As a supporter of conventional public schools for decades, I bought into the idea, as many upper middle class families do, that as long as my two sons went to one of the “best” public schools in the state in which we live, they would, for sure, turn out to be excited, autonomous, life-long learners. I believed that inside the public schools that win awards and rank the highest in a given state – those that are the “best” – must reside the “best” teachers and the “best” learning. My early 1990s training to become a classroom teacher never directly supported or refuted this idea. Somehow I just concluded that wherever the “best” teaching and learning are, then it must result in lots of children being excited about learning, autonomous in their endeavors to do so, and all of their educational needs adequately met. These beliefs of mine were so strong that I convinced my husband that we needed to buy a home in the suburbs of the East Bay of San Francisco, so we could have access to the “best” public schools in the state of California for our kids. Sure enough, my boys have attended award winning public elementary and middle schools in our neighborhood until this year, our yearlong adventure away and, thus, homeschooling.
My dedication to public schooling was further strengthened by my belief that the more time my sons spent within the walls of the “best” public schools, the more autonomous they would be as learners, and the more they would come to love and adore the experience of learning. Tanner has over 9, and Cole over 6, years of conventional public school experience. At 180 days per year, 6 hours per day, that’s a lot of time within the school walls: at least 6,480 hours for Cole, and at least 9,720 hours for Tanner! Given Malcolm Gladwell’s premise in his book Outliers (that a focus on a particular skill requires about 10,000 hours to become an expert), I was pretty much expecting that by the time my boys hit upper elementary/middle school, they would be approaching expert in both tackling learning and accessing the joy and fun involved in it. For some kids, maybe that is the case, but I learned very quickly as we set out to homeschool during our adventure this year that it was most definitely not true for my kids. Experts and fanatics about academic learning they are not.
DISILLUSIONMENT
The public schools my boys attended have many talented, amazing teachers, principals, and parents with high expectations and outstanding resources. I was a leader for parent involvement on campus for years, and I overtly and avidly supported conventional public education as much as possible — alas, our tax dollars at work! The schools were definitely achieving what is expected of them federally and state-wide. The schools’ statistics are high – I personally sat in on many meetings where the data for the school and district was digested, disaggregated, analyzed, then goals set and money appropriated toward the most important academic efforts. The updates my kids got via report card and state testing showed they performed as expected for their respective places in individual development and grade level, even if a bit developmentally delayed for my younger one in reading and writing due to some of the language needs outlined in his individual education plan. I thought for sure my boys must enjoy the process of academic learning, and I trusted they were learning to love learning given they were seated in the “best” public schools for so many years. I couldn’t wait to homeschool thse kids who love to learn and offer them the exciting opportunity to dive into it!
As we “deschooled” through the fall, I spiraled through a bit of disillusionment. My boys weren’t thrilled to engage learning no matter how I sliced it and diced it. I kept noticing and wondering why my kids weren’t excited about the idea of “doing school” and learning in general, whether at home or in a local building. What?! This shocked me. Last year, most of the time they didn’t complain about going to school (ah -but they did love to see their friends – so much so that my youngest had a challenge of putting his socializing above focusing on his work). I began to realize that this year long family adventure was giving me a window into their dispositions toward their little academic worlds that report cards, grades, test scores, and other statistics didn’t otherwise tell me. I learned my boys don’t love learning or the idea of gathering, testing, acquiring, or creating information in the academic arena. Don’t get me wrong – they love learning about how to get better at Fortnite or make a better building in Minecraft. But marveling at Pangea, understanding the concept of feudalism, or even just reading a simple book for pleasure… not so much.
What happened to their little sparks of curiosity that were so fun to see in preschool? Those sparks had them voluntarily learning all about the different types of fire trucks at 3 years old, soaking in more board books before bed than I could keep up with (and stay awake for!), and their thrill at engaging learning at every turn in their Reggio Emilia-based and nature/nurture preschool classrooms? It can’t be the public schools’ faults that my boys have no self-directed academic learning intrest and no connection of joy with academia, because they are some of the very “best” schools and teachers out there. I’m not out for blame here — I’m reflecting to understand better. I’ve spent the past six months navigating around this unexpected dynamic which has been our greatest challenge in our homeschool experience thus far.
DEFINING “BEST”
My expectation of the affective, rather than academic, outcome of my boys’ attendance at the “best” conventional public schools was off the mark and obviously too idealistic. I’ve come to realize that what it means to be one of the “best” public schools means to be one of the schools most likely to contribute the greatest percentage of students who attend four year college and subsequently have careers that earn high socio-economic status in our society. It is a great privilege to have my boys attend schools that can get them on such a beneficial societal path… but at what price? At the price of their curiosity about history or science or the lifelong love of reading and writing? I’m still wondering if that’s their admission fee to high society?
I am still hopeful since they have time left in their public schools, should they choose to return, that the “best” public schools will ALSO mean the schools most likely to generate the highest percentage of numerate, literate, communicative, compassionate, critical thinking, problem solving leaders who work well with others and make the world a better place. Is this definition and the one I just mentioned inherently binary? Can they go together? Will my sons’ continued participation in our local public schools upon our return to California allow for both? What does this realization mean for the handful of years my boys have left until they’re college age? More importantly, what does this realization mean for our homeschooling for the rest of this year? Can I actually have an impact on their disposition toward academia and/or the idea of “learning”? Can I get through a year of homeschooling that may be synonymous with pulling teeth?
DESCHOOLING
I read a TON to prepare for homeschooling and learned about the nebulous “deschooling” process that we would all need to go through as a family as we made our way into the world of homeschooling. It was mentioned a lot, but there wasn’t much about the actual specifics of it. None of the homeschool mamma websites, facebook groups, or even the homeschool advice books gave specific examples of what exactly would be happening during “deschooling”. Now that we are almost six months into homeschooling and over half way through the school year, I look back and can see that “deschooling” for all of us was about our collective evolution of the definition of what “school”, “learning”, and in particular “good” schooling actually is.
Here are some examples of key behaviors and language that were characteristic of our deschooling process:
ME (the “teacher”):
- aiming to “cover” all of the state-adopted curriculum standards for Math, Reading, Writing, Listening, Speaking, Science, Social Studies, Art, Music, and Techonololy just like the conventional public schools do in 10 months or less
- organizing our overall homeschooling into academic subject-area chunks
- organizing our homeschooling day into subject-area chunks
- organizing our homeschool assignments by clock time
- organizing homeschool assignments using a classroom-type platform (Google classroom)
- ordering packaged curricula for covering the state-adopted curriculum standards
- providing too much or too little freedom for my boys to choose how and when to finish their work without the right amount of support
- dictating how. when, and where they should finish their work
- carrot & sticking my boys to do their work
- negotiating with my boys about doing their work
- setting my own short and long-term deadlines for my boys to complete their work
- organizing field trips for learning based on what the standards say and what I think they need
- seeing my role as needing to set it all up and organize it all and own it all myself
- requiring and valuing evidence of completion more than evidence of mastery
MY BOYS (the “students”):
- taking way too much time to complete all of their assignments & dilly dallying all day
- breezing through their assignments way too fast without care
- avoiding assignments / engaging escapism as much as possible
- cheating me / the system in ways like: dilly dallying during a set clock time for completion, saying they completed it when they hadn’t, distracting me from noticing if they’ve completed something
- complaining about the way we were doing anything, no matter how I sliced it and diced it
- not liking journal writing online, then not liking it in a notebook, then not liking the question prompts, then not liking any which way I asked them to practice writing
- not liking anything we were doing AT ALL
I was operating from a place of fear: fear they wouldn’t learn, fear they would be “behind”, fear they would never care about school or learning, fear they wouldn’t develop the skills they would need to succeed on the academic path to college, fear they would never think for themselves. fear they would never ENJOY thinking for themselves. In my fear, I dropped everything I knew about what the best kind of teaching really is, how to create an autonomous learner, how to cultivate buy-in and joy in learning, failing AND succeeding. I lost sight of how I really wanted to do things because I was under a time-constraint and a self-imposed scrutiny of whether or not homeschooling would be successful during our year away. My fear resulted in my abandonment of my inherent values and ideals.
RESCHOOLING
When we got to New York in November, I had the opportunity to attend a talk by Diane Tavenner, founder of the Summit Public Charter Schools and author of her new book Prepared: What Kids Need for A Fulfilled Life. It turned out, Diane’s 11 schools have upheld the philosophy that students need to be good learnERS as well as learnED; her students are collaborative in their approach to their education. Her book reminded me of the core skills that kids would need for autonomy in their learning, reminded me to let them lead, let them be interested, to not sink or swim and rock the pendulum back and forth, but to capitalize on that to find a sense of equilibrium, to invite them to reflect on their choices and their successes and failures and what they are learning from them about themselves as a learner. Her book about her schools’ model reminded me to have my boys have voice and share in decision-making. Diane’s book was just what I needed to help propel us out of our deschooling and into some strong homeschool practices.
Coming out of our deschooling process, inspired by the book Prepared, we were able to figure out how to work with learning and this thing called “school” in the way that works best for all of us. Perhaps this is the “best” schooling for us because it meets our individual and family needs AND propels my boys toward mastery? Rather than doing school and learning be about ME vs. THE BOYS, it’s US together, and they have taken much more ownership of their learning to date. Here are some examples of what currently underscores homeschooling for us – essentially all of the reasons why I’ve come to enjoy it so much:
- honoring our “circadian” rhythms. Noticing how we feel on cloudy days and cold days vs. sunny and warm ones. Noticing what it does to our energy levels and our desire to get out or to nest. Arranging our day with that ebb and flow in mind.
- making choices the night before about whether or not to sleep in or get up early based on what we all want and need to accomplish the next day
- outlining the baseline expectations of where each boy would need to be with regard to the extent of mastery of different subject specific skills and content in order to feel confident about heading back to conventional school
- involving each boy in deciding by when they want to have that extent of mastery – what is their preferred “end” of their school year?
- involving the boys in selecting how they want to acquire and/or demonstrate their extent of mastery
- breaking the outline of mastery down into the amount of weeks left in homeschooling and inviting the boys to choose which weeks they want to work and which days or weeks they want “off”
- helping the boys set “SMART” goals each week – the boys dictate theirs to me, I record them,and we review them daily and weekly for progress toward their goals and their overall mastery
- checking in to see if their goals for the week are ones that will get them to mastery by the time they determined they want the year to “end”
- inviting and allowing the boys to adjust their daily goals and reflect on whether or not those choices of adjustments are working for them and why
- inviting the boys to plan the “field trips” and plan out the days that are of interest to them (see previous blog Kids In Charge for details on this)
- embracing and capitalizing on the “learning” in our everyday experiences – cooking, cleaning, watching the news, reading aloud together, staying home, leaving home, and more – generally “seeing the learning” all around us
- building on the insights and curiosities that they do happen to mention or questions they do happen to ask (Alexa and Siri are a huge help to us in getting some curious info in the moment!)
- taking the time to seize the opportunities to discuss values and perspectives as they come up
- asking lots of “What do you think about that?”… “How do you think you could do it?”… “What do you think would be a strategy for a solution?”… “Why?”… “What do you think needs to be done?”… and the most important one shared by my mentor regarding historical and political dynamics: “Who do you think lost as a result of that event/decision/policy?”
- taking the time to listen more than tell
Our focus has become more collaborative, more attuned to our needs and interests, and more focused on shared goals rather than a top-down model of how learning or even our daily schedule should flow. I’ve had to let go of some of the things I had grand ideas about. Preparing for, assembling, and executing fancy science projects or experiments, I’ve learned, is just not my thing. I pushed myself to do a few, and we had an ok time, but it’s not Tanner and Cole’s thing, either. Maybe I missed my window with them on this when they were little?! The boys chose to learn science through video courses online instead, and I had to let go and be ok with that – after all, that’s the same way they learn about how to get ahead in Fortnite and build better buildings in Minecraft!?
I had great ideas of how I would weave all of the social studies learning into current events and help them make connections to the importance of history and today for each unit of study they do with a project-based focus. Well, that was a little overreaching because I couldn’t keep up with learning the 7th grade social studies curriculum MYSELF, let alone make grand connections to the present day for Tanner. If we were to homeschool for a longer period of time, I would reach out to Diane to access her schools’ curriculum, so wouldn’t have to create the curriculum from scratch. California state history in 4th grade is honestly kind of lost on me since I’m a native New Yorker, I frankly don’t find it very interesting, and neither does Cole, so I had to let go of parts of that, too. That was hard for me to come to terms with what I could bite off this year, what I couldn’t, what I was capable of alone (without a reliable homeschool co-op, for examples), and more. I let go of requiring them to acquire specific content and show evidence of mastery of all of the related vocabulary for their social studies topics and instead prioritize that they simply get the “jist of it”. As long as they could know the basics and have a strong foundation, I could focus more on present day connections as we watch the news, or The View, or 60 Minutes. We’ve been able to dive into related historical and social justice topics and connections as they arise, and to me, that has been more real and interesting, and for the boys, too.
Overall, I had to relinquish and reset a lot of what I had been tethered to regarding how to RAISE children, in addition to how to TEACH them. During the fall, as I’ve mentioned in a previous blog, I became obsessed with the book How To Raise An Adult: Break Free of the Overparenting Trap and Prepare Your Kid for Success by Julie Lythcott-Haims. In a nutshell: let them fail, give them life skills, give them the skills for HOW to learn, not necessarily WHAT to learn, let go of the fear of being in or getting into the “best” schools, particularly colleges/universities, and help them find their passion, their path, their own definition of success with LOTS of guidance, not helicoptering or directing, from you the parent. This book helped me paint a different big picture of the “end game” I want for them than I had painted for myself for decades as an educator, The end is not college itself or gaming or beating the system to get there. The goal and end game is to help my boys get on the path that will allow them to live fulfilled lives that help make the world a better place – ideally a life in which they help others who are currently oppressed equally access the privilege to which they have access – even if it comes with sometimes not being very “happy”. Resetting my perspective has allowed me to be more forgiving of veering away from the specific learning standards some days, or not diving as deeply into others of them. Maybe it’s given me a homeschool “out”, but it’s definitely helped me shape our priorities for this year and years to come.
THE “BEST” PARENTING
At the same time that we were engaging our deschooling process, I was being ridiculously challenged in my parenting skills. If you ever want to learn what isn’t working in your family, take a trip for a year and be together ALMOST EVERY MINUTE of EVERY DAY for DAYS and MONTHS. You will find out what isn’t working pretty fast because it will stare you in the face EVERY DAY until you get it right.
I’ve just finished reading The Awakened Family: How to Raise Empowered, Resilient, and Conscious Children by Dr. Shefali Tsabary. The entire premise of the approach is as follows: instead of trying to change the behavior of your children, focus on fixing yourself since you can’t actually control those around you anyway. Become aware of your triggers, your story, your needs, and communicate them, letting go of the carrot and stick discipline tricks, the time outs, the yelling, so you can truly share in the moment and with your loved ones. The approach invites you to make suggestions about the strategies to improving a situation that is not working for you as a parent, sharing about your fears and concerns, and inviting your loved ones – particularly your children – to help you with it. Bearing all of this advice in mind, and attempting to be more present and aware in all of my waking moments, I’ve been practicing being ok with being more vulnerable in my family, and especially taking steps to connect with my children much more than command them. Thankfully, homeschooling this year has offered up the precious resource of time in which I can practice the approach. When I’m struggling, I have time to address the issues with my children because we’re not typically rushing from one thing to the next. This gift of time stares me down and brings me face to face with who I really am as a parent, then closer little by little to who I really want to be.
EVOLVING TO MORE SUCCESS
Now that we are in the last half of our homeschooling year away, I’m collecting some evidence that our approach to homeschooling as it has morphed is working so far. In addition to collecting the tangible pieces of writing, documentation of reading levels, and badges of progress in math, there are affective elements that are telling me we haven’t totally missed the mark: Cole actually verbalizes now that he thinks he’s “good at school” – this being a first for him in 5+ years of schooling. Tanner is motivated to write and learn and perform at a higher level to persuade me to get him what he wants through writing and show that he can meet the grade level standards. Tanner appreciates me as a facilitator of his understanding by saying to me that he wants me to help him on an essay and inviting me to “pull it out of him” – meaning help him cull his thoughts and get them on paper by asking key questions, so he can clarify his skills in writing, Tanner is proud of his ability to do 7th grade level work, especially when he is interested in it, and he turns up the volume to hear the little chime in math that says mastery is happening. Cole reads without nagging, now motivated to complete his checklist. Cole and Tanner are now both making successful choices about how much and how long to work each day, where, and when, in a much more realistic way than 6 months ago.
The yelling, the cajoling, and the negotiating have significantly subsided, and I’m more sane than when we set out on this adventure for sure! I think the boys are enjoying many of their freedoms in their homeschooling and the collaboration in my parenting. We’ve hit a bit of a nice stride, and I’m looking forward to hopefully ending our current “school year” strong. I’ll have to keep you posted as to what happens between now and the end of May…
🙂 Carolyn