Leaping From The Box

The CTCL (Colleges that Change Lives) people have announced their 2009 tour dates. If they are coming near you, I urge you to take the time to visit them. We attended one of their sessions several years ago in Nashville and found it well worth our time.

The tour is based upon the schools featured in the book Colleges That Change Lives, 40 Schools you should know about even if you’re not a straight-A student, by Lauren Pope. This is one of my favorite college-prep books; check out my review and you will begin to understand why.

The 2009 tour includes 26 cities, so be sure to check the list for the one nearest you!

We have heard so much about the S-word (socialization) and homeschooling. People who send their children to public schools always bring it up, seeming to imply that homeschooled children sit at home in the dark all day like so many mushrooms. I recently read a very interesting article in the February 2008 issue of Psychology Today, however, that presents some strongly worded criticisms in the reverse direction.

In the article Skinny Sweepstakes By Hara Estroff Marano the author describes some of the social problems that kids face, starting in middle school. For example, psychotherapist Steven Levenkron observes that these days “…the adults essentially outsource parenting.” RAND scholar “Richard Hersh calls it the culture of neglect: kids grow up overly dependent on their peers-‘in essence, kids raising kids’ – without developing a strong sense of self.” He goes on to explain how kids need to be mentored by caring and demanding adults. On the other hand, he also realizes that adults should not see kids as helpless and shelter them from a wide range of experiences. It is sometimes a delicate balance, but one that homeschooling parents have a great deal of experience with.

The author of the article examines how schools and colleges are set up to contribute to eating disorders, anxiety and depression, through artificially restricting students to same-age peer groups. Although the thrust of the article centers on eating disorders, the message comes through loud and clear that as schools become more and more homogeneous in age, and often in culture and class, kids are getting a very skewed idea of what the world is all about.

Think about how schools have changed. My grandmother taught in a one-roomed school in the 1920’s, where children of all ages interacted with one another. Over time, the schools have gotten larger and larger and the age range at a given institution has gotten narrower and narrower. Even the local university now boasts that it has classes for seniors, conveniently located at the town library so no seniors actually enter campus.

What options do you have when sending your child off to college? This article indicates that the greater the diversity in age per grade level, the better off your young person will be. One option to consider is a community college. Community colleges often have students enrolled from a larger diversity of backgrounds, both age and cultural. The average student age is higher than at your typical university, which means the students definitely bring a wider range of life experiences into the classroom.

So, next time your ten-year-old spends half an hour talking to the librarian and you are ready to go, be glad that he or she gets to spend time in the real world interacting with people other than only peers.

Through blogging I have “met” many interesting homeschoolers from across the country and around the world. Sandra is one such blogger and her On Living By Learning blog is one of my daily reads. I love her byline, “Learn, Grow, Explore, Change the World.”

On Sandra’s June 22nd post, A Homeschool Mixer Introduction, she plays along with Alesandra’s Homeschool Blog Awards homeschool mixer, answering 19 homeschooling questions. These are questions that all homeschoolers have been asked more than once in their homeschooling journey. My children are all grown, so I will be answering these from a slightly different perspective, looking back on twelve years of homeschooling. And since my answers will likely be on the long side, I will answer a few each day until we’re done. So stay tuned, keep watch, you know the drill!

1. Why do you homeschool?

   We began homeschooling in reaction to the education being offered at our local public school. Each of our children needed to homeschool for a different reason: Kat because of the psychological stressors occurring in her fifth-grade classroom and the lowering expectations of the girls in regards to academics, David because he needed more challenge than his second-grade classroom had to offer, especially in the science area, and Charles because his kindergarten class had too much violence occurring and we were concerned that he would gain the label of ADHD when he advanced to the more demanding level of attention that his upcoming first grade level would require.

   Those were the reasons we began homeschooling. They were not the reasons we continued homeschooling after the first year. Somewhere during that first year we began to realize how much the public school had taken over our lifestyle. Homeschooling afforded us the freedom to study what we wanted, when we wanted, where we wanted, and how we wanted. We were in control of our daily schedule and that was a wonderful feeling of freedom!

2. What technique or curriculum do you use?

   The first few months we did school-at-home with an organized schedule and lesson plans. After a few months, I was experiencing serious burn-out, so we took a break over the Christmas holidays and I spent more time learning about homeschooling methods. While I was doing that, my children just kept on learning! My children were actively unschooling at the same time I was learning about unschooling. So for the last 11.5 years of our homeschooling journey, we were unschoolers. (I will always consider myself to be an unschooler, even though I am no longer legally homeschooling anyone.) We did use some curriculum, especially in the high school years, but always to meet a need or interest that one of our children had, such a college preparation or learning a language.

3. Do your kids work above or below grade level (or both!)?

   We did not worry about grade levels, so I never really kept track. In some subjects I am sure they were above, in other subjects, below. It didn’t really matter to us.

4. What is your educational level?

   I graduated from Finger Lakes Community College with an Associates of Science degree in Secretarial Science.

5. Do you feel that your education level has an effect on your teaching (both limits and abilities?)
   No, not really. There are some very intelligent people homeschooling that never had the opportunity to go beyond high school for more education. That does not mean that their education ceased at high school. And a secretarial science degree really doesn’t bring much to the table as far as homeschooling your children. I think what helps more than your level of education is a willingness to know your limits, to know where you need to seek outside assistance, such as co-ops or online classes or community college classes. The most important thing, though, is the mindset that you are never too old to learn anything. Homeschooling will be a lot easier if you believe in that and model that mindset.

Watch tomorrow for the answers to these questions:

6. What does your daily schedule look like?
7. Are your kids always polite and ready to learn?
8. Do the kids (or you!) get frustrated?
9. How has this affected your parenting?
10. How much free time do they have?
11. What do they do during their free time?
12. What hobbies do they have?