Tag: Homeschool

A Round Peg in a Square Hole: What is Learning?

Before any of my children were born, I had ideas about what education was supposed to look like. I had been homeschooled and knew I wanted to homeschool my own children, but I thought in terms of curricula, subjects, schedules, and grades. We were going to be academically rigorous and graduate at the top of every expectation. Then my children were born.

My oldest daughter talked fluently at a year old, loved stories and educational TV, and exhibited an empathy and understanding beyond many adults even as a toddler, but couldn’t read until she was nine. My oldest son couldn’t contain himself, struggled to meet anyone else’s expectations, but could name dozens of dinosaurs by the time he could talk, learned to read with zero instruction, and thought like an engineer. My middle daughter struggled to focus on anything, froze up in the face of any expectation, but had perfect pitch and rhythm. My youngest son had no emotional control and struggled with milestones, but could tell you anything you asked about reptiles or amphibians and had an instinct for finding and loving the lonely. My youngest daughter has a mighty will, an insatiable craving for attention, a memory like a steel trap, and a spirit that could not be contained by external forces.

The more they grew the more apparent it became that my grand plans for their education were flawed. Personalities didn’t fit the boxes of expectation. While one was a natural at languages and human behavior patterns, another died of boredom unless producing art of extraordinary talent. While one ravenously feasted on biological principles and mathematical concepts, another lived on exploration and observation of the natural world. Isolated subjects may as well have been babble, assignments caused panic. Stories filled their minds, however, and through stories they learned of mythology, historical events, great minds of the past, and human behavior, and their language skills exploded. Cooking and art instilled mathematical truths about the universe without complicated formulas on paper. Modern technology provided many other opportunities. Games involved strategical reasoning, creative problem solving, and coding skills. Videos and virtual reality allowed experiences that could never have occurred otherwise, exposure to distant places and cultures, scientific experiments beyond our resources, and tutorials for any skill desired.

Although I have watched them learn in wonder every single day, rewriting my expectations of education has taken many years. Societal pressures are powerful, and fear of failing to meet them still remains in the back of my mind. It rears its ugly head whenever someone asks questions about our learning. Usually the questions involve what curriculum we use (none), how we plan to teach advanced high school subjects (they’ll learn it if they need it), what their grades look like (we don’t have them), and other relatively recent constructs. Rarely are the important questions asked, like how well they are able to incorporate skills into life, what understanding do they have of human behavior and natural law, do they know and develop who God created them to be, and the like. When the usual questions are not answered as expected, confusion and worry are plain to see, growing tendrils of unjustified doubt. Because all those expectations have come to be the round hole, it’s hard for most of us to notice square corners. For many, that round hole may be what learning looks like, contained, structured, and entirely predictable or controllable. For the neurodivergent mind – the square peg – learning is in the corners, out of bounds, unpredictable, and exciting, filling spaces that others cannot even see. Learning is life and will never end, will simply change.

No Limits

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When people ask me what grades my children are in, I have to stop and think where they would probably be assigned in the public school system based on their age, because we don’t level our homeschool in that way. Homeschooling multiple children of varying ages more strongly resembles the one room schoolhouses of 150 years ago than any modern classroom. Learning occurs based on developmental readiness rather than on arbitrary divisions.

We also don’t really divide our education into disconnected subjects. Mathematics tends to be set apart for the moment because numbers have never been my forte, and needing help means we need some sort of curriculum. However, the principles of logic, reason, and spacial relationships naturally form the foundation for learning everything else. And without the enforcement of artificial boxes, even the smallest question can lead to a full educational experience.

For example, my ten year old chose a project about games played during the 1940s from an available suggestion list. I had him write down a handful of questions he wanted to answer on the topic, starting with the obvious “what” question. Before I knew it, he had chased the game of hopscotch back to the Roman empire, learned how to build an early version of pinball from scraps, and followed the game of chess to ancient China.

Because there are no subject divisions or levels to pass, there are no tests. Without age-assigned levels, there are no time limits, so there is no need for scored work. With enough time to practice a skill or explore a concept, mastery or at least comprehension can be reached, therefore failure is never ultimate. Without the randomized sets of skills and concepts assigned to each level, education becomes about the process of learning rather than about deadlines. The mind is trained to look and to think, to process new information and produce with it in whatever context occurs. And what is produced is much more practical than the ability to recite information; it is conversation, play, invention, business, art, architecture, medicine, and so much more.

Without grades, without subjects, without tests or scores, there is no need for carefully controlled classrooms. Discipline becomes about character rather than classroom management. The world expands outside of four walls as far as feet and imagination can carry us, and every experience is food for the mind. There are no divisions. There are no limits.

Unschool

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We’re the unschool crowd. Nope, not the uncool crowd; those extra letters are intentional. We don’t have to waste our time in car line or on the bus. We don’t have to follow dress code or wear uniforms. We don’t have to be confined to desks for hours or locked in one room. We don’t have to fill in bubbles to prove we know things. We definitely don’t have to raise hands and get hall passes to go to the bathroom!

We don’t have to wake up before dawn and rush to catch the schoolbus. We don’t have to go to bed before the sun goes down. We don’t have to walk in lines and we don’t get punished for running in halls. We don’t have to choke down cafeteria food in the five to ten minutes left after walking to and from a classroom and standing in line for a tray.

We don’t have to raise our hands to answer questions. We don’t have to complete extra busy work for a grade because the teacher has too many students to focus on one at a time. We don’t have to struggle to follow a lesson plan that doesn’t match our learning styles. We don’t have to be quiet and sit still.

We are the unschool crowd. We read every book we can find. We play every song, we paint every picture, we write every story. We watch the trees and the stars and the grasshoppers and invent new technology with what we observe. We play with computer codes in our living room and design complicated feats of architecture in our backyard. We run barefoot in the rain and harvest God’s bounty under the sun. We play games and watch tv, then create our own. We converse with the aged and cuddle the infants. We chase after dreams and make them goals. We trip over mistakes then use them as stairs.  We are free to find out who we are as individuals and free to act on that knowledge. We are entrepreneurs and leaders, philanthropists and friends. We are the unschool crowd, and we are very cool.

It’s Not a School Day

We have officially started our homeschool summer. No more assignments. No more schedules. No more educational obligations. It’s wonderful and relaxing, and we are having so much fun!

When chores are finished the kids drag out my old violin lesson music and open the organ to pick out the little simple songs on the keyboard. Twinkle Little Star, Happy Birthday, and Frere Jacques ring from the walls in various key mixtures as they practice reading a staff and figure out which notes match which keys. But it isn’t a school day.

Legos and paper cover the floors in several rooms as parades of weapons, fantastic creatures, and marvels of engineering pass my workspace. The geometry of biology and architecture shape paper and form moving lego joints through the process of experiment and failure. Scenes and characters from books and history come alive in inspired creations from the tools of childhood. But it isn’t a school day.

My six year old clamors, “Read this book to me,” and I propose she help me read it instead. She sounds out every word on the first page, four whole lines full of syllables and digraphs and challenges. We high five at each hard word conquered, then I read the rest of the story about a hard working garden spider. One page has a picture of a moth, and she wants to know how moths eat, so we look it up. Two YouTube videos and twenty minutes later, we know not only how but what they eat, and can identify a full dozen different species of moths. But it isn’t a school day.

We record a regular podcast reading famous stories aloud, stories that exist in the public domain but are no longer favorites for entertainment. Today we neared the climax in a gripping tale of aliens, suspense, and danger, a story written in a time and culture long forgotten. They laughed, exclaimed, squealed, and held their breath, completely absorbed in a world they have never experienced. But it isn’t a school day.

The tantalizing smell of sausage and eggs wafts from the kitchen, where my daughter works blissfully alone. Eggs, milk, and cinnamon have been whisked to perfection for soaking soft bread to be browned. Meat had to be thawed and shaped, and the the pan kept to the perfect temperature for even cooking. Ingredients had to be measured and counted to ensure enough food for seven hungry stomachs. A platter fills with golden-brown slices of French toast beside perfect gray circles of sausage. But it isn’t a school day.

My seven year old is exploring the yard. A storm is blowing in, so he watches the cloud movements and waits for the first drops to fall. He scours the treeline for mushrooms and edible wild greens, bringing me handfuls that Daddy will need to identify when he gets home just in case he got it wrong. He picks a handful of bright flowers to put in water, delighted when I tell him their name and musing about what they remind him of. But it isn’t a school day.

Tonight as they drift to sleep we will read a chapter of The Fellowship of the Ring. The poetry of joyful hearts will create music to soothe them to sleep. Pictures of courage, love, and goodness will form the framework of their dreams. The simplicity of the triumph of good over evil will shape their souls to seek good things. But it isn’t a school day.

Tomorrow we will still be on summer break. We will have no assignments, schedules, or obligations. I wonder what we will learn; it’s sure to be exciting.

Stories With Kids

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(I’d like to thank my kids for their contributions to this week’s prompted flash fiction. Sometimes the real life conversations are far funnier than any story I can come up with.”

“Hey, kids, y’all wanna give me story ideas? They have to connect to this lighthouse picture.”

“Me, me, me! Let me see the picture! How about the Lighthouse Girl? A girl was travelling, trying to find a magical world that doesn’t exist. Instead she found the lighthouse, and lived in the lighthouse and made friends in the little town.”

“But what does the lighthouse have to do with a magical world? You can’t just throw things together that don’t connect and call them a story.”

“I don’t know.”

“Oh, I have an idea! It has a lot of rooms, and people are fighting inside!”

“Why were they fighting inside?”

“Because it was raining. When the rain stopped they ran down all the stairs to the bottom, but the door was locked and the key was lost! It was a dark house! And there was a little girl running like Sonic to find the lighthouse, but she found the dark house instead, and there was a Shadowman!”

“My turn! There was a town with a lighthouse. The lighthouse had always made people feel safe. One day a woman became the principle of the local school, Lighthouse Public School, but she was really mean. She gradually took over the town and named herself queen, making everyone in the town her miserable slaves. She decided she needed an army to conquer the world, so gathered all the townspeople…”

“What does the lighthouse have to do with all this?”

“She had shut down the lighthouse. When she was about to march and conquer all of Mississippi, the lighthouse suddenly came to light, brighter than ever before. The woman was revealed to be a demon and faded away.”

“Ummm… Once upon a time there was a little girl and a lighthouse. She and her father owned the lighthouse and kept it running until one day it broke down. They tried to fix it but they couldn’t, so her father threw the keys in the trash. The little girl was very sad and did everything in her ppwer to get the lighthouse running again.”

“Did she succeed?”

“Um, it took her a few months but she did succeed. Everyone in the town was very happy. The end.”

“Hmm, something about Christmas.”

“In a lighthouse? On a summer day?!”

“Once upon a time it was Christmas Eve. This little girl and boy and their dad went to cut down a Christmas tree. They found the perfect one and cut it down, and brought it into their house.”

“Hold on, what does this have to do with a lighthouse?”

“The lighthouse is their home. They decorated their tree, but the star was missing. They bought one and it arrived that day.”

“Is that the end?”

“No. Hmm. They opened the box, got a ladder, and put the star on top. Also they built a fire, and beds, blankets, and pillows. And they were comfortable happy ever after. The end.”

Learning Outside the Box

I’ve always found it hard to explain to questioners what we do as homeschoolers. Not because I don’t know what we do, but because most questioners have preconceived ideas of what constitutes education. They want to know what grade a child is in, what their letter or number grades are, what subjects they are taking, etc. Even babies and toddlers are expected to learn according to curriculum and schedules. The concept of learning in any other way is foreign to most of the modern world.

The truth is that all those preconceived ideas are a relatively recently created box. Once upon a time, education occurred from reading living books, experimenting, discussing, researching, and writing. The concept of grade levels did not exist; tests and scores would have no meaning. Mastery was determined by how well ideas learned could be practically implemented by students, or by how well a student could reason using what they had been taught. A successful education was considered to be the ability to think, discuss, and work, rather than the ability to regurgitate disembodied facts or fill out an answer key.

In the past the difficulty and expense of dispensing information restricted education to those with the means to pay such costs, but much has changed since that argument was used to support the founding of public school systems. Books are inexpensively printed on paper that costs pennies; photography and digital recording have replaced the tedious work of sketching anything to be studied later, as well as made records less destructable, and both can be done by anyone from a handheld device at the touch of a button. Technology has advanced to the point that communication from any point to any other point can be instantaneous with a miniscule cost. Because of the many tools now available, the education coveted and treasured by our ancestors lies at the tip of our fingers, and yet we can no longer comprehend its nature.

So, when I say we don’t know our grade level, I really mean my children are motivated to read books of greater difficulty in order to research their interests. When I say we don’t use a scoring system, I really mean that we work together on projects and correct mistakes until we understand all the elements of the project and produce the appropriate results. When I say that we have never taken a test, I really mean that my children can carry on an hour conversation with anyone who will listen about minute details of complicated subjects. When I say they haven’t memorized standard lists of facts, I really mean that they are capable of reasoning and arriving at conclusions on their own, often putting me to shame. When I say that I don’t have lesson plans or assign lessons, I really mean that my children have the desire to know and keep up with their own educational activities in special journals with my supervision and approval.

This is possible because not only do we function outside of mental boxes, but my children do not spend most of their life in the physical box of the classroom. As a mom of five, I can attest to the difficulty of monitoring, interacting with, and teaching discipline to only five children with five separate personalities and sets of needs. The classroom box renders such attention impossible and reduces everything within it to either rote and drone or total chaos. Neither lead to actual education, no matter how dedicated and caring the teacher; there is simply no space or time to do more than establish the ability to fall in line.

The world desperately needs a return to learning outside the box. I’m grateful for the freedom and the tools to pursue it.

The School Closet

Homeschooling is such a fluid undertaking. Unlike in a traditional classroom, where teachers repeat roughly the same lesson plans and teach the same skills year after year, homeschooling goalposts shift constantly as children develop and learn. Although some families maintain special “schoolrooms,” most of us don’t have the space in our homes for such a thing, and with the deeper understanding of our children’s learning styles that comes from the time we are able to spend with them, many families like mine would find that confining learning to a single room would be difficult.

Instead, our homes fill up with random collections of paper, art tools, science kits, memory tools, and of course books. Where others cover their walls with carefully chosen decor, ours are hidden behind bookshelves and child-made art. The household linens share space in the hall closet with school supplies.

The bookshelf situation will be a project for another day, but today our school closet got a makeover. With middle school approaching and STEAM taking over the house, the supplies needed to be updated and reorganized. Paper needs are hovering in a weird transition between construction paper and graph paper. Crayons and markers grudgingly yield space to colored pencils and paintbrushes. Coloring books were purged to make way for an entirely new category of supplies, a box full of microscope, chemistry, and magnets.

And yes, we count board games as school. Don’t you?