Tuesday, February 12, 2008

Lessons from Homeschooling


We've struggled this year with exactly how to "run" our home school. When we left Canada, I had a vision of all these wonderful projects that we could do together. The kids would be engaged and interested, pushing the learning agenda themselves, sometimes working so late that I would have to demand they put their school work away and go to bed. As usual, though, reality is different from the vision.

Even regular school can be boring at times -- heck, regular school is probably boring a lot of the time for many kids. But at least there you can hang out with your friends and maybe even get into a little trouble once in a while. The lack of interesting things to do is more than made up for by the lack of interesting people to be with. In many cases, the actual work is secondary. Contrast that with home schooling; there's you, the work, and your mother, also known as "the teacher". If you're lucky, "the teacher" has figured out a way to combine the courses so you can work with your brother or sister, who you are currently mad at because he/she has just ___________ your _____________ . (fill in the blanks with your own pet peeve)

We've run the gamut from almost no structure -- when Mark and I would leave the hotel room in search of an apartment and say to the kids on the way out, "Work on your math!" -- to a fairly strict schedule that has the kids finished by 2 p.m. each school day (theoretically).

Amidst all the traveling that we did between September and November, we managed to sneak in a bit of school work. We made it a point to not take any school books with us when we traveled. By the middle of November, however, we began to realize that we needed a bit more regular structure. We started by trying to let the kids schedule their own time. I would lay out 20 one-hour assignments that the kids needed to do each week, and they would organize their schedules to get them done. As time went on, however, we had to lay out more and more "rules", mostly around the use of our two laptop computers:

1. School work and the adults' work gets priority for the computers.
2. The computers can only be used for school work between the hours of 9 a.m. and 2 p.m.
3. Adults get computer time during the even-numbered hours; kids get the odd-numbered hours.
4. If work isn't completed by Saturday night, school starts Sunday morning at 9 a.m. and continues without breaks (except for a 10-minute break in every hour) until the work is done.
5. And so on...

Far from allowing the kids more freedom, it actually ended up imposing more restrictions on all of us. Looking back, I see that I was decidedly optimistic but crazy to think that it would work.

Eventually we got down to the nitty-gritty: how much work needs to be completed by the end of the year, and how much time we have left to do it. The kids scheduled their 20 one-hour blocks of work (between the hours of 9 .m. and 2 p.m.) in a way that suited them.

Some (ok, most!) days we don't get started by 9 a.m. Then we work after 2 p.m. The goal is to get finished early enough in the afternoon that we have time to go out and explore the city, or do other fun things.

What is interesting to me is the process that we have been through. That order and structure was imposed on them was actually the kids' choice. However, it suits me, too. It has been much better to have a set schedule so that the kids know they will be finished at a certain time each day.

We have had our good days -- like the bridge building project that both the kids took on -- when the home schooling approaches my vision, but it has been a lot of hard work for all of us. We are trying to ensure that the kids achieve the learning outcomes for their grades and have the necessary skills to do well in their next school year. It is an experience that we'll never forget. Through home schooling the kids have produced a blog, painted beautiful watercolours, learned goal-setting and developed some amazing computer skills, among many other things.

As wonderful an opportunity as a year of home schooling can be, I think we'll all breathe a sigh of relief when things are back to normal next year and the kids head off to a "real" school.

How's the winter going for you? write us: christinateskey @ yahoo.ca or mvieweg @ gmail.com

See our pics: http://www.flickr.com/photos/christina-t/

See the kids' beautiful watercolours and read some of their writing: http://www.viewegkids.blogspot.com/

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