Feb. 22, 2008 - Deschooling
Ariella is in the midst of deschooling. Both of us are. It could take up to a year, according to some of the books that I read. Her questions "What can I do?", "Should I color the duck yellow or orange?", and "Can I have recess now?" all have to do with what she found to expect at school. In the fall, I felt almost like I was in competition with her first grade teacher. I was constantly being challenged with "That's not how Miss so-and-so did it".
We've changed a lot since we started and we're still adjusting and trying to find what works for us. I'm figuring once we hit the point of finding what works for us, then we can enjoy all the luxuries of homeschooling. We've tried school at home, required daily work, and weekly work where Ariella chose what days to do which subjects. At one point, we came up with a schedule so that Ariella could physically see that she got a recess and if she got done her work, she could have free time and lots of it. After a week, we gave up on that. It still felt too much like school to me and I needed the flexibility that homeschooling is supposed to provide. For a while I let the girls sleep in (thinking that why should they be forced to get up when they don't have to go anywhere), then I decided that they should at least be up and being productive. Now, they both get up on their own around 7:30 or 8, most of the time well rested.
Ariella, especially, is used to being told exactly how to do things, to sit down, to be quiet, to draw a straight line, to color the sky blue...School does this. I remember not wanting to raise my hand to risk looking and sounding dumb and I remember doing things just like the teacher wanted to get a good grade (even in college, I wrote papers based on what I knew the professor wanted to hear). In school, no one is allowed to think outside the box.
I'm just thankful that I started homeschooling when I did, because if it's taking this long to deschool after only 3 years of traditional schooling, I would think it would take longer is a child had been in school longer.
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