Homeschool for Life

I am in the middle of planning two different high school years: my last son's last year of high school and my last daughter's first year of high school. Three graduates have left our house and now I'm planning for the last two to be prepared to leave as well.

More than ever before, planning my youngest's first year of high school feels like the beginning of an end rather than a beginning at all.

It could be sad, but it can also be immensely satisfying. I choose to think about the satisfying parts.

Homeschooling high school is rare these days. It has been since I began homeschooling my oldest in 2008. I know it can feel intimidating. It can feel like the stakes are high and like it's too much to handle. I do think it's valuable to choose outside and even online classes for high school to prepare them to do their own work for not-mom and get feedback from not-mom, but education can be more potent while taking less time at home, even in high school.

A wise mother might not be able to teach every subject off the top of her head through high school, but a wise mother WILL be able to pick and choose from her selected curriculum what will work for her students. Yes, that’s right - pick and choose.

Many years ago, when I was looking into Veritas Press’ Omnibus program (an overwhelming curriculum if ever there was one!), I noticed this statement in the introduction:

“Good teachers will pick and choose lessons, chapters, texts throughout the Omnibus series. The textbooks are just big piles of suggestions and ideas, and they need to be applied with wisdom to every classroom, every family, and every student.”

There’s the curriculum, with its schedule and lesson plans, saying from jump that no one expects you to use it all or finish the whole thing!

The material is given to you, the teacher, to pick and choose and apply as fits your situation. Don’t ever feel like you’re doing it wrong if you don’t finish a book in a year. School teachers don’t, either. Meeting their objectives does not necessarily mean doing every page in the book.

And why let curriculum writers set the objectives in the first place? You should be doing that yourself and then using the books to meet your objectives.

Why do we so often feel that our job is to serve up a textbook’s agenda rather than to set our own agenda? It’s because freedom is scary. It’s not safe. There are no guarantees.

But, you know what? The textbook doesn’t come with a guarantee, either. It is not part of a plug and play formula.

You are the mother. You are the teacher. You might not know the subject as well as the author of the material, but you do know your child much better. You are not teaching a generic classroom of averages, but your own home of individuals.

Your job isn’t to pull them through a gauntlet laid out by bureaucrats, but to determine a path and use the materials as means to get there. You are the one in the driver’s seat. You are the artist. You are the craftsman.

Homeschooling families have an advantage over conventional classrooms that, in my opinion, far outweighs the benefit of being a “master teacher.” In a homeschool setting, learning and life are intertwined. The lifestyle itself educates us into not compartmentalizing our lives or relationships.

Everything naturally relates to everything else because the way siblings and meals and outdoor play and books and math all mingle haphazardly. To try to emulate a classroom in the home is to miss out on the real value of homeschooling in the first place.

If classroom learning is the only kind of experience you’ve ever had, recognize the limit to your imagination. Look at your home, your children, stories of self-education throughout history and see the larger picture: Learning truly is life-long and life-pervasive.

What better setting, then, for learning, than the place life itself is fostered?

In our homeschool, looking back now that I have 3 graduates and 2 teens, I think there were 3 specific things we did that allowed education to weave its way in a concentrated form, through our full lives, lived well — if by well we mean recognizing when we sinned against one another and seeking forgiveness and repentance and delighting in the world God made and the work God gave us in the place He put us.

#1 - A Year-Round Homeschool Schedule

First, we followed a year-round homeschool schedule. Now, this did not mean that we were always doing school; it was actually an intentional structure designed so that we never felt like we were always doing school. Sometimes moms say they’re homeschool year-round when they’re really just operating as if they’re always playing catch up.

My husband and I believed that unassigned reading was just as valuable as assigned reading, as long as it wasn’t twaddle. So that meant I wanted to provide plenty of books — keeping my kids in books was a job in itself — and provide enough time that they had to either read or be bored.

So we homeschooled for 6 6-week terms every school year. We took off from Thanksgiving week through New Years and from early May until after the 4^th of July. Between the other terms, we took off one week. So we had 6 weeks of school, and a week off of school.

On our week off, we cleaned house, decluttered, ran errands, went to the park more, played with friends more, and had plenty of free reading and project time. Screen rules did not change on breaks and were strictly limited except for kindles and audiobooks.

I think the typical school schedule trains us to have school mode and vacation mode. With our year-round schedule with plenty of breaks that still weren’t vacation-mode, we were building a whole and full life.

No matter what school schedule you pick, give yourself and your children a life beyond getting school done, and then to watch what your children do with their free time, with their life, and learn more about them and what kind of direction and discipleship they need based on seeing what they do when structure is lightened.

We want to raise people who can use time and resources creatively and independently. They need practice and guidance in living. I used what I saw during our breaks to inform my path forward, with the intentional goal of raising contributing, capable, adults.

My observations during those weeks off let me know where each child was in that growth path.

#2 - Manage yourself

The second tactic that I appreciated so much and that really is only feasible in a home, one-on-one setting, is that of making my kids run laps around the house, ride their bike around the block, or do jumping jacks in front of me when they got squirrely, argumentative, or dramatic over their lessons.

I learned the hard way that you can’t reason an unreasonable student back into reasonableness. When they’re unreasonable, reasons bounce right off. No matter how good your reasons are, they won’t land.

But I’m also a stubborn firstborn, so my students also were NOT going to get out of their work, rewarded for being resistant. Virtue is the real reward, but one you often only taste after you have it.

So when they hit a wall, I’d send them out to run, bike, jump, drink water, leave the room and come back and try again. These consequences drove my kids crazy. But they worked and allowed us to still get work done without fighting over it and without giving up until tomorrow which is just procrastination.

Procrastination isn’t the end of the world, but it is a waste of time. Exercise, however, is a bonus!

As my kids got older and took classes online or at the local community college or when my husband took over their math, I noticed that when they started feeling tension rise in their work, they’d take a quick walk, get up and get some water, play a song on the piano, then get back to the work.

When I was telling them to run laps, they felt like I was punishing them; but I was actually showing them how to live and work well. They didn’t have to believe it or know it at the time; they learned by doing.

Even writing this talk, when I felt stuck or didn’t like something in how it was coming together, I got up and moved the laundry or walked to the end of the street and back. It’s a reset to brain work that works much better than staring at the screen or keyboard or math page and blanking.

The way we homeschool can serve our children in future paths, serve them for life.

#3 - Book Club Atmosphere

Third, and finally, we should take advantage of the homeyness in our homeschools by combining our kids in lessons and fostering a book-club atmosphere. If we’re keeping the home in our homeschool and weaving learning into life, then what we do for school should prepare us for lifelong learning.

Grownups don’t do workbooks when they want to learn something. They also don’t fill out comprehension quizzes when they read books.

Grownups who are lifelong learners read, write, discuss, and implement. Whenever possible, therefore, we should bring those elements into our homeschool routines. That’s the principle. Read, write, discuss, implement. Life also is not age-segregated, so I don’t think school should be either.

I think having multiple ages around one table, reading and interacting with a book or a Shakespeare play or an art print is an asset to everyone’s learning. Run with it, embrace it, plan for it.

Age segregated classrooms where everyone is supposed to be doing the exact same thing at the same rate optimizes for factory worker. That’s what it was designed to do.

Most likely, our children will not be factory workers. They will be car mechanics, plumbers, computer programmers, financial advisors, pastors, teachers, small business owners — and they will work alongside all kinds of people, older and younger.

That is normal in real life and it’s an asset when it’s normal in our homes as well. Another way I have applied this principle is by setting up our history, art, science, theology, and literature classes as much like book clubs as possible — book clubs with sketching and writing assignments.

Book clubs ought to be a normal part of adult life, I think, and when that’s a normal way to learn, I think our children will naturally step into setting them up and enjoying them on their own rather than think their school is done because they got their piece of paper.