As I finish up my first round of analyzing the data from five years of research I am profoundly struck by how different each homeschooling story is. For those novices to homeschooling, I beg you not to think you know what is going on when you hear someone say homeschooling. These stories I present about how curriculum is or isn’t used in these fourteen homeschools have required me to describe something entirely different every time!
-----------------------------------------
I sat down today to report on Elizabeth’s data, thinking here’s a family who used lots of curriculum. I realize I am right, they did, but oh my goodness, Elizabeth never bought any curriculum, the ones her girls used were all different and often child-managed. Elizabeth was a parent who delighted in homeschooling and came up with lots of non-curriculum fun ideas helping her daughters select books, engaging in literary discussions, organizing writing projects and they would have regular tea parties where they shared poetry they loved.
Adjusting the learning environment to meet children’s needs is much easier when homeschooling, and Elizabeth took great advantage of this benefit. Her youngest daughter, Ella, loved the outdoors, nature and animals. Ella put a tent in the backyard and slept in it for almost a full year, including the winter,
"She slept outside. Periodically she will do about a four- or five-day stint where she doesn’t eat anything except for what she can forage for or catch herself. So, she knows what bark you can eat, what leaves you can eat. She knows what kind of weed makes a seed which she found in our yard and she mashed it up and fried it and it turned into a salt substitute, and then this other plant she got that you can make a paste with for pancakes. So, she made pancakes with stuff she found. She fried up earth worms and ate them one day. I mean this is her."
Ella also loves animals. She earned money babysitting, so she could buy and fill three huge fish tanks. She also has a ball python, a bearded dragon, two fire-bellied toads, and a rabbit. My mother got her a turtle. Ella was very upset because the turtle’s tank was too small, so she nagged my mother until she got her a bigger tank from Craig’s list.
-----------------------------------------------
The question remains, is following a curriculum necessary for success in school? Elizabeth’s girls are older. My dissertation, the first year of this study, had focused on Ella, her youngest daughter, but all her girls had all been homeschooled and throughout these five years the older girls provide early measures of ‘success’, particularly using a more traditional heuristic*.
Bethany, the oldest, homeschooled from 3rd to 8th grade. She attended a local private high school and then received a Psychology degree from a local college with a merit scholarship. She works at a day care and is considering graduate school or a fuller job at the daycare.
Patrice, the next oldest, homeschooled for 2nd through 12th grade. She worked her way through high school, pretty much self-managing her own learning, using the same textbooks the local school was using. She received a full scholarship to Jacob’s School of Music in Indiana, and now is attending graduate school in music with a full scholarship plus stipend for living expenses at Notre Dame.
Kendra was homeschooled 3rd through 8th, skipped 9th grade and attended 10th – 12th grades at the local private high school. She attended the local college with a merit scholarship for two years and has transferred to Temple University.
Ella has homeschooled from 3rd through 10th grade. She did try the first semester of her freshman year at high school, and that didn’t work out well, so she returned home to finish out the year,
"Ella has been very much on her own this year. I would say she’s unschooling except that she is doing work that I think she feels I’m requiring her to do, so maybe that wouldn’t be called unschooling, technically, because she’s not just doing whatever she wants. But she’s largely doing whatever she wants with the pressure with knowing that we have to see an evaluator, so she better have something."
Ella is very into her music. Mostly she does research. She researches various pieces of music, of classical music, and she also does a lot of composing. She’s participating in Bryn Athyn Orchestra, Bucks County Youth Orchestra, the Philadelphia Youth Orchestra, an ensemble group and her cello lessons. So, she has all these five things that she goes to rehearsals for every week and does performances for. Ella has been searching for music colleges since she was in eighth grade. College is a goal for Ella, one she will undoubtedly meet.
The success of this family is obvious, at least measured by traditional educational standards. Many parents, including Elizabeth, have detailed different ideas about what is success. In many cases what is standard in traditional schooling is what nudged these families towards homeschooling, so it isn’t surprising that they might hold different ideas of what a successful outcome is. I will address these different heuristics in a separate post.
Photo by Lê Tân on Unsplash
Bình luận