Yeah. Me, too. The question is: When you get to that point, what do you do next?

Take a look at a note from a mom who is right at that crossroads.

I am home schooling my two very active boys, ages seven and five, and I am stuck. I think the biggest reason I am stuck is that I taught special education in the public school system for nine years and I just have in my mind how our school day “should look,” and it doesn’t fit, and, honestly, home schooling is really frustrating and I don’t like it. I just can’t seem to break out of that and embrace what works best for us! I also think I have “too many” ideas and things I want to cover and have trouble focusing on what is best.
–Losing Heart

Dear Losing Heart,

I have so been where you are. I understand your heavy heart. When I first began home schooling, I tried my best to make my school look and walk and talk like a traditional classroom. That was my model. I didn’t think it was a way to teach; I thought it was the way to teach—the only way. After all, if it wasn’t, why would teaching schools teach future teachers to use it? Thankfully, I hung in there, and with each passing year, my classroom grew more and more relaxed, less and less structured, and more and more able to follow the gifts and interests of my children.

This is a transition that almost every home schooling mom/teacher must make. We all start with what we know: the public school model. Admittedly, a few continue with that traditional model, but they are rare, and I believe that in doing so, they lose out on the many glorious options available to them and their children.

Here is the bad news: Moms who have been trained as teachers have the hardest time finding new models. You have already expressed this awareness, but you need to know you are not alone in this. It’s hard for everyone. It’s especially hard for teachers.

Keep in mind, the traditional model is not a bad one if you have twenty or so students and even more kids coming up the ranks. When the goal is to process a lot of children through a system, the public school model is not a bad one—but you’ll have to let some other things go. In that system, you cannot follow the strengths of the individual child; there isn’t time. There are too many other kids to consider. It’s an okay system for moving groups en masse through a process. However:

• If a particular student takes an interest in rocketry and all the physics behind it, nothing can be done, because the whole class doesn’t share the interest and it’s not on the lesson plan.
• If a particular student has a gift for writing and would love to delve into Shakespeare and all the unfamiliar richness of that older language, nothing can be done, because the whole class doesn’t share the interest and it’s not on the lesson plan.
• If a particular child shows an early interest in chemistry and would love to play with a lab kit, learning about reactions and properties, nothing can be done, because the whole class doesn’t share the interest and it’s not on the lesson plan.
• If a particular student just isn’t getting multiplication facts and needs three times the usual amount of time allotted to master it, nothing can be done, because the whole class doesn’t share the need and it’s not on the lesson plan.

In a traditional classroom, we move onward for the good of the majority; it makes sense to do so. Holding twenty-five kids back because of the needs or interests of one child does not make sense.

But in home schooling, it is not about the majority. It is about one child at a time.

(Can I get an “Amen”? J)

In home schooling you can follow delights. You can follow interests. You can address challenges. You can do pretty much anything that teaches a child that learning is fun and wonderful and lifelong, so before you give up, I would suggest you try different approaches. How about a unit study that focuses on something that absolutely delights your child?

Bugs? Monster trucks? The military? Firefighters? China? Davy Crockett?

Make models. Collect samples. Go on field trips. Watch kids’ documentaries. Read biographies of people who are into this subject. Role-play. Perhaps most importantly, find another home schooling mom who has already made this transition, and see if you can shadow her in her schooling for a week. Join together for a time. Share the school week or month. Watch what she does differently. Give yourself permission to step away from traditional, even if only for a month.

Should I Teach Subjects in Order?

When I first began home schooling I collected scope-and-sequence documents from around the country: public schools, private schools, expensive prep schools, schools for gifted students, and Montessori schools. I studied them to get a sense of the most comprehensive scope and sequence I could formulate for my own school. As a result, I made an amazing discovery: Other than a few essentials in learning to read, and of course, math, there wasn’t a clear path. Some schools studied earth science in fifth grade, and others studied life science. Some studied ancient Egyptians, while others were learning about Thomas Jefferson. Some learned metaphors and similes, while others were learning about proper citations. For almost everything, there was no clear chronology of learning.

This was a very freeing revelation for me. I realized that as long as they got the same information into their heads by the time they graduated, the method and sequence of how they got it could be completely of my choosing!

I was free to make learning delicious. This thought should liberate you from designing your school based on how it “should look.” Instead, apply a new method.

What would you need to do for your child to say, “That was wonderful! Can we do more?”

There it is. That should be your method. That should be your guide. If you started with that idea and changed just one lesson in your school day, you would see the difference. I suspect that soon you would change another and then another, until, before you knew it, learning in your school would be delicious. And you’d never want to stop.

The post Letting Go of the Teacher in You appeared first on Texas Home School Coalition.

The children went suddenly silent. This was new. However, they had been taught not to complain, so they dutifully ate what was put before them. Yet, each secretly looked forward to lunch. At noon the children eagerly waited to see what tasty treat Mom would produce. Once again there appeared another plate of refried beans and molasses. Lunch was a rather quiet affair, except for Mom, who burbled quite happily about giving only the best to her family. Dinner—same story. Three days and nine meals of beans and molasses later, Dad finally spoke up.

“Hey, hon, what’s up with the beans and molasses diet we seem to have gone on?”

“Well,” she replied excitedly, “I read this great book, Better Nutrition by Selective Feeding. I answered all the survey questions about our family, you know, and found things like how I always need something sweet around 4 p.m., and you need more fiber every three or four days, and Joey needs protein in the morning or he can’t concentrate, and how Julie feels woozy after one whiff of broccoli—and when you put them all together, the book says we’re in the Sweet-n-Bean Cuisine group.”

Stunned silence met her wide-eyed enthusiasm.

Can you imagine a sillier idea? Who would feed their family a steady diet of one thing, even if it were proven to be complete and efficient? The idea might look good on paper, but this formulaic approach would certainly be a loss for their palates. Yet, some advice on learning styles would have you doing the same thing. Typically you go through a series of questions, narrowing down your child’s learning style until you have the tightest, cleanest, most efficient vehicle for delivering new information to this exacting young mind. Even more, you get to give him a really cool name too!

“My son’s a PLOD—you know, a Pre-abstract, Localizing, Oblivious Diagonal.”

“Wow, you must be so proud. My daughter’s a Bilateral, Retrieving, Anti-linear Timid. You know—a BRAT!”

“Oh, how wonderful! BRATS are so easy to teach.”

The problem with much of the available material is that it seems to devote most of its pages to delighting us with new and clever things we may call our students. Then far less time is spent telling us what to do next. In other words, how do we teach to this clever new title? What should we do when our son has reviewed long division for months and the process just does not stick? What should we do when our little girl can produce four completely different ways of spelling “bovine,” and they all look perfectly fine to her? Just how are we supposed to teach anything to the child who simply cannot sit still?

Many books seem to stall out after helping us come up with the really cool name. The advice that often follows is sometimes a bit vague. I read things like, “Keep your child focused on the lesson.” “Get them more physically involved.” These were great ideas, to be sure, but what I did not know was how. I did not know different ways to teach the math so that it would stick, different ways to teach the spelling so that the correct way would be learned.

Therefore I put the books down and decided I had a new mission. I was now in an earnest search for teaching methods. I collected them much like others collect matchbook covers or salt and pepper shakers. I took methods that were fun, or odd, or unlikely—methods that would never work on me or were even out of my comfort zone to teach. I searched for and grabbed any ideas I could find. I passed no judgment on anything until I had given it a whirl. That is when I began to discover a wonderful thing about my own previously struggling child: He could learn. He could learn well, and fast, and with enthusiasm, once I found ways in which he did learn. Along the way there were many surprises that most learning style programs would never have predicted.

I learned that my child, who most definitely is not a visual learner, was nonetheless able to work through material better when it was color-coded. Go figure. We have learned to emphasize visual input in several ways:

I found that information about people in history was more easily learned if first I provided a face or image of the person.

Another child struggled to remember the “gh” in right or fight, so as he practiced it, he boxed in the “gh” with a bright green marker. This additional step, plus the bold reminder in green, made it easier to remember the otherwise forgotten silent letters.

Another child, in his haste to finish math, often added when he should have subtracted. I had him start by boxing in all plus signs with a bright blue color and circling all subtraction signs with a yellow marker. This extra step helped him pause long enough to catch the symbol’s required action before he plunged ahead.

We also learned the value in “becoming the lesson.” In other words, ask: if you could magically go anywhere or do anything that would enhance today’s study, where would you go? Then just recreate the trip, using stuff around the house. We have traveled the planets. We built the tower of Babel (till God came, scattered us through the house, and left us speaking different languages; mine was Pig Latin). We even created and traveled through a crawl-through digestive tract. That was a memorable day.

Another unexpected teaching method emerged when I one day discovered my son repeating his spelling words over and over until a natural rhythm developed. This one really surprised me, as I had been absolutely certain, at least up to that moment, that he was completely without musical ability. Thus, I had totally ignored rhythm as a learning vehicle. Yet there he was—bopping away to his own spelling words. I tested this idea and set several things to either rhyme or to a beat. Wow! It burst open a new avenue for learning. The result was that we now have a simple daily recitations section in our schooling. (We call this Ditty Time.) During our home schooling years, my son (and all my children) has learned the names of the presidents in order, many different rules of math, the books of the Bible, the elements of the periodic table, parts of speech, Bible verses, state capitals, the planets in order from the sun, and a gazillion dates and events from history. Quick! Finish this sentence: “In fourteen hundred and ninety-two …” See? Ditties are powerful things.

We will not be having refried beans and molasses for dinner tonight. We should all give our families a wide variety of foods in our meals, not only for the value in nutrition, but also for the sheer pleasure of diverse flavors and culinary experiences. In the same way, we should teach with methods that bring a rich, layered, and fun experience to the student. We just need to open our minds to all the different ways there are in which material could be presented. Find the oddest, strangest, most unlikely of possible methods of teaching, and then—give it a whirl. It is in such whirls that learning takes flight.

The post A Lifetime of Refried Beans and Molasses appeared first on Texas Home School Coalition.

“Yeah, honey … you’re terribly funny. I’ve always loved that joke.”

One of my husband’s favorite chuckles is to poke fun at my addiction. No, I don’t have an alcohol or drug problem (caffeine notwithstanding). I don’t gamble or display typical compulsive behaviors. I am, by all generally accepted measures of mental health, a reliably stable person. Still, I do have a problem.

I collect books.

That sounds rather harmless, don’t you think? When I say it that way, it sounds like a quaint hobby. She collects tea doilies. He collects antique glassware. Carol? Oh, she collects books. Yet, such a sweet pronouncement doesn’t really do justice to the questionable intensity of activity that actually accompanies her “collecting.” To make matters worse, now that she homeschools (I prefer to speak ill of myself only in third person), it almost puts a noble face on her addiction. Well … don’t home schoolers always need more books? Are there ever enough books when one homeschools? Why can’t we put shelves up in front of that exit door?

Over my years of homeschooling and speaking, I’ve walked the aisles of many a vendor hall. In the beginning it was a painful experience. I saw so many wonderful books and materials that I wanted … I longed for … books that I was certain would radically revolutionize our schooling until my children were such prodigies they would make appearances on Jay Leno to amaze America with the wonders of home schooling. Now, after so many years, after so many vendor halls, after so many used curriculum sales, local library sales, and garages sales … now I walk those same halls, looking like a lost bag lady, scanning the many books being offered and muttering under my breath …

“Got it. Got it. Already got it. Got that too. Whoops. Got two of those (big sigh).”

I am, after many long years, finally feeling a slowing in the drive to find, obtain, and hold books. In fact, as I wander the aisles now, my mind travels in a different direction. Now that I’ve seen every book ever written for home schoolers (really; I’m pretty sure about this), I can indeed make the profound announcement that there are some books you will simply never find in a home school vendor hall. Isn’t that amazing? Even with all the thousands of offerings, I have come to the conclusion that, though we are a diverse group of folks with a multiplicity of needs, wants, and characteristics, there are still some books you will never see in our halls. In just such a spirit, I offer some possible titles:

• Creating Great Tattoos Using Things You’ve Probably Got Around the House!
• 22 Ways to Encourage Social Workers to Come Over for Tea
• NEA’s Book of “Why YOU Should Homeschool”
• Keeping Your Hired Domestic Staff Motivated and Happy
• Harry Potter … A Unit Study for the Whole Year
• Getting Expelled From Your Support Group … and Other Ways to Liven Up Meetings
• Dr. Seuss’s Version of the 10 Commandments (I DO NOT want my neighbor’s cow. I DO NOT want it then or now.)

There are Absolutely NO Absolutes … Post-Modernism Truths … er … um … Suggestions … Thoughts … Well, You Know

I can safely proclaim that you’ll not be seeing these titles (although I secretly think the Dr. Seuss book has great merit and potential). Nonetheless, my mind continues to wander … and wonder. What other books might we be missing and not know it? Are there books that we actually could use that have not made an appearance? I pondered this a bit and sent off to my publisher a list of possible titles that could, indeed, come in handy for a home schooler but are as yet an untapped market:

• Making Usable Furniture from Unused Curriculum
• Minivan and Paper Mache: How Will You Find Your Van in a Conference Parking Lot?
• Coonskin Caps From Road Kill — A Thrifty Mom’s Story
• Some of My Best Friends Use Public Schools – The New Face of Tolerance
• Keeping the Hearts of the Children Who Will One Day Choose Your Nursing Home
• Pot Holders, Pup Tents, and Other Great Uses for Those Old Denim Jumpers
• Local Support Groups Launch New Twelve-Step Recovery Program
• “He’s One Stone Short of a Temple” … and other Ancient Hebrew Jokes
• Our Weapon of Choice: The Glue Gun
• “I’ve Been Called for Jury Duty”: 55 Great Ideas for Getting Dad to Teach Today
• I Have ONLY Three Children! … and Other Embarrassing Home School Confessions
• How to Win the National Spelling Bee, Geography Bee, and Quilting Bee in Five Easy Lessons!
• Creating a Walk-Through Digestive Tract (and Other Science-Alive Moments)
• “I Wasn’t Sleeping! I was Meditating on our Family’s Mission Statement”: Quick and Believable Responses When Caught Dozing
• Classical–Shmassical: Whatever Happened To Recess?
• Dust Bunny/Cheerios Sculptures: Creative Ways to Get YOUR Kids to Tidy Up
• “I Just Can’t Get That Tomato Out of My Head!” One Mom’s Courageous Battle with Veggie Tales Abuse
• Boundaries and the Deadbolt Solution: Finally Going to the Bathroom Alone

So far, I haven’t heard from my publisher. I can only assume that he’s shopping these titles around with marketing executives. The possibilities are just staggering. The spin offs are endless. The energy is infectious! Then again, perhaps it’s time to feed that other addiction and get my morning cup of coffee.

The post Betty Ford Called appeared first on Texas Home School Coalition.