Homeschooling: The Journey Continues

My friend Sarah has a pair of jeans that I unintentionally complement her on each and every time she wears them. They fit her perfectly in cut and length, and look great with whatever else she's wearing.  However, if I ran to the store and bought her jeans in my size, I know for a fact that they wouldn't fit me as well as they do her.  They're her perfect fit, not mine.  (I'm still looking for my perfect jeans...another story for another time.)   Thank goodness there's hundreds of brands of jeans to select from.

This is how I feel about contemporary educational options for kids.  I certainly wouldn't tell a family what is best for them any more than I would proclaim the jeans that fit me perfectly would fit others perfectly.  Some families feel quite at home in public school, it marries their values and lifestyle well, and fits them.  It doesn't fit us at all.  There have been times I wish it did, so I could enroll and walk away, showing up to volunteer on Fridays or bring cupcakes for birthdays, or even to just get a break from the rigors of parenting everyday all day long, or dealing with homeschool curricula.  But in the end I have to listen to that still, quiet voice within and go with my instincts.   Luckily for us, it's the best time ever for alternative education.  It's not just public vs. homeschool anymore.  Nowadays you can homeschool, unschool or hackschool.  The options are as numerous as buying jeans, and as confusing.

One friend praises her Sonlight homeschool curriculum.  For three years I've studied Sonlight's approach, and have even interviewed her kids, to see if this angle aligned with our values.  I may have even purchased it had it not been for the $900 bucks a year I would have to fork over.  But now I'm so glad that I didn't commit to Sonlight, even if the money had fallen from the sky.  At the end of the day, Sonlight wasn't a good fit for us either.

Andres' last day of school was Friday.  After a year with the FLEX Academy program, we had plenty of signs along the way that this program of a homeschool/public school hybrid wasn't working for us, and that we wouldn't return the next year.  He cried as he put away dishes after school Friday, lashing out a me, telling me he doesn't have to let go of the things he loves, and he loves the people at his school.  Maybe I was riding the fence when I enrolled him, worried about taking on the whole burden of responsibility for my child's education.  All those years in college studying pedagogy and educational philosophy, history, law, and application according to a public school paradigm has (I confess) skewed my ideas and personal opinions/values on education.  Learning is a science, and the role of school is hone skills and prepare our children for participating members of society.  But how these children participate is lost in the muck.  And for the 8 years I was teaching language arts in public school, I behaved like a pseudo scientist, researching and collecting data from test scores, reviewing my materials and curriculum plans, adjusting for differentiation and special needs and administrative interests, and responding to various studies and trends sweeping the field, always with the outstanding and over-riding goal of...improving test scores.  The student wasn't a whole person with gifts or dreams or spirits (yikes!--remember separation of church and state!?)  The student was a hypothesis.

So I knew what it was like behind the curtain of public school.  When it was my time to choose a path for my kid(s), there was no contest.  Homeschool?  Sure!--as long as I can have a dribble of public school ideals included to keep things fun and interesting, oh, and to "socialize" them, because God knows the only real way kids can be socialized is through public school.   (Is my sarcasm translating?) And it was fun and interesting for Andres at FLEX, he brought home cute projects and made some little friends, but there was a good deal of it not beneficial to his personal growth, or our family's lifestyle and values.  Even the stress of implementing FLEX at home in September was epic, being that it was a convoluted curricula with countless communication fails from his program and an overall lack of support.

No, FLEX is not coming around for 1st grade.  But what was?  I was getting anxious about it, and as I had listened to friends on their own children's educational pursuits, be it public or home, I found that my personal educational philosophy was surfacing for the first time, and not the scripted one I had to memorize for my student teaching application in college, but a real-life one that I discovered in the eyes of my boys, and the invisible future they will live.

I've learned that I don't want my boys to simply participate in society.  Most people do manage to participate in some capacity on some level, despite the degree of education they've achieved, after all we're social creatures, we need each other.  But what I discovered this year is that I wanted my boys to be whole people, and content in life in all circumstances.  Not prototypes, or experiments, or drones, or togs in the system, but whole and content.  I got that far in developing my philosophy when two interesting things happened this week.

1)  My dear friend Rachel and I attended Columbia Virtual Academy's Road Show (open house) where we could flip through textbooks of various curricula they offered through their program.  The nice lady who acted as my guide really didn't know how to help me, and she was floundering when up came Rachel, who is just now wrapping up her 1st grade homeschool with CVA, and shared with me a wealth of helpful and insightful information from the materials she had used this year, to how they implemented them, and what the kids did, how they liked it, etc.  She pointed out several items written by Susan Wise Bauer, a name I've come across countless times via the 50 or so homeschool blogs I subscribe to.   For the first time I was able to look at her work in real life (vs. online) and I loved what I saw.  Bauer aligns with the Charlotte Mason (CM) homeschool method, which I read up on long ago, and shrugged off.  But here is real applicable curricula, laid out clear and easily followed, and I imagined that it would fit us pretty well.  And knowing that Rachel had used it and loved it was the final sign I needed to commit to a plan.

2)  My dear friend Sarah came over yesterday for Raph's birthday celebration (more on that another post!  how fun!) and shared with me some of her thoughts as she deliberated taking her son out of public ed, and going the homeschool route.  She brought up Charlotte Mason again (no surprise...the same names come around and around in this alternative ed culture, Montessori, Waldorf, CM, TJEd, etc...and Charlotte Mason has a vast following, with good reason).  Sarah mentioned Ambleside, a rich site with free curricula and materials, available for the CM method.   It's been years since I read up of CM, and now with some traction under my wheels in the homeschool department, I thought it was time to review her philosophies and see if it came close to my own budding view of things.

Sidebar:  When Andres was one year old, I knew a woman getting her Montessori teacher certificate, and I attended some workshops with her, curious as I was being a public ed teacher about this private school method.  I liked what I saw a lot, but I knew then it wasn't going to gel with our lifestyle or with Andres' personality.  And that particular woman had strong opinions about CM, not entirely positive ones at that, so I never really pursued deeper investigation.  I had been convinced (by that woman) that Doctor Montessori had discovered the magic method to reaching children, and Miss Mason wasn't even a mother, let alone a homeschool mom, and her Victorian-era rationale is out of date, out of touch, and backwards-thinking with diction like child "training."  (Maria Montessori would never dream of condescending to children with language like that.)  And that's the other thing with homeschooling.  For every praise a method gets, there's just as many in the way of criticism, which--while researching what to do with my child(ren)--the pros and cons have been very put-offish and added to my confusion, although it underscores my original point about individualized educational fit based on family needs, lifestyle, and values.

But God nudges.

Here comes Charlotte Mason again in face after six years of me shelving her method.  And this time I thought I had better respond to the nudge and look into CM one more time.  Because as my personal philosophy solidifies, so do the educational goals for my boys.

My family is mixed ethnically, so an all-American or anglo-centric approach isn't appropriate for us.  (That was one reason I shelved CM long ago, and looking so longingly at Montessori's great multicultural method.)  I don't want an overtly conservative, legalistic Christian curriculum that shuns the theory of evolution or fairy tales, although I do desire God and scripture to be not just what we do, but who we are in everything, including education.  I'm not impressed with pre-learner fads, like parents teaching their infants to read and/or memorizing math facts, since there's no evidence at all that these early learners have any academic advantage over students who learn to read at 6 years old (or 8 for that matter), which is what I assume these parents honestly believe (that or that their child is a prodigy), and for my objectives, learning reading, writing or math skills prematurely fails to demonstrate a correlation between that and becoming a whole person, or being content in life as an adult.   I want my boys to be open minded, able to see things from others' point of view in a humble and graceful manner like my oldest friend in the world, dear Shannon M, or my beloved friends, Sarah C and Sarah V, all having challenged me to open my eyes and continue to teach me the fine art of perspective.  I want school to be something that grows us closer as a family, synching bonds, and creating memories.   I don't want to "teach to the test," although I fully realize in this world subjugated by standardized tests they will have to eventually learn how to maneuver through those minefields as well.  I want them to be comfortable in their skin, have ownership of the things which make them unique and different.   And I want their education to include a deep respect for life, art, languages, culture, music, literature, and cultivate profound thinking and ideas.  These are my goals.  Now, how on earth to get there?  Is it possible?

But God nudges.  And in my research today on Charlotte Mason, I was struck by something she wrote to The Times in the early 1900s:

Anyone who wants to teach children needs to decide whether man is just physical, or something more. It can't be both ways, and even the most trivial detail of the school day will line up with one or the other of these two fundamental perspectives. One method is scientific education. The other is humane education. Both methods cultivate the senses and exercise the muscles, but for different reasons, and with a different goal in mind.

I feel that I'm being called down off the fence, and being made to choose.   With my goals and own personal philosophy surfacing, I must nail down a direction, and follow that still, quiet voice within me with heart, courage, and faith.

I don't believe in magic bullets.  I don't believe in one size fits all, utopias, or perfection.  But I feel that choosing an educational path is like jeans.  I think you can find a fit that matches your natural shape, and then break them in so that over time and with wear they curve where you curve, bend where you bend, and fit your beautifully unique form.