Week Two

Today is Friday. We've had a busy week. We are fortunate to live minutes away from a nonprofit resource center which supports homeschooling families, and my son attended an art class there yesterday. Afterwards we went to a marvelous farmer's market, where we found purple Brussels sprouts,tender baby carrots with the tops still on, and watermelon radishes, which taste nothing like watermelon and are much hotter than ordinary radishes.

On Monday, I attended a class for parents who are new to homeschooling. On Tuesday, my son met a nice young man his own age who is also homeschooled. We are beginning to become connected to the homeschooling community.

I am encountering many parents with very strong opinions about the best way to homeschool. There are a few predominant philosophies. I'm striving to keep an open mind, avoid bias, and focus on what is right for my son.

Every homeschooling family has some sort of unique circumstance which influences the choices the parents must make. In our case, our child has been public schooled until halfway through the sixth grade. There is always a chance that he may need to return to public school if our circumstances change.

Unschooling sounds ideal. However in our case, it would have been best if we started it from the pre-school age. We did not. We decided that our child would be public school educated, then halfway through the sixth grade we came to the realization that we were not getting acceptable results no matter how many parent-teacher conferences we scheduled or how involved we were in helping him with his homework. Homeschooling was a last resort after doing everything we could to work within the public education system. Now we have a young man who has been institutionalized in the public school system, and who may have to go back to that system. I don't know that he will return to public school, it's just that my crystal ball tends to not predict these things very well. At this time, it does not appear to be in his best interest to condition him to be unschooled when there is a chance that he may have re-adapt to public school. Public schools teach kids in large batches, so schedules can be inflexible. My concern about unschooling and child led learning is that if he only learns what inspires and interests him and follows his intuition about what he wants to study each day, it would be hard to adjust if he returns to a setting where he has to be assigned classes, teachers, and a schedule.

One thing I am considering doing away with entirely is the concept of grades and percentages. Rather than grading his work, I want to focus on what he is learning and observe whether he has mastered a skill or a concept. I don't want him to focus on earning a grade right now. Instead, I want him to focus on exercising his mental abilities to learn, process information, and solve problems. I intend to guide him toward self-directed study, so that he can become an enthusiastic student for life. We'll know we are on the right track when mastery is the reward, rather than an "A."

One year, when I was in the 5th grade, it was necessary for us to move in with my grandparents for a school year. As it happened, my grandmother was the 5th grade teacher in the little town school. I still remembered how she taught us in the classroom, how she gently guided me, and how much I enjoyed school because my grandmother was the teacher. I even enjoyed doing my homework at their little kitchen table while she prepared dinner. That year, learning became more pleasurable for me, and it's something I was able to carry with me my entire life. I want this for my son. I want to be able to pass on something of what my grandmother gave me.