A girl, ploughing through the classics with a sword

CZ was never, as a child, a huge fan of ancient history. And in our case, Sonlight and Veritas Press didn't help. By the time she was eleven, she announced, "If I have to read one more book about a twelve-year-old orphaned boy lost in the midst of historical events, I'm going to scream."

Nonetheless, we're studying ancient history this year, at CZ's request. I think she thought it was going to be more about Nordic sagas and less about Babylonians and Greeks, but she's holding up her end of the bargain. As a result, CZ recently concluded, "I now know way more than I ever wanted to about how to cleave someone in half with a sword."

She's also learned that the scariest place to be in the ancient world was inside a palace, especially if you were a royal first born son with an ambitious uncle. Christendom, flawed as it is, can't help but look a little better.

But every now and then I give CZ a break and allow her to insert another type of book into her schedule. During Christmas vacation, for instance, she chose Musicophilia. Most recently, she decided to tackle the earliest Icelandic saga. But the earliest sagas take place in the 900s A.D. and are pagan, so they feel like ancient history anyway.

So this week CZ has been curled up on her chair reading about a bunch of people who drink a lot and whose names start with Thor-. Needless to say, there has been bloodshed. But I'm surprised at how often CZ breaks out into a chuckle. On Thursday, there was a chuckle that was a little louder than most, so I asked what it was about. She read aloud:

"One night the king had gone to bed, and so had Thorir and Thorolf, and Thorfinn and Thorvald were still up. Eyvind and Alf came and sat down with them and made merry, drinking from the same horn at first, then in pairs. Eyvind and Thorvald drank together from one horn, and Alf and Thorfinn from the other. As the night wore on they started cheating over the drinking, and a quarrel broke out that ended in abuse. Eyvind leapt to his feet, drew his short-sword and stabbed Thorvald, delivering a wound that was more than enough to kill him. Then the king's men and Thorir's men both leapt to their feet, but none of them was armed because they were in a sacred temple, and people broke up the fighting among those who were the most furious.

Nothing else of note happened that night."

So she's developing a black sense of humor. Perhaps it's good that she waited until she was sixteen to read this sort of thing after all.

Another side benefit of CZ not having liked ancient history as a child is that she is still fairly innocent of many of the plots to the Greek stories (she mostly knows the myths), and she's now reading them for the first time with a fresh eye and in their original forms. One evening two weeks ago, for instance, she was ploughing through Grene's translation of Oedipus the King. She was very quiet for a long time, and then:

"He did what?!"

That was definitely worth the wait.

Un guazzabuglio

Un guazzabuglio is a mishmash. It's currently one of Bob's favorite Italian words, and it also describes our life lately:

• Math and physics classes are in full swing in our home two days a week. Everyone loves Mr. Tenney! Sometimes I sit and listen in with my knitting, and I overhear geometric series word problems in which fairies shoot down space aliens. No one blinks an eye.
• We're trying to implement block scheduling. This was CZ's idea. I see her point: Who's got the time to be switching subjects every hour? She's always liked to go slowly and have plenty of time for music practice. Some subjects don't have a day of their own, though, so we have to fit them in edgewise.
• As usual, we don't even quite follow our own homeschooling plans. Ancient history seems to be sliding towards medieval, and Italian...Yikes! Our tutor Paola got really busy and hasn't been coming, so CZ and I have been sitting down to work out direct and indirect object pronouns and the confusing things they do to past participles on our own. We don't have an answer book. Oh, and CZ ordered a Finnish textbook with her own money and is studying that.
• Never, ever poke a clogged moka pot.
• We are going to Milan for Thanksgiving. Go figure!
• I am going to be with my mom next week while she has cancer surgery. They're hoping they found it early. I just want to see my mom.
• CZ is concert mistress in her orchestra again. This is its own reward, because she gets cool solos ;-). She has two competitions in November and I've-forgotten-how-many recitals and practice performances leading up to those. And she gets to play in the Redeemer orchestra this Christmas!

So, if I don't post for a while, I'm probably doing one of the above (with the exception of poking the moka pot). I'll be back as soon as I can.

Meanwhile, here are some recent illustrations of our guazzabuglio life.

We made lunch yesterday from farfalle, parsley, and the last red pepper of the season. I include it here because we decided that it looked Christmas-y!

This is trig, written in Elvish script. I think the moral of the story is: If you have nerdish tendencies, run with them!

I'm trying to finish this scarf for Knit Together, a ministry of Hope for New York. It's the third thing I've ever knit in my life, and I'm finally learning how to correct my own mistakes. I like to work on this because it gives me an excuse to listen in on math, physics, and orchestra rehearsals.

"Our" tree is turning! I look forward to this event every fall.

A recent sunset from the Svalbard webcam. Because we live in a city, we supplement our diet with vicarious nature scenes.

Homeschooling post

I have two more Italy posts to do, but life intervenes. This is a post about our upcoming academic year.

There's been a pile of books waxing and waning on our living room radiator for a month now. I've been ordering textbooks and classics, and putting things into the pile or taking them out as I see fit.

Here's our plan:

I'm holding classes in my home this year, for math and physics, with our favorite math tutor, Steven Tenney. He will teach physics using Hewitt's Conceptual Physics as his main text, supplemented with math problems from other texts. They'll also be doing some combination of algebra and precalculus. I really don't know! And that doesn't bother me, because I know they'll be learning. I just hope I can get enough compatible students to keep the cost down.

Music continues to be the passion that eats all free time. We'll continue with the conservatory program on Saturdays, with private lessons, orchestra, chamber, composition, ear-training and theory, and possibly music history. CZ continues to read everything she can find about Sibelius. Plus she will likely be entering at least two competitions, one of which requires that we make another recording next week. Yikes!

Oh, and did I mention that she found a piano in our building basement and paid the super (with the money she gets from giving lessons) to help her haul it up on the elevator? It's now in her 7' x 13' (one one side, shorter on the other) bedroom.

Italian. Having finished Rosetta Stone through Level 3, CZ will continue to have la bella lingua shoved down her throat by her well-meaning, yet tyrannical parents, and also by one really nice tutor who will, eventually, come back from Italy. We miss you, Paola!

The truth of the matter is that CZ knows way more Italian that she wants to admit, and her accent is better than ours, so it would be a real shame not to continue, even if she has stuck Post-It Notes to every object in her room in Finnish right now.

Sports. (I hate the phrase/acronym P.E.) Cycling and skiing, I hope! And maybe ice-skating.

You see what I'm leaving out, don't you? History and literature. CZ will read something, somehow. I'm not too worried about that, even with all the music. But I wasn't too sure about the history. In all honesty, we rather dropped the ball last year, which made me doubt my usual intuition that it will all get done somehow if we get into a productive routine.

For couple of weeks, I went into something of a tailspin and did something that I never do: I planned out a history curriculum on a spreadsheet--two lecture series coordinated with readings and a history spine and some written responses. Lots of people do that, and if it works well, fine. But it typically doesn't work well for us. We needed some structure, but not this much.

Finally I found what seems to be a workable solution from what, to me, seems an unlikely source--The Well-Trained Mind. I used to fight against this book when CZ was small, partly because I thought it was too much for a reluctant writer. Or maybe it was just the word "Trained." Or those schedules, which Ms. Bauer herself says the publishers made her put in there.

But at any rate, I happened to pull this book down from the shelf a week or two ago to look at the book list for ancient history, and while I was at it, I re-read the plan. It looked so doable. It was basically just reading and taking intelligent notes, and then having discussions. And I really do like Ms. Bauer's new history series for high schoolers/adults.

I do have one reservation, and it's that I'm not sure CZ wants to stick with ancient history and literature (her original choice) for the whole year. Nordic sagas beckon, as do the Russians. At any rate, the plan isn't written in stone yet. And if we use Ms. Bauer's method, it doesn't much matter whether we substitute some books for others, as long as she gets the idea of reading carefully, analyzing and discussing, and writing, for a couple of hours each day. Yes, I know Ms. Bauer would rather we be reading in chronological order, but if we do so more or less, I'm not terribly worried about it.

Or are we, as usual, veering off towards unschooling?

A quick note on homeschooling

As the school year draws to an end, I'd like to write briefly about two things: the end of CZ's year, and our (very schematic) planning for next year.

On the convergence of projects at the end of this year:

I am really glad to see how hard CZ is working.  She is writing her first real research paper, and just finished the rough draft.  It's a good first draft.

The New York Public Library's hold system unfortunately can't even come close to keeping pace with a three-week research paper.  Most of the books she needs have now been stuck in limbo for two weeks between the Performing Arts branch and our local one. So she may end up having to do the entire paper from online material.  I have no idea whether it's now typical to write a high school research paper this way or not.  At any rate, it seems doable.

CZ keeps finding interesting side topic material, and actually seems eager to do more research even after the paper is finished, and perhaps organize her findings into other papers. She's found a mystery in her topic that's worthy of a novel--a lost symphony!

This eagerness to research and write is a big change from even a year ago.  It should be a sign of hope for other homeschooling moms whose children didn't enjoy writing when they were younger.  I didn't push structured writing (other than a few regrettable and short-lived episodes) when CZ was younger, so this is her first experience with it, at an age when she has more stamina.  We've led a family life full of discussion and ideas, however, so it hasn't been that hard to pick up an expository format now that she needs it.  

Also, since CZ also has four performances and several subjects that all need call for study right now, I told her she could put geometry on hold for two weeks.  We both want to finish math soon, but in homeschooling we do have the happy option of rearranging things when necessary. And she could do all the work, but it wouldn't be done as well and she wouldn't learn as much from it.  Putting math on hold allows for a better-written paper, SAT II study, attention to assigned reading from outside classes, and violin practice.  

I remember getting to college and thinking that the workload there was much more manageable than high school because I only had three classes to prepare for at any one time, rather than seven. I had more time to make connections in each class. This is multam non multa in action.

On planning for next year:

Now that CZ has proved she can do rigorous work and keep up the pace of outside classes, I'm willing, and in fact eager, to take a more creative approach next year.  I haven't figured out every detail, partly because I'm looking for other people to share classes with, but I'm generally willing to give CZ more leeway in the content of the coursework now that she knows what rigorous work looks like. It's not that she didn't approve of what she took this year (in fact, she did want to take every class), but next year we might be able to do more of the same kinds of work where she chooses the books and topics herself and does more of the work on her own. I hope we do this.

Also, I had a really helpful meeting yesterday with a local homeschooling mom whose son is a freshman in a very selective college this year.  We had never really talked in detail about homeschooling before, but she was quite gracious in sharing her experiences. She sat down at her computer and showed me how her son's transcript worked, what sort of portfolio and application package they had put together, and how she had collected letters of recommendation from various teachers and activity leaders he had worked with through high school.  She even lent me some college search books.

While I have no doubt that this young man's success in being admitted to ivy-league and similar level colleges was mostly due to his phenomenal test scores, coursework, and dedication to a few worthwhile activities, I was also pleased to see that the family was able to put together a package that allowed their son's creativity to shine through. The writing (for the course descriptions, much of it his own) was almost whimsical in places.  I have no idea what CZ will do for college yet, but I found this meeting to be very encouraging, and I'm thankful that there are moms out there who've been through this already and are willing to share their experiences in a relaxed, encouraging way.  

Homeschooling Wordles

Someone asked me how to do homeschooling paperwork the other day, so I pulled out my notebook full of quarterly reports. Quarterly reports are what New Yorkers have to turn in to the district to show that they're homeschooling all the required subjects. I have ten years worth of them now. I'm not a fan of regulation, but they really do provide a nice record of what we've done over the years.

After my friend left, I started looking at them and noticing recurring themes. Remembering an applet I'd seen recently, I went to Wordle and plugged in some of the most common words on the reports that I knew represented CZ's genuine interests. And voila, it generated the image above!

I don't know how to make a big version of the Wordle yet, but you can click on the image to enlarge it. Otherwise, it might be sort of hard to see the individual words. When you create your own Wordles, you can play around with fonts and color schemes, and make words bigger or smaller according to how many times you enter them. You can also omit words. CZ tried entering in her entire ninth grade learning journal, and that was interesting, too! (See below. I omitted a few words for confidentiality.) Maybe you'd like to do one for yourself or for your own children. Have fun!

Encouragement for high school

Today I'd like to expand just a little on something I wrote in my last post:

In our family, our best learning happens when we allow time for ideas and projects to "ferment," when we make connections between subjects, or allow one project to serve in several areas. But most especially, the best learning is a collaboration between the curiosity of the child and the wisdom and experience of the parent. It's best when not overcomplicated by trying to shoehorn a preset curriculum or available class into your present area of readiness. (Sometimes the curriculum or class is a good fit, and that's fine.) These principles hold true, at different levels, during the entire time a child lives at home, and hopefully beyond.

If you've homeschooled, you know what questions/comments homeschoolers get asked more than any others. They are, "Are you going to do this through high school?" and "I don't have the patience to homeschool!"

They're legitimate concerns, of course. They're asked by people who are trying to do right by their children. And both are relevant to what I wrote in my post.

I'd like to address the last comment first, because I got a good answer to this one early on in my homeschooling journey. It was, "Of course you're not patient! But homeschooling forces a person to develop patience." That answer was an encouragement to me then, in 1997, and it's still an encouragement to me now.

But mostly I'd like to talk about the high school issue, because it encompasses both concerns. If there's one thing that most parents are frightened of, it's raising teens. So teaching them naturally seems even more frightening. And yes, there are teens with serious emotional challenges who need special help. I'm not qualified to talk to those parents; I can only pray for you. But having a teen isn't automatically a reason to throw up your hands. And homeschooling a teen (or several of them, so I've heard) can be extremely rewarding. All I'd like to do is encourage those parents who are scared before they start. If you are intrigued by the idea of homeschooling high school, but you are surrounded by people who question your judgment, take heart!

The number one thing to remember when homeschooling any child is to put the relationship first. You've probably heard that said about homeschooling before, but the reason I'm repeating it about high school is that people tend to panic when they see those college requirements and tests looming. I know--I've done it. And I believe in excellence. But there are many creative ways to send a message of excellence to your teen. Any job can be well done, and for some teens, cleaning their rooms or being considerate to a difficult sibling is really a more difficult task than scoring well on a test.

We do talk about test prep and requirements, even make a game of them, but I try not to get lopsided about it. I want my daughter to know her own priorities and stick by them. I also want her to be able to work hard at things she puts her mind to, and make hard decisions if necessary. I do want her to give all the subjects a chance, but more for their own sakes more than for college admission. I don't want to send a message that I'm cowed by other people's expectations or comparing her with other teens, because a child will internalize that message. It's really a form of peer pressure.

Here's one thing that homeschooling has done for our relationship: Since CZ and I live with each other day in and day out, we have to get along. Obviously I'm trying to teach good character, but as the grownup, I have to take on the greater burden of "bearing with." And honestly, I'll say it's easier to get along than it used to be when she eight to eleven or so. Perhaps we've come to some understandings, and that makes it easier.

We're both a bit reserved, so I've had to develop a style of talking about conflicts that fits our family. I've known other families who are more comfortable with a therapeutic style of relating, and could wear their faith more on their sleeve, and sometimes (especially when I was younger) I've even thought we should be more like that. But two guidelines serve our family well: We joke a lot, and we try not to make too big a deal of things. That latter one is harder, because we're all oldest children. But still, it's a good rule.

(And about that faith thing. It doesn't mean that we don't have it. It means more that we don't want to wear out certain words by over-using them. I'm convinced that this is an introverted thing.)

So how does any of this apply to learning? I'll give one nitty gritty example. During the past couple of weeks, CZ and I spent a lot of time writing a paper for her literature class. (We're taking it for accountability.) It was supposed to be a simple persuasive essay, and I suppose the teacher wouldn't have cared whether it was on whether chocolate ice cream is better than vanilla, so long as it had supporting points. But CZ wanted to write about the composer Sibelius. And she wanted to research, even though this wasn't a research paper.

So, I set out to advocate for a solution that would fulfill the requirement, and yet still allow her to write about something that interested her. First of all, that meant coming up with a persuasive thesis. (After three drafts, she finally narrowed it down to persuading the reader that Sibelius' stylistic toolkit included much more than the popular Finlandia's catchy and triumphant themes.) Then it meant that she researched, while I kept her on task. ("How exactly does this quote support your thesis?") Finally it meant that I proofed and proofed, but I tried make sure that she understood the reasons for my comments, and that as much of the final language as possible was hers. A good editor does as much.

I'm rather glad we don't have the paper back yet before I write this to color my response, because I'm really proud of what she wrote! We both learned a lot, and on a deep level, about Sibelius. And CZ learned that she could analyze music and make a logical argument even on an emotional subject!

And here's the beautiful thing about it: I'm remembering all those days when CZ was six or seven and every time she had to write anything, she dug the pencil into the table and rolled the paper up into a ball. And I'd wonder whether I'd ever be able to marry her charmingly metaphorical way of speaking with the ability to put any words on paper (or screen). I'm also remembering the days when she rejected one canned curriculum after another and I would take dictation on her endless ideas instead, just to help her realize she could write. (At eight or so, she could go on for an hour straight about an idea for a business--which of course needed funding right that minute!) I'm remembering that she's still not a natural at spelling and handwriting, though she's improved a lot.

But that doesn't mean she can't write! The improvement this year alone has been dramatic. She's always had a "voice," but I wasn't always sure that we could organize it or articulate it in a way that would serve her well as an adult. I think I'm just starting to see that coming together. And that, in my mind, is what high school is all about.

Some ways in which food is a metaphor for learning

Lately I've been reading a lot of about food and farming. I started an omnibus post about some of my thoughts yesterday, but it was just all too much at once. So I decided to start over with a more limited aspect of the organic/local metaphor for now by comparing it to homeschooling. That was a big part of my original post.

Michael Pollan says:

"...food is a powerful metaphor for a great many of the values to which people feel globalization poses a threat." (p. 255 of The Omnivore's Dilemma*)

I see lots of connections between the writings of small farmers and those of the most thoughtful homeschoolers. The more I read, the more I realize that this isn't just a coincidence. Underneath is a paradigm shift. Especially during the past one hundred years, our society has been rapturous about the benefits of technology, but now we are seeing its limits, and what has been lost in the trade. And some people are looking for ways to get back some of what was lost.

So wise people are asking: To what extent should we employ technology? Can we find a proper balance by way of organizations, or through consumer purchases of goods produced and marketed by others, or does it go deeper than that?

Wendell Berry thinks it goes deeper:

"...the responsible consumer must also be in some way a producer." (p. 24)

One way we can think about homeschooling is that we produce our own learning. You don't have to read the likes of Wendell Berry, Joel Salatin, or Gene Lodgson for long to realize that production in the old sense was a cooperative process with nature. And so is homeschooling. And that's the underlying theme beneath all the comparisons that follow. But remember, these metaphors are meant in a spirit of inspiration, not legalism! Take them for what they're worth.

***

Real learning isn't so far removed from the concept of real food. A fast food meal now and then won't kill you, nor will cramming for a test, but they are short-term solutions.

KINDLY USE

Teaching a child is a matter of "kindly use," as Wendell Berry puts it.

"Kindly use depends on intimate knowledge, the most sensitive responsiveness and responsibility. As knowledge (hence, use) is generalized, essential values are destroyed. As the householder evolves into a consumer, the farm evolves into a factory--with results that are potentially calamitous for both." (p. 31 of Berry)

Or as Pollan put it:

"The point isn't to get ever more interventionist and efficient about farming, but to become more attuned to its nature. By being sensitive to nature you can take a more subtle and harmonious approach." (p.188 of Pollan)

And:

"Ranching is a very simple business. The really hard part is keeping it simple." (Brad Adams, Florida rancher, also from p. 188 of Pollan.)

"The efficiencies of natural systems flow from complexity and interdependence." (about p. 214 of Pollan)

These are all also true of homeschooling. In our family, our best learning happens when we allow time for ideas and projects to "ferment," when we make connections between subjects, or allow one project to serve in several areas. But most especially, the best learning is a collaboration between the curiosity of the child and the wisdom and experience of the parent. It's best when not overcomplicated by trying to shoehorn a preset curriculum or available class into your present area of readiness. (Sometimes the curriculum or class is a good fit, and that's fine.) These principles hold true, at different levels, during the entire time a child lives at home, and hopefully beyond.

Note that small farming is not without its own sort of efficiency. But it's an efficiency of interdependence, not an efficiency of quantity.

Pollan notes that animals in CAFOs (feedlots) exhibit learned helplessness. Just like some children in poor schools!

CONSUMER SOLUTIONS

The following point could be controversial, but I at least want to put it out there: The homeschooling movement and the organic food movement have been co-opted in similar ways. As homeschooling becomes more popular, we tend to be happy enough with better consumer solutions instead of producing our own. I do shop at Whole Foods sometimes, and I do buy curriculum and participate in outside classes, but I try to ask myself first, "Do we really need this?" and if so,"Is it really a good fit?"

I promise, I do understand why people are so quick to opt for ready-made solutions. Not only is it convenient when we get busy, but we question the wisdom of going off on our own to the point where our children are left alone, even if we don't mind being left alone ourselves. I know; I've done it myself! We crave community, even when it feels more like networking at times. And modern life has so many pressures already. So I'm not advocating a legalistic approach to education or family life. We each have to be convinced in our own mind. (Romans 14) I just happen to be one of those people who finds lots of joy in doing many things myself. And I'm having fun with this metaphor, because I do think it's useful.

Sometimes what we don't do is even more important than what we do. Sometimes we don't buy anything at all. We make it ourselves. One easy thing to make yourself is your own entertainment. Just about anyone can do that, with a little practice. You just have to be willing to stare down your own boredom.

CERTIFICATION

Big organic farming (with certification) reminds me of homeschooling under the auspices of the NYCDoE. The paperwork I turn in to the city each quarter bears little relation to what I do everyday, which is much harder. Half the time a regulation is beside the point. Sometimes it's counter productive. At best, the purpose of regulation is to protect people from worst case scenarios. But aren't there better ways to do that? What regulation really does is to obscure via abstraction.

"The law enacted may be a good one, and the enforcers all honest and effective; even so, the consumer will understand that one result of his effort has been to increase the number of people of whom he must beware." (Berry, p. 23)

I like the fact that there's an article called, "Can an Organic Twinkie Be Certified?" (It's by Joan Dye Gussow, 1996.) That encapsulates the paradigm difference quite well!

Organizations work at cross purposes to their stated missions. Wendell Berry says this. John Taylor Gatto says this. John Holt says this. If this many people who regularly challenge my thinking all say the same thing, I should listen.

Berry:

"[Institutions'] solutions necessarily fail to solve the problems to which they are addressed because, by definition, they cannot consider the real causes. The only real, practical, hope-giving way to remedy the fragmentation that is the disease of the modern spirit is a small and humble way..." (p.23)

WISDOM AND CHARACTER

Farming, and homeschooling, are really going to require several generations to regain the wisdom that's been lost.

So homeschooling, as with local food, is a form of individual responsibility that ultimately has the potential to rebuild community. Where to start? As always, with character.

"...these public absurdities are, and can be, no more than the aggregate result of private absurdities; the corruption of community has its source in the corruption of character." (Berry, p. 19)

And character starts with a deeper faith that is tested in action. And mercy.

*All quotes, unless noted otherwise, are from The Omnivore's Dilemma (in the case of Pollan) orThe Unsettling of America (in the case of Berry).

Spread the news--stay home!

I love this Bravewriter post so much that I'm not only going to put it in my shared items sidebar, I'm going to make a post about it, however brief.

Back in the early days of home education, I read a long treatise on why parents ought to stay home, in the house, with their kids. The writer talked about rhythms and routines, modeling all kinds of life skills (plumbing and baking, creating a shopping list and sewing on buttons, filling the bird feeders and using the drill). She urged long sessions of reading aloud and leaving time for dress-ups and Legos, lying on a couch bored, face painting and knitting. She emphasized how busy-ness leads to a habit of breaking concentration, of not deeply investing in any one moment, project, or playtime because inside the child knows that that activity is about to be interrupted by another trip out the door.

With little kids, I had no trouble taking the “stay-at-home” advice to heart, though. We had one vehicle that I didn’t get to drive on week days, we didn’t own a TV, and the World Wide Web hadn’t been invented. So we stayed in, or we played on the front steps. But the pace of life, even with small kids, was slow. There were hours wasted on diaper changes, walks around the cul-de-sac, making muffins and taking naps. We read tons of picture books (took a laundry basket to the library and loaded up) and made play-doh from scratch.

And then, the world sped up. Cell phones, cable TV, Netflix (DVDs sent right to your door!), the Internet, two cars! The next thing I knew, the options of what I could do in and outside my tiny condominium with or for my kids flooded my life. Some of you only know homeschooling within that context of high-speed, 24/7 connections to All the Great Things to Do Every Day! You see and hear ads, you join email lists, you get calls from friends at any time of day. And of course, homeschooling itself has exploded in popularity in the last 20 years so there are more ways to spend your time and money than ever before (and plenty of advice that if you don’t do X, your child won’t be ready for Y!).

If you choose to homeschool, let’s put the home before school. What is home exactly?

If you choose to homeschool, let's put the home before school. That's exactly what I am trying to convey in almost every post in my blog, however inarticulately. As we've started high school, the home part of homeschooling feels beleaguered like never before. Sometimes I feel like our family is in a small dingey in an open sea. Actually, we're in a small apartment in the middle of a competitive city, but the effect is the same. Despite feeling threatened at times by the prevailing culture, I pray that I'll be able to provide some sense of refuge, some sense of space and leisure, some sense of home. And I find that more often that not, that sense of refuge comes not from doing more, but from doing less. It's harder to do less! But it's worth it.

Spread the news.

Fall leaves nature journal

The leaves are finally starting to turn riot in Central Park. Watching them turn always reminds me of a tradition C.Z. and I had in our early days of homeschooling. Anyone could think of it, no doubt, but what I like about it is that though it is extremely simple, it isn't dumbed down or silly in the least. A child (or even an adult) can do as much or as little with it as he likes, and it's a good exercise in observation. I think Charlotte Mason would approve!

• The procedure is simple enough. You take a walk in the park and gather a few leaves. Of course, C.Z. preferred to gather a few hundred, but after a while I'd say, "Well, okay, but you'll have to carry them, and...hmm, do you suppose maybe we should leave a few for the other children?" (Young New Yorkers have to learn very early to share with a few million people.) So, we tried to come home with only our very favorites.

These was one of the last leaf pages we did, after C.Z. had already learned to mix colors pretty well.

• When you get home, have the pencils, watercolors, field guides and paper ready. Children soon learn that leaves shrivel overnight, and parents soon get busy with other things, like dinner.

• Place a leaf on a piece of paper. Sometimes we used sketch pad paper, but often enough, we used printer paper, because that's what we had. After a while, we learned to arrange several leaves on the paper to create a composition. Trace the leaf's outline with a pencil.

• Get out the colors and try to imitate what's going on in the leaf. Here, it might help to know basic color mixing. Not only do blue and yellow make green, but they look better mixed loosely on the paper than dutifully colored with a straight green pencil. Brown leaves usually have a lot of bright yellow shining through. And a touch of contrasting color, like red or blue, often makes the shadows look interesting, but too much muddies the color. But don't be afraid to mess up. Experimenting is half the fun, and the beauty of it is, you can always get more leaves and paper!

• Sometimes we used more pencils, sometimes more watercolor, and sometimes we used both. And sometimes we looked at D'Aulaire books for color-mixing ideas. I feel fairly confident suggesting that you can do this, because C.Z. doesn't consider herself to be a particularly good draftsman, but tracing the leaves gave her just the right amount of encouragement to do the rest.

• After you've done all that observation through tracing and coloring, identify the leaf. Many leaves are easy enough to identify with a field guide--the maples, the oaks, and gingkos, for instance. But we eventually came across a few that stumped us, like the ailanthus that hung over our old building's back patio. Eventually we learned to bring home a bit of the seed pod from the park if it was available, or to take a good look at the tree's bark. Since we were usually in a public park, and at any rate shared all our trees with others, we only took leaves that were on the ground, and we didn't shave off any bark. So we had to be very observant on the spot.

To be honest, we're still not 100% sure this is an ailanthus leaf, but we learned a lot about shapes and pods while trying to identify a branch that fell onto our building's patio!

• Then we wrote the name of the leaf below the drawing. C.Z. was not enthusiastic on the subject of penmanship or spelling as a young child, so sometimes this was the hardest part, but it did give her practice using something real, and to this day we know what some of these leaves are only because she took the trouble to label them the day we brought them home.

• When we finished, we simply slipped the pages into a small notebook with plastic sleeves. We added a few pages each year for three or four years. In the end, we had a nice little leaf nature journal, and lots of happy memories of crunching and sloshing (depending on the weather) through leaves on fall days in the park.

The opening page to C.Z.'s old leaf notebook

(You can tell she already had strong opinions about the colors of her letters.)

I'm sure New York City isn't the first place most people think of when they consider nature education. (For one thing, kids aren't even allowed to climb the trees, and even the prospect of jumping in a pile of leaves can be unsavory considering some of the trash one finds underneath.) And I've heard more than one New Yorker proudly claim to have no interest in nature whatsoever. But our family has always liked nature, and the challenge of finding nature in New York City rather invigorated us than defeated us. We've always been a little contrary, but really, it's not nearly so much the pleasure of being obstinate that drives us outdoors as the smell of wet leaves, and the jewel-like contrast of bright red maple leaves with their gray surroundings of fog, looming park rocks, and sodden sky.

School year so far...

One skill C.Z. has picked up this year: How to read on a moving train.

So far this has been the school year of logistics. Honestly, I'd rather be doing something cozier, and I still think we can get there. But a mother's job is also to provide her children with the skills they'll need as adults, and right now I'm trying to help C.Z. to budget her time wisely, so as to open up those (very important!) opportunities for adventure, serendipity, and yes, even coziness.

During the past two or three weeks, I'd noticed that C.Z. is having to spend the whole of Sunday afternoon catching up with assignments instead of family. So yesterday I added up her workload for each day, and consistently came up with over seven hours per day, including the music school day. I hadn't realized this before because she had been doing her own schedule on iCal, but I made my own spreadsheet so that I could see it better. Our first job was to get a true picture of the situation, so we could figure out what to do about it.

Now, I know that some people would say that the typical high school student is supposed to study more than seven hours each day, that of course they study on Sunday, and that we need to be realistic. But (respectfully) our family is not going for the typical Manhattan-style achiever described in The Organization Kid. We are realistically admitting that we can't do everything well. And that since the default direction of our culture is towards over-scheduling, it takes active planning to avoid it. So here are my first draft thoughts (feel free to add to them):

A lot (even most) of C.Z.'s current busyness is violin-related (even injury-related), but a good bit is also related to outside academic classes. And some of our busyness was quite unpredictable, as busyness often is. I'm so glad we said no to some perfectly good classes and activities that we were considering! Even so, I have identified one class that we could possibly drop if necessary. Also, there are some very creative books and activities that I'd love to add to the mix for depth, but I know from experience that adding them now would just compound the logistical emphasis, which would defeat the point.

Also, despite the fact that this fall's schedule is not my ideal one, there are some decidedly good things that are coming out of it. They are, in fact, just the kinds of things I was hoping for when we allowed more outside classes, and more formal classes, this year. Here are a few:

• C.Z. has found that she can write, and even likes to write. She has a kind, but firm, and really intelligent literature teacher, who "velocitizes" the kids, as my husband would say. Each essay gets just a little longer, until they're writing full length expository papers with confidence.

• She's learned to read on the subway. For years, C.Z. said she couldn't concentrate well-enough to read on the train, but I think necessity was the mother of a new skill, and now she enjoys it. Last week she even read Great Expectations while "surfing," because the train was so crowded she couldn't find a bar to hold on to! This is a good development, because we've been spending a lot of time on trains lately.

• She seems to find textbook biology easy. I was somewhat surprised, as I didn't ever think we were doing what I'd call "enough" science. It was mostly an informal hobby of ours, and mostly hands on. I'd expected her to know, say, bird species already, but not polysaccharide chains. Where did that come from?

• After a long hiatus, C.Z. is taking music composition again! (Even though she has very little time to work on composition. But she can take things she's already done for critique, which is a good start.) I like to see her taking composition, because I think it's such a strong interest, and it's not always easy to find opportunities for it.

• Generally, C.Z. seems up to the challenge of this year, even though the work is taking a lot of time. It helps, no doubt, that she chose the classes. And it shows me that informal education in the early years can lead to success in formal work once a child is old enough to want to.

I'm still looking for a bit of cozy learning this year, but we'll find it somehow. Ideally, what I'd like to see is that C.Z. realizes she can work hard, sees the wonderful opportunity for leisure (in the true sense) that the next four or so years hold, and goes beyond the presently necessary emphasis on logistics into the realm of very real, connected, and deep learning.

Henry Adams on the Prussian educational system

Still reading The Education of Henry Adams. Last night I ran across these interesting passages, written about Adam's stay, as a recent Harvard grad, in Berlin. As context, Adams had gone to Germany to study law, but quickly realized that he was in over his head in the university, so he enrolled in a regular "high school" school with twelve and thirteen-year-olds to learn the language instead:

Bismarck himself was then struggling to begin a career against the inertia of the German system. The condition of Germany was a scandal and nuisance to every earnest German, all whose energies were turned to reforming it from top to bottom; and Adams walked into a great public school to get educated, at precisely the time when the Germans wanted most to get rid of the education they were forced to follow...

...one could at least say in defence of the German school that it was neither very brutal nor very immoral. The head-master was excellent in his Prussian way, and the other instructors were not worse then in other schools; it was their system that struck the systemless American with horror. The arbitrary training given to the memory was stupefying; the strain that the memory endured was a form of torture; and the feats that the boys performed, without complaint, were pitiable. No other faculty than the memory seemed to be recognized. Least of all was any use made of reason, either analytic, synthetic, or dogmatic. The German government did not encourage reasoning.

All State education is a sort of dynamo machine for polarizing the popular mind; for turning and holding its lines of force in the direction supposed to be most effective for State purposes. The German machine was terribly efficient. Its effect on the children was pathetic...

They never breathed fresh air; they had never heard of a playground; in all Berlin not a cubic inch of oxygen was admitted in winter into an inhabited building; in the school every room was tightly closed and had no ventilation; the air was foul beyond all decency but when the American opened a window in the five minutes between hours, he violated he rules and was invariably rebuked. As long as cold weather lasted, the windows were shut. If the boys had a holiday, they were apt to be taken on long tramps in the Thiergarten or elsewhere, always ending in over-fatigue, tobacco-smoke, sausage, and beer. With this, they were required to prepare daily lessons that would have quickly broken down strong men of a healthy habit, and which they could learn only because their minds were morbid. The German university had seemed a failure, but the German high school was something very near and indictable nuisance.

Adams seems to have had an amazing knack for being in the right place at the right time, possibly because he had the fortune (for good or ill) to be born into a very influential family. At any rate, he seems to be describing, first hand, the very educational system that Bostonians Horace Mann and Adams's own relative, Governor of Massachusetts Edward Everett, had just introduced into the United States as its first public school system. (Reading this, I'm not sure they succeeded entirely, but they did make some headway.) John Taylor Gatto and others, of course, have had plenty to say about the Prussian system elsewhere, but I thought it worth sharing this vivid first hand account.

Planning for next year

That silence was the sound of C.Z. and me finishing up the year and planning the next one.  But I thought I should post today because there will be another silence soon while we have visitors and then go visit family.  Despite the constant rain and cool temperatures, summer is almost here.

Here's what next year looks like so far.  It's C.Z.'s first year of high school:

Once a week outside classes:

Literature and writing class at a local tutoring place

Biology class at the same

Geometry using Jacobs, with a weekly enrichment session at our co-op

Saturday all-day music program with violin lesson, orchestra, chamber, theory and ear-training

Possible tutors:

Italian (with the rest of the family, because Bob wants one) or Latin (with one other girl)

Writing (We've been having the co-op math tutor, who is a published playwright, talk with C.Z. once per week about creative writing.)

At home:  

History, which may be a Teaching Company series, or just free reading, if she's motivated. Possibly some grammar brush up. The usual side interests in music, trips to museums, cooking, and other reading.

Other:  

This summer we're going to be doing some volunteering for Audubon that may extend into fall. We have recently attended a knitting circle that contributes to a local homeless shelter. And there may be other volunteer opportunities that may arise later in the year.

We'll probably buy into in our local support group's discount ski package again next winter.  C.Z. wants to ice skate, too.

***

Now, you're likely to notice what I noticed when we were making this plan, and you may possibly even have the same reaction:  This isn't homeschooling!  It's private tutoring run amok!  What about unschooling?  What about the simple life?

Honestly, it's not what I would have chosen, either.  But it's what C.Z. chose when I allowed her to decide, with the possible exception of the foreign language. And after hearing her reasons, I saw maturity in them. She's at an age where it's important for her to feel competent. She's never liked textbook learning or formal writing, but she wants to make sure that she can at least do that. The implication is that once she goes through the paces, she can take off on her own.

I suspect that the music program has something to do with it, too. Once you enroll in one outside program, it tends to take priority, because it has its own deadlines. And she loves her orchestra and chamber programs. So she felt she needed something more formal in academics to make sure the other subjects got done.  

One of my friends whose daughter is doing a similar schedule said, "So, how does it feel to be an administrator this year?"  I knew that she was half-joking, and I laughed along with the joke, but the other half of me felt slightly deflated.  I don't think of myself as an administrator.  For one thing, I'm not very good at it!  But also, my reasons for homeschooling have a lot more to do with promoting freedom and intimacy than in making sure things get done.  

By outsourcing, are we losing those good qualities of freedom and intimacy?  I don't think so. For one thing, next year's schedule isn't really so different from this year's.  We're going to do fewer co-op classes, and it wasn't like Latin was going so well under my tutelage anyway.  In fact, it was something of a bone of contention.  

C.Z. is positively excited about the literature class.  I think she sees it as a chance to have something interesting to discuss with other homeschoolers her age.  

And besides, in the indomitable spirit of the long-time homeschooler, I can't help looking up a few interesting supplemental books and ordering them.  I'll be reading along, and discussing, because I just can't resist!  I can spend my time with C.Z. doing the fun stuff.  She can do the administration. I find that very appropriate.  C.Z needs to be responsible for some kind of outside work that she finds important, but both of us still want the intimacy of a strong family life.

Of course, knowing the way homeschooling goes, this may all change by Christmas, but for now, I'm going into the summer feeling hopeful about the coming year.  And one of the things I'm feeling hopeful about is that once she tries this "outside" sort of year, she'll feel more confident about working on her own at home as well.  And even if she continues this way, it will have been her choice.

Natural learning through writing

First, let's start with some inspiring quotes...

Julie Bogart's Bravewriter blog is one of many sources that has helped me keep homeschooling in perspective. Jody recently redirected to me to a set of posts from 2007 on Julie's "One thing" concept. They've been such a help that I'd like to elaborate a little on how some quotes from the series apply to our family's learning. I'd come to these conclusions independently before I read the series, but it always gives me a nice feeling of confirmation when someone so articulately states something I was working out by experience.

The first quote is about how deep interests led to well-rounded learning in Julie's home:

"By allowing my kids to wallow in Greek mythology for two years, they discovered a way into history that helped them imagine other times and places...'One thing' implies trusting that the immersion in one topic that really interests will lead to all the learning necessary."

The second is a set of three short pointers about writing:

"We start with the writer, not writing forms or skills...

Fluency comes before competence...

Direct experience adds depth and insight to writing..."

And the third quote is about the academic stress that creeps up on homeschooling parents in junior high. I've been thinking a lot about that this year, as the rubber meets the road: 

"Cozy learning...is that wonderful intersection of real studies combined with natural lifstyle...

By junior high, the coziness starts to disappear...This odd notion called, 'now it really counts' moves in and takes the learner hostage...panic and doubt ensue.

[The moms of junior high students] take a look at the college admissions list, remember their own high school days and immediately lost all the love of learning they've cultivated for the last eight years."

After this third quote, Julie described how she dealt with anxiety creep in her own family.  I thought Julie's story was particularly interesting because she jettisoned a program that would probably have been the envy of many academically-oriented homeschooling parents.  Why? Because her teens were unhappy while carrying it out. 

Since I started writing this post (I've actually tried and ditched several attempts over that past two weeks), I've discovered that Julie has added a new "One Thing" post entitled, "How do you fit it all in, one thing at a time?"  This new one is well worth reading, too, because it explains that "One thing" at a time is how adults learn naturally.  She describes the exhaustion that can result from years of school.  

"The freedom to think and do and be what you want are intoxicating and produce the best conditions for learning. You find yourself motivated by your own hunger, not by someone controlling what you do.  And in fact, there is brain research that supports your adult style of learning.  Apparently our brains do best when we have the opportunity to focus intently, allowing the greatest interconnection of ideas to occur simultaneously...and sequentially."

And now, let's move to the application...

C.Z. has been writing a short story lately.  I really hope she keeps at it, because it's one of the longest and most ambitious pieces of writing she's ever attempted.  It's a sort of dystopian comedy about an enormous school, set in the latter part of this century. The descriptive details seem natural even though the subject is conjectural, and the story is quirky in a particularly C.Z sort of way.  

Yesterday she got to a point where she realized that in order to describe the school accurately, she had to work out plausible details about its size, shape, and design.  She started sketching, quickly ran into some design problems she had to work out, and started doing some research.  

Before the hour was out, she was making calculations based on the number of students currently enrolled in U.S. high schools, recommended square footage per student, typical library sizes and number of volumes (because she doesn't like Kindle and thinks it won't succeed), cafeteria sizes, plausible numbers of floors, typical high-rise building infrastructure, and logistical problems that might be presented by such a large building.  She even found an architectural model for the type of building she was trying to design (partly Hartsfield Airport, but also a hotel that I remembered from childhood because it fit her description so well). The result of all this research was a set of ridiculously large numbers, but they were consciously ridiculous in a way that bolstered the point of the story. When you read the result, the casual way she mentions the large numbers involved in the building makes the story funnier.  

In the process of figuring out this building, C.Z. started doing square footage calculations based on typical room sizes, subtracting out the outer classrooms from the inner ones the way one subtracts a frame from the area of a picture.  There were conversions from miles (!) to feet, sometimes in three dimensions. At one point, she made a calculation error, but didn't realize it for quite some time, by which point it had affected several other calculations. In the end, she fixed the problem by changing the building's trolley system to a moving sidewalk.

This one example illustrates many things that Julie was talking about in her "One thing" series:

C.Z. focused intently, allowing for interconnections to form between new information and things she'd previously learned, powered by her own hunger.  One topic, pursued intently, led to any number of other topics.

Also, this kind of writing is very much about starting with the writer. Though it might not seem like C.Z. is writing about something she knows (school), she actually is, because this has been a whole year of learning about school, from involvement in her music program to watching most of her homeschooled friends apply to high school (you apply to public school here). And as with many things C.Z. does, there is a lighthearted undercurrent of social protest throughout the story.

In fact, and lastly, this year has at times seemed like one huge assault on what Julie calls the "coziness factor." Not only does school touch our lives increasingly through our social networks, but I realized yesterday that I was evaluating no fewer than fourteen outside classes for next year's homeschool. At that rate, there wouldn't be any home left!  Obviously, we'll say no to many of these, but it illustrates the insidiousness of high school anxiety and academic creep. In light of all these temptations, I admire C.Z.'s consistent adherence to the spirit of independent learning.

Natural learning for older students doesn't really have to be different in kind from natural learning for younger students. The learning is more in depth, of course, because older students have more mature minds, and more experience. They're making connections and they can come up with insights that will sometimes surprise you. But it doesn't necessarily have to involve slavish adherence to textbooks, externally imposed "rigor" to make sure the student does high school level work, or sophisticated organizational tools that keep all your teen's classes straight.  

If the atmosphere in your home all along has made love of learning a priority, I'm convinced that there's no need to panic in the eighth grade. Each family looks different, of course. But I am convinced that deep and natural interest has a way of creating learning that is as "rigorous" as any high school.*  And often it comes about because you have the luxury of doing one thing for a while.

***

*End note: Another way I've seen the advantages of deep learning illustrated lately is via the NYCHEA ROV team.  They're a local homeschooled robotics team who won an international competition last year.  They beat out institutional high school teams who had much higher budgets and professional mentors.  

After listening to one of the team members talk about the competition last week, I asked whether perhaps the team's low budget may have made them rely more on ingenuity, and whether the judges may have liked that.  He said that it definitely had been a factor.  Some of the other teams had more expensive and sophisticated robots, but since the NYCHEA team didn't have these advantages, they had to do more to build their own understanding, and this led to a better robot.  

I might add, of course, that I framed the question that way on a hunch that it might be the case. The young man was very gracious, and even pointed out that every competition is a close one!