Homeschooling: The First 3 Weeks

After finishing our first three weeks of homeschooling, lots of lessons have been learned – and not just by the kids! I entered into our homeschooling adventure with glorious visions of my fourth and seventh grade boys so excited about learning that they get on their laptops, fiendishly research cool topics, sign up for courses to learn even more, read avidly, and publish writings, all independently. I expected they would jump at the opportunity to be outside of school walls and learn in this way! Getting to this vision? Well, that’s going to be a journey and a lot tougher than I thought! The first three weeks of homeschooling were a wake up call for what it might take for my vision to be realized. Here are the details about how we got started, some reflections on my sons’ prior experience with school, and some strategies I’m taking to help with motivation…

GETTING STARTED

After years of compulsory public schooling, we really had to “sell” homeschooling to our boys to make their year away from our permanent home and their friends appealing. We sweetened the deal by not starting our “school” until after their three weeks of surf camp ended – a full two weeks after their peers in our home town started school. On the day before our official “first day” of school, we made a family field trip to Best Buy and bought the kids Chromebooks, covers, and mice. They were so excited to have their own learning devices, and I left pleased to be running a little 21st century private school (LOL). They decorated their chromebooks with their stickers from surf camp and adjusted their settings, screen savers, email view, and more. It reminded me of my own classroom teaching days when I would invite my students to decorate their journals and folder covers during the first few days of school as I got to know them. It was fun being part of this magical time of anticipation with my boys given our big year ahead. They now had in their hands the tools to make my visions a reality!

To be ready, I mastered using Google Classroom (which didn’t exist when I taught middle schoo years ago) to assign tasks for the boys, and it’s free! The one to one ratio of laptops to kids means except for Cole’s writing journal, some brainstorming tasks, a few practice pages here and there, and the chapter books they are currently reading, everything is housed online. Each morning they go to their respective google “classrooms” online and click on each item to see what’s expected of them for the day. When they complete their work, they click “turn in”. I can track on my end what they are up to, and it helps me as well as them, to stay organized. It also makes our “school” super portable. No heavy backpacks to schlep! When we head to the library or want to work in the climbing gym community space, all they need in their string bags on their backs is their laptop, a folder, their book, a pencil, and a snack. Ah, the freedom to learn!

DAILY CURRICULUM & LEARNING TASKS

Daily Skills Practice

Each day, the boys work on their skills in reading, writing, math, and typing after they complete their morning chores of making their bed, getting dressed, eating breakfast, and brushing their teeth. If all goes well, the tasks get done in less than 2-3 hours, and we are free to do other things for the rest of the day. Here’s the basic schedule with tasks not necessarily completed in this order:

In a separate blog post called Homeschooling: Our Daily Skills Practice, I’ve detailed how we set up each of the above tasks, what approaches and resources I am using, the expectations for each, and how I will make sure the boys are progressing in their 4th and 7th grade levels. If you’re considering homeschooling, an educator or former educator yourself, or if you want to imagine what it would be like to move your own kids through each of these tasks each day, you’ll want to check it out. If you have homeschooled or are currently homeschooling, I’d love to know what you think, so please leave a comment below!

Just like in classroom teaching, not all learners start out with all of the skills from previous grade levels mastered, so there is a lot of hole filling and back tracking that has to happen. That’s definitely true for my boys and our homeschooling. I’m grateful that I have the time to work one-on-one with each of my boys as often as necessary to help them grow, and I can see very specifically which skills they are lacking through their daily skills practice. I also share in the Daily Skills Practice post some of the specifics for where my boys were lacking skills despite strong progress reports and report cards from their schools last year.

One Vs. Many

Working with each of my boys one-on-one for a period of time each day is an amazing luxury that makes me super hopeful for what they might accomplish in their skill development this year, On the other hand, having this luxury, and knowing how much time and attention it takes for students to master skills, it makes me stressed on behalf of all of the teachers out there who have 25+ students in their classrooms. I had to do so much just to ensure Tanner, who doesn’t have many issues with learning, learned the skill of using commas. Just imagine what classroom teachers have to do for 25+ students in the room! Moreover, most classrooms have an average of 12 – 16% of learners with some sort of unique needs, identified or not. In a class of 25 students, that could be 3 to 5 students who may need even more time and attempts than Tanner. Similarly, approximately 6-8% of students in a typical classroom are gifted and talented and ready to move on to something else. With all of the skills and all of the learning standards, it is a very daunting task to be responsible for the learning of 25 – 30 students at a time, especially if they don’t just “get it” the first time they learn it or happen to be the type of learner who can “get it” any which way it comes at them. My hat is off to all of the educators out there tackling this dynamic. I remember the exhaustion of classroom teaching well!! 

Other Subjects

We’ll be forging our way into science, social studies, and the arts in a few weeks. I’m just now wrapping my head around the science and social studies standards and cross-referencing those standards with my greater list of things that I want to do within our year as well as local museums and excursions. More soon on all of that!

LESSONS LEARNED

Cole’s initial approach to the freedom that comes with homeschooling was this: do a little work, go surfing, have some lunch, do some more physical activity like rock climb, go back out and surf again, complete more work, and toss a little drawing in here and there. When he shared his initial approach with me before our first day, I was such a proud momma and thought, “Alas! This child is the perfect candidate for homeschooling! Won’t this be the perfect homeschool flexible day!! All on his own he is planning to build in lots of opportunity for movement and breaks to refresh his brain for learning!! So proud of him!” In reality, after several days of meltdowns around 4:00 or 5:00 pm, and multiple learning tasks left undone, I had to mandate that he can break up his learning with only ONE big physical activity in the morning, and he can’t do any other intensive physical activities again until after completing his work.

When I was a classroom teacher, at the beginning of each year, I would get so excited to set up a new system for some part of learning that I had been thinking about and planning all summer. I’d start the year fully confident in it, only to realize, within 48 hours of rolling it out, that children will find the weakest spots in the best laid plans and run with them to their advantage. In the past three weeks, I learned that if Cole chooses to do his writing and reading as the LAST learning tasks assigned for the day, he will be way too tired to focus on them. We went through about a week of complete melt downs around 4:00 pm, coupled with negotiating to try to get out of doing the work, which, of course, I wouldn’t let him do, so round and round we would go in this spiral, neither of us willing to budge, until we were both either yelling at each other or both in tears (and those who know me well know that I RARELY cry, so this was devastating.) I’m pretty sure the battling was as exhausting for him as it was for me. In my hopes that he would be reflective on his choices and make better ones, we endured several days where what should have been a simple 2 hours of work for all of the learning tasks for the day dragged out over the course of 6 hours for one reason or another. This had me fuming. After a few days, I had to finally step in with a mandate (I am the parent and the teacher after all), such that he has to start with writing and reading before tackling anything else, and there are no ifs, ands, or buts about it!  Waking up and going surfing without breakfast, writing, or reading does not work for him, and certainly not for me! This new approach is working so far!

We’ve learned some technological lessons like Google Classroom only allows you to reuse one assignment post a time, so I need to create several new items for each day, for each kid. Khan Academy has a funky way of calculating the number of minutes a kid is on the app, so in my task expectations in google classroom, I set a minimum of clock time as well as a minimum of skill minutes they need to accrue. TypingClub rocks because it tracks the skill level as well as the minutes spent on the app. My favorite is the kids clicking “turned in” when they are done with each assignment in Google classroom. It’s super useful for when I need to be away from the two of them. I can see if they’ve completed their work from afar by going into my google classroom app on my phone. It’s great for accountability to them working when I can’t see them. 

It took us a few days to a few weeks to also figure out things like where to store their learning supplies, to remember to put the Chromebooks back on the chargers, to have one child work in a separate room if I’m working with the other child one-on-one, so they’re not distracted. After 3 weeks, we’re finally in a hum when it comes to working on skills daily. I don’t know if this will turn them into lovers of learning, but it’s going to help keep them on track in the event they elect to return to the public school setting next year.

HOMESCHOOLING THE “RECOVERING COMPULSORY SCHOOLER”

By the end of 6th grade last spring, Tanner (my kind, smiley, compassionate rule follower) has instead become almost expert at routine compliance and completely disheartened by the middle school grading system, leaving him with a ‘why bother!?’ attitude toward the idea of ‘learning’. He’s hip to the fact that good grades means you’re the best at jumping through the hoops and doing what the teacher expects, not that you’ve actually mastered a series of skills or concepts or ideas, and certainly not that you had a ton of fun doing it. From his vantage point, fun is lunch and P.E., and not in working toward mastery and engaging deep learning. Cole, (my clever, strong-willed, snuggler) has become almost expert at dodging and escaping learning – quite an educational Houdini – having filled the void moments at school with as much socializing as possible and minimal interest in mastery or engaging deep learning. It’s like they are recovering from their time in compulsory school, and they brought these dispositions with them to our homeschool experience. That has made for an interesting few weeks, shattering my dreams of them being thriled to learn outside of school walls.

In preparation for this year, I’ve combed through tons of online info about homeschooling. Most of the blogs and social media posts that I’ve read are by moms (sadly, not a lot by dads, but there are a few!) sharing about homeschooling their toddlers or elementary age children. Others are by moms of middle and high school age children who have been homeschooled pretty much forever. They swap ideas for best ways to teach math and foster reading skills, and there’s virtually no commentary about any of their children being averse to learning and exploring. I’ve taken from this one important thing: If you’re going to homeschool, start early – your kids basically will never really know any other way, and their spark for their love of learning won’t get extinguished. Unfortunately, this doesn’t exactly help me in my current situation.

I searched for information about transitioning from compulsory schooling to homeschooling at the upper elementary and middle school ages. What is out there makes the assumption that you are leaving compulsory schooling for good, and we’re not yet sure if that’s what we’re signing up to do. There is mention online and in books about a “deschooling” process in which you and your children let go of the norms of compulsory school and reignite the kids’ interests and your own approaches to learning. If we were for sure not returning to the public schools back home, I think I’d be totally on board with all of this. Apparently this process can take weeks or MONTHS. Given that my boys may elect to return to compulsory school, they will need to be “on level”, so we are kind of beholden to the system, even though we’ve temporarily departed it. In just our time away, I fear I don’t really have the time to go through the whole deschooling process, if I am expected for them to complete the year on par with their peers in the public school. Moreover, I’m not willing to go through that stress right now during our fun time away based on how my early summer went with the two of them. So, what am I to do?

What I need is information on how to temporarily homeschool children who no longer naturally gravitate toward learning anything outside of school except the latest insights on their video games. I need mentorship for homeschooling what I call “the recovering compulsory schooler” in as quick of a period of time as possible, since we are only away for 10 months! How exactly do you motivate kids who don’t want to learn to complete assignments at home WITHOUT taking the time to “deschool”. I have a sneaking suspicion that this is a binary, and it’s one or the other – stick with compulsory school ways or abandon them completely. For now, I just can’t let go of my educator self and abandon it all, so I need to figure out how to get my boys practicing their skills with as little nagging as possible, in as little time as possible, so we can free up our day for more fun approaches to learning and doing fun things.

MOTIVATION

Just like in classroom teaching, the first few days of our homeschooling went along swimmingly. The boys were so excited to use their new Chromebooks that they tackled their assignments with glee. They liked knowing that “school” was only two hours each day, and all seemed bright. By the end of the first week, the glitter of the Chromebook experience started to fade and the reality of the responsibility for real learning began to set in. They realized that the skills practice part of our homeschooling was pretty much the same as what they might otherwise have to tackle within real school walls, and it wasn’t necessarily all going to be easy. So, just like with regular classroom teaching, I had to be prepared for the second week when they would start testing me, and they would need some additional motivation to be bought into the system of learning.

Since, most unfortunately, intrinsic motivation is not yet a part of either of my boys’ learning repertoires, I’ve decided to capitalize on extrinsic motivation. Rather than flat out “bribing” my boys to get their work done, I’m working with their “currencies” (to quote Robyn Jackson from her awesome book Never Work Harder Than Your Students) to find lots of win-win for their learning, their play, and my sanity.

Attacking Daily Work Time

I started our second week telling them that if they finish all of their assignments, including their morning chores of eating breakfast, brushing their teeth, getting dressed, and making their beds by 10:00 am, they could earn some screen time each day, beginning no earlier than 4:30 pm. If they don’t finish by 10:00 am, then they deduct the additional time from their allotted screen time. Additionally, I told them that if they finished BEFORE 10:00 am, they could play on their screens for entertainment until 10:30 am. They figured out very quickly (the clever loophole finders!) that they could set their alarm for 6:00 am, be done by 8:30 am, and play their video games until 10:00 am, while still earning their time after 4:30 pm! By the fourth day of this, they were super cranky from not getting enough sleep, and they were so wired from being on their screens for entertainment, it got to be just too much.

I adjusted the deal tp rely on an amount of hours each morning, rather then a specific clock time. During this third week, we’ve settled nicely into them having to finish their Google Classroom tasks and their morning chores within 3 hours of when they wake up (no more setting alarms!). It’s working so far, and I’m appreciating some down time in the evenings after 4:30 or 5:00 pm. Since their screen time for entertainment rather than school purposes can be around 2 hours each day, they are excited because if they were attending their schools at home, they’d be lucky to have even an hour of screen time per day, and they’d be within those walls for about 6 hours each day.

Attacking Year Long Goals

I need to ensure they get through their entire math curriculum within 10 months, so I called on some additional extrinsic motivation. I told the boys: upon mastery, they can have a reward of their choosing that is previously agreed upon. 7th grade is 7 units, and 4th grade is 14 units, so for every two for Cole and one for Tanner, they get to have a fun reward. For their first unit, they chose to earn an “all-nighter” – this means they get to stay up as long as they want and use their screens for entertainment as much as they like on a particular night. Of course, I agreed because they picked something free!

The boys were so pumped about earning their privilege that over the course of the next two days, they each worked on their units for 5 and 6 hours straight! The completed units that would normally take a couple weeks or months in regular school in just two days!! So, they got to stay up on that Friday night as long as they liked. They crashed at 3:30 and 4:00 am, but they had a blast. At this rate, Tanner might be working on Algebra by Easter?! They chose to go indoor skydiving after completing their next units. We’ll see if this extrinsic motivation continues to work. I have to think of something good for reading and writing now… Any ideas?

LOOKING FORWARD TO MORE

Finishing their skills practice within 3 hours of waking up allows us to have the rest of the day to surf, relax, play games, go to the rock climbing gym, and more. While the long afternoon play time for the past three weeks has been fun and perpetuated our feeling of being on vacation, these tasks for skill development are not moving my boys toward my ideal of them becoming communicative, compassionate, critical thinking, problem solvers who work well others and enjoy learning in addition to them becoming literate and numerate. Besides the thrill of earning their fun experiences like indoor skydiving, these tasks are not much “fun”, for them or for me.

Now that we have some basic routines and resources in place for practicing basic skills, we need to get out and really “learn”. There is a whole world out there waiting to be explored, tons of current events that they can engage, amazing local resources around us, and a whole list of things I made that I want them to learn or experience regardless of the grade level standards. I need to strategize for taking advantage of community-based activities, field trips, the arts, and more interesting topics! I have quite a road ahead of me if I am going to win their hearts back to the joy and fun of learning. As of the writing of this post, we have 5-6 weeks left in North County of San Diego. I’ll keep you posted as to how we ramp things up.