Finding the Magic

It didn’t take long for my sunny optimism to find a cloud to hide behind.  It’s a good thing the fabulous Sophie, of Our Life, Inzaburbs offered to write a guest post for me today or I’d be whining again about being on a jury.  Nearly half way through!  See, I found a silver lining.

I begged Sophie to write a post about homeschooling, a subject I find fascinating in a rubber-necking-as-I-drive-past-an-accident sort of way.  As in, I’m glad it’s not me over there, but I still want to know all the gory details.  Read on, and have your assumptions about homeschooling challenged!

———————

I like Andrea. I always read her blog.

So, I was very pleased when she asked for guest posters. And I suddenly felt the call to submit something. Which I have never done before because let’s face it, most people guest post so that they can put something out there which they hope their loved ones will never see. You know, write about their heiney without involving great-grandma.

I can’t do that. As in the case of Andrea’s Anonymous Bitch Fest Guest Poster, my extended family knows how to google. They really do. For example, my sister-in-law found my blog back when I had three readers and those three readers were all my parents checking me out three times a day . She is either an amazing Googler or she was very very desperate to read what I had to say.

That means you won’t find anything about my heiney on these pages. But I wasn’t really sure what to write.  Andrea’s family runs a plumbing business and I was going to talk about how I once seriously thought about becoming a plumber.

It’s true! I did! I am good at fixing toilets. I have fixed every toilet in this house at least twice!

… I am good at fixing toilets temporarily.

So what? I would get a lot of repeat customers.

But then Andrea asked me to talk about homeschooling.

Groan. Way to kill the fun, Andrea! Here we go then.

Homeschooling.

(Disclaimer: I had a lot of trouble writing this. I was trying to keep it general but kept finding myself veering off into the personal. So, if you are curious about anything at all, ask away!)

Many people (actually all the Moms I know) tell me they could never home school. It seems like an enormous, monstrous thing to do to yourself as a parent. Right when you finally get the opportunity to outsource your childcare to the state, for free! (and feel virtuous doing it!) you decide instead to devote yourself to a life of servitude and lesson plans. And anyway, isn’t home schooling for hippies and the religious right?

I know this, because this is how I thought too. I came to home schooling very, very reluctantly.

It’s true, it is a lifestyle which can be frustrating. But do you know what is even harder? The daily stress of dealing with a child who is just not getting on with school. In the end, it came down to me or him. As a parent, which would you choose?

Yes, I have lost some freedom. I don’t get to go on extended shopping trips, have lunch with the girls, or work uninterrupted for hours. My time is no longer fully my own. On a bad day, I like to wail to my husband that I am a Mom 24/7 and it is ne-e-ever going to e-e-end!

But then, let’s look at the flipside. The whole family has gained freedom. Freedom from stress in the morning of dragging a reluctant child to the school bus, harrassed siblings in tow (you know how when you start yelling at one you somehow end up yelling at the others?). Freedom from forced homework sessions, and from distressing, frustrating meetings and phone calls with teachers. Freedom from early bedtimes and early rising and packing school bags and remembering library books and this weeks fundraising money and …

(Also, freedom to take swimming lessons in an empty pool and go to museums without having to push through hordes of day campers in their multicolored t-shirts, and park right next to the store instead of at the other end of the carpark. Ah. Those are the best freedoms ).

So, here we are, at home. The woman who, had we had a high school yearbook, might have been voted “Least Likely to Become a Teacher” and the child no teacher could apparently teach.

It’s lucky I am not a teacher then.

Our homeschooling style is what is often called “relaxed”. We do not work in a classroom environment, with lesson plans and schedules and tests. In fact, we don’t even use a curriculum, although I do consult books such as “What Your First Grader Should Know” to ensure we are covering all the bases. We work for an hour or two every morning, on spelling and math. Sometimes I teach a concept, using the whiteboard. Sometimes we work with manipulatives, like legos and coins and clocks. Sometimes we make charts. Often we use worksheets. They are not fancy worksheets, the books from the supermarket or drugstore do the trick.

And all the other stuff – the reading and history and geography and art and music and sport? We were doing all that anyway, thanks to books and educational TV and Google Earth and those big rolls of paper from IKEA. And maybe, so are you.

School isn’t necessarily a magical place where miracles happen.

Magic can also happen at home.