about how to use the philosophy of education rubric. Just not finished yet.
Archive for the ‘General’ Category
Developing a Philosophy of Education
How do you develop a philosophy of education? 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 the 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 parent, involving 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. What does your partner/spouse expect?
Think about your marriage (or your partner) if you have one. 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.
Triangling in help
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:
- budget time and money,
- make decisions about purchases,
- manage curricula,
- and measure successes and shore up deficits.
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 kids 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.
From the Forums: When it works, it works!
Last year we took the WONDERFUL copywork/dictation class and now we are slowly working our way through The Writer’s Jungle. Today my children did their first keen observation exercises.
Samuel, age 8, dictated the following to me with just a little bit of help:
Lightsaber
———-
It has a light-blue blade with streaks of white on it. It has a red button that you pull down to open it. It has six grips on it. One has a little, tiny, white streak on it. In the back of it, it has a knob with ridges going all around it with a dot the color of bronze in the middle of it. Right above that there is this thing that looks kind of like a little clothespin but you can not close it. And it has some black on the rim of it.
On each side of the lightsaber, it has two little bumps with a circle going around it. Above the red button I told you about there is a little silver circle. Above that is a black strip that curves in a moon shape, going out to the sides. On the sides, there is a hump that goes up, around the back, and back down on the other side. Then in the middle of the handle, there is more than 55 tiny, pointy studs going around the middle. It feels a little sharpish but it has a good grip.
It tastes like stale crackers.
In the middle of the left side of the lightsaber, there is a rectangle that goes a half-inch off the side of the lightsaber. On the top of that, there is a gold line about half-inch wide and two inches long and it has perpendicular and parallell lines carved on it and it has two little black spots on the top. And on the side of that rectangle, there is this little thing coming off of it that looks like a bed and it has a black spot at one tip. At the bottom of it, near the grip, is a black hook so you could hook it on your pants.
When the blade is coming out, it sounds like a fast-moving river. When it is going back in, it sounds like a brief drum roll.
The smell is like perfume. That’s why I don’t smell it that much.
———————————–
Jane, 10 years old, wrote the following all by herself about a large multi-colored fake gemstone. (I corrected all of her spelling a punctuation errors as I typed this in):
This fake diamond is an amazing mix of colors. When I lean my head to one side, the sun relects on the little, triangular, tinted plates, creating a rose-blended lavendar, while some still remain an emerald green. The diamond-shaped, colored plates surrounding the outer edge can appear gold in some forms of lighting or lavendar, and in other cases emerald color. The inner plate can, too, appear a most majestic gold. Once I turn on the light the colors become deeper and darker like a dark, deep sea.
It feels cold to the touch, like icy metal. But it warms slowly as you keep your hand on it. The back is coated with a light metal surface.
It smells like a clear icy morning, so clear and airy almost like nothing. When I rub it on a wood surface, it sounds rocky and raspy like a not-so-clear voice coming over an old-fashioned radio. Sometimes when I touch it with a warm hand, it feels sweaty, the way it does when you grip a penny too hard and too long.
In the front there is a flat, circular, clearish plate, which is surrounded by the diamond plates I told you about. I think it is very complex and interesting to think about.
——————————-
I’m pleased with their results. We’ve read good books & they’ve done narration for many years. For the past year, we’ve done copywork, dictation & freewriting regularly. We just completed the Farmer Boy Arrow that caused us to discuss and notice descriptive details, especially for my daughter. We also recently played the communication game, which really helped my son notice & describe details. I think all those things helped prepare them for this valuable exercise. I LOVE this approach to language arts! It’s so natural, fun & productive, too.
–Betsy R
Stop! You don’t have to write every day…
You don’t have to write every day to become a great writer. The old adage: “Write every day” doesn’t apply to your kids. Truth is, it doesn’t even apply to all adult professionals! Writing every day is one of the great writing myths. There is some value to journaling or setting up a daily routine that requires you to write, inspired or not. And plenty of writers trumpet this practice as a result. The value in the routine is that it helps writers (that is, people who are already proficient at handwriting or typing, who’ve been getting paid for their word counts, who want their vocation or hobby to be writing) get over the usual blocks that come with required creative output. But even adults sometimes need breaks, need time to muse or be still or to simply read for awhile rather than produce.
You’re working with kids. Your kids. Your kidlets who can’t remember how to make a cursive “r,” who still struggle with even spacing between words, who forget that the faint pink line on the right indicates a margin that they must respect by not running it over with letters. These are the writers for whom generating original writing can become the most blocking, anxiety-producing activity of the day—the difference between cheerfulness and tears.
The Brave Writer philosophy says instead:
Interact with writing every day.
That means you can read it, copy it, listen to it being read, or analyze the writing you read. Look at it for why it works: makes you laugh, hooks your attention, delights you, persuades you; look at it for how it’s structured, why it’s whatever length it is, what support is used for its points, the musicality of the language, and so on. You can read writing for the sheer joy of it. Inside your mind, little grooves of how good writing feels and sounds are established so that as you return to your original writing, you find yourself unconsciously imitating those sounds, rhythms and forms.
Give your kids and yourself a break. Read, read, read. Count it as part of your writing program. When you write, let it be from a place of overflow and energy. Freewriting once a week or working on a project per month is the way to keep original writing on the menu of things to do each week. But never let them take over. Interact with writing every day. That’s the Brave Writer mantra.
