My lovely friend Joanna Steven interviewed me recently about homeschooling and she has graciously agreed to let me post a copy of the text here. (Thank you Joanna!)
Joanna has an excellent blog called The High-Raw Nourished Kitchen (www.joannasteven.blogspot.com) which is a treasure of information and inspiration in achieving outstanding health through nutrient-dense, delicious food, movement and attitude. She is the co-author with raw vegan celebrity Tonya Kay of the Raw Nutritional Analysis ebooks. The series follows Tonya Kay’s diet through the seasons with a nutritional breakdown of her food intake and activity. She is also the proud new mom of a beautiful baby boy and the author of a book about her high-raw pregnancy soon to be published by the team at Raw Mom. Please go by and say hi, Joanna’s blog is a delight you will savor.
Gabriel
Joanna: Nearly 2 million children in the US are being home schooled, for a variety of reasons. Can you tell us more about your own decision to home school? What were the driving forces behind it?
Shawna: The primary driving force was a desire to provide Gabriel with the best education possible.
Language Arts as a foundation including reading, writing, grammar and vocabulary and not just condensed into a single subject.
Real history, not social studies.
Science built on a proper hierarchy of knowledge.
Math that is conceptually understood and not just memorized.
But there are so many more excellent reasons and benefits –
A desire to separate schooling from socialization so that both are done well.
A continuing of our parenting philosophy, which is based on independence and positive discipline, instead of a switch to a rewards-based system of obedience.
The cultivating of a questioning mind, a quality that is easily frustrated in a large classroom where the teacher simply doesn’t have the time for the questions or the answers.
Joanna: Many people who are against home schooling feel that it is not possible to give a child a good education at home. What would you say to them?
Shawna: My family’s response to this kind of statement is, “Poppycock and balderdash!” We find it is possible to give a child a superior education at home. That’s why we home school!
By educating my son myself I eliminate so much of the wasted time at school. There’s no need for crowd control and personality mediation. No standing in line, no waiting for everyone in class to be ready for the next activity. Eliminating all of that leaves more time for learning. My son can learn at his own pace, he can ask as many questions as he wants and we can go as deep into a subject as he desires.
Science experiments
I was able to choose a curriculum that meets our standards for education, instead of relying on school textbooks and
workbooks. I don’t use textbooks or worksheets. I researched homeschooling, education and curriculum for 2-1/2 years before starting and I worked hard to find curriculum not dependent on worksheets! I also chose to avoid all-in-one boxed curriculums. They’re easier, especially for new homeschoolers, but you can choose a much better curriculum if you put it together yourself from a variety of sources.
And I would ask a question of my own. What is it about public school that these people think works so well? I’ve talked to public school teachers and a private school teacher and principal and I’m confident we’ve made the right choice. I also recommend everyone read John Taylor Gatto’s “Dumbing Us Down.” John Taylor Gatto was a public school teacher for 30 years in New York and was both the New York City and New York State teacher of the year. He writes elegantly and honestly about the damage the system does to children.
Joanna: Some parents wish they could home school, but they feel they have far too much to do in their every day life without replacing the entire school system. Do you feel you have found a good balance between educating your children and taking care of other tasks and having some time for yourself?
Shawna: First, I want to emphasize that we absolutely do not try to replace the “entire school system” at home. We wouldn’t want to. Also, schooling at home saves time. You can focus on your child’s learning and questions and move along much more quickly than a teacher dealing with 30 or more students. Or you can slow down and spend a lot of time if the child wants to continue deeper into a subject. We have a good three to four hours of concentrated schooling per day in language arts, handwriting, math, history and science. The rest of the day is free for exploring the world, art, play, anything at all!
Recess
There’s no need to re-create the wheel here. It’s possible to find great, user-friendly curriculum that meets your standards and goals for your child’s education. And be sure to search for resources in your community. In my community I can find gym classes, art classes and science labs specifically for homeschoolers.
The rest of the day is free to learn in a variety of ways by following Gabriel’s interests. He asks great questions and has an insatiable curiosity. He also has great focus, so when he wants to learn about something he likes to go deep. And we support that in as many ways as possible.
My son has free time every day to play on his own and with friends and I have time for other tasks and for myself. In fact, I have more time if I want, because we are home and can structure our days as we wish. We’re not subject to the school’s day-long schedule or to homework or to school meetings or fundraisers. We decide how to invest our time every day and that’s a great lesson for any child!
Joanna: Knowing what you know now, what would you change, if anything, in the way you started to home school your child? Do you have any tips to share with parents who are just starting to home school?
Shawna: I would relax! It sounds cliched, but it is such important advice in the beginning, to relax and have fun. Your child will follow your lead and if you are excited and passionate they will be too. Also, kindergarten is such a fabulous time because it’s a very light load academically so there is so much room and time to play with routines and rituals and approaches.
My tips:
Have fun! Homeschooling is an exhilarating adventure! You will learn so much about yourself and your child that will delight and challenge you.
Create rituals. Both daily rituals and yearly ones. We read “Wake Up!” by Sandra Boynton and do yoga in our pajamas. Then we make green smoothies together before sitting at the dining room table to do math (we always start and finish with my son’s favorite subjects, so we start with math and finish with science). It’s a great start to the day and my son counts on the regularity. We also have a regular first day of school, which my husband chose as September 1. And on the first day of school we make muffins together, some of which we deliver to our neighbors. We go for a walk every day and take different routes through our neighborhood and always finish through the woods. These moments become touchstones throughout the day and year that my son and I cherish and look forward to.
Lunchtime visitor
Find homeschooling activities in your community. My son goes to a gym class twice a week with other homeschoolers, ranging in age from 5 to 12. We also just discovered a secular group that gets together once a week for outings and/or classes, such as area hikes, berry picking and a recent trip to the Aviation Heritage Museum. We have a membership to the Imaginarium, which is priceless. In addition to astounding exhibits and hands-on experimentation they offer science labs for homeschoolers. It is a real home-away-from home for my son.
Cultivate an atmosphere of “learning all the time.” Education is so much bigger than the specific time spent at a desk. My husband calls the classroom a “stale environment.” Encourage your child to ask questions all the time, explore your community, and try new things.
Involve family and friends. One of the ways we keep my husband involved in our homeschooling are occasional phone updates. One example recently was our spider report.
A spider built a web outside the upper corner of one of our living rooms windows. We watched him build the web and my son loved checking it often and seeing the collection of gnats and mosquitoes accumulating in it. One day we were fortunate to see a fly get stuck in the middle of the web and the spider scurried down, quickly wrapped up the fly and ate part of it (technically he drank the blood)! We were astounded. My son was ecstatic and running around yelling “eww”!
So we called Daddy with a spider report and he suggested we read Charlotte’s Web. So we plucked the book off of our shelf (it had been a gift from my sister at Gabriel’s first birthday book party) and we cozied up near the spider web to read.
And in chapter V we read this, a most beautiful and eloquent description of what we had just seen:
“A fly that had been crawling along Wilbur’s trough had flown up and blundered into the lower part of Charlotte’s web and was tangled in the sticky threads. The fly was beating its wings furiously, trying to break loose and free itself. ‘First,’ said Charlotte, ‘I dive at him.’ She plunged headfirst toward the fly. As she dropped, a tiny silken thread unwound from her rear end. ‘Next, I wrap him up.’ She grabbed the fly, threw a few jets of silk around it, and rolled it over and over, wrapping it so that it couldn’t move. Wilbur watched in horror. He could hardly believe what he was seeing, and although he detested flies, he was sorry for this one. ‘There!’ said Charlotte. ‘Now I knock him out, so he’ll be more comfortable.’ She bit the fly. ‘He can’t feel a thing now,’ she remarked. He’ll make a perfect breakfast for me.’
It is a perfect example of the three-dimensional reading recommended by Jim Trelease. We had just witnessed that very scene and could now read it rendered into beautiful language and nestled into a story. My son now loves spiders instead of fearing them and is always careful to preserve their webs (he talks about how tired Charlotte often was when she finished weaving). And my husband looked forward to our Charlotte’s Web reports every day.
Find the big picture. What is your overall goal for your child’s education? Instead of just focusing on completing your current curriculum, think about the qualities you want education to cultivate in your child. For example, I want my son to be able to think clearly and well and to trust his mind; to be able to articulate his ideas clearly and creatively both verbally and in writing; to know the significant developments in history, math and science that have created the world he lives in; and to know how to learn. To know how to research a new interest or idea or subject, not just through Google, but also at the library, by interviewing people in the field and possibly by finding a mentor.
My husband recently required a trip to the ER for a kidney stone. It was a harrowing beginning, but once he had been treated for pain and was resting more comfortably, my son became intrigued by the surroundings. He asked about the various kinds of equipment in the room and their uses, he was able to observe a lengthy ultrasound on his dad and he asked one of the nurses to explain blood pressure. And we had the great fortune to meet a lab tech who taught my son about blood draws and allowed him to assist in drawing blood from his dad. It was an absolutely irreplaceable moment of learning at the hand of a mentor that no classroom or book could ever give him. And it made my husband and I realize that we could actively seek this out for him as a regular part of his learning.
This is so essential to the dynamic education we seek for Gabriel. To realize that all the world is a marvel and learning is not confined to one subject or to one time or to school. And while schools do occasionally take classes on field trips, they cannot do so in relation to a child’s specific interests and the trips are most often a break from school rather than being woven directly into the curriculum.
Joanna: Would you ever consider sending your child/children to a regular school? If so, what kind? If not, what do you think would need to change for you to maybe consider changing your mind?
Shawna: I wouldn’t consider sending him to a public school. The one school I would consider is the VanDamme Academy (www.vandammeacademy.com) founded and run by Lisa VanDamme. Unfortunately it’s in Aliso Viejo, California while I am in Anchorage, Alaska! It’s the school I wish I had gone to as a child!
Lisa VanDamme was extremely instrumental in the forming of our own home school and our educational philosophy. She began her career as a home school teacher and recounts her experience in her ebook “Reclaiming Education.” That and her articles at the Objective Standard are enlightening. I recommend her ebook, articles, blog and video blog to everyone as a great education in education!
This interview was originally published at www.rawmom.com. They are an excellent source of information for raising healthy, happy children.
