminded me of feelings I had as a girl when my father tried to help me with math homework and I just “didn’t get it.” My dad got so frustrated with me, thinking he’d been clear (I’m sure he was!). But I felt desperate inside. I couldn’t validate him. I could only fail in his presence and make him miserable. What an awful feeling—to know your parent is trying to help and you can’t translate that help into success! The only way forward is to shut down, if there is no entry point for discussion or honest communication of scary internal feelings. I feared I wasn’t smart. I didn’t want my dad to know that about me. So I clammed up.

Noah’s weren’t tears of frustration or anger or anxiety about writing specifically. I could tell. He said to me,

“You’re a writer. You and Dad talk about it all the time. You teach it. No matter how much you tell me that you aren’t worried about how well I write, I still know that you’d be happier if I wrote well. And I want to do it but know I can’t.”

More tears.

Wow. So honest. So risky!

The only respectful reply at that point was silence. I saw. I didn’t have an explanation, or more information to throw at him, or even good ideas, or defenses for how wrong his perceptions were. I saw. And in seeing, I knew that all I really had to offer was compassionate support. A hug. A kind, understanding smile of sympathy.

So I told Noah that I loved him, appreciated his openness in risking those words out loud, and I offered to do whatever it took to support him in finding his own way out of those oppressive feelings. It was a moment.

My real job at home

I suddenly realized that my true job as a mother was to care more than anyone else about the interior lives of my kids. I wanted to be there to watch, encourage, and do what it took to support them in triumphing over the hurdles they faced. Noah gave me a gift. He articulated his feelings in a way that I could understand them. Lucky me! Here was an instance where Noah’s self-awareness and verbal capacity helped him—and even realizing that—that he could find his words when he felt safe and cared for—helped me know he’d write well one day.

Not all of our kids can express themselves as easily in words. We want to remember to listen beneath the words, or to help find the words for our other kids when they get that stuck. Or at minimum, we can offer a comforting response like,

“It must be so frustrating to not be able to express what’s bothering you right now.”

Noah and I talked for 45 minutes the next day about his writing project on roller coasters that he’d begun, and the change was dramatic. He felt freer to ask for help, to try my ideas, and he knew I was relaxed and happy with him. We did the work together, and I watched him go to the computer to write with relief and success. I was humbled by that. It struck me that he found a way to relieve the pressure of those “illegal” feelings, and then with my kindness and companionship, writing followed.

That may not be the exact sequence in your family. However:

  • relief
  • light
  • hope
  • intimacy
  • optimism

…may follow.

Those are good too.

Partnership Writing

Posted in Brave Writer Philosophy, Family Notes, Homeschool Advice, Young Writers | 7 Comments »

Take back our power in language

Play with words

It’s about time we take back our power in language. We are not controlled by Mrs. Cox, the ghost of public school past sitting on our left shoulders. We are free. We are at home. Let’s figure out how to make writing a freeing, liberating, sparkly experience, shall we?

You know how we let our kids take apart an old phone or toaster to see how it’s made, to learn how to use a screw driver, and to have the satisfaction of working on a “real” household item? That’s a great thing, isn’t it? Little screws lying on the ground, bits of wire, the metal tray, the coils that heat… It’s amazing to see it in pieces and to marvel at the fact that someone knew how to put these bits of metal and wire together to make a tool that burns our toast! Taking the toaster apart is more effective to teach us about the toaster than studying it in a book or even making toast, right?

Some of us have rooms dedicated to art exploration—a similar freedom to discover. We might keep an easel, paints and brushes available any time, a tray of pastels or colored pencils, and stacks of scratch paper.

Still others of us will collect musical instruments—percussion and piano, recorders and flutes, and two kinds of guitars! Or maybe we’re the kind of family who has a whole slew of balls, frisbees, hockey sticks, hoops, and goals available to practice a favorite sport or to learn a new one.

We know that play and exploration produce learning.

By contrast, we’re reluctant to play with, take apart, explore, and mess with language. Why? I don’t know. Perhaps it’s the grammar hangover from school where teachers are more about accuracy than inspiration.

Flip the script.

What if your house had an accuracy-free play-zone for words? What would be in it? How about a variety of writing utensils (gel pens, fountain pens, markers, sidewalk chalk, calligraphy quills, crayons, lipstick)? How about some unique writing surfaces (butcher paper taped in a big sheet to a wall, dry erase board, chalkboard, clipboard, various sizes of lined paper, cards, notecards, postcards, an iPad, a mirror, colored paper)?

How about making a stack of notecards with all the words you like—a whole big mixture of words you collect for a week, one per card?

How about putting individual punctuation marks on notecards (a comma card, a period card, an exclamation point card, a quotation marks card, a question marks card – or several of each!)? Then use your word notecards to make a sentence and lay the punctuation marks where you want them to go. Walk around the room and lay them out on the floor. If you want, you can use big poster boards rather than tiny notecards.

Begin by punctuating it all wrong, first. See what happens when you start a sentence with a period or an exclamation point? What if you put one in the middle of the sentence?

What new uses of these marks can you think of?

Are you getting the idea? Language is not meant to be treated like an antiseptic vaccine. It’s a toy! Play with it! See what happens. Discover how the pieces of language and writing work together to create meaning and joy, communication and inspiration.

Brave Writer Online Classes
Top Image by Virginia State Parks (cc cropped, tinted, text added)

Posted in Homeschool Advice, Language Arts, Words!, Writing Exercises, Young Writers | 4 Comments »

Zippy tips for kids

2 zippy tips to get those rascals of yours on board

I promised that before the school year started, I’d give you a couple of pointers for how to get those kids of yours to buy into their homeschool experience. Here they are, in the nick of time!


1. Psst: They can’t read your mind. Let them in on your plans!

You know what I hate? I hate being super-duper excited about an idea I have that is sure to change the world, or at least tomorrow morning, only to have a kid—my kid!—roll her eyes at me and scowl.

I hate putting in endless hours reading, discussing, pondering, imagining, and preparing for this most-holy-and-awesome project only to meet sarcastic rejoinders, bored stares, and dawdling.

I hate being convinced by my posse of homeschool mom friends that the curricula I used last year blows and this new one is perfect, only to discover that I hate the first five paragraphs of explanation and now feel obligated to use it because of all the money I spent. I hate that my kids can tell I’m not excited and they make it worse by complaining…. OUTLOUD SO I CAN HEAR THEM.

Homeschooling is hard enough.

It’s intolerable when your kids DON’T WANT TO DO WHAT YOU WANT THEM TO DO.

To help your little rascals get into that same head space you’re in, you want to use a skill you’re famous for teaching your children: narration. Narrate aloud in a kind of Shakespearean soliloquy the process you are going through/went through that led you to this particular moment in time.

For instance, you might wake up one morning and move through the kitchen-family room talking aloud like this (while clearing shoes from the floor and empty dirty cups from horizontal surfaces):

You know, yesterday during nap time, I paged through our Incan chapter in the history text. Did you know they made these interesting patterns on clay pottery? I thought to myself, ‘I would love to paint pottery like that.’ Then I wondered how difficult it would be to get some clay to make the pots first. Easy! We have that Michael’s coupon.

Then I imagined what it must have been like for the archaeologists to have found those broken pots in the ground so many hundreds of years after they’d been made. You know?

So I got to thinking. What if I made a pot, painted it with cool Incan designs, smashed it with a hammer, and buried it in the backyard between layers of cardboard to show what century it came from? Then you guys could dig up the broken pots!

Or, even better, I wondered if you’d want to paint, smash, and bury the pots for me to dig up? Or we could do it for each other. Do you think you’d like to do something like that? Look at these pictures!

You model your process by narrating it to the kids. You invite them to move with you through the thoughts and ideas you generated so they have time to “catch up” to you and imagine it with you.

Sure, most kids would love to paint designs, hammer pots, and dig holes in the ground. But sometimes even your best ideas feel overwhelming to kids when they get dumped on their heads while they’re still wiping sleep from their eyes.

What do you do if the idea you have is
less immediately exciting?

When you want to move into a new set of workbooks, or you have decided to change how you teach math, or perhaps you have a child who will need to work harder than usual to learn to handwrite, you want to narrate your thinking process there too. But add brownies and some cuddle time.

(While on the couch, snuggled close together)

Sweetie, you know how we’re not enjoying ________ (math, writing, cursive, reading) right now? I have some friends who have shared some new ideas with me about how we might make it a little easier. It might take some effort to catch on and I know it will feel really weird at first to change what we’ve been doing, but how does this sound to you?

Here’s what it’s like. Here’s how it works. Here’s what you would be doing. How does that sound? (Listen.)

(Ask and mean it) Can we try it together for a week and then discuss how it feels? What time of day do you want to try it? Does it help if you have a plate of cookies by your side? Or iPod headphones in your ears? Or alone on your bed in your room, away from the chaos of the family?

Tell me how it really is for you and I will help you along the way. Here’s the philosophy behind this new way (state it in simple terms—more active, more concentration, more repetition, less tedium, more creativity, more predictability, slower, faster…). Then we’ll evaluate. Can you do it with me for a week (month, semester)?

This is how you narrate to your child what it is you might want to try, might want to do. You involve them, getting feedback. You’re still the parent. You can expect the child to cooperate or to try it, but you want to do so with a gentle, open mind. Allow for tweaks and feedback (even negative responses need to be heard).

If all else fails, you can try the new program yourself first. Sit at the table and start painting, or do copywork, or try the new math game. Talk about it as you do it. Let your kids watch you. Be upbeat and engaged. See who joins you. Laugh – that almost always pulls kids into what you are up to.

2. Psst: You can’t read their minds either! Ask them what they want.

On the flip side, your kids have been pondering, thinking, and imagining their lives too. Some of them spend time envisioning the next level they’ll beat on a video game. Others wish they could sew costumes or paint with watercolors. You might have a child who wants to be in a play or who wants to play an instrument. Maybe your daughter wants to become the next soccer star of her local team and your son hopes he can take a cake decorating class. A teen might want to spend hours a day watching the top 100 films listed by Criterion in order.

How will you know they have these dreams if you don’t ask? Where will those hours of the day come from if they’re already filled with your agenda or your wishes?

Even more, what if your kids have some thoughts about how to learn the hard subject area that they struggle with? It’s surprising the amount of insight some children have about their struggles if you know how to ask them the right kinds of questions. You might ask things like:

I know times tables feel hard to do. Does anything help? Do you prefer to hold things in your hand or draw on a chalk board? Does it help to talk to me as you work on them? What’s the hard part for you? Is it the book? Too busy and colorful? Too plain and tedious? Do the Cuisinaire rods hurt or help?

Don’t punch the questions at your child like a nail gun. Take them slowly, show curiosity. Sometimes a child will say one thing that unlocks the whole thing: 

I don’t get the point of the rods.

Suddenly you can see that your child is going through the motions without true understanding! More modeling and support, conversation and suggestions can follow. So pay attention and use your maturity and compassion to help you hear where the frustration comes from.

Usually lectures about the value of a specific subject area for their eventual adulthood doesn’t work with kids. What works is breaking down each task to its smallest part and relating it to their immediate world.

If there is no immediate connection, perhaps the work should fall to you to discover one before requiring a child to work that hard on the subject. After all, these are children. They don’t have the same level of fortitude to “do what they should” as you do as an adult. So take time (since you are the grown-up) to find the connection, to uncover the meaning, and to share it with love and support before requiring follow through and effort.

When your child shares what I like to call a B-HAG (Big Hairy Audacious Goal), you want to support the dream. For instance, our middle son, Jacob, wanted to go to NASA’S space camp. We didn’t earn enough at the time to afford it. So Jacob’s dad suggested that Jacob start a cookie business in our neighborhood to raise the money. And Jake did—he raised over $1000 between the ages of 10-12 to pay his entire way (including airfare).

We bought the ingredients, we taught him how to knock on doors to get customers, we supported him when he spoke to managers at grocery stores to see if he could sell cookies out front, we helped him open a bank account. We didn’t shut him down or make science experiments more important. We made time for him to achieve his goal with support and creativity. This choice took time away from other studies or activities. But it’s what he wanted to do.

Even to this day, Jacob (20) loves astronomy despite the fact that he isn’t planning to work in the space industry. He has this marker in childhood, though, of having set his mind to a Big Hairy Audacious Goal and fulfilling it. That attitude has continued right into his adulthood.

If you take the time to narrate what you imagine in your family and you take the time to listen to your children narrate what they imagine would make them happy, you will discover lots of things you could be doing together right now that would expand the joy and power of your homeschool immediately.

Isn’t that what you want?

I’d love to hear how it goes and what you find out from your kids. We can discuss in comments below.

Registration for fall classes opens on Monday, August 6, at noon eastern.

Remember: fall is our busiest time so if you are wanting a class, be sure to sign up early!

The new season of the Arrow and Boomerang are happening right now too! Not too late to sign up.

Rooting for you,


 

 

 

Posted in Brave Writer Philosophy, Homeschool Advice, On Being a Mother, Young Writers | 4 Comments »

Thinking Differently about Writing

The Paradigm Shift

Sometimes moms have a hard time wrapping their brains around Brave Writer. They ask questions like:

  • What grade levels is it for?
  • Do I need any other writing program if I use Brave Writer materials?
  • What do I do once I’ve worked through Growing Brave Writers? Do I go on to some other program or can I keep going with Brave Writer?
  • What’s the difference between the Arrow and Partnership Writing?

So with all the new visitors and emails flying into my in-box, I thought I’d take a moment to give you another way to think about Brave Writer.

Brave Writer requires a paradigm shift
in how you think about writing.

Like any paradigm shift, it feels “wrong” at first, even though you also feel drawn to it. Brave Writer is not about programmatic writing. It’s not organized by grade level. It’s organized by developmental stages of growth.

The reason you may feel flustered by Brave Writer is that it requires you to consider each individual child’s needs and then match the right products to him or her.

That’s a bigger challenge initially than clicking on “1st grade” and buying the 1st Grade Package. But the upside is this: we offer TONS of support (email, phone calls, and the membership community, Brave Learner Home) to ensure that you buy the right products for your particular family. Once you enter the world of Brave Writer, we take care of you and your kids. You have access to me (Julie Bogart) and my staff.

We teach YOU how to be a homeschooling parent and writing coach simultaneously without damaging your relationship with your child, as well as provide tools with processes and exercises to help you establish a writing process that is tailored to your unique child.

It’s not: “Write a descriptive paragraph, using a topic sentence, an ‘ly’ word for the second sentence, and a clincher for the last sentence.”

It is: “Delightful child of mine: you have so much to say. Let’s see how we can get that captured on paper in any way we can so that you and I can play with your ideas and thoughts, so we can expand them, enjoy them, and share them with others. Let’s discover all the cool, interesting thoughts inside you. I’m on your team and I have some tricks up my sleeve for how we can make writing comfortable, interesting, less taxing, more satisfying, and even enjoyable. You deserve that. Have a brownie.”

See how different that is? It helps you to execute ANY writing you do with your child, in any other curriculum you are already using. It’s the manual that tells you how to teach writing, not what to teach.

Can you feel the difference?

Brave Writer

Brave Writer products facilitate writing growth
through a specific set of ideas about writing.

Those ideas are:

  • When growing a writer, you want to match the level of support you offer to the developmental skills of your child. Help helps!
  • It’s essential to separate the mechanics of writing from the original writing voice in the early stage of development.
  • We use someone else’s writing to teach mechanics.
  • We capture the child’s original writing voice on paper, on screen for that child until the mechanics take hold.
  • The writing process is more important than writing formats, particularly in the early years.
  • Writing growth happens through a series of papers, not in every single paper.
  • Writing with freedom, support, and modeling creates space for kids to access/delve into their own language that reveals their natural insight, vocabulary, and passion.
  • Parents make the best coaches and allies to their children.
  • Any native speaker who reads and writes can be his or her child’s writing coach.
  • Creating emotional safety for writing risks is the single most important skill a parent must master to grow a writer.
  • A language rich environment is more important/effective than spelling, grammar, vocabulary, literature, and writing workbooks.
  • Poetry Teatime is the gateway drug to all things Brave Writer.

A wonderful side-effect is that it will make you a better homeschooling parent, period. The paradigm shift away from “school,” to “home” is profound. You’ll find that you are suddenly much more able to be there for your kids, valuing their quirky individuality, no matter how skilled or unskilled they are in academics. You’ll discover that you love hanging out with these little people and you’ll be startled by how their mind life delights and fascinates you (rather than worrying that they are behind).

In other words, Brave Writer’s paradigm shift speaks to the whole of how you home educate but uses writing as the primary lens through which you re-envision what it means to celebrate, nurture, love, and lead your fabulous little people.

The Brave Writer Philosophy

Posted in Brave Writer Philosophy, Homeschool Advice, Language Arts, Writing Exercises, Young Writers | Comments Off on Thinking Differently about Writing

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