A Place in the Community

"What do you want to be when you grow up?" As adults, we often quip that we're still working on the answer to this question. Discussions about career are polarized: Will you do what you love and become a starving artist? Sell out and make big bucks? Or are you one of the lucky few who can do what you love and the money will follow?

Love and money and passion and money chase each other in that framework. People just meeting one another may ask, "What do you do?" And some of us cringe because we don't want to be defined by what we do for money, or we're not doing anything for money, or the thing we do for money isn't what we wish it to be. Some questioners might be networking, or posturing, or judging others by how much money they make. But I suspect that many of us persist in asking the job question because we want to learn a person's interests. And we are blinded by a pervasive (middle class?) myth that a person's paid work is indicative of their interests. I suggest asking the more genuine question: What are your interests?

We ask children what they want to be when they grow up because they are working on their education. We're thinking of vocations and professions that require a specific education, and wondering if they've narrowed anything down. 'Cause it's interesting to explore your interests, but you will have to grow up and pay bills one day. Most of you, anyway.

Children are also asked their favorite subject in school, I suppose as a tactic used in sussing out their interests. The timeline varies by family and community, but at some point the child gets old enough for the adults to turn up the pressure and feed them into the same high-stakes career mill we've entered ourselves: Will your paid work fulfill your passions?

If the answer is yes, it can be quite an exhilarating time. Unless and until you hit some kind of emptiness in trading your passion for money. If the answer is no, life can feel devastating: you are one of those failures giving less than gleaming answers at parties. Worse, if only you had arranged things better, you too could be happily spending all day getting paid to do what you love.

May I suggest an alternative? When our children are old enough to begin thinking outside their immediate families, let's teach them that they will need to find a place in the community. Yes, there are practical considerations: your household has to earn enough money for food and bills and meeting your financial goals, whatever they may be. You will need to do enough work for the community to be paid "enough." Look at your skills and ask what you can do. It doesn't need to be like finding a life partner: one career to fill your heart and satisfy you all the days of your life. That's probably a little sick anyway; that kind of devotion to career seems outsized.

Your place in the community will shift over time. Your place is not only your paid work, but defined by all the relationships you have. When you go out into the world, who are you in relationship to others? As you note this, remember that work doesn't need to be paid to be real. It's the interactions with other people that bring our half-formed dreams into reality. Be a part of the community.

Loose Tooth T

I read a great blog post today about the growing movement of people who are homeschooling their preschoolers. The emphasis of the post is that young children learn best through play, and we adults would do well to let them do it. No need for flashcards, scripted lesson plans, or worksheets. There can be a lot of pressure to do early academics, and it can be hard for geeky parents like me to resist it. So I welcome any reminder that play, and usually free play, is the best way for young children to learn about their world.

I focus on setting up our home so that it is a rich environment (like having a special art corner). We read, we play games, we go out in the world. We listen to songs and dance around. We even watch TV sometimes (gasp! a perfect mom "no-no"). I do all these things, but because of what I know about the importance of free play and the lure of early academics, I avoid lessons and direct instruction.

I am starting to see how fun it is to watch my daughter learn academic type things in her own time, as a natural corollary to the way we spend our day. For example, we have been reading abridged Winnie the Pooh stories, which are divided into tiny "chapters." Of course, each chapter is numbered. Bug is starting to make a game of talking about and identifying the number at the beginning of each chapter. Cool! I wasn't even thinking of that as a "learning opportunity," which is what helps to keep it fun and keep me relaxed. If I'm not counting on her to Learn Something, I'm not going to be pushy or slightly tense. I can focus on our relationship and her needs. All this is part of my grand desire to let learning be fun. Not make it fun. It already is fun, when you stay out of the way. Let it be.

Approaching learning this way, I am collecting little "how it happened" stories. Here's how letter recognition happened for Ladybug:

Our fridge, with "Chicka Chicka" magnets

Over Christmas, Ladybug and Daddy took a trip together, and on that trip Daddy bought the classic book Chicka Chicka Boom Boom. It's a rhyming alphabet book where the letters each climb a tree, fall down in a crazy pile, and one by one climb up again. The letters are distinguished by the various bumps and bruises they suffer when they tumble out of the tree. Ladybug's favorite letter is "loose tooth t." For a while, Daddy read Chicka Chicka Boom Boom every night, and the two of them played seek and find the letter. Suddenly, when I was reading various other books to Bug during the day, she was captivated by the presence of loose tooth t on many pages. A few times she even held down a page I was trying to turn, so she could point out and just ponder the fact that loose tooth t was in this book too. I felt like I was revealing an ancient secret when I said, "You'll start to see that all the letters are in all the books!" I guess it is an ancient secret, but we'll get to the Phoenicians later.

One day in particular, Ladybug was captivate by the word "OUT" written in large type. It was in a book about a bat (a follow up since she so loved Stellaluna). She kept flipping back to the "out" page and recognizing each of the letters, and saying "out" and not really reading, but still taking some step towards understanding that the story was coming from this code. What's memorable to me is her intensity. She had a glimpse of what that "out" word stood for and was so determined to study it more, to understand. I told my husband that I was glad he was there that day to see it happen, because I would have thought I was making it up otherwise.

Teaching reading can invoke so much stress. Should you take a phonics or whole-language approach? Do you need to be an expert to teach it? What if you mess it up? In all the homeschooling guides I read, there is a special section devoted to easing parents' worries about READING. I have always believed that I wouldn't need to worry about this too much, that the child of two bookworm parents who is lovingly read to will also blossom into reading. Am I excited by these first little signs? Of course. But I promise, at least for now: no flash cards, no scripted lesson plans, no worksheets.

Science as a Skill

When I wrote the post How to Talk About What I Don't Like, I really wanted to get around to saying, "Here's what I want to do differently." I am creating a label for posts called To Do Differently. The "What I Don't Like" post is full of me understanding that schools aren't all bad, and teachers are mostly good. I guess I feel the need to put that out there before I launch a series of posts about wanting to be different from school. But, I can't shy away from the fact that I'm not planning on homeschooling for the sake of recreating a school environment at home. Wish we could call it "Whole World Learning" instead of homeschooling. So, here's my first thought about a subject to approach in a non-traditional way.

I hear people talking about the "skills" subjects, and they mean language arts and math. These build cumulatively and give you the skills you need to study other subjects. Then they talk about the "content" subjects, like history and science. The idea is that these content subjects are full of ideas to learn and explore, but you won't get too far in them if you can't read and compute.

I am taken with the idea of studying science as a set of skills that leads to understanding content. Real science, I think, is not memorizing Newton's laws, but asking why. Why do the rock and the feather fall the way that they do? What can we infer from our observations? What would prove our hypothesis wrong? This type of analysis and critical thinking is certainly a skill that grows with practice. I think it's very challenging to commit to teach this way. We can pay lip service to it, and ultimately just lead students through a rather scripted discussion that concludes where the grownups have decided it needs to. And that's not half bad, but wouldn't it be better to give the student the time and space to really find out for themselves? It seems that homeschooling is ideal for providing this luxury of intellectual freedom.

I have found a science curriculum developed with these principles called Building Foundations of Scientific Understanding. The author's introduction helped me to formulate my ideas about teaching science. I look at a lot of curricula, but there are few that I buy years before I'll be needing them. In fact, this is the only elementary age curriculum I've purchased. It was just so affordable and intriguing. It consists of four strands (parentheticals are mine):
A. Nature of Matter (Chemistry)
B. Life Science (Biology)
C. Physical Science (Physics)
D. Earth and Space Science (Geology, Astronomy)

Wow. An elementary science curriculum that not only goes beyond nature study, but leads to comprehending the foundational principles of the major scientific fields. This is achieved using the scientific method, not fill-in-the-blanks and multiple choice worksheets. That's something I'd like to do differently.

Three Ways I Think About Education

 When I encounter an idea in education, it seems that I will eventually approach it from each of three angles below. Here's a sample idea that weighs on my thoughts:

"Teaching kids to ask questions and think about problems before receiving the solution encourages more non-linear, divergent and creative thinking, to produce better innovators, problem-solvers, and problem-finders."
The educational value of creative disobedience 

1. They are failing to do this in schools, and I find this lack so offensive that I would be unhappy sending my child to school.

2. How will I succeed on this point when arranging for my daughter's education?

3. How could we change our institutions so that this great idea is implemented for more children?

How to Talk about What I Don't Like

I've been thinking to myself that I want to start blogging about all the ideas I have to educate my family differently from a standard public school. If I'm going to take on the task, I should at least write out my ideas so I can better reflect on them. I want to be clear with myself (and anyone interested in reading along) what my goals are, and why I would make such an unorthodox choice as to homeschool my kids.

My hesitation here is that this involves some criticism of school. Not everyone homeschools because of a dissatisfaction with public or private schools. For many families it's simply a way of life that works well, without reference to a school. I do believe our family will grow into that way of life, but I also have some negative things to say about what goes on in many schools. This is a very political topic and always has been. Socrates was found guilty of corrupting the minds of the youth of Athens. We get testy when it comes to teaching our children.

I cannot speak about every school in the country, first because I don't have the experience, but second because they are so varied that it's useless to try to talk about them as if they were one institution. Additionally, the last time I attended a public school was in 1998. A few things have changed. The changes I know about, such as increased standardized testing, do not impress me. My point is that there are many things I just don't know. But I still need a way to talk about my philosophy and my concerns.

I have friends and relatives who work hard in public schools. I know so many good teachers, and I respect their experience and the work that they do. I had good teachers in school, people who left such a strong impression on me that I think back to them decades later. But I also know teachers who I privately think aren't that bright and I wouldn't want teaching my kids. I sat in a restaurant next to two student teachers whining about how much math they had to learn (10th grade level) to teach elementary kids. It was all I could do to restrain myself. What kind of model of learning are those people providing? What kid deserves the sentence of learning math from a teacher who sees little value in the subject? 

If my only concern were the occasional lame teacher, I would probably send my children to school. I think most teachers are probably great; I certainly learned from many great people. But I firmly believe that they are good people working in a bad system. My biggest concern for my kids' education is the preservation of a love of learning for its own sake. Grades, busywork, teaching to the middle, teaching to the test, cutting P.E. then punishing kids for wiggling...what else can we come up with to make learning a more godawful experience?

Then there's "good schools." These are the ones in the nice neighborhoods with the good funding from hefty real estate taxes. People buy homes in these neighborhoods so their kids can attend the "good schools." This must be a happy experience for enough families because the schools gain that "good" reputation. However, I still object to the emphasis placed on letter grades, overscheduling of extracurriculars, standardized testing, and general sense that you must get into Harvard to have a meaningful life.

There probably are schools that would not offend my idea of an education that is exciting and respectful to the student. However, I believe they cost a lot of money that, at this point, I would rather save for my daughter's college tuition.

We may all find that she does well in a school setting when she is a little older. Some very religious homeschoolers are comfortable sending their children to high school, because by then the students' value systems are in place. My thoughts are very similar, but the values I want to protect are a joy in learning and inquiry. I want to promote doing your best work regardless of a letter assigned to it. I believe young children shouldn't have to swim upstream for a healthy education. So I'm starting at home.