Michelle Conaway

Watch this video and I’m sure you will be inspired to reflect again on the reasons why you are homeschooling your kids.

Although I do homeschool my kids, I feel compelled to get involved with this movement. Why? Because the kids that are in school and being pushed and pulled in a million different directions will be adult members of our society very soon.

Even though I am pretty sure my kids will not go back to the public school system, I know that they will also be adult members of society in the near future. We will all be working together to solve problems in our world.

For this reason, I see that the problems facing public education are also my concerns and not just concerns for public school parents and administrators. Just because I have chosen the path of homeschooling does not mean that I can hide my head in the sand and think that public education does not affect me, my family and the world. Kids in public school systems will be the adults of tomorrow and I would like to hope that they have something to bring to the table. I would hope that they are being given the tools to make our world a better place.

This country is raising a lot of kids that don’t know how to think critically. They have learned to shove a lot of information into their heads, in a short amount of time, and then mind dump that information onto meaningless tests. Where is the true learning in this scenario?

They are not learning to problem solve or apply what they have “learned” in real world situations. They are not being allowed to be “whole” human beings. They are not being given a moment in the day to discover what they are interested in. They are not given time to absorb what they’ve learned, explore the material and apply it in everyday life.

This epidemic seems to be taking hold at dangerously young ages. I see parents scurrying around trying to get their three year olds in prestigious, very structured preschool programs. I actually heard a mom say, “They MUST get into a good preschool or they won’t be prepared for the rigors of kindergarten.” WHAT????

My twenty-four year old daughter works in one of these preschools. She comes home very frustrated that her two year olds are REQUIRED to learn sign language and sit for thirty and forty minutes at a time to HEAR NOT EXLORE concepts about colors, shapes and numbers. They are told “NO” a lot. They are given very little time to explore their world and discover concepts on their own or with guidance and participation from their relaxed teachers. They are given report cards for God’s sake! As a preschool teacher, my daughter is experiencing frustrated and stressed out two year olds.

Kids are being motivated by fear. They are terrified that if they don’t push their way through AP courses and lots and lots of extra-curriculars they will be failures in life.

I know an eleven year old girl that is taking five AP classes and never gets to come out and play anymore because her “future” is at stake. She didn’t want all the AP courses, but her parents insisted and she of course complied.  What choice does she have?

The other day she looked longingly at my boys outside playing at 4 p.m.  With a gazillion books in her hand, she marched dutifully in to study instead of enjoying the beautiful fall afternoon with her friends.  She had already completed her seven hour government imposed curricula at school but she wasn’t finished yet.  No time for play.  She has college to worry about. An eleven year old child.

Children do not come up with this ideology on their own. Children don’t come out of the womb being fearful about their futures.

Administrators and parents are caught up in an epidemic of scaring the living daylights out of our kids. Have we gotten so fearful about our own futures that we project that onto our kids? Are we raising kids that will be so afraid they don’t “know” the answer and therefore give up finding solutions? Are we raising kids to be so stressed out and frustrated and depressed that they crack at the age of thirty or heaven forbid, younger?

Kids need time to think and explore and discover what brings them joy. They need time to focus and develop their strengths, find coping skills and learn to maneuver through their weaknesses. A five year old certainly has no business worrying about his college options. And if he IS worrying about that, he is picking up on a paradigm his parents have latched onto and his school has embraced. A five year old is not naturally worried about his future at all. Not unless he has been given a reason to worry by the adults around him.

I feel compelled to explore solutions to this fear based epidemic plaguing our school systems. I’m not sure what action I will take but I do know that change must take place. All parents want to think that the future holds something wonderful for their children. That is why I homeschool. I imagine it’s why there has been so much growth in the homeschool community in the last few years. The education system is broken and it not only effects the kids that attend these systems, it affects us all.

We as homeschool parents have discovered what works for our kids and our families.  We have a unique voice because we have had the courage and made the time to explore what excites our children. We have discovered how our children learn. We have stepped away from a system that for whatever reason was not working for our kids and discovered what does work. How can we help with this movement towards a better education system thus a better world for us all?

We can offer our unique voice.  We can become involved.  I have tended in the past to have a somewhat “us (homeschoolers) against them (the public school system)” mentality.  But upon closer examination of my own paradigms, I have realized that if I want a better world for my kids and future generations, I must come to the table with my ideas and promote a system in which ALL kids, not just homeschooled kids have the advantage of living meaningful lives.  I must drop this “us against them” mentality and join the forces wanting and demanding change.

The homeschool community has much to offer in this arena. How better to give than to give of our voice?  To share our experiences as educators. To share the successes our children are having. We as homeschooling parents have a say in the types of learners that are being spit out by a broken educational system.  That education system is producing the problem solvers of tomorrow.

If you would like to find out how you can become involved with the Race To Nowhere movement, please click the link.

Even small actions can make big differences. What kind of world do we want to create? As Ghandi said, “Be the change you want to see in the world.”  We as homschoolers are “being” that change. United we can make a big difference not only in our children’s lives but in the world we are sending them into.

“You can teach a student a lesson for a day; but if you can teach him to learn by creating curiosity, he will continue the learning process as long as he lives.“ ~Clay P. Bedford

What does it mean to learn? How do we measure what and how much someone is learning? How do we learn and what are the best methods of teaching?

I have asked this of myself countless times since I started homeschooling. I have challenged myself to set aside everything I was ever taught about learning and come up with my own brand and definition of what learning truly is.

I’ll never forget my first day of homeschooling my two boys.  I had prepared well ahead and ordered all of the books I thought would constitute a great education for an elementary aged child.

I had a book for math, spelling, history, english/language arts, age appropriate literature, science books, work books. . . you get the idea.

I had gone to great pains to make our upstairs game room a bright, knowledge building resource.  Charts of every kind, maps, rulers, crayons, sissors and the like.

I was organized.  I was real organized.  There was a specified time for each subject.

Well, I’m sure you know where this is going.  It was a COMPLETE disaster.  We spent about six hours up there and by the end of it we were all crying.

I felt hopeless.  I felt like I couldn’t do it.  I felt like I just wasn’t cut out for this homeschooling stuff.

Right about that time, I crossed paths with a woman that had been homeschooling for a while. I told her my plight and that I didn’t easily give up on ANYTHING, but that I was very fearful that my kids would grow up to be dumb dumb’s if I homeschooled them.  I told her I just didn’t think I had it in me.

She laughed.  “Throw some legos in the floor, turn on some music and read a book to them while they play,” she said.

What????  You mean let them play?  That went against everything I was ever taught.

Learning was hard.  Learning was something you had to do first in order to do what you really wanted to do.  Learning was not fun.

Thus began the shift in my paradigm regarding learning.  Slowly, VERY slowly, I began to let go of the fear that I would be one of those careless moms that let their kids grow up to be just plain stupid.

This took more recalibrating in my own head than it did planning activities for the kids.

We would have a day where we would sit around talking and playing Legos. . .

then

I would freak and pull out the old school books and drill them for hours on reading and math skills.

You can guess which days were more successful.

Over a period of time, yes years, I finally started letting go of what I had learned about learning. I had been through the one size fits all public school system, you see, and had to overcome the doctrine of that mindset.

I was shocked and amazed to see how much my kids learned in regular old daily life, with no particular agenda.  I started asking them what they were interested in and we would pursue it with gusto.

They learned math at the grocery store and in the kitchen making their favorite cookies.

They learned reading sitting by a cozy fire, drinking hot chocolate while I read to them. Then they read to me.

We learned about science taking walks or better yet  “adventures” along the bayou that runs behind our house.

We learned history by visiting grandparents and talking about life.

My paradigm started shifting from:

LEARNING IS SOMETHING YOU MUST ENDURE

to

LIFE IS A SCHOOL

My kids learn so much simply by being who they are. The world has become our classroom and our creativity is revived and kicking. I have learned that we can build skills in everything, yes EVERYTHING we do in life.   We must remember to rely on our curiosity and not on some standards that someone else sets for us.

I trust my kids.  They have been learning since they were born and thankfully the love of learning is just growing stronger for them, as it is for me.

Each person has such unique gifts to give to the world and when encouraged, those gifts turn into tangible skills that can be used to build a well rounded beautiful life with plenty of time to stop and smell a rose. . .

That rose might just teach us something about life.

Any child who can spend an hour or two a day, or more if he wants, with adults that he likes, who are interested in the world and like to talk about it, will on most days learn far more from their talk than he would learn in a week of school.” ~ John Holt

If you’ve read my post titled  Life is a School you know that I started my homeschooling adventure entrenched in the traditional school ways.

Afterall, I myself, had gone through public school. My husband had survived it.  So had my twenty-four year old daughter. But I had decided to homeschool my two boys for various reasons and I really believed that they needed to study in every subject – every day.

We set out on the path with spelling, math, literature, science and  history books in hand. I quickly realized that the boys were very willing and able to buck the system.  And buck they did, leaving me perplexed about how I was going to survive one year, let alone an entire education with each of them.

Thus began my inquisition into how people learn and how best to teach two young boys. MY two boys to be exact.

If you’ve Googled Homeschooling, you already know how much information is out there. I was overwhelmed to say the least.  And not only that, we had already spent a small fortune on age appropriate material for each of the boys. I really wanted to utilize those materials if possible.

While searching, I came across a few articles about unschooling. I was intrigued. The articles talked about letting your kids follow their own interest. They talked about just spending time with your kids and talking. They talked about staying present with your kids and really trusting them to learn what they needed to learn and encouraging them in the ways they wanted to go.

I absolutely loved this idea. I wanted to implement it immediately.

I did. . .

But, I got scared. I saw the school kids in our neighborhood learning multiplication facts and doing difficult science projects.  They had hours of homework, after having been in school for seven hours. My kids were playing with blocks and Legos all day long.

I pulled out the old school books and quick.

I was surprised that they could do the “grade level” worksheets I put in front of them, even though we hadn’t had any formal lessons on the subject. They would dutifully appease my fear by sitting at the table, pencil to paper, heads hung low and miserable, gazing longingly at their Legos, wondering when I would let up.

After several of these episodes, I realized that in order for unschooling to work for our family, I was going to have to unschool myself. I was going to have to let go of being attached to HOW my kids learned and TRUST them to learn by being who they are. I was going to have to listen to them and ask them what they WANTED to learn.

After years of teetering back and forth between unschooling and die-hard school work I’ve learned to let go of expectations and realize that my kids have many interests and that when they are pursuing their interest they are learning – math, spelling, grammer, history, science and art. When they are following something they are interested in, they are much more motivated to learn what they need to learn in order to pursue it.

So, we play video and computer games, we draw, we read books, we take walks, we cook, we clean, we garden, we take care of grandparents, we play games, we live, learn and love life – together, without grades, without agendas, without trying to get anywhere other than where we are right now. And it is wonderful!

It is really preposterous to believe that a child will not learn from the world around him. It’s really the only way that anyone learns. We have been brainwashed to believe that the only way to learn is in school.

It was slow moving and very difficult for me to let go of my upbringing and have the courage to do something different. But the rewards have been great.

My kids are very well rounded and happy. They are excited to get up every day and are living a life far beyond what I ever imagined was possible.

My husband and I are raising thinkers.

And questioners.

And implementors.

They will always think for themselves and never be afraid of asking the big questions.They will trust themselves to pursue what is in their heart and ask what they need to ask to get there.

There are no F’s in our house. . .or A’s, B’s, C’s or D’s.

As Thomas Edison said after several tries at inventing the light bulb:

“I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” – Thomas Edison

That’s the attitude I want my kids to have.  And you can’t get THAT on a graded paper at school.

This is such an awesome technology.  I am by no means a “techie” but luckily my husband is and found Dropbox.

It is a “cloud” service where you can upload files to the cloud and it serves as a backup. You can also share files with friends and family.  Happy Day! No more emailing files back and forth. All you do is save your files to a Dropbox folder and you can share it with anyone you invite to that shared folder.

The service is free. There is an upgrade you can purchase but I have found that what they give away is sufficient for my needs.  My husband has purchased the upgrade. You can earn more free space by inviting friends to Dropbox. My husband talks more about Dropbox from a “techie” perspective at his Blog.

As far as schooling goes, this has been great.  I purchased a Unit study from Currclick, but wanted to use it with both of my kids.  They each have their own laptop and since the Unit Study is so internet intensive, I wanted them to be able to have a copy of their own.  Dropbox to the rescue!

I just saved the Unit Study to the Dropbox folder, invited my boys to Dropbox, (got more space for myself), and voilà!  They both had their own copy of our Unit Study right on their own computers.

I have also shared files with friends.  Everything from podcasts to writings I’ve done, to music.  As long as you save it in your shared Dropbox folder whoever you invite has access to it.

I am such a sissy when it comes to new technology, but honestly this is so easy and so worth it!  I highly recommend it to anyone that ever purchases downloadable material for their kids.  It makes it easier, quicker and allows everyone to be on the same page. Literally!