Shr Jya Ting: April 2010

Homeschooling...it's kind of a loaded subject. I've homeschooled for 3 years now and I've met those who believe public school is incompetent at best and evil at worst and homeschooling is the only way to truly educate kids and I've met those who believe homeschoolers are weirdos whose kids will grow up to be so socially retarded they will have no hope at a normal life. Of course they are both right as one can always find people at both ends of any spectrum. Of course they are also both wrong, very wrong. Most homeschoolers are very normal and well adjusted people and most public schoolers are very normal and well adjusted people. In my family we both homeschool and public school and are most certainly not well adjusted or normal people.

For quite a while I held a secret interest in homeschooling and an admiration for people who do it while at the same time considering that I did not have the guts to do it myself. That is, until we moved back from Taiwan and my oldest had a horrendous year in second grade that demolished his budding and childish self-esteem. Then I found I had plenty of guts and began homeschooling without reservation and in the face of quite a few who thought I was making a serious mistake. To be completely fair, I do not think the school system was to blame. Rune had lived in Taiwan from 3 to 7 years old. He had gone to 3 years of school in Taiwan. He was at a point where he was beginning to prefer Chinese to English. He was essentially, socially Taiwanese. However, we all blithely assumed, being American, he would have no troubles transitioning to American school and peers. In short, we were wrong. If you remember, he is also my worrier, an attribute that did not stand out in the Taiwanese culture but became a large problem here. So we started homeschooling.

I discovered quickly that I have no aptitude for homeschooling. I have no patience and essentially no desire to spend my whole morning teaching. And I have even less patience and desire to come up with things like science or art projects. If I ever tried it was always a disaster due to the toddlers and/or babies of the house considering the project an opportunity for their favorite pasttime-destruction. I rapidly gave up all pretense of being any good at homeschooling and left off "teaching" and all crafts or projects. This made Rune and I both much happier. We fell into a routine of Rune working alone and only coming to me if he had a question. When he was done I would check his work and he would correct it and we called it a day. In the beginning he naturally had a tendency to waste time and want to play and I would have to continually remind (threaten) him to keep working. Then he discovered that if he worked diligently he could be done well before lunch time and would therefore be free the rest of the day. We joined a homeschooling group that met once a week and enjoyed it a lot. It worked for us and after the first year he didn't want to go back to school and I felt he could still use some time off to be comfortable with himself before he tried public school again so we went a second year.

After the second year, I felt it was time to go back to school for several reasons. One, he was envious of his brother having friends and was beginning to miss social interactions with his peers. He didn't want to go back to school but I felt that it was not because he loved to be homeschooled but that he was afraid to "fail" at public school. I didn't want him not going to school because he was afraid of it and I really thought he had enough confidence now to do well. Second, I began to feel that academically he might suffer. He was doing well in all his workbooks and I rarely had to help him understand concepts, but (as I've mentioned) since I stink at homeschooling he definitely was lacking in things like science projects, arts and crafts, writing projects and field trips.

During this second year I began to notice that my second child was a slacker at school. He often forgot homework, his writing was atrocious and his reading below par. He blamed everything on either the teacher or me. We were supposed to keep track of everything for him and his lost homework was never his own fault. I thought how Rune worked so diligently on his own and perceived that Eliseo could benefit from the same lesson. So Rune went to school and Elie stayed home.

Hoo boy, is Elie a different child than his brother. It took him six months to learn what his brother learned in one. Namely, that if you just sit down and DO THE WORK, then it will get done and your mom will stop yelling at you and you can go play. Sure, I could have sat next to him all morning and by force of my presence he would have kept working and gotten done just fine. But I didn't want that. I wanted him to be self-reliant. I wanted him to stop thinking that his education is "the teacher's" responsibility and consider that he is the master of what he learns. He wasn't interested in that lesson and I will spare you the gory details of how I finally taught it to him, if, in fact, he has actually learned it. It remains that he now almost always finishes before noon and so he will be going back to public school after summer break.

Now, with just a month left of school I begin to reflect on what I've learned about my kids, myself and what I really think about homeschooling. This is what I've learned about myself. I am most emphatically not a good homeschooler. I don't enjoy it. I feel that if I devote as much attention as I should to the "student" that I run the risk of doing a disservice to my younger kids who, I feel, have a more legitimate claim to my attentions. I have interests-exercise, reading, studying Chinese, surfing the net etc-that I (selfishly) am not willing to relinquish in order to accompany my child all morning in his studies. Most importantly, I've learned that when it comes to teaching I am MUCH too hard on my kids. I expect them to be like myself, i.e. academically gifted and diligent. Academics was my forte. Getting A's was what I did better than almost anything else. Academics came relatively easily to me and I worked harder at it than other things because I loved to. It is satisfying to do something you are really good at and I expected my kids to have that same drive and satisfaction. Guess what, they don't. I think I may have influenced them to a certain degree and Rune may have some of it on his own but they still can't live up to my expectations. And it drives me bananas!!! I know my expectations are my own problem and I can't foist them off on my kids but it grates on me all morning to see Eliseo make mistakes that I know darn well he shouldn't be making and only makes because he chooses not to focus as diligently as I would. And (I can barely even write this) because he could care less if he gets a few problems wrong. He doesn't even do that badly, it's all me and my ridiculously high expectations that I have of myself and therefore think HE should have for HIMSELF. Really, it makes me want to scream and it's probably not fair of me to put either of us through this.

What I've learned about my kids. Rune is stronger than he thought he was. It took him much longer to find friends than he'd hoped and he had several months of feeling that he was the 'weird' kid at school, but he plodded along and didn't let it get him down and now he enjoys school a lot and has several friends. I really feel that the two years off from public school gave him the breather that he needed and the opportunity to define himself without the external pressure of peers. I don't believe every kid needs this, but he did. I've learned that Eliseo is basically Alvin the Chipmunk (this was pointed out by my sister and it is so true). He is often unfocused and can be supremely annoying and has a tendency to not listen to authority (not to be rebellious but just because he is too much interested in the fun he is having), but at the same time he is the guy everyone wants to be friends with because he is so much fun. He is the 'center' of our group of kids. If any of them have an accomplishment or some cool thing they want to share they ALL go to Eliseo first. He has proven to me that he can be diligent and has made great strides in taking charge of himself and not deferring responsibility to others.

What do I think about homeschooling? I've perused the books and my conclusion is that the very same information found in them is found in public school books. Kids have the same opportunity to learn the same information whether in homeschool or public school. What they do with that opportunity is the rub. It is undoubtedly easier for a child to slink into the corners of public school and not take advantage of this opportunity. Homeschool is an advantage in this respect. If, however, a child can be taught to teach himself then he can learn everything there is to learn from either setting. I know there are those that feel that homeschooling has the advantage of letting a child learn faster--if they are capable and so inclined. But, for myself, I don't feel that there is really any advantage in moving so far ahead of your peers. Most people will end up at the same point eventually. Kids that learn to read at two years old will not necessarily be better readers than their peers by sixth grade. They may even be surpassed by some that didn't learn to read until kindergarten because the other child may have an aptitude or an insatiable interest in reading. I lived in a culture where kids were routinely pushed to their limits and far surpassed American kids academically in grades 1-12. Interestingly, no one homeschools in Taiwan (that I know of) and yet the students there are very academically competent. This is because Taiwanese parents and teachers expect A LOT out of the students and the students, therefore, put A LOT of effort into their studies. I've known quite a few elementary students spend 4-6 hours a day on cram schools and homework after regular school was over. However, once they got into college they relaxed. They basically considered college to be a breeze, whereas Americans generally consider college to be where they are really challenged. The result being that by the end of college they are at the same point. I found Taiwanese professionals to be just as competent as Americans, not more or less. Skipping a few grades does not make a genius. A genius will come out in whatever setting they are placed. A child that is "bored" at school because it is so easy for them can be challenged at home in so many other ways by their parents. I wouldn't worry so much about skipping them ahead a grade in school, but rather encourage them with other challenges at home. Like learning a foreign language or reading a Russian author or discussing world affairs at dinner or playing a musical instrument or all of the above. Intelligence is so much more than being able to do 4th grade math in 3rd grade. I could be wrong about that, though.

Note: I forgot to mention that I do think a child may be so academically gifted that the pace of public school bores them and they will either start trouble making or will become known as the "know-it-all" and be disliked. Homeschool can be helpful to these kids because they could work at their own pace at home, finish as early as they pleased and then have free time for other pursuits.

I also feel that public school offers distinct advantages after elementary school. Not every parent can become expert in English, Spanish, Math, Chemistry, Physics, Sports, History, Computers etc. But in public school kids have an opportunity to be taught by teachers that specialize in these subjects and therefore have an opportunity to learn great things from them if they will take advantage of it. It seems easier to me to teach my kids to want to learn from those teachers and how to get the most from them rather than trying to become expert in every subject myself (which would be impossible anyway). Of course, if they are motivated enough, they can learn these things from books since the authors of the books are experts themselves. Which they may have to do anyway since, unfortunately, some teachers are as lame in the classroom as I am at home. Also, public school offers equipment that cannot be matched at home unless you are wealthy. Chemistry labs, physics labs, biology labs, access to expensive computer drafting and photography software etc. In short, I don't think I would attempt to homeschool past elementary school unless my child was having a really tough time at school or otherwise getting himself into trouble. Of course I will let my kids know that at the first whiff of illegal or morally reprehensible behavior (you know, like drugs or teenage sex) I will drag them out of school kicking and screaming and lock them in the house with a pile of homeschool books.

And thus, ends my epistle on homeschooling. I have purged my brain and feel much better.

Thursday, April 29, 2010

Homeschooling and what I've learned about myself

Thursday, April 15, 2010

The Garden