Pretty much anything you expect of your kids and students comes back to you. If you aren’t polite around your children, you can’t expect them to be polite when you aren’t around.*
* expecting them to be polite to YOU is another subject altogether!
If you ignore your kids and stare at your phone when they’re in the room, they are likely to do the same.
Being a lifelong learner is yet another place where you have to lead by example. Do your students or children see you learning? Do you try always to sound like you know everything? Then you are raising them to shy away from admitting they don’t know something and finding a way to attain that knowledge.
Make a model of yourself. Talk to your kids about what you learned. Tell your students that you are struggling to relearn to play piano after 30 years.
Assess your role
An older teacher once said to me, “I’m always the dumbest person in the room.” It wasn’t a comment on his self-esteem, but rather on his teaching method.
Of course, he had many of the answers that his students were searching for, but his job was not to be the Sage on the Stage. It was to be a guide and mentor.
Some parents seem to think that if they step back from being the authority on everything, they will lose basic parental authority. But that’s simply not true. Children are more likely to respect the authority of someone trustworthy and open than someone who cuts off debate.
Join in the fun
Let’s face it: being a lifelong learner is actually fun. And your kids are more likely to blossom at this task if you’re by their side. Consider everything that you come across in daily life to be a learning opportunity:
Weird bug in the house? Look it up and identify it.
Relative states an offensive opinion at a family dinner? Go home and engage your kids in learning about the issue.
Kid is suddenly fascinated with a topic you find mind-numbingly boring? Unnumb your mind and find out more.
The other day I explained that curriculum is the vehicle, not the destination. New homeschoolers often work themselves into exhaustion trying to find the perfect curriculum, and often end up disappointed.
Today I want to address the idea that curriculum isn’t even always necessary, especially in the early years.
Kids live to learn
Until someone tells them that learning is hard (remember Barbie’s message about math?), kids love learning. They love the search, the discovery, and the ownership. Watch a baby trying to figure out a new toy. Learning is play; play is joy.
You don’t have to be a “radical”
Without any intervention, we see joy in exploration and learning throughout the elementary years. So-called “radical” unschoolers, who never use curriculum, believe that children will learn if you put them in the right environment.
Most homeschoolers don’t have the commitment and focus to be truly successful “radical” unschoolers. At some point, we might need a math book or a Crash Course video to help us along. But all the homeschoolers I’ve known do have the ability to make it through many years without much in the way of formal curriculum.
Meet the reluctant unschooler
I wrote my first book while in the thick of homeschooling two kids.
As I’ve explained in many past posts, I didn’t set out to be a homeschooler, and I certainly didn’t mean to be an unschooler. In fact, when I first started homeschooling, I remember asking another homeschooling mom to explain it to me. It just seemed preposterous!
But all of us have to teach the child we are given, and I was given a child who had a rough relationship with pencil and paper in the early years. Give him a math worksheet and there would be scribbling, paper ripping, and all-out tantruming. But “swing math“? He learned his multiplication tables in a week.
Until he started school in sixth grade, my son did very little seatwork. Each month, if we didn’t have “samples” from our daily lives to serve as documentation of learning for our public school homeschool program, we would produce some. But otherwise, life was our textbook; the world was our curriculum.
Repetition is built into the system
Think you can’t possibly cover everything the elementary school standard curriculum covers? Think again. Public school curriculum works the way a painter does. It’s not just one brush stroke over one section of wall. Each year builds on the last, often moving over the same material multiple times.
In public school, this makes sense. They are educating millions. But you’re educating a limited number of kids, and you simply don’t have to work that hard.
Don’t worry about learning “gaps”
I will write about this in more depth later. However, the fear that your child will have gaps in their learning is unfounded. All adults have gaps in their learning. For example, my husband switched schools and missed out on learning cursive. He’s a successful, well-employed adult. I grew up in the Midwest and missed out on curriculum on California missions. I filled in this gap as an adult with no problem.
When your kids are young, the world really is your classroom
Go for walks
Make friends with interesting people
Ask questions at stores
Visit the world on Google Earth
Visit the world around you on your bike or in your car
Go to museums
Ask people to explain their jobs
Get kits to build gadgets
Invest in open-ended toys like Snap Circuits
Take part in your science fair
Volunteer in your community
Take advantage of the knowledge available in your faith community
Find relatives or neighbors to show your children how to do things
The #1 most common question I get from new homeschoolers is, “What curriculum should I use?” This is an understandable question: there’s a lot of focus on curriculum in schools, and an implication that good curriculum is the end-goal.
In homeschooling, however, it is clear that a well-educated child is the end-goal. And it occurred to me that if learning is the goal, then curriculum is a vehicle. Just like we can get to the store by driving, walking, biking, or perhaps taking public transit, there are many ways to get to learning.
Life is like walking toward learning
Right from the beginning, our children are learning. Babies show through eye movement that they are learning every second that they are awake. The world is their curriculum.
As children grow, play becomes their curriculum. We give them blocks and they learn about geometry, gravity, and cause and effect. They climb a tree and learn about the importance of secure footing, fear, and exhilaration. They play with friends and learn social-emotional skills, bartering skills, and the strength of community.
Learning vehicles can take us to new places
If we constrained our lives to only visiting places we could walk to, that would be like learning in the world directly surrounding us. It works well for hunter-gatherer societies, but not so great when you need to attain certain skills to succeed in our society and in a career.
The curriculum we choose is simply a different learning vehicle. Maybe it can take us places further in our community—that’s “car curriculum.” Maybe it can take us to faraway places very unlike our everyday life—that’s “airplane curriculum” Or maybe it can rocket us to a new plane of existence by giving us insights we never would have discovered on our own.
The destination never changes
But no matter what curriculum you use, the destination is the same. We want our kids to learn. So does it really matter which curriculum you use? It can, but I can assure you that countless homeschoolers have found that a free video they happened upon in the library sparked more learning than the beautifully packaged curriculum they purchased for hundreds of dollars.
Yes, I do appreciate well-written curriculum. I love it when teachers are able to package up their approach in a way that inspires others to try new techniques. I have great respect for the skill it takes to break down concepts and skills into a well-scaffolded structure.
But remember: curriculum is the vehicle. Sure, sometimes it’s nice to get a smooth ride in a limo. But it can be just as fun to go over bumps on a one-speed Schwinn.
You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself any direction you choose.
Longtime readers know that my family has used almost every type of educational approach for our kids. We like to joke that the only type of school that we haven’t tried is Christian Military Academy!
My younger son is currently about to graduate from a mainstream public high school (his choice), and I have to say, I have been pleasantly surprised at how well they have handled this crazy situation that was dumped in their laps. I’ve heard lots of complaints from parents in other districts, but I share none of them. It’s not perfect, but my son’s teachers got well-trained, really quickly, and they are trying hard.
Teachers are doing their best to maintain connections with their students.
One of the things that our district is doing really well is parent communication. OK, perhaps they are overdoing it: I don’t actually need a text message to tell me to read my email!
This week they asked for parent input through ThoughtExchange, a nifty little tool for exchanging ideas.
I had one thing to say and I hope I said it well: the public school system needs to be more flexible.
Rooted in tradition is not necessarily good
Public schools have not grown organically. They were formed on a specific model of learning, and all changes have taken place as if that model is not worth questioning.
When people have come up with better ideas that built on top of that model, they were tolerated. The charter school system, for example, was built on top of the standard public school model.
When people have come up with ideas that require throwing that model out the window, like the great educational thinker John Holt, for example, public schools would have none of it. They had certain tenets that would not be questioned:
All students must learn in age-homogeneous groups.
All students must be required to be on campus a minimum number of hours.
All students must study state-mandated curriculum.
Source: Wikimedia Commons
Enter the quarantine
This pause in school-as-usual can be seen two ways:
It can be seen as an irritating interruption, to be gotten past as soon as possible.
Or it can be seen as an opportunity.
I prefer opportunity.
Integrate home and school
Kids do better emotionally when they feel nurtured, loved, supported—all that stuff they have in a healthy home. We have cut families out of schools by design, and yet principals wail about lack of parent participation. Schools are simply not designed to be emotionally healthy and integrated with home life.
Now that we’ve got parents and home intertwined with school, let’s not give that up.
Stop demonizing alternatives
This is my teen attending an online class while jumping on the trampoline.
When you judge a fish by how well it climbs a tree, the fish comes out looking pretty lame. Alternative schools are for kids who need alternatives. That means that the alternative will not reflect the demographic make-up of the surrounding district. When students and families choose schools, they make choices based on themselves, not the society they live in.
Yes, we should make sure that all choices are open and welcoming to all families, but districts need to allow for differences. For example, stop demonizing a program that attracts struggling students for its low test scores.
States have to stop assuming that all cultural groups are the same. Programs that suit the unique needs of a cultural group are not equivalent to racism. Equal education does not mean the same education.
Principals have to stop coming into schools and trying to strip the individualism out of the school in the name of “quality.”
Offer maximum flexibility
In a world where families can choose 20 different types of toothpaste, education is presented as a monolithic single choice.
That doesn’t fit with our culture. Some students, certainly, not only need to be at school for the allotted time but also need aftercare. Some students thrive in standard curriculum with a typical school day schedule.
But many students don’t. Parents around the country are remarking on the positive changes they are seeing in their children:
My kids are learning so much more at home.
My teen is sleeping—finally! And waking up a reasonable human being.
My kid who was bullied has had a huge dip in her anxiety level.
We started following my kids’ interests and suddenly they love education.
Live and LEARN
If public school administrators and teachers don’t learn from this experience, they’re in the wrong profession. Teachers talk about creating lifelong learners—this should be the goal of everyone. We should all look at this situation and see what we can take away from it that is positive and good.
I was happy to see that I wasn’t the lone voice for thoughtful reconsidering of what school should be in the ThoughtExchange conversation initiated by my district. Let’s make sure the districts hear our voices, and don’t think that reversion to the status quo is any sort of achievement.
Whether your teen is homeschooled or at school in regular life, things have changed. They are now home 24/7 and that can exacerbate existing tensions. Teens thrive with independence because that’s what they are programmed to seek. If your teen doesn’t seem too thrilled at your suggestion to play a board game with the family, well, that’s not too surprising.
Trust them
First, let’s get this over with: Teens who have their parents’ trust are more likely to trust their parents, more likely to confide in them, and more likely to heed their advice. Make it clear to your teen that you trust them. Don’t forget to tell them what you admire about them.
But then, be frank with them. Make sure they’ve been exposed to non-alarmist, fact-based information about what’s happening. Then make it clear that you trust them to do the right thing.
Let ’em out
A number of my teen students have told me that their parents are keeping them inside, and not, apparently, because that’s warranted. Find out what your local and state health departments are advising. Ours, both in my county and state, are advising that non-symptomatic people get out and get fresh air and exercise—as long as they follow social distancing rules.
This is especially important for your teens. Encourage them to get out in the natural light and get some exercise. It will be good for their emotional health as well as their physical health. If they absolutely must be inside, go back to the question of trust: Make sure they understand why they’re cooped up and what the parameters are.
Explore with them
My teen and I like to give ourselves facials. And I am definitely going to ask for a fun stripe of colored hair!
Whether you are out or in, you can join your teen in their explorations. Maybe you can both learn a new skill, like bread-baking or chess. Maybe you can go to a park for a walk.
Ask your teen to show you funny videos. Do your hair together. Watch a show. They might reject you, but you can always try!
Support but don’t pressure them about academics
Chances are your teen’s academics are going to look a little different for the rest of the semester. Ask them what they need from you, but if you weren’t involved on a day-to-day level before, back off and give them some space. Remember: every single kid applying to college is going to have a story to tell about what happened this semester. A bad grade or an incomplete really won’t be the end. And it’s certainly not worth destroying your relationship over.
Love them
So many teens believe that their parents don’t love them. So many parents are convinced that their teens disdain them. In any case, we have to fight against that. Remind them that you love them, even as you let them have the independence that they seek.
