Homeschool Conflicts
MiriamHumans have a lot of desire to label things and people. Homeschoolers are no different. "What type of homeschooler are you?"
Me? I'm an unschooler. I love asking my girls what they want to learn and helping them learn it. I keep a close eye on what seems to interest each of them when we go somewhere, read something or they play. Many times those interests are in line with lists of age-appropriate learning and also with what they say they want to learn. This is nice because it reinforces my knowledge that I'm in-tune with them.
Despite me loving unschooling, Aba isn't convinced. He's sure the girls need to be sitting in a classroom-type of situation and learning for hours a day. He's slowly coming to his senses, but is starting to worry that they aren't reading. At five years-old. You know, when they enter Kindergarten (or Pre-1A).
This naturally leads to conflict.
I've tried giving him books, articles and excerpts to read about how children learn but he says he doesn't have time to read them. For many things he lets me research and present my case and then agree with me. Not this time
We had come up with a compromise that I had hopes for. Basically we would slide our routine into the camp's routine and have "school" (math/reading/writing) from 8:30am to 9:30am. Then we'd have parsha/brachot/holidays from 9:30am to 10:15am followed by snack. Then we could unschool the rest of the day.
We spent Shabbat lunch at the same table as another homeschooler and talked over this plan. She tried convincing Aba, too, but mostly made me rethink my compromise.
Her concerns are that by setting aside a time and place for "school" the girls will associate learning with them and not feel like they are learning elsewhere. This is something I'm terrified of happening. My main reason for homeschooling is to appreciate each child's abilities and desires and make life a learning experience.
So I rethink my plan. I need to keep it somewhat the same for Aba's comfort, though. This is what I've come up with.
- Don't call it school.
- Don't always have it at the table. (Why I bought clipboards.)
- Don't tell the girls, "its time to..." Rather say, "we have an hour before we need to leave. What should we do?"
I think this puts us on the right track. I've come up with some other ideas but they'll be in other posts.
What do you do to solve homeschool style conflicts in your family?
Reader Comments (5)
I've been really, really fortunate that my husband and I seem to be on board with unschooling and I can't recall any conflicts.
That said, as most families who unschool, we get a lot of criticism from others.
I know it's different, but the way I've handled homeschooling conflicts with other family members (like parents, sister, etc.) is simply to point out how our children learn and over time they began to see it.
It also helps that my son unschooled his high school years and then went on to score extremely highly on the ACT and get admitted into an honors program at his college. No one taught him chemistry, biology, physics, etc. He was interested and learned it on his own without textbooks, syllabi, or exams.
Every day I can point out new concepts and knowledge that my daughters have acquired. And because they are motivated and engaged they never.forget.it. That, for me, is the key to unschooling. When learning occurs by the child's own motivation and interest it's true learning. It's not just memorization and it's not learning to please others.
For me it's so very important that my children not learn to please others, but learn for the love of learning itself.
I was unschooled for a couple years of my education, and I think the fears that children will only think of school-time as learning can be overblown. Children naturally want to learn in a variety of situations, and a short period of educational instruction in the morning is not going to change that. You'll be showing your kids that there are many ways to learn and that the "school" activities are one way, but not the only way. They will probably take whatever skills they gain during "school" time and use them to explore and create even more on their own.
By the way, have you seen the Ball-Stick-Bird reading curriculum? It teaches kids to sound out words through science fiction stories about aliens and space ships. I think it's a great example of a reading program that doesn't feel like school.
We're still working on this, with a similar division of opinion. My kids are 7, 5, 2, and 6 months, and it's a little more complicated. It's hard to find a balance that works for the kids and the adults!
We do a certain number of workbooks to demonstrate what they learn, and are definitely not unschooling when it comes to parsha decoding/translating. It's still a process, though.
My girls are so-so on workbooks. They like the writing ones to copy the letters and then move to their chalkboards, paper, walls, etc. LOL
We are lucky that they all love chumash so we are able to unschool that a bit, too. The best project we did was paint little wooden Israelites who become the characters in any parsha. Its gotten to the point where we need more because the girls like to act out multiple weeks' scenes together or create dioramas with them.