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This entry is dedicated to Marlamom and is partially in response to her comments. Smiles and hugs to you!
Before I had children, I knew we would homeschool. My husband and I were the best of friends even before we dated. I remember sitting in the lobby of a glamorous Chicago hotel and having a specific conversation with him about children. It was a cold Chicago evening and we had ducked into the lobby to escape the cold and finish our coffee. We weren't dating yet, but somehow the conversation turned to children and education. We talked about how children learn and how we wanted to one day have a different kind of family. We envisioned having a home that was a place of freedom and creativity - for the parents as well as the children. I had been homeschooled for the last two years of highschool, so I, then in college, had already glimpsed what "education" could be when you removed "school" from the equation. This evening is one we both can still recall with clarity. I think it was then that I began to see him as a future husband/father material. He says that he knew that he wanted me to be the mother of his children. But as this is a story of educating and not a romance - I will leave those details for another day. It would be years before we married and still more years before we had those children we were discussing. I have always had an interest in learning and how we learn and why. After we were married, my job was working with children. I did this for six years before our first child was born. I read alot of books. I read everything by John Taylor Gatto. I read John Holt. I read the Moore's. I read Mary Pride. I read from one end of the spectrum to the other. And then I started to read the books that were compiled from homeschoolers and what their days looked like - the puzzling thing was that noone's day seemed to look the same. I would read these amazing stories of children who were never offered a text book, but went to Harvard. I read how they were building models, winning contests, building businesses, creating art and writing books. I would read and think about how I could do all that. It seemed so surreal. It seemed like an educational Utopia. It seemed like an impossible dream. Then, my first child was born. Overnight, my life changed and I realized that no book could ever compare with the experience of mothering a real live breathing child. I joined an unschooler support group when my daughter was still a toddler. Those were fun days. We went to hear David Albert speak. He was inspirational. But what stood out the most was when I was introduced to him. My husband works odd shifts, so I was there with just my daughter. She was an older two at the time. We came in and David went down on one knee in front of her. He greeted her like a real person, not in a cute sing-song voice, but like any other person there. He asked about her day and her interests. I was surprised when she answered him (she was shy of strangers). Then he saw her eyes go to the violin he had sitting on a stand. She didn't say a word, but her eyes told the story. "Would you like to hold it?" She seemed shocked that he asked or had even noticed her interest. He patiently spent time letting her hold it and showed her a few things about it. His talk that night was about his book, "And the Skylark Sings with Me", but I think it was a lesson just to meet him and to see how he treated people, even the youngest among us. I mention this because out outlook on our children has more to do with our homeschooling than any other factor. Regardless of our curriculum or philosophy of education, our outlook on the children and on the process of education is the spirit of what we do as homeschoolers. As my daughter got older, we read her stacks of books, we went to museums and plays, we took her to the ballet, we gave her the music lessons she asked for and she took an interest in gymnastics. We used some texts and some workbooks and some curriculum. But, most of all we listened to our children and valued their input and jumped on their interest with both feet. Time marched on an we had another child. We ran into health hurdles. We got busy and harried. And then one day I was helping my daughter get ready for a history presentation with our local homeschool support group. She had chosen Laura Ingalls Wilder for her report. She was wearing the costume I made, she had built a Lincoln log house and furnished it with paper dolls of the Ingalls family. She had made a rag doll and named it Charlotte. She had hand sewn the buttons on herself, as well as the red yarn mouth. She had stuffed it with filling and sat on my lap as I helped her sew up the body. She had written a report all on her own. She stood up in front of the parents and children gathered and did a wonderful job! This was her kindergarten year. It hit me that day that we had done it - or a piece of it anyway. We were like a page in the "homeschooling days" books. Here was my daugher, immersed in her topic, delighted with learning, happy and engaged with her life. She could read, she could write well enough to make her own poster. She had her own interests. She was being "EDUCATED". And somehow, it was happening, that long ago dream that my husband and I had for our children. We were living and learning together. In some ways, it could be hard, but mostly, it was just life. The journey of homeschooling (or home education) is hard to define, it is hard to tell you just how we do it. That is because it will be as different in your home as your child is from mine. Home education involves risk. You are daring to step out and think for yourself. You are daring to let your children have a radical freedom. They will also have a radical opportunity. Imagine where all of these children, who are free to learn and study and explore in their own unique ways can take us? We have come along way in this country from the early days of freedom and the pioneer spirit. I am excited to discover that it has been here all along, for those that have the courage to take the risk. |
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