I found this great post on the Making Room 4 One More, blog entitled, 6 Ways you are making Homeschooling Harder Than it Has to Be! It’s an insightful article and I highly suggest moms give it a read and see if maybe they can save themselves some time, energy and work!
I’d like to build on that a little bit. Recently I’ve encountered a number of different moms that have decided to drop out of certain fun and even educational activities because they or their kids are stressed out – and these aren’t just newbie moms trying to do kindergarten with toddlers underfoot, These include moms of middle schoolers and high schoolers!
Why are moms putting chains around their homeschool and limiting all that it could be for their students? And just to be clear, I’m using the definition of chained meaning, “to confine or restrict.” Isn’t that the antithesis of homeschooling? The beauty of homeschooling is educational freedom and the ability to adapt resources to fit the child. It’s the freedom of letting them learn experientially and in ways that they really retain what they’ve learned because they learn to find something interesting about each thing.
If homeschooling has become drudgery, hard and even boring, here’s what I think might be constricting the process.
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1.
You’re trying to do school at home instead of homeschooling. This was also in the 6 Ways article, but I think it bears repeating. The glory of spending an afternoon in nature, or spending six weeks on astronomy, or reading delightful literature gets lost when students hit 9th grade. The student becomes the slave to credits, core courses, and a transcript because that’s what the local high school does, what the state mandates for the public schools, or what other homeschool friends are doing, or even to what homeschool vendors suggest.
While a certain amount of discipline should develop in high school that doesn’t mean you have to stop what you so fondly remember in the early years.
My state only requires 1/2 unit of American History, but in my homeschool, I give 2 years of credit. We spend one year from the explorers to the civil war and then from reconstruction to current days, and we are always covering current events. That immersion into American History gave my kids a deeper appreciation and understanding of what the country has gone through and survived. Two of my children have passed CLEP tests in American History.
We also continued to read together as a family, only we were reading Steinbeck! That made our homeschool really feel like HOME school.
2.
Once high school starts, parents worry too much about having the right amount of credits to meet their state mandates and getting into college. Lee Binz writes a lot about delight-directed learning. My kids all followed their passions in high school.
Sure, they did algebra, geometry, and algebra 2 as well as biology and chemistry. However, we incorporated many things that they were interested in. What I didn’t do was tell my son that he couldn’t study piano, guitar, organ and sing in the choir because he needed to have another academic credit. Nor did I tell my gifted artist and craftsman that she couldn’t rehab a house because she needed one more math. Instead, I found a way to give them credit for the things they were doing and incorporate the things I thought they needed for a well-rounded education.
As their teacher, I helped them find something in the subject that they could find interest in. It was my job to translate that into course descriptions and credits.
3.
Co-ops can be a godsend. I love how my co-op helps my children study advanced sciences and provides them opportunities to meet with friends every week. My youngest has even enjoyed being part of drama and music.
But it’s possible to get co-op burnout too. I’ve known moms who have dropped classes and left co-ops because they felt that all of their time was spent preparing for the co-op class. That’s not much fun and it doesn’t give the parent flexibility in their home school.
Co-ops should be good additions to your homeschool, but the parent should still be in charge of their kids’ education.
On the other hand, I also know parents who dropped classes that provided fun experiments and enrichment because they were stuck in my first point above!! Why? If they get a chance to build a volcano, make a pizza from scratch, dissect an eyeball or see how a pully system works up close and personal, let them have the freedom to do that!
4.
This might not be as big a deal in other faith traditions, but in Catholic home education, big names like Seton, Mother of Divine Grace, and Kolbe Academy are still big deals. In my opinion, they are also just as constraining as trying to follow state graduation requirements for public schools, or rigid curriculums. I’ve seen moms drop enrichment classes that they wanted for their kids at co-op because they couldn’t fit it into the programs of the big Catholic homeschool programs.
Part of that might be related to my first point. Another part might be that parents feel that they need a “diploma” from one of these places. They don’t. My honors student is about to graduate from college next semester and he went in with the diploma I made for him backed by the transcript I produced because I was never shackled to a “program.”
5.
With the acceptance of dual enrollment and getting college credit in high school, I think many parents are being enticed into restricting their students to only taking classes they can get college credit for. When that happens there is more limited time for delight-directed learning, learning as a family, or even enrichment. Dual credits can be a great opportunity, but it shouldn’t shackle the student or the teacher from the learning that comes in the home, with the family, during those last few precious years before graduation.
“An alarming number of parents appear to have little confidence in their ability to “teach” their children. We should help parents understand the overriding importance of incidental teaching in the context of warm, consistent companionship. Such caring is usually the greatest teaching, especially if caring means sharing in the activities of the home.” Raymond Moore
