Homeschooling

The latest update in the Ching household is that we are now homeschooling all three kids!  I was going to wait on writing about this for awhile, but I generally write about whatever is taking center stage in my brain, and right now, it's the world of homeschool.  I've been watching others homeschool with interest for a long time, but didn't think it was the right choice for us because public school was going well for our kids, because I had misconceptions about what homeschooling consists of, and because I had misconceptions about how it would go for our family.  But with our oldest two at or approaching middle school age, this seemed like the right time to try It.  I've gotten a much closer look at the world of homeschooling in this last month, and I thought it would be worth writing about what's the draw for me, and things I'm learning as we enter this new world.

Bat walk

What's appealing about homeschool?  We are 6 weeks into our journey, so these ideas are aspirational.  One of the reasons I wanted to wait to write about it was because I know I'm still a green thumb (and I don't want to do a repeat of when I wrote about how easy it is to have three kids, then had to  eat my words a year later) - but this is a great time to set the vision for what I hope it can be, and then refer back on the weeks when it's harder.

• Homeschooling is a good chance to have lots of quality family time - to nurture that bond, to control the environment of your kids, and to let the kids grow up with lots of time around both their parents and siblings.
• It allows you to emphasize what's most important to you both in terms of time spent on certain subjects and how they are taught.
• You can tailor the education more to the needs and interests of each of the individual kids.  
• We can shorten up the school day substantially and allow more time for free play, nature, and art, and have more freedom in the schedule in general.  

Looking for pond creatures

My misunderstandings about homeschool:

• "You need traditional school to be socialized" - I used to wonder how homeschooled kids got socialized, and whether we would all be lonely if we tried it.  Every homeschool family does things differently, so I can't speak for all, but for those who are looking to socialize, there are gatherings available every day of the week.  There are co-ops.  There are park meet-ups and field trips organized on homeschool Facebook pages.  And there are social groups forming all the time - - we are now part of a nature group and an art group.  Many homeschoolers, especially with kids in the 6-12 age group, choose this path in part because they think play should be a bigger part of childhood, so they are very actively incorporating play with other kids as part of their schedule.  (And this is just addressing the 9-3, specific to homeschool part of socialization; like the rest of modern middle class America, there's also all the activities that take place in the afternoon and evening - sports and scouts and church groups and music groups and etc etc etc)
• "You won't have enough time to do the rest of life, or to do anything fun." - I thought we would be pretty shackled to home from the hours of 9-3 Monday through Friday, making our way through workbooks.  This was a multi-part misconception:
• School at home is much shorter - more like 3-4 hours than the 7ish (counting drop off / pick up) of traditional school.  You can do it in just the morning or just the afternoon.  You can do it on a Saturday if you want to use a weekday for something else.  You can go year round and just do 4 days a week.  You can really work it around the rest of life, whatever that looks like for you.  
• When doing actual school hours, you are not just shackled to the table in your house.  The world is your classroom!  Especially for science, social studies, and art / music / humanities, there are so many field trips you can do to make learning hands on.  And even with the subjects that ARE mostly workbook based (I'm looking at you, math), you can throw the workbooks in the car along with a cooler of food and take them with you on an off season lake day.
• "You can't teach well without professional training" - This one I would describe as more of a tradeoff than a complete misconception.  I have no doubt that, given a class size of three and complete freedom of curriculum and content, a professionally trained teacher would do a better job than me, and I think it remains to be seen how my kids do without a professional teacher.  (Teachers, I think you are amazing!  And I am super grateful for the excellent education my two oldest received from you for elementary school!)  But the positive parts of the tradeoff - the tiny class size and the corresponding ability to target precisely to my kids' academic levels, interests, and learning styles; and then getting total freedom to choose the curriculum, and to adjust throughout the year if something isn't working - not to mention, no standardized testing, and no pressure to teach to tests - those are the hugely positive parts of the tradeoff.

Checking out the original Nevada Supreme Court

My misunderstandings about how homeschool would work for our family:

• I thought homeschooling was going to be very hard on me - It is a lot of work!  Just like with distance learning, I'm appreciating teachers in a whole new way.  But once you choose curriculums and get the hang of how to use them, they have done most of the prep work for you.  Once you set the schedule, you just need to follow it.  Once the kids learn the routine, they more or less follow it.  I'm getting used to distributing my time and energy differently, but overall, homeschooling is way more manageable and enjoyable than I thought it might be.
• I was worried about creating a clear separation of home v. school - I used to think that it was important to have school be at school, and have home be the separate soft landing.  There is a great book called "Brave Learner" that helped me shift my mindset on this - one of the beautiful things about homeschool is that you don't separate this all out.  During reading time, the student can sprawl out on their own bed.  If it's a hard day in math, they can get a hug from mom or pet their dog.  If they have a burst of energy, they can take a spontaneous trampoline break; if they're hungry, they can walk 3 steps to the kitchen and grab a snack.  For us, it's been an advantage rather than a disadvantage that there's not a clear separation.  
• I thought we needed to have an IEP - I will probably write a whole separate blog post about this one, once we have a year under our belt, but I want to say two things about this one:  first, this is going to depend hugely on the particular circumstances of the student, and for many students with a disability, it will be a clear choice to stay in public schools with the supports of the IEP.  But for others, homeschooling might allow for exactly the environment and accommodations that your student needs.  It's going well so for us on this front so far, but again, it's too early to write much more.  

Those are my early thoughts about homeschool!  Stay tuned to see how it goes as the year goes on :)