Hearth & Homeschool

Education is not the filling of a pail,
But the lighting of a fire...

W.B. Yeats

That's how we homeschool. We encourage our kids to be passionate about life-- to explore, challenge and enjoy. We don't separate life and learning. Life IS learning, whether we are sitting down working out a math problem, cooking, gardening, or exploring the world. It's all one big adventure.

I try to remind myself of this when they don't hit the math book as much as I would have liked one week, or when I look back over our month's activities and I don't find a whole lot of "schoolish" work sheets, reports or projects done. I'll fret for a while, then one of the kids will tell me something they picked up at co-op about a squid's eye or crab spider. Or I'll see my 7 year old in the bath tub experimenting with holding air under water in cups and toys. Or I'll catch my 10 year old lifting finger prints off bathroom fixtures with my make up brush, talcum powder, scotch tape and black construction paper. Or my teen will announce she's finished writing a novel.

It's not the amount of stuff that fills our folders that really gives me the satisfaction that they are learning-- at least, not for long. It is watching them function in their daily lives, interact with others, or holding conversations with them in the car. These little accomplishments creep up and smack me in the face, making me realize that something must be going right.

It makes me cringe when people say, "I can't homeschool, I have to work," or, "I can't work, I have to homeschool."

There was a time when, being an optimist, I felt compelled to jump into such a conversation and begin listing perspective ways to make it possible. My positive, "can-do" attitude, with a desire to find solutions to problems, however, was received as rude. People thought I was telling them how to live their lives. I'd get a lot of angry glares or frustrated comments shot back at me for doing so, being accused of trying to preach that everyone should homeschool, or accused of trying to put down non-working parents for not earning a living.

Neither case was my intention. The problem was a communication breakdown. I see a huge difference between can't and don't want to. For example, I can't be in two places at once- physical impossibility. But I don't want to work in an office from 9 to 5, for five days a week. I don't want to put my children in public schools.

Now if someone tells me, "I don't want to homeschool, at least not badly enough to change my work situation," or, "I don't need to work, and prefer not to work when homeschooling," I totally respect that! I'm not trying to convince the world they need to homeschool, or convince homeschooling parents that they need to be part of the work force to feel truly fulfilled or be useful.

I guess I'm just used to it, but I rarely have had the luxury to not work for long periods of time. In the 10 years I have been homeschooling my kids, I think I have spent a combined two years not working-- a few months on maternity leave, a few months while recouping from a car accident, and a few months after a lay-off. And, come to think of it, the only reason I was able to take those times off was because I was still being compensated by my job.

I have spent a few of those years working full time, and a few working part time. I've spent about 4 of those years working outside of the home, and about four working from home. I have tried all sorts of jobs and situations, always trying to make it more convenient.

What I have discovered is that it is possible to do both- if you really want to do both.

Every family and their situation is different, everyone has different feelings on the subject. If you work and aren't that keen on throwing in homeschooling, that's fine-- I'm not suggesting you do. If you homeschool and feel you can continue without working, good for you! I envy you! I wish I had the same option at this point in my life.

All I ask is that people stop suggesting the two are mutually exclusive-- because they are not, and it is a misleading attitude that discourages people who want to do both.

So this section is not for the purpose of telling working parents that they have no excuse not to homeschool, nor is it for the purpose of telling homeschooling parents that they have no excuse not to work.

Rather, it is for those who strongly desire to homeschool, and also strongly desire, or flat-out need, to earn a living. Here are some great articles to help you figure it out.

A lot of families who have been interested in homeschooling have been deterred by the thought that they might have to give up one income so that a parent can stay home full-time with the kids. While many of us would think one stay-at-home parent is the ideal situation, in reality, many of us simply have to work. The good news is, that doesn't mean you can't homeschool.

Read Full Article: Working and Homeschooling: You Can Do Both

The holy grail for many homeschooling parents is a work-at-home job. Setting your own hours, making extra money from the comfort of your kitchen or living room, and not having to worry about money going to babysitters or the bother of commuting seems too good to be true, but it isn't. There are may work-at-home opportunities, if you know where to look, and what you're getting into.

Read Full Article: Working at Home while Homeschooling

I am not a naturally neat and organized person... I'm more along the lines of controlled chaos. Record keeping was a particular challege for me. When I started homeschooling, I went overboard. Granted I was in New York State at the time, and they are pretty anal about paperwork. So I had all these different subject areas, keeping track of time, dates, activities, samples, resources, materials, even absence notes, which my local superintendent said were required (they weren't, actually). It was a headache to keep up with, and took more time than homeschooling itself-- and at the time, I only had one child of legal homeschooling age.

For a while, my record keeping was dropping the work the kids did at the end of every week or month into a box, and trying to sort through it at the end of the year. This proved equally frustrating.

I think the key to creating a managable system, however, is to go with your personal style. Do you like to journal on the pc? Then that's how you should keep your HSing records. Do you like to scrapbook? Then do it that way. Do you like to just sort, toss and store? Get yourself a file folder. If you like to jot down things in your day planner, do it with homeschooling.

You'll find some ideas about organization and record keeping in the article Homeschool Record Keeping: Creating a Managable System

It's not something I like to dwell on, but it seems to be such a major concern of people who don't homeschool that it warrents a mention. So for anyone reading this who thinks socialization is a problem for homeschoolers, please let me put your mind to rest: it's not.

Socialization is not something that starts with, or ends with school. It occurs everywhere, from the moment we are born and interact with others, till we stop when we die.

There is an entire world to socialize in outside of the school grounds: libraries, museums, community centers, zoos, aquariums, botanic gardens, parks, playgrounds, pools, outside in most neighborhoods every afternoon or week end, camps, recreation centers, scouts (boy, girl, earth, spiral, etc.), 4H clubs, church, sunday school, teen organizations, volunteer positions, chess clubs, music lessons, dance lessons, martial arts lessons, sports teams, co-ops, support groups... I could go on. But there is no shortage of places to take a child to socialize.



And the idea that anyone would find school a necessary socializing agent is, to me, frankly laughable... I don't know about you, but I attended school as a child. I also worked in schools as an adult. I have met plenty of kids who go to school who are wierd, awkward, uncomfortable in new situations, intimidated by authority, shy, withdrawn, overbearing, bullying, disrespectful, unsympathetic, lacking empathy, nerdy, geeky, and even criminal, to know that schools are no guarantee of positive, effective socialization.

I certainly have known a lot of students coming out of school who had to re-learn how to socialize in the real world, where bullies and teasing aren't tolerated and considered immature, where the cliques and the pecking orders don't exist, where the "us against them" mentality with older people or authority figures doesn't cut it. In other words, they've had to learn what homeschoolers have had to do all along-- get along in the world at large. The schools do not accuratly reflect the social norms outside of it's walls.

Now I'm not trying to argue that homeschooling is better than school for all kids... I'm saying pointing fingers at certain individuals and claiming they prove there is something wrong with the whole group is an unfair and inaccurate depiction. It works both ways, and you can see how flawed an argument it is when I turn it around on you and say, "I know some really socially deviant schooled kids, so schools fail to properly socialize." It is just plain intellectually dishonest.

For one thing, children, like adults, are so diverse; everyone has a different personality. One person's personality is simply no measure for the rest of a widespread group that represents over a million people nation-wide.

For another thing, when you're pointing to one person and deciding they are "weird" or "strange" and that somehow makes them bad, you are implying that because they are not like you, that they do not meet some arbitrary standard of yours, that there is something wrong with them. Guess what-- that's not the case. People are diverse. It takes all kinds Perhaps the problem is not that the other person is different, but that you are judgemental and narrow-minded?

I think most people hear "homeschooler" and automatically look for the negatives because they are already set in their mind that it is too different from what they are comfortable with to work. Some people just can't look at another group without seeing just a charicature in their minds of what that group really is because they have a hard time embracing and understanding anything different. This is usually born out of fear, or out of some kind of superiorty complex.

Fact is that studies have been done where child psychologists watched a group of children in a room through a one-way mirror. Half homeschooled, half were not. The psychologists couldn't tell from watching them which were which. And I am willing to bet that you couldn't do any better.

Another fact is that people who homeschool and who are close to homeschoolers-- even those who worried about socialization before they started-- usually realize pretty early on that it is a non-issue. The only people who really worry about homeschooling and raise all the alarms about socialization are the people who are:
1) already prejudiced against it
2) don't know many homeschoolers
3) have never homeschooled, they just "assume"

Anyone who wants to label homeschoolers "unsocialized" should put their money where their mouths are. Ask a local homeschool group or co-op if you can sit in and observe them. Don't go by a couple of people you've known or have had brief encounters with. If I did that by looking only at only a few "strange" or "withdrawn" schooled kids (and I have worked in schools; I know they are there), I could say that school kids were all unsocialized-- that wouldn't make it a true, fair or accurate depiction though.

It's so over-cited, just the mention of the dreaded "S" word is enough to make a homeschooling parent cringe. I must admit, however, that deep down I do have some serious concerns about socialization. It's something that has been nagging at me, and I don't feel I can brush it aside or turn the other way any longer.

The fact is, I am very concerned about the socialization of schooled kids...

Read Full Article: Socialization: A Homeschooling Parent's Concern