The other day, I was thinking about homeschooling. Scratch that last sentence, it makes it sound like I don’t think about it all that often, in reality, there are times it seems like it dominates my thoughts.
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I never meant to homeschool
When I was student teaching, I distinctly remember having lunch with the other teachers, and they were talking about a student who had joined part of their way through 5th grade and was behind. They were fairly mocking of homeschooling and brought up all the ways this child was socially awkward, in particular, I remember them commenting, “He doesn’t even know how to play Heads Up, Seven Up.”
This seemed end of the world to me at 21. I have no clue why, but all I could think of was all the things they’d miss out on if they were homeschooled.
Then I taught in public school. I saw all of the politics that go on outside of the classroom, I saw how little respect teachers are given, and how we don’t teach the children.
We teach rules and standards, but we don’t teach children. We make laws like “No Child Left Behind,” and more children are left behind every day. We take away recess and wonder why kids can’t sit still.
And I saw how much of my classroom time was taken up with pointless stuff because a law said I had to teach it. All thoughts of teaching history or science or any of those other classes were pushed out so we could prepare for the test and have the required 2.5 hours of reading instruction every day.
I didn’t want that for my children, so I started thinking and praying, and we decided to homeschool.
I lose my lesson plans at least 3 times a week
In case anyone thinks you have to be super organized to homeschool, let me dispel that myth. It makes homeschooling easier, but it’s not required. There have been some weeks I print off 5 copies of my Illuminations schedule, I am immensely glad my schedule is saved on a computer (PS: I did a similar thing when teaching, except mine was a word document, and I used the same blue clipboard I use to hold my lesson plans now, only now I have an entire house to lose my clipboard in).
I once had to rebuy my curriculum because I put it down in the wrong place and couldn’t find it for two weeks. Of course, once I bought the new curriculum, I found the old one, so I was able to return it.
I read way too much, and am trying to adjust my expectations for my kids
I loved to read as a kid. Once I moved to Texas in the 5th grade, I devoured a book a day because that was my way of coping with the move. I work to remember my kids are not me, and do not read as much as I do. It’s a real struggle because I keep thinking they should be able to finish the book in 1/4 of the time they are completing it.
When I was a junior in college, my Mom was going to get married, and so we were moving. I packed up about 12 paper boxes of books I’d managed to fit onto my 8-foot-tall bookcase I kept in my room. The books were double and triple stacked, and everyone was amazed at how many books I’d stuffed in that bookcase. Now Jeff and I have about 10 bookcases in our gameroom upstairs. We both have about 100 books we want the kids to read before they graduate from high school.
The poor kids will be constantly told, “Okay, you read that, now read this!”
Future Ticia 2025 here, recently in the Lorehaven Guild (a Discord server I’m on to talk books) I linked my planned list of books for the kids to read in high school and they were amazed at my book list, and I was thinking, “It’s not that many, it was only one book a month during the school year.” But we had a fun discussion about the books we read during their high school years.
I collected LEGOS as a kid and now use them for homeschooling
Every year for Christmas, my Mom would give my brother a HUGE LEGO set, and I would get a Breyer horse (which I loved, so I’m not complaining). Halfway through building the set, he would lose interest, and I would start to build the set. So I built the pirate ship, the train set, and the Technic race car.
Now I use LEGOS for our homeschool history. Just the other day I pulled them out and we learned all about Magellan circumnavigating the globe.
I don’t concentrate well, and it affects my homeschooling
There are times my boys concentrate better than I do and can be better at staying on track than me. I frequently lose my train of thought in the middle of a sentence as I see something else and start to think about that.
I set routines in place to help me, because otherwise, I would get nothing done. Simple routines are a lifesaver for people with ADHD. I’m finally admitting and adding in the H, previously I’d said I have ADD, but after several friends said, “No, Ticia, you are ADHD, you can’t sit still,” I’ll admit to it. Apparently, not everyone taps their foot like crazy as they sit and type (it’s very distracting to Jeff as he tries to write).
Future Ticia 2025 will add in a common comment from my daughter is “How were you not diagnosed,” to which I respond, “I had decent grades and I didn’t get in trouble.” I did get an official diagnosis in my 40s.
I’m a huge nerd, and I use that for homeschooling
If you have something you love, you need to add that to your homeschooling, be it writing, a TV show, a book series, or movies; you need to add that in, it’s part of who you are.
We use Star Trek to discuss history and politics. It’s a great way to discuss issues you wouldn’t have thought to discuss. The same goes for superhero movies. They make great fodder for discussing complex moral issues, and why we live our lives the way we do.
Our role-playing games have become writing assignments. They’ve also been a great opportunity to practice math because there’s a lot of adding and subtracting.
And finally, I’m left-handed and that’s made me a bit more open to unusual learning choices I don’t like busy work
I’m sure you’re wondering what left-handed has to do with learning choices. To cope with my hand smearing the paper, I came up with all sorts of ways for taking notes and for writing in general. I frequently came up with alternative ways of doing stuff the teacher barely approved of (I was always an enigma to teachers. I knew most of the answers and would participate, but I wouldn’t complete busy work and spent half of class reading).
As a senior, I had a teacher who expected us to learn WordPerfect, his definition of democracy. This was a regular quiz he would have in the class, and I refused. I failed that quiz and missed that heavily weighted question on the test because flat memorizing his definition does not mean I have learned the subject. It means I’ve learned how to be a parrot.
Because of that class and a few others, I’m open to my kids guiding their learning as long as they are learning the material. I’m also willing to give a lot more leeway in assignments if the child can articulate WHY they want to change the assignment (Princess, in particular, uses this leeway very effectively).
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