conventional wisdom=da bomb

Warning: heavy analogy use ahead.

You know how they say that after you experience a major change in your life, like a divorce or the death of a partner, or a job loss, you should wait a year for things to sift out before you make any major decisions? I think I might have some insight into why that's a really, really good idea.

When my school closed last fall, after I'd been part of it (and it a part of me) for close to seven years, I grieved. It felt, truly, as though a sister or a very close friend had died. I think part of the reason might be because I'd been deriving much of my identity through my work at the school. I was a teacher first, and a mom second. Offering progressive education in this decidedly non-progressive city felt like a really important mission, and much of the meaning in my life came from my work. When I was exhausted from work struggles, I could at least know, at the end of the day, that I'd done more good than harm.

When it died, all that was gone, and last year was a very, very difficult time. I didn't know what to do with myself. I felt that I wasn't really accomplishing anything, from day to day. An important character in my life story had just been vaporized. I felt like I'd lost my best friend. I kept waking up in disbelief, only to have the reality of it crash around me once again.

Add to that the particulars of the death: it wasn't as if my beloved friend (the school) died a natural death, or even a sudden death. It was protracted, and painful, with much dissent among family members about when and even whether to pull the plug. The years leading up to the end of my school were agony.

When it ended, I felt profound relief, but then I had to figure out what to do with myself. Homeschooling was no more than an emergency, stop-gap measure. I would gladly have gone back to teaching if I could. I worried that I was doing the wrong thing: that I really should be working my ass off to create a new school in this community, that it was a fool's mission to focus so heavily on my own children, when they will, more than likely, be just fine, no matter what kind of schooling they receive. My "real work" had been working with other people's children, and it felt somehow morally wrong for me to turn my back on them.

And now, suddenly, a year later, everything has shifted. It's not so much that my life and my work are now suddenly imbued with moment and importance. Editing and tutoring are hardly the stuff of profound meaning; if I don't do these things, someone else will, just as well or better. It's more that my perspective has changed. I can handle it, suddenly. I can face a long, crazy day of running around to lessons and playgroups and teaching commitments with peace and a smile, rather than a groan. I don't need quiet, quite as much. I'm not finding myself sitting on the couch escaping into a novel, day after day. I don't feel sad anymore.

It's been a year, and I think I'm ready to put the school behind me.

This imbues everything I'm doing with a new sense of purpose. Now that it's clear that TSS is really, truly gone, and isn't coming back, my most important work is clearly the work I do with my own children. I'm excited about homeschooling this year, and more relaxed about it at the same time. I want to make their early school years what they really should be, and I'm ready to find out about how to do that.

first day of school

When I was a kid, my mother took a picture every year, on the first day of school. It was always my brother and me, at the end of our driveway, ready to get on the school bus. Some years she actually got a picture of the moment we stepped onto the bus. New shoes, new clothes, new backpacks, you know the drill.

Here's mine for this year. Today was my first ever day of teaching graduate school. Imagine that. I'm afraid I still look like a student, but the actual students didn't ask to see my ID or anything, so I guess I fooled them.

I'm teaching a curriculum class for pre-service teachers in their first semester of a two-year master's degree. The class is about how to make the work we do in elementary classrooms more interesting, more fun, more holistic, better for kids. I'm hoping it's going to be fun, for me and the students.

Here's what I asked them today: Why are you here? What are schools for? What do we as a society hope to accomplish by setting up schools and classrooms? What do you hope to accomplish as a teacher?

Here's what I'm asking you: What do you think these pre-service teachers should know, about schools, about teaching, about kids, as they enter this profession?

leave of absence

See you in a week or two.

now what?

I was all set to post yesterday about how if I could just let go of my ambitions to write professionally, teach kids other than my own, and help teachers learn to be more flexible and inclusive in their classrooms, I would love this life.

I have incredible freedom. I can't believe that I can actually find moments in my day every day to spin, for fun. I can read what I want, I have enough yarn in my stash to knit for the next ten years, at least. I can enroll my kids in a class at the local science museum, and then we can play hookey if we like. We can spend the day gardening. We can sleep in, or get up early. We can walk to the grocery store, or we can set up a lemonade stand.

But some days, freedom isn't all it's cracked up to be. Some days, I get really cranky. Some days, I don't want to hear either boy call out, "Mama!" ever again. Ever. Some days, like yesterday, I realize I'm out of patience because I'm literally out of gas: I often forget to eat lunch because I'm so engrossed with gardening or spinning or a book I'm reading or even, sometimes, doing something with the kids. Eating turns out to be one of the least interesting things I do, so I skip it in favor of something else, but then that turns around and bites me on the butt because I actually do need to consume some calories.

And those are the days when I look around me and all I see are piles of books I should be reading, essays I should be writing, laundry that needs folding, and crumbs everywhere, again. I get conflicted: I think, if only I didn't care about anything other than the house and the kids, I might actually be able to get it all done, most days. If only all I wanted was just to do a really great job teaching them and spending time with them.

Those are the days I think I should try to ditch my professional aspirations, as well as my fiber hobbies. And that's what I was thinking yesterday: I should get some focus and get down to what's really most important, just the kids and their work, their needs. Yeah, that's the ticket. Just forget myself for the next fifteen years or so.

As you might imagine, this line of thinking gets pretty depressing, pretty fast, but there are days when it really does seem to be the path of greater sanity. The solution to having a life in which one is juggling too many priorities is to eliminate some of them, right? And since I'm not planning to give my kids away (this week) it seems clear that I should eliminate the priorities not directly related to supporting the kids and their learning.

And then I read this post. The inimitable and very talented prairiepoppins of Handmade Homeschool reminds us that not only do we need to keep our own passionate selves going for our own sakes, but that it's really what's best for the kids, too. Our children need us to be actively engaged with our own passions, not only because it feeds us, but because they need to see how an actively engaged person lives her life. Devoting ourselves exclusively to our children does them a disservice, because it gives them the notion that not only are they the center of the universe, but that mothers/parents can't do anything else but take care of kids.

Which is not so.

So now I want to hear from you: what do you do to keep yourself going? How do you keep it all together when everyone is coming to you for most of what they need? How do you get time for yourself? What do you do to feed yourself?

Tell me, please. I need to know.

kill your television, Lewis and Clark

As a result of my thinking about the need for some kind of final synthesis, I asked the kids to think about what they wanted to do as a cumulative project to convey what they've learned about the Lewis and Clark expedition. I told them they could write a book, make a poster, put on a play, make a television show, write some music, create a dance, or anything else they could come up with. Wide open: whatever you want to do, whatever you feel moved by the material to create.

They want to make a television show.

Does this stop you in your tracks? No? Seems like the logical choice for a couple of kids in a television-obsessed culture, does it not? Yes indeed.

Except guess what? We. Don't. Have. Television.

I haven't talked about this much, because it's not something I think about much anymore. We don't have tv in our house because advertising is bad for kids (and everyone else) and that's what I've told them. They are not television virgins: their grandparents have cable, and they watch at their house. When we travel, I let them watch tv in hotel rooms. It's not a big deal to me, particularly, but I don't want it in my house.

We do have a DVD player, and we do watch movies. But there's no broadcast television in our house, and there never has been. (full disclosure: Joe and I follow a few shows on DVD and download: Lost, The Wire, and House. That's it. No advertising, and we watch after the kids are in bed.) And days and even weeks often go by in which the thing does nothing but gather dust. Of course, it gathers dust whether it's in use or not, but you know what I mean. Sometimes it just sits there, unused, for long periods of time.

So I have to ask myself: do the kids want to make a tv show because it's really the best medium for the topic (I'm open on this; it may well be.) Or is it because television has become a kind of ultra-exciting forbidden fruit?

I can tell you this: the next time this question comes around, and I start asking them what kind of final project they want to do for a unit of study, if they want to do another television show? My answer is ready.

We did that last time, kids. Let's do something new this time.

does any of this matter?

Evenspor over at Spors in the Desert posed a great question recently, in a post about gifted education:

There is one question that I still wonder about despite all of this. How much of this really matters in the end? Don't most of us still become productive and relatively happy adults, despite public schooling? I believe there are at least a few cases where the difficulties with the system are so great that they can cause lasting emotional and motivational damage if not dealt with. However, for most kids, is it good enough to just go through the system, as long as parents are paying attention - supplementing education and looking out for signs that things are not all well with their child? Do we need to fix a broken system, or do we need to focus more on simply being the parents our children need us to be?

It's certainly so that most of us turn out all right, in spite of (or independent of) our schooling. I would agree that in situations where it is possible to separate the influence of the schooling and the parenting (i.e. not my home, and not the home of anyone who is homeschooling), it is the parents who have the greater influence.

I'm going to take myself as an example, because as it turns out, it is my own experience that informs my decisions about these matters. (Isn't that astonishing? I would apologize, but really, what other experience could I possibly use?)

I had a very traditional elementary school experience. I sat in rows and did lots of worksheets. I had deadly boring drill and kill math homework. I learned (or rather, didn't learn) social studies from dry-as-dust predigested text books. We took maybe one field trip a year, and it was to the zoo, not related in any way to anything we were learning. There was no effort made to make any of our learning relevant to our lives. We were vessels to be filled. It was as if the outside world didn't exist.

I like to think I turned out okay anyway. I did well in high school, and I went on to my first choice and relatively competitive college, where I did well enough to graduate in the usual amount of time. I eventually went on to graduate school, where I did very well, and became a teacher, a profession that I loved. I am, in the words of Evenspor, a productive and relatively happy adult.

It's probably because of the influence of my parents that I remained intellectually awake enough to survive those stultifying years in elementary school. We had interesting discussions at home. We went to museums, a lot. We did lots of logic puzzles and mental math. We watched the news together and talked about it. We played games together. My parents, both of whom are teachers, took the time to talk to me about and introduce me to the real world: the world of people who are curious and interested.

But here's the thing: for eight years of my very young life, I was miserable. Miserable. I clearly remember the day I realized, with horror, that my life revolved around going to school. I rebelled in various ways: I refused to do the math homework (didn't need it: did fine on the test at the end of the week without it) and got in LOTS of trouble for that, on a regular basis. I cried. I yelled. I stomped. I was not an easy kid to have around, I'm sure.

So yes, I believe that this stuff matters. I believe my kids would be fine in public school, and they would both turn out to be productive and relatively happy adults. They, like me, are smart, but not so smart that public school would be a total disaster. I'm sure they could handle it. But I'm also sure it wouldn't be much fun, and they would probably not enjoy it. I don't know whether they would be as utterly miserable as I was, but I don't have any urge to find out.

Here's the radical thing I've decided: the quality of their lives right now matters. I believe my kids should be allowed to ask questions and seek the answers, that they should be allowed to get outside more than twenty minutes a day, that their lives should be free of the political agendas of NCLB and its attendant tests.

It's not about the outcome. It's about giving them a good life, now.

process or product?

Sandy, a fellow teacher and the parent of one of my former students, asked a really good question about my post about constructing curriculum out of children's questions. She writes:

My problem is getting caught up in product and assessment. Should we write a report about Lewis and Clark, or make a play or draw a picture... I have to let go of that and see process as important. But how to balance that - how much am I doing For her, how much should she be doing for Herself. See, I'm a unit planning kind of person - it makes me feel safe and like I know what is going on. I guess that's why people like systems, so they don't feel like they're just doing a bunch of random unconnected stuff that doesn't get synthesized at the end (into a research paper!) That final synthesis of learning seems like an important step.

This is something I struggle with, too, and I'm not at all sure I'm doing this right. I am really just starting out on this home schooling gig.

First of all, I'm open to the kids writing a report, or putting on a play, or making illustrations for a book of some kind. We're not done with Lewis and Clark, and I don't yet know where it's going to take us. I may even insist on it: a recent post at Mother Crone's Homeschool has got me thinking a lot about the importance of developing kids' ability to persevere, and seeing a project through to its logical conclusion, even if they're excited about something new, can help kids learn to develop that persistence. When I was teaching, I would have certainly insisted that every child participate in some kind of final project.

But now that I'm not teaching other people's kids, I have to ask myself why that final synthesis was necessary. One obvious purpose of an end-project is to assess a child's learning. In a classroom of 15 kids, I needed that. I was pretty familiar with what every kids was learning, but not completely on top of every little detail. Not so with teaching my kids at home. It would be pretty hard to miss seeing where they're missing something.

Another purpose was always to report to parents about what the kids were learning. We would make posters, or put on a presentation, or write a book, and that became something I could show parents when they were wondering what we were doing. This, obviously, is completely out the window. I'm the teacher-parent, I know exactly what we're doing, and Joe, bless him, trusts me completely.

There's another important feature of classroom learning that is just missing from our experience at home. Lots of final synthesis projects were designed to give kids who hadn't yet taken part a piece of the action. It's the same reason we would do the same topic in lots of different ways: a hands-on experiment, books from the library, a field trip, an expert from the university visiting the classroom. These are called 'multiple entry points' in the trade, and they really serve to make sure that every kid gets something out of a unit study. Some kids are more into book learning, some are more into field trips, some kids need a hands-on experience, and some kids will only pull it together if you ask them to write a report or a book about it.

My kid is like me: he's a book learner.

But I am having this sinking feeling right now, that even though I know that's true, and he's perfectly capable of gleaning huge amounts of information from books, that we'd all be having more fun if we were doing some of those other things I just described.

So, thanks to Angela and Sandy, looks like I need to rethink some of what we're doing.

a curriculum follows a question

We were in LA for a week or so earlier this spring, and the kids and I spent a few days exploring. We went to the library (right across from our hotel), we walked around the neighborhood (no grocery stores or laundromats), and we took the Metro. A lot. One of the places we took the Metro to was Chinatown. Here's me in my two dollar hat, purchased to shield my eyes from the Southern California sun. Funny, but I'm not using it around here nearly as much.
This was a trip we'd been planning since we first started homeschooling back in October. When I explained to the boys that we'd be able to do more field trips, and that we'd have more time for family trips that would be our field trips, the first place they wanted to go was China. I explained that we couldn't actually afford to go to China, but maybe we could go to Chinatown. I was thinking NYC at the time, but there we were in LA with a Chinatown visible from the train, so off we went.

But I digress. Back to the Metro. We were going everywhere by Metro, because we didn't have a car, and there was nothing useful (like food) in our neighborhood. So the kids learned to read a subway map, and learned to recognize our stop, and so on. They also learned how to use the automated ticket machines. Or rather, they learned to watch me try to get the automated ticket machines take our debit card, and then give up and give it our precious cash.

When the machines gave change, they gave it in dollar coins. These coins engendered a lot of interest, not being the usual increment of money that is metal and round. One of the dollar coins was a Sacagawea dollar.

"Hey Mama, who's Sacagawea?" I don't even remember who asked.

"Oh, she's this Indian lady who traveled around with Lewis and Clark when they were making those maps," I said. We'd already learned a little bit about Lewis and Clark when Big started making maps of the neighborhood, so they had some context. "When we get back home, we'll get some books out of the library and find out more about her."

The miracle is that I actually remembered to do just that. We found lots of great picture books about Sacagawea, about York, and about the expedition in general. We also poked around in the adult section, and came home with a copy of the journal kept by Lewis and Clark, and a DK book of recent photos taken along the route.

The picture books are ostensibly for Little, but I've noticed that Big has a sort of magical radar that goes off when someone is reading out loud, and he often shows up to listen. Some of the picture books are very closely based on the diaries kept by Lewis and Clark, and follow them even down to the dates. This gives us a great opportunity to think about the modern-day interpretation of historical fact. For example, there's the apocryphal story about Sacagawea saving the entire expedition by fishing many essential items out of the water after the boat swamped. We looked in the diary, and found that, at least from the perspective of Merriweather Lewis, this was not such a big deal. The event was recorded, but he doesn't seem to think her efforts that day were essential to the overall success of the journey. Interesting. So I can ask questions like, "Why do you think the modern-day writers of Sacagawea's story might want to exaggerate this event?"

The books about York are similarly enlightening. As Lewis's personal slave, York was the only member of the expedition who wasn't paid for his work. Some of the books have great historical information about slavery in general. For instance, one book describes the marriage customs among slaves. They didn't include any vows about 'til death do us part' because everyone knew couples and families could be parted at any time by their masters who could sell them.

So we get a chance to talk about some of the not-so-pretty aspects of Western Expansion, just by reading stories. Over and over, Lewis and Clark write of their sense that they are the first civilized people to set foot in these lands, even as they encounter people who are settled and civilized, with laws and customs and art work and complex cuisines: all the markers of civilization.

This is good stuff, and it's all on my agenda as an educator. I want them to question the motives of people who write books for children. I want them to consult primary sources for history, and to look deeply at the intellectual and cultural context of those sources. I want them to understand that slavery was an abomination, that it was perpetrated on people as fully human as we are, and that its effects echo through our lives even now. Of course, it answers some of what New York State wants me to be doing with my kids too. I needed some kind of American History topic this year, and we are finding this one to be particularly rich, both in terms of available materials and issues raised.

Much of this was a surprise to me, however. I am not an historian of any stripe, and I know very little about the Lewis and Clark expedition. When the original question was asked, I answered it not from a wealth of knowledge, but by accessing a factoid I'd memorized, probably in a Social Studies classroom, some year long in the past. I wasn't even completely confident that I was answering it correctly.

The point is that I don't have to know all this stuff; I just have to be ready to jump on it when the question comes along. It's impossible to predict which questions will become curriculum, but over time I think I've developed a sense of which questions to just answer, and which ones should send us running off the library.

ugh

I've been running an experiment the last few days, to see what happens when I stop doing laundry, stop making bread, and stop vacuuming in order to knit as I listen to Rufus Wainwright, Leonard Cohen, and Steely Dan.

So far the results seem to be that I finish the socks I've been working on, but we run out of clean clothes, bread, and the house is suddenly overrun by bits of paper (Little is fascinated by scissors these days) cat hair, and crumbs. Just in case you were wondering.

I've been thinking a bit about my position that educational systems are bad for kids because they mean that the teachers/parents aren't responding to the kids and where they are, what they need. It becomes an education imposed from without, rather than inspired from within.

And then I started thinking about it a little more, and I realized that I really need a system for my house, because the house is not my thing. Cleaning and keeping things tidy does not come naturally to me. I have to think about it, or I'll just skip it. (Incidentally, I do have a system. I've just chosen to overlook it for a few days.)

Teaching, on the other hand, is my thing. I love working with kids, love figuring out what they want, what they mean when they say inscrutable things, love helping them communicate better with each other. Teaching is the place where I am most truly myself. It is my vocation, my right livelihood.

What I'm trying to say is that I don't need a system because teaching is my passion. It's the thing I think about most, care about most, read about most, so it's pretty easy for me to fly without instruments, so to speak. I am not willing to take the position that the only people who should be teaching their children at home are people who have a similar passion. There are so many factors that go into the decision to homeschool that it is just too much to ask that everyone who chooses it also be able to construct the curriculum day to day, following the children's needs. Not because they wouldn't want to, but because they just might not feel equipped.

And that's why lots of people really need a system, and who am I to fault them for it?

So my question now is this: is it interesting, or would it be interesting, to read more about the process that takes us from a simple question posed by a child, to a full-blown integrated curriculum that spans several months?

Let me know, and I'll write about that. Or I could just go back to posting pictures of my socks, if you'd rather.

who's in charge around here?

Another great question from anthromama in the comments:

When you allow the children to lead, will they grow up thinking that they only need to study or do what they want?

My children would die laughing to think that someone out there in cyberspace wonders if they get to do whatever they want, whenever they want. Just rolling. On the floor. Laughing.

Here's how it goes in my house. In the morning, after Big has dressed and eaten and done his morning chores (NB: ideal version), he and I get ready to do school. I don't say to him: "Gee, honey, do you think you might like to do school today?" or even, "When do you think we might do some school today?"

Instead, I say something like this: "Let's get ready for some school. I'd like you to do another topic in your math book today, and I want you to do some writing. You also need to practice your recorder. Which one of those thing do you want to do first?"

Let's say he chooses writing. Fine. I'll say "Great. Do you want to write in your journal today, or do you want to write on the computer?" He already knows that, except in some very specific and unusual circumstances, he can write about anything he wants. He wrote a long fairy tale through most of the winter, he's been writing poems lately, and he has several stories started on the computer.

So he goes off and does those things. Some of it he can do on his own. I make sure I'm around and not distracted when he's doing math, because he needs that support, but he doesn't need or want my help when he practices his recorder. He has only recently been willing to show me his writing, but I've been surreptitiously monitoring it all winter, and I will use his writing to work up more teacher-directed curriculum.

For example, I noticed that he was confusing plurals, possessives, and contractions in his writing, so we sat down one morning and learned about what the differences are, how they look, how they are used. Then over the next few days, we came up with lists of words in each category. He doesn't confuse them anymore.

It's child-led because we wouldn't have covered this topic if he hadn't shown that he was confused about it and needed to learn it. It's teacher-directed because I noticed he needed it and created the work that would address it.

Another example: we have struggled to find a good way to do math. It is clear to me that we have to do math every day, and that there has be some time built in for skills practice. At first I thought I could just come up with the curriculum on my own, but it turns out I'm not so smart when it comes to math. I can figure out where his skills are lacking, and I can come up with problems that address those skills, and I can teach him how to solve those problems. And that turned out to be the most boring approach ever invented to any subject. He was bored, I was bored, and it was just ugly. We had some books of math puzzle books, which require good problem-solving thinking, but that was spotty and not enough.

After I blogged about this struggle, Shaun recommended Ed Zaccaro's Challenge Math books. (Thanks Shaun!) These books have pretty much saved our lives, math-wise. They're fun, they're comprehensive, they're challenging. Big One loves them. This is the first time he's had fun in math since our beloved school closed, and I made the decision to leave our wonderful math curriculum behind.

So (just to draw this connection again) it's child-centered because I was listening to his concern and heeding his frustration, all the time knowing that we needed to do math in some kind of way. I could have just said, "Look, we've got to do math and this is the way I've decided to do it." I could also have said, "Oh never mind, I guess Big One isn't meant to do math in life. We'll just drop it." But I listened to him, knew we needed math in our lives, and kept looking, so we found something good.

anthromama goes on to say:

...I have personally observed homeschool parents who essentially constantly defer to their children, which in my experience is bewildering for the child and the opposite of empowering. The general Waldorf view is that children need adults to have natural authority--not authoritarian, but authoritative. I wonder how child-led learning could work with that.

I've personally observed some homeschooling families like that, too. I've also observed plenty of school-going children who are calling the shots, and whose parents are falling all over themselves to comply with the child's latest demand. This is just not a feature of child-led learning. It's a parenting style, although I hesitate to call it parenting at all.

I agree that this so-called parenting style is upside down and backwards, and that children need to know there are limits, and that you're there to hold the line. That doesn't mean you're not watching them to see how things are going, and it doesn't mean you're ruling every little detail of their lives by decree.

Children need to be listened to, and they need to know that they have some power in the home. But not all of it.

goals and objectives, part two

I gotta say something.

I didn't mean to imply (and I hope I didn't) that it is only because my kids are somewhere on the gifted spectrum that I can be relaxed about milestones and ages and keeping pace with externally prescribed academic goals. I really believe this is something that can be applied to all children. It's just that I don't have to think too hard about it, because I know that my kids would be more or less "caught up" if they were to suddenly enroll in a public school.

In fact, what I really think is that it is all the more important for children who somehow defy the expected learning trajectory to be allowed to develop at their own pace. This goes for both ends of the bell curve.

I had a student, years ago, who was not reading. She was too old to be not reading, and I had been working with her for over a year in a very concerted effort to get her the tools she needed to begin reading. Her parents were freaked, and I was concerned, too. Not because she wasn't reading, but because I could tell that she didn't know a lot of stuff she needed to start to put it together and begin reading. I started working even more with her, after school. I met with her parents, and we talked about ways they could support her at home with the skills she needed for reading.

And then, slowly, haltingly, she began to read. She was mostly reading from texts she'd memorized, but sometimes she was able to bring it all together and decode an unfamiliar word. I was so, so pleased, and I knew that we could build on this success, and with practice and discipline, she would eventually be able to read along with her peers.

Her parents were not pleased, not in the least.

Guess why. Go ahead, guess.

Because she wasn't reading on grade level. Here was a child whose entire approach to the reading enterprise had been, shall we say, circuitous and unconventional. Reading was not her thing. She would rather have been constructing fabulous things out of blocks and what not. She read as little as possible, and only to satisfy me, her teacher, and her parents. There was just nothing, absolutely nothing, in her history to suggest she should be reading on grade level, and everything to suggest she was going to do it her own way, in her own time.

If they were going to compare (and what parent doesn't) I wanted them to compare her work to where she'd been last year, not to the other kids her age. Because she wasn't like other kids her age.

And really? Neither was anybody else. Every kid I ever taught had his or her own set of gifts and deficits. Some of the most intelligent, insightful kids I taught had some of the most challenging difficulties. We called it uneven development, but I'm beginning to suspect that "uneven" is more normative than anything else. Every kid has some gifts, and some gaps.

Just like people. Imagine that.

goals, objectives, standards, and the like

From the comments to my post about child-led learning, anthromama asked:

I would be interested to hear about whether you have any specific goals for your sons, any milestones that you would like them to pass by a certain age, etc. Essentially, how you will gauge how they are doing. Or if you have something else you are measuring, either qualitative or quantitative.

The short answer is yes.

But I'm guessing you're not here for a short answer, are you? Or at least, I'm not here to give short answers.

I have lots of specific goals for my sons. I want them to love reading, writing, and researching, to be interested and engaged with the world, to develop rigorous thinking about math and science, to have an understanding of cultural conflicts in this country and in the world, and to understand that there are many ways of looking at various kinds of problems. I want them to play music, draw, and paint.

I also want them to have a deep and satisfying knowledge about how to create a comfortable home, by taking part in the daily work that is required to do that. I want them to be able to understand basic directions and find their way home from a friend's house, the mailbox on the corner, or the grocery store.

I want them to have a basic understanding of American and world history, to know a little something about the history of art, and to have a deep understanding about how to find the answers to specific questions that arise.

I want them to have an understanding of how to meditate and do yoga, as tools for living in this world. I want them to know how to eat well.

One of my most important goals is to allow them to reach developmental milestones when they themselves are ready to do so. So I'm not concerned if Little doesn't read "on time," because I have assessed him carefully so I know he doesn't have any kind of reading disability, and my more important goal is that he love to read and write, so I am content to allow that set of skills develop organically.

I'm unconcerned with seeing that they reach specific milestones at certain ages for a number of reasons. For one thing, I believe that milestones are artificial constructs that frequently don't have much relevance for kids. In my first year of teaching, I had a multi-age class in which my youngest student (age 6) wasn't reading, and my oldest student (age 9) was reading on a 12th grade level, and of course there was every reading level in between. Every one of those kids was doing fine, and there was worthwhile, developmentally appropriate work for each of them to do at every moment of the day.

There is a huge range that is normal, or acceptable, or just fine. It is only the graded system in which all kids of a certain age are expected to do the same thing that has created the notion in our minds that this is the only way to ensure our kids are "on track."

The other reason I'm not worried, and I haven't written much about giftedness here because for me it's not particularly relevant, is that my kids are pretty smart. They have never been in an educational setting where it was important for us to find out exactly how smart, so I don't know exactly where they fall on that bell curve. During my teaching years, I had a total of three children who had tested 'profoundly gifted,' and my kids are not like those kids. My kids are more garden-variety gifted. They love to read and reason, they are naturally curious about the world, and school work is easy for them. I know they would be in a gifted and talented program at the local public school, but I also know that it wouldn't be enough.

And that is a big part of why I'm teaching them at home.

child-led learning: try it, you'll like it

This is a post for those who think letting the child's interests, academic needs, and questions lead a homeschool curriculum is too much work. I hope to demonstrate that in fact, it is the very opposite. All it requires is that you don't already have anything planned, or you're willing to drop it from time to time, and that you're paying attention when your child is talking.

Example the first.

A few weeks ago, Little and I were looking through my alumni magazine, in which was featured an artist working in mosaics. Little asked, "What's a mosaic?" I love this age (5), because there are so many interesting things he doesn't know about yet. I explained that it's a picture made by sticking many small pieces of something to a surface. It can be tile, glass, ceramic, what have you. Then we got out the paints and paper and completely painted several pieces of paper a few basic colors, and then some not-so-basic colors. I wish I could show you pictures of this stage, but those images are on Joe's computer.

After the sheets of color had dried, we cut them into squares roughly 1" across. Then Little and I made mosaics. We just stuck our paper "tiles" onto big pieces of butcher paper.

Here's Little's:

















And here's mine:

















Big made one too (his included some small old bits of toys and various household flotsam) but he gave it to the wedding couple out in LA.

Example the second.

I have been teaching a small hands-on science class to a group of homeschooled kids. There are seven kids. The youngest is 5 and the oldest is 11. We started with a meeting in which I told them what sorts of resources I had available and which topics we could study, and they decided to start by learning about air and air pressure. Which is what we have done, once a week for about a month.

Last week, several of the kids were digging around in my garden before class started, and they found what they were absolutely convinced were worm eggs. I was not so convinced, but I kept my skepticism to myself and they continued to explore and investigate. This week, when I was planning for our science class, I realized that there was potential for an interesting science project at the intersection of their conviction (that these little gray balls were worm eggs) and my skepticism (no way, they've gotta be seeds).

This week, we gave the weird little gray balls some soil and water:

You can't see them, they're buried.

We articulated some theories about what we think the little gray balls might be, and made some predictions about what the outcome might be with each of our theories. The class, like any class, has widely ranging literacy abilities, so I did the writing and the kids did the talking.

And that's all there is to it. There are some kinds of curriculum for which a parent or a teacher's biggest job is to pay attention and then get out of the way. I really believe that kids will ask the questions that lead to the experiences they need.

Important caveat: I think it would be a big mistake to let a child's natural curiosity about something like long division lead the math curriculum. At least in my house: Big would never get there. But I find that I need to do relatively little of this sort of parent-imposed learning, because so much of what the boys are curious about leads us naturally into intellectually robust curriculum.

And it's not a lot of work. In fact, I think it's got to be less work than following a science curriculum or an art curriculum. It's just fun. The day we made the mosaics, we did art for three hours straight.

And I bet you Little will never forget what mosaic means.

oh. my.

Well, there certainly are a lot more people around here lately. Thanks to Shaun and Jove and Casey, this blog has seen an increase in visitors every day this week, and thanks to Sitemeter, I can watch it happen. I'm gratified, but a little nervous. On the one hand, more visitors means more comments, and the commenting has been superb. If you're visiting for the first time, please visit the comments. There are some really interesting and thoughtful people who are engaging with the issues I'm raising, and raising new ones. You are all giving me a lot to think about. On the other hand, I can't imagine what ya'll are going to do when you find out that I mostly blog about knitting and keeping house.

Here's a question for all those who homeschool: Is it possible for you to imagine a school to which you would send your kids? I've been thinking a lot about this lately, and I'm cooking up a post about my vision for a school that would tempt me away from homeschooling.

keep those systems off my kids

I had this incredibly nurturing and thought-provoking day with an old friend earlier this week. I've known this woman about as long as I've known my husband (almost 17 years) but we've been out of touch for the last eight or so. I used to babysit for her daughter, who is now an adult with a Master's degree. She now has a son the same age as Little, and the boys spent the day digging in the dirt, building, and creating performances for us.

She homeschooled her daughter, and is now homeschooling her little son. We talked about many things, including various alternative approaches to education. Her daughter was enrolled in a Waldorf school briefly, but it didn't work out, so she brought her home.

I took the position in that conversation, and I'm taking it now, that any system, be it Waldorf or Montessori or NCLB or the latest ELA test imposed by New York State, cannot serve the best interests of the child. This is because the teachers (or parents) are referring to some authority outside the classroom.

The authority belongs in the classroom (or in the home) with the teacher and the children. Each teacher (or parent) has to work out for themselves whether the adult will have more say in how the learning swings or the children will, but it has to be a balance between those two: the adult who is facilitating the learning, making it possible, and the kids who are there to accrue the tools they need to function in our culture. All these terms would need to be defined, of course: learning, tools, function, culture, and it is by the definition of these terms that many policies and curricula have been imposed on many groups of kids. It is when we decide what our kids really need to know in order to function in what version of our culture that we decide how the learning is going to happen, what the kids will learn, in what order, by what means.

I think this is the primary place where public education has gone so badly awry: nobody trusts the teachers, and certainly nobody trusts the kids. But without that trust, children are just "receiving an education;" they're not actually being educated. They aren't learning how to think, to trust themselves to find out what they need to know, and they aren't learning to work things out in any meaningful way. They're just learning that somebody out there has a notion about what they should be doing all day, and they must sit still for it.

My position is this: the reference has to be the child, in the context of the larger culture and the role the child will eventually play in that culture. We want, of course, for our children to be prepared for a wide variety of roles, so it is they who are making this decision. We don't want them to be limited by their educations.

You have to look at the child, or the children, in a classroom. You can't be looking at some book written by somebody who's never met your kids, or known your community.

That's what I like about Dewey: the reference is the child, and he doesn't imagine himself to know anything about all children everywhere, except that they are capable of real work and they want to engage with the real world.

Now I am sure that there are many Montessori teachers and many Waldorf teachers (and I include parents teaching their kids at home in this category) who use the structure of the philosophy as a sort of invisible framework, and for whom the primary reference is actually the kids. This is what Anthromama was saying in the comments: you study up on the philosophy, and then you let it go when you actually engage with your kids.

My sister-in-law is a good example: she went to a Waldorf school, founded another one when she got older, and enrolled her young daughter in yet another. She loves Waldorf. But she also knows that it doesn't work for every child, and she knows her child, and when the Waldorf school seemed like it wasn't a good fit for her daughter, she brought her back home.

Evenspor is another good example. She loves the Montessori approach, but she is mostly looking at her child. She has goals that are based in a system, but then she looks at her child to figure out how to get there.

But I am equally sure that there are teachers who slavishly follow the precepts of their chosen philosophies, to the point where they don't even see the children in front of them. I might even say that there are more slavish followers than there are creative thinkers in these systems. I might even be pushed into saying that it is the very creation of a system of education that gives birth to slavish followers.

And that, my friends, is just wrong.

homeschooling parents and teachers

I've been thinking about the collision of two worlds lately, or the overlap in the worlds between classroom teachers and parents who opt to keep their kids out of school to teach them at home. I'm thinking about it in part because of the brou-ha-ha in California, where suddenly a bunch of people seemed to be saying that homeschooling parents were going to need a teaching credential. The issue has calmed down, as many were saying it would. I also have a friend who homeschools whose sister-in-law is a teacher who thinks my friend is not qualified to teach her kids at home.

I have something to say about this.

On the one hand, there are the teachers who believe that their degree has prepared them for the work they're doing. It's hard for them to see that someone could do a good job of what they imagine to be the same work without a similar credential.

On the other hand, there are the parents who stay home with their school-age children, who have daily evidence that they are doing a good job, and that it can be done without a background in educational theory. It's hard for them to see that teachers need their specialized degrees: after all, they have elementary educations themselves, don't they? Do they really need to know how to teach long division, as long as they remember how to do long division?

The two sides feel understandably threatened by each other. I am here to tell you that both sides are confused. They think they're doing the same thing: teaching kids the stuff they need to learn how to do. They are wrong. The two jobs are so dissimilar as to be just barely related.

Classroom teaching is an incredibly complex task. Let's not even think about what it's like to teach kids how to take standardized tests in a public school... mostly because I don't know what that's like. The teaching I was doing was child-centered, organically connected to the children's needs and interests, with a flexible, individualized approach to curriculum that could speed up for intellectually gifted kids and slow down for the differently gifted. It was, in many ways, the classroom version of homeschooling, in which the child's need for freedom and autonomy, both physical and intellectual, were respected.

But I was doing it with a bunch of kids, and most of the time, not one of them was my own child. I was spending my days with a group of other people's children. I needed those educational theories I learned in my Master's program. I needed to refer to those books I'd collected about how to differentiate instruction. I needed the philosophical underpinning that taught me how to proceed with a child who was acting out in class. I needed to remind myself of the words of one particular professor, who had told us it was our responsibility to love every child we taught.

Teaching my kids at home, in contrast, is so smooth as to be barely perceptible as work. I don't need educational theories, because I know my kids. I don't need to remind myself that I love them. When Big is stuck on something, I don't need to refer to books that will tell me a different way to approach the concept. Because I know him well, very well indeed, I can intuitively find an approach that will work. I understand how his brain works because it's very similar to mine.

I don't need to know much of anything that I learned when I got my teaching credential, because all I really need to know is my kids. But that doesn't mean I didn't need it when I was teaching other people's kids.

And here's the thing that's been really sticking in my craw lately: it seems that some homeschooling parents believe that because they deeply understand that they don't need a credential to teach their kids, the credential must be worthless.

It's not.

Teachers really do know some things about teaching that parents who teach their kids at home don't know. Because they have to.

It's completely different work.

major decision

I have an interesting opportunity. And a decision to make.

I've been asked to teach a class at the local university next fall. I'm going to leave out the details, because it's not completely definite yet, but it seems very likely that I will be teaching a very juicy course to Master's level pre-service teachers next semester. For the uninitiated, this means that I'll be teaching a small class of folks whose undergraduate degrees are mostly in the liberal arts, who have decided to become teachers.

I've also been asked to seriously consider doing an EdD. This is Education's version of a PhD, and it would mean that I would eventually be qualified to teach the next generation of public school teachers. It may not be obvious to everyone reading this post, so I will explicitly state that if I were to become a part of that system, I would spend the rest of my working life fighting hard to train the kinds of teachers who will work to create schools that meet children's needs better than they currently do. I am thinking of this work as a kind of human-rights activism.

I want to work to create schools where children's intellectual integrity is respected. This would be possible where the authority in the classroom rests in its proper place: with the teachers and children, rather than with an outside authority like a prescribed curriculum, the State, a test, or legislation like NCLB. I want to train teachers who can be flexible and creative, and use their senses and their mental abilities to really look at and respond to the children they teach.

This is the only battle, political, environmental, or otherwise, that I have any interest in fighting. This is one of the few things that could tempt me out of my current state of relative withdrawal from the world.

Here are my three quandaries:

To what degree would choosing this be taking some version of 'a good life' away from my own children? In other words, if by choosing the path of working to try to ensure a more humane schooling experience for children in public school, I would be eliminating the humanity from my own children's lives, it seems wrong-headed. Is it possible to keep my children at home as I pursue a doctorate? Clearly, I would need some outside help.

I believe this is mostly a losing battle. I believe that public school policy is not driven by what's best for the children, but rather by politics, an anti-intellectual and fear-based emotionality, and a failure of imagination caused when people believe that the only way to school is the way they were schooled. Can I do any good by fighting a losing battle? Can I make things better?

If what I really want is to make public schools better, doesn't it make more sense, as a certified and experienced teacher, for me to go into the public system myself? In other words, rather than sit in an ivory tower and tell other people how to do this very difficult work, shouldn't I just do it myself? At least then I would know that some children are getting a fair shake, at least as far as possible in the current grades-driven, test-crazed political climate. Of course, this would guarantee that I couldn't keep my kids home, so that pretty much makes it out of the question at the moment. However, eventually my children won't need to be home anymore, and at that point I could certainly get a teaching job and become an agent for change within a school.

Please discuss, either by email or in the comments. All perspectives welcome.

a banner day

Friends, today the gardening bucket came out. Little and I share a love of plants and sunlight and green things growing that Big One just doesn't comprehend. Little and I trimmed and carried dead stuff to the compost. We made room for small things trying to poke their way up through dead leaves and mulch. We basked in the sunlight and counted freckles. No small task.

Today at Big's French teacher's house, we met five new Tunis lambs, dark brown and tiny. We watched and waited, hoping the last ewe might give birth right there, right then.

Today it is 60 degrees, on the shady side of my house. Today we walked to Big One's music lesson. There are buds popping on the trees, everywhere and every color... purple and red, gray green and chartreuse.

And today, for the first time, my sisyphean editing project began to feel possible. I have developed a modicum of efficiency. I am learning to move on when there's a nut I can't crack, and keep going through the material. I am more than half way done.

I feel I need to explain something: I am not actually doing any editing. If I were actually honing prose, or even rewriting, I would be having fun. I really love playing with words. In fact, what I am doing is fact checking. And I will spare you the details, but these facts that I'm checking? Let's just say that it would be hard to find less interesting material. So I am finding myself spending inefficient hours learning things I just don't want to know.

But today? Today even that's okay, and today it seems like I will eventually learn to integrate this work into the rest of my life, and put it in the back seat where it belongs.

music

A couple of moms and I have gotten together and asked a local music teacher (who is a genius but really hates being photographed) to teach recorder to a small group of kids. The kids are just starting out, so we're learning things like tonguing and hand position, as well as basic music stuff like beat and rhythm. Today was our second class. It's way too easy for Big One, although he has agreed to participate when we start playing songs. And it's way too hard for Little One, because the other kids are older than he, even though they're also beginners. So it's not a good fit for either of my kids, but it's really, really fun to have a music class for kids in my house.

I've been thinking about where one draws the line when it comes to allowing a child to guide his own learning. Nine times out of ten, I think kids make the right decisions, and I believe that it's really important to build curriculum based on their needs and interests. Not just important; essential.

But music is a place where I'm not so sure. For me, music is like learning math or a language. Reading music is part of being an educated person, and learning to play an instrument is an essential aspect of a child's education. For me. It is akin to what some families feel about sports, I think: that there is so much important stuff to learn in the process that a child's education is lacking without it.

And learning to play an instrument requires practice, which requires discipline. It requires that you work through a difficult patch because you are reaching for a goal that is somewhere beyond the moment you're in. It's often not fun. In fact, when you're really sweating it out through a technical passage, it can be downright frustrating. What child would choose that?

When Big One first started to play the recorder, it happened because his music teacher at school noticed that he was really ready for it, but his class wasn't. So he started private lessons. This was four years ago, and along the way, I've reminded him to practice, over and over. I've also sat with him through figuring out difficult passages, helped him with reading new and tricky rhythms, and helped him persevere when he was frustrated to the point of tears. He is now at the point where he works these things through on his own, and does it for the intrinsic reward, but it was a long road to get there. If I'd left it entirely up to him, I don't know that he ever would have.

I never let him quit because he's really good at it, and that was evident from the very beginning. My thinking (which I shared with Big) was that some people are born with an ability to do some things easily and well, and those people have an opportunity to live their lives as artists. Mind you, I think an artist could be a painter, a musician, a scientist, a writer, or even a teacher: it just means someone who is doing for a living what they really live for. I told him that because he has a chance to live his life as an artist, he has a responsibility to develop this talent.

Little is anxious about learning recorder in a way that Big never was: he has daily evidence that learning an instrument is a lot of work. We may have to look into soccer for him.

crisis

Minor crisis, I should say. More of a conundrum, really. Conundrum didn't seem snappy enough for a post title.

Big and I did some new work today: more complicated long division, resulting in repeating decimals. This wasn't frustrating for him, because he knows how to do it, but it was tedious. All those steps, and then you have to keep doing them. And doing them. And doing them, until finally a pattern emerges in the decimal and you can put your damn repeating bar up there and be done with the thing.

So he was trying to make it more entertaining, for him and for me, by personifying the numbers in various ways, by pretending he was dueling the problem with swords, by putting in lots of meaningless zeros as unnecessary place holders. All these small diversions resulted in a tense mama who kept directing him back to the problem in a businesslike and humorless way. It also resulted in a single problem taking twenty minutes to solve.

We were clearly at odds, and when he finally dissolved in tears, I lost my temper. Or maybe I lost my temper first, and then he dissolved. That seems more likely, somehow.

And then I tried to explain myself:

Long division is just something you have to do.

The only fun part about it is getting it done. Maybe it gets a little bit fun when you can do it really quickly, but that's only because you're getting it over with.

It's like practicing scales and arpeggios: nobody likes it, but you have to do it.

He eventually settled down and we did several more problems. In a businesslike and humorless way. Which was satisfying for me.

And that's when I had my crisis: Doesn't he deserve a teacher who loves what we're learning about? When I was a teacher, I would at least muster some enthusiasm for a subject, even if my heart wasn't particularly in it. Especially when some of the kids were reluctant. Doesn't my child deserve the same? From me, his teacher?

When I was a kid, I never paid attention in math class, because my mother was (and is) a gifted math teacher, and I knew I could just come home and have her explain it to me, and it would be crystal clear in about twenty seconds. Why bother listening to a thirty minute explanation in class, when I had a home tutor always ready and willing? And interested, I might add. Maybe she didn't find long division scintillating, but she certainly never would have told me that the only good part about it was getting it over with.

So now what? I do think he needs to do his long division relatively quickly, and that he would do well to learn how not to get distracted by all the wonderful and creative things that reside in his head. But I also want it to be fun for him, and I want to do better than telling him it's just something we have to do, because.

Maybe it's too much to ask. Everything can't be fun, and there are some things we just have to do. Like dishes, and long division. But I don't want my feelings about math to dictate his feelings about it. I believe I can do better, and I'd really love to hear from other homeschoolers about how they pull this off.

The amazing thing is that after the long division, we went on to this:

That's Word Roots: Latin Prefixes, Roots and Suffixes, by Cherie Blanchard, which was like dessert. He LOVES this work, and is finding all sorts of amazing connections between what he's learning about Latin and his French lessons, between words he knows, and words he's just now finding out about.

Dessert. Learning Latin was like having a piece of chocolate cake. For both of us, really. It was so relaxing, intriguing, and just plain fun to jump into the world of words.