Archive for the ‘Unschooling’ Category

Explaining Natural Learning

Explaining Natural Learning to Your Kids

A Brave Writer mom asked on BraveScopes:

How you go about explaining natural learning and alternative education to your children to help them navigate their own understanding of learning in light of our culture’s expectations.

Talk about how they know and feel good about their days. One thing I did do with my kids was to narrate spontaneously when I saw some experience turn into a quantifiable learning experience. So I might say, “It’s amazing how much you are learning about World War 2 these days! Tanks, battles, and that movie about the Bridge on the River Kwai! I’m going to jot that down on the calendar to share with X at the end of the year.” (We presented a portfolio to a year-end evaluator in Ohio.)

If Jacob asked “Did we do school today?” I would go back over the elements of learning: “I read to you, you practiced math, we built a medieval fort out of paper towel tubes, and we had that great conversation about the book you read.”

You can explain the philosophy of education to your kids too:

The reason you are at home and not in school is because brain research has shown that kids learn more when they are immersed in their interests and work at their own pace. We have more time to do both at home.

Like that. But keep it short. Don’t go into a big treatise on what home education is and don’t run down schools. Just focus on the benefits of home.

For more about natural learning:

Unschooling Undefined
Why I Gave Up the Unschooling Label

 

The Homeschool Alliance

Posted in Unschooling | Comments Off on Explaining Natural Learning

Unschool Undefined

Unschooling (and other homeschool philosophies) Undefined

This topic is a doozy! We tackle the big one—the daunting one. UNSCHOOLING!

We also look at a slew of other homeschool styles and philosophies and discuss them.

I remember being batted around from one ideology to the next. The fans of any given viewpoint were usually so enthusiastic, it was difficult to resist their arguments. Then I’d test the ideas for myself and flounder. I wondered:

  • Is it me?
  • Am I doing something wrong?
  • What if my kids are the problem?
  • How do I know if the philosophy is right for us?
  • And the worst one: Am I just not good enough at this philosophy?

Then I’d worry: Now I won’t get to benefit from the community of all these lovely homeschool women… (which meant one of two things):

  • Pretending (as though I was living up to the ideals)
  • Going quiet (not sharing, just reading)

It took some time to figure out what it was I really believed for my homeschool and what I felt to be true for my family. Watch the broadcast below where I share with you some principles I developed for how to evaluate the various homeschool ideas out there, while preserving your sense of community and self esteem!

Join The Homeschool Alliance: a master class in home education!

Posted in Homeschool Advice, Periscopes, Unschooling | Comments Off on Unschool Undefined

Love who you are

Love who you are

Have you noticed how easy it is to wish away your chief personality features? Do you think to yourself, “I’m the wrong personality for my temperament”? You might wish for a clean, orderly home in your heart, but your personality style is relaxed Bohemian. Or you are the sort who keeps a ship-shape house, but wish you could relax when your kids make big creative messes.

Layered on top of the structured versus unstructured selves we bring to homeschool are our memories of school. We compare what we do at home (even when we don’t want to) to what we experienced as children. We react against it (“I’m not doing that!) or we we suffer because of it (“I’m not teaching my kids anything”).

The temptation to overhaul our essential selves is powerful. Advertising everywhere tells us we are one tweak away from being the fantasy person in our heads. We may be able to resist Botox or Coach purses, but the seductress for home educators is any “method” that results in effortless, joyful learning where parents and kids get along all the time.

We hop from one program to the next like frogs on lily pads forgetting to consider which personality is implementing the philosophy!

Let me let you in on a little secret.

There’s no one personality type that is better for homeschooling than another.

Let me drill down further.

There’s no one personality type that is better for parenting, loving, nurturing than another.

Every type has its marvelous strengths, and (darn it all) each type has its blind spots and liabilities.

What you and I need to do is to become self aware people—able to recognize when our personalities are creating the hum of happiness and productivity, and when they are sapping the energy from the room and causing pain.

It isn’t always better to have a messy or a neat house.

Sometimes waking up to a clear kitchen table, fluffed pillows, books easy to access, and a freshly vacuumed carpet is the most nurturing way to start the day. If, however, the process of getting there ended an art project or removed a Robin Hood fort still lingering in the minds of your kids as they went to bed, the same cleared space in the morning may now feel like robbery:

“Where did you put my art project?”

“Do I really have to get out all the blankets again for my fort?”

The question to ask yourself as you move through the day isn’t “How can I be more relaxed?” or “How can I be more productive?”

You want to ask yourself a single question:

“How can I best serve this moment?”

I remember when I went to graduate school, I had just begun our unschooling experiment. It was a study in contrasts. I was being educated by highly trained academics with lectures, a syllabus, reading schedule, essay assignments, and tests. My kids were free to explore the world without any hindrance.

Or so I thought.

Love who you are

What became apparent to me after a semester surprised me. I loved graduate school. It felt nurturing to have someone care enough to create lessons, to show me what I should read to get a full view of the subject, to dialog with me from a position of investment and knowledge. I liked having a plan and a schedule. I felt relief. I had studied the subject area for five years on my own, and now I felt this surge of strength that came from guidance and support.

Meanwhile, the structures I had used in homeschool were on hold. I wanted my kids to feel free to learn what they wanted, to investigate any topic to their hearts’ content. A couple of them took off! But two floundered. They felt (strangely enough) unloved. They wouldn’t have used that language but in hindsight that’s what it was. They felt connected to me when I took the time to plan their lessons and guide their education. They lost that connection when I gave them “freedom.”

I spent hours on unschooling lists learning how to create the context, how to support an unschooling lifestyle, how to foster and nurture a rich learning environment. I didn’t “abandon” my kids to doing whatever they wanted unsupervised. Nevertheless, two of my children missed planned lessons and a structure for learning. I understood this because I was having a parallel experience in grad school.

What becomes so difficult to tease apart as a home educator is the idealized vision of learning that dances in our heads like sugar plums and the very real home and family we have. Our job isn’t to be more organized or more relaxed, more structured or completely free of structure.

Our job is to serve the moment—to serve the needs of our families from within the framework of our delightful personalities.

We can do that best when we lean into our strengths.

If you’re an orderly person, create happy order. Avoid the temptation to require everyone to be like you. Resist your tendency to nag or to have your feelings hurt when the rest of your gang is unenthusiastic for kitchen duty or keeping tables cleared. Straighten, file, assemble check lists, keep the sink empty, make the beds, plan the day. Enthusiastically offer your talent for creating a clean, peaceful, orderly, neat space to the family as a gift.

If you’re a relaxed, go-with-the-flow mom, stop pummeling your personality. Your home is cozy, it’s alive with activity, and it supports messes without stress. Keep big containers nearby for quick clean-ups, make a loose routine to follow each day (rather than a schedule), allow your kids who need order to create systems to support you and the family. Smile.

Do not worry that you aren’t getting enough done in either system or style. Focus on this moment. What is happening right now? How can I help it become a good moment? Shall I ease up and let the mess grow? Shall I hunker down and clear the space so something new can be born? Are we getting along and growing?

Above all: no system saves you. You will eventually go back to being who you are. Your job is to be the best you, you can be. Be the you that creates love and learning, not the you that worries and frets or ignores and pretends away.

You can even say to your kids in a moment of frazzledness:

“You know me! I need everything cleaned up before I can think straight. Anyone willing to help me so we get the day off to a good start? My brain is about to fall out of my head when I see shoes scattered everywhere. Cookies to the helpers!”

Or

“You know me! I can’t put a week-long system together for the life of me. Let’s make a quick list for today of things we want to study and do, and then put them in an order. Who wants to make the list with me? If today feels good, we can do it again tomorrow. Let’s eat cookies while we discuss.”

See? The goal isn’t to “reform” who you are and how you are. The goal is to be the best of yourself that you can be, acknowledging that within your strengths and weaknesses is a real human being doing the best she can. Your kids want to help you and they want to be themselves too.

They’ll learn to love who they are in direct proportion

to how well you love who you are.

Go forth and love yourself.

Posted in Brave Writer Philosophy, Homeschool Advice, Julie's Life, On Being a Mother, Unschooling | 16 Comments »

This is how it is for most of us. Embrace it!

Our homeschooling year

Posted in Julie's Life, Unschooling | 3 Comments »

“But I’m bored!”

What to do when your kid is bored?

There’s a difference between boredom, and the quiet space and time that lead to new activity.

Children are without resources. They come into the world wholly dependent on you to show them the way, to provide for them, to create their environment.

When a child complains, “I’m bored,” it usually means that the current environment appears flat. They can’t see the possibilities any more. They’re used to the furniture, the materials, the toys, the games, the places these are housed. Routine and predictability are good for a smoothly flowing life, but they can be the enemy of creativity.

Rather than abandoning your child to his or her boredom, help your child to reinterpret the space. You don’t need to make suggestions (bored kids are notorious for shooting down each one as tedious, too difficult, not interesting). The suggestions feel coercive to the bored person, and not like they will create the relief being sought.

Rather, boredom can foster creativity if the parent wisely redirects the child into reflection combined with seeing the old with new eyes. Rather than saying, “Go play with your Legos,” you might say, “I wonder how else Legos can be used besides for building things…”

You might offer, “I bet if you hid behind the couch for 15 minutes with your flashlight, you might get some new ideas.”

Sometimes feeding your child helps. You could say, “While you figure out what to do next, have some crackers and cheese.”

You could turn your child loose with a new, more advanced tool.

“Take pictures with my camera while you figure out what you want to do.”

“What if you put on make up to look like (favorite character right now) while you think about what to do next? Use my kit upstairs.”

“If you want to use the mixer (or any appliance) for a new project, let me know and I’ll show you how it’s operated.”

“I find drawing helps me think of things to do. Do you want to borrow my ‘special Mommy markers’ for added magic?”

You can share methods that have helped you conquer your boredom:

“Maybe you will find something to do by clicking around the Internet for 15 minutes.”

“When I get bored, I page through magazines, walk around the block, read a chapter from a book, drink tea, go exercise… Any of those sound good to you?”

And you can do things silently:

  • Put a new hat or scarf on top of the dress-up clothes and move the basket to the middle of the room.
  • Arrange the library books on a coffee table in a stack.
  • Add brand new drawing utensils or decks of cards to the game drawer.
  • Bring the sheets and blankets downstairs out of the linen closet and tell your kids they can use them any way they want.
  • Put the microscope on the table when it’s not scheduled for use.

Your role in facilitating creativity is to help foster an environment that awakens curiosity to explore a new function or new pursuit, that relieves the mundane from its tedium, and that leads to new uses of old things. Your job isn’t to solve the boredom with a scripted activity.

If after giving your kids these incentives, they continue to look bored, just know that this is the quiet, evolving space that leads to a new idea. You can offer comfort for the process:

“I bet it’s frustrating when nothing interests you… no matter what! I hope it doesn’t last long. Let me know if you need something from me.”

Then move on.

It won’t be too long before the new interest arises.

Tags:
Posted in Brave Writer Lifestyle, Brave Writer Philosophy, Unschooling | Comments Off on “But I’m bored!”