Confessions of an Underachieving Homeschooler

It had been a rough morning. A Really Rough Morning. The kind of morning that left me searching the web for an educational consultant--or was it a psychological therapist I needed? It was barely 11:30, and I think our tally so far was: 

• 1 screaming fit,
•  2 refusals to complete assigned work,
• 3 outbreaks of sibling rivalry, and
•  several episodes of uncontrollable weeping. 

I had somehow managed to keep my cool for the most part, and was now sitting quietly beside my older daughter as she struggled to come to terms with the fact that she could either complete her math problems now or she would complete them that evening while her sister went to karate class without her. After laboriously working through the next few calculations, she turned to me and asked, "Mama, do you know what I want to be?" Thank goodness, I sighed to myself, she is finally formulating a positive thought! "No--what do you want to be, honey?" I answered in my most nurturing-homeschool-mom voice. Her reply: "An orphan."

Like I said, it was a Really Rough Morning. I would like to say that such mornings are rare at our little not-school, but that wouldn't be true. Though I'm not usually invited to kick the proverbial bucket, my carefully planned lessons do sometimes get received with a less-than-enthusiastic response. I'm not one of those homeschooling moms who, when asked how she manages to be both parent and teacher to her children, chuckles modestly and says, "Oh, it's really not as hard as you might think." Or "It just comes naturally." Nor will I ever write a book about how my little geniuses taught themselves to read at age three, or mastered algebra by fourth grade without having to complete a single workbook. It turns out that not all homeschoolers are overachievers.

Writing with homemade ink and
rooster quills

No; homeschooling for us has been filled with both ups and downs: moments of joyful work and elated success mixed with episodes of failure and frustration. For me, it has been deeply challenging, often gut-wrenching work. It has required me not only to develop a host of new skills, but also to radically question many of my fundamental presuppositions about education, about child-rearing, and even about what it means to live a good and decent life. In fact, I have had to do more self-reflection during these past few years than I have ever done before. And what I've learned about myself in the process hasn't always been pretty. Homeschooling has been far-and-away the most humbling enterprise I have ever engaged in.

Baking bread

I have been staying home with my girls (for the most part) since my younger daughter (now six-and-a-half) was born, and I have been homeschooling in some form since my eight-year-old turned three. I never would have expected that this is a path I would take. In fact, if even ten years ago, you had suggested to me that I might become a "stay-at-home mom and homeschooler," I likely would have laughed dismissively. Not me: college professor, academic administrator, international field researcher, political activist, writer, community organizer. I was doing consequential work in the world! How could I give all that up to spend my days reading fairy tales; singing "The Months of the Year Song;" wiping up endless globs of of paint, yogurt, toothpaste, and mud; and wrestling with my first born over math worksheets?

Truthfully, I do sometimes miss the more professional and public life I had before I began doing this--the invigorating, ego-boosting conferences; the frequent opportunities to travel internationally; the excitement of working with young adults as they formulate their dreams and develop their expertise; and perhaps most of all, the camaraderie of coworkers. Homeschooling can be a very lonely occupation. Especially when it isn't going so well, and there's no colleague in the office next door with whom to commiserate and problem-solve.

Studying life in a pond with a
local scientist

Yet homeschooling has not only been the most arduous job I have ever had; it has also been the most fulfilling--and largely because of the struggles and accompanying soul searching it has involved. I am pretty sure that I have grown more intellectually and emotionally during these past five years than I did in my previous eight-year career in higher education. And I have done so hand-in-hand with my children. Indeed, the best thing by far about homeschooling has been the fact that it has provided my girls and me with innumerable opportunities to learn and grow together. It has allowed us to explore the world alongside one another and to share in the exhilerating experience of discovering the wonders and mysteries of that world. It has furnished us with the opportunity get to know one other more deeply than we would if they were away from home for eight hours a day, five days a week. It has given me a chance to witness (and sometimes even facilitate) their earliest intellectual and social milestones. It has allowed me to ensure that, for them, "study" doesn't just mean learning facts someone else thinks they need to know, but also pursuing their own interests, finding answers to their own questions, and chasing their own dreams.

It has also permitted me to be with my girls through their toughest struggles, and conferred on me the responsibility to help them develop the skills and wisdom to overcome those struggles. In my attempts to grow into this responsibility, I have done a great deal of research and reflection during the past few years aimed at becoming a better mentor of children--that is, a better parent and teacher. Fortunately, I have discovered some wonderfully helpful resources in a variety of literatures--not only from the fields of homeschooling and parenting, but also from psychology, sociology, education, child development, and spirituality. Of course, I still very often find myself unsure about how to best help my daughters when we're in the midst of one of our Really Rough Moments, and I'm afraid that more often than I'd like to admit, I make things worse. But at the end of the day, they seem to know I love them and that I am willing to work with them to find a better solution. Perhaps that is what it means to be an underachieving--but good enough--homeschooler.

Making homemade paper

By the way, we did manage to get all our work done on the Really Rough Morning that began this essay, and by mid-afternoon, my aspiring orphan was cuddling in my lap as we commiserated about the day and reassured each another with kisses and hugs. Tomorrow would be a new day, I told her. And no matter what it brought, we could handle it. Together.

"Love is a better teacher than duty." --Albert Einstein

Real-Life (and -Death) Learning

Warning: The images and text in this blog might be disturbing to some readers, particularly children. Please read with caution!

"I never let schooling interfere with my education." 
--Mark Twain 

The girls and I had an even less-conventional-than-usual week of school last week. Our schedule specified that our science lessons would focus on animal identification and classification. Instead, we ended up studying the innards and orneriness of roosters.

What happened was this: Over the previous couple of weeks, one of our Delaware roosters, Obadiah Slope, had been getting more and more aggressive, both with the hens and with Segi and Simi.  He hadn't attacked anyone yet, but we were concerned enough to start keeping a close eye on him. Then Monday morning as the girls and I were wrapping up our chores, he cornered Simi, circling her and chasing her into the barn. (Luckily she made it inside before he flew at her.) I knew then that this guy was going into the roasting pan--and soon. That night, I told G-P that the girls and I would set aside our school schedule the next day so we could butcher our erstwhile friend. G-P graciously volunteered to go into work late so that he could catch and dispatch of Obadiah himself. (I have to admit that although I'd talked real big about taking care of everything on my own,  I was immensely relieved not to have to actually wield the machete blow.) To my surprise, the girls walked with their dad through the whole process and never turned their heads. Looks like they really are turning into farm girls!

Bringing in the Carcass 

By 7:30 a.m., our carcass was ready to go. We spent the morning, scalding, plucking, gutting, and chopping. And learning! I invited the girls to participate much more actively in the butchering process this time. And because we had set aside all our plans for the day, we had plenty time to inspect how the feathers attached to the skin; to study what joints look like and how they work; to identify most of the internal organs and discuss their functions; and even to conduct some research into why roosters "turn mean." (We learned, of course, that what humans interpret as roosters turning mean is often a rooster simply being especially devoted to doing his most important jobs: protecting and defending his flock.)

Scalding

Plucking

Examining the Internal Organs

Examining the Joints

A Major Perk of Our Rooster Practicum: Dinner!

The crisis we faced at the beginning of last week highlighted the fact that if there is one thing homesteading homeschoolers can count on, it is that circumstances will sometimes get in the way of even the best-laid lesson plans.  Luckily, one of the perks of homeschooling is that a derailed schedule can be a just as much an opportunity as it is challenge! That was certainly the case for us in this instance. Indeed, I think I can safely say that the girls and I both learned more from our hands-on exploration of the ill-fated Obadiah than we could have gotten from several textbook chapters on chicken anatomy and behavior.

A key to getting a good education, it seems to me, is being open to "learning where we're planted"-- taking advantage of the learning opportunities that come up in everyday life, even (or perhaps especially) when they interfere with our formal education.

Thank you, Obadiah, for our tutorial. And for dinner!

Living Imaginatively: Lessons from Little Ones

To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee,
One clover, and a bee,
And revery.
The revery alone will do,
If bees are few.
--Emily Dickinson, Poems

"If a child is to keep his inborn sense of wonder, he needs the companionship of at least one adult who can share it, rediscovering with him the joy, excitement and mystery of the world we live in."--Rachel Carson, in The Sense of Wonder.

"Oh, Mama, doesn't that last line just give you a thrill?!" my 7-year-old exclaimed. "Uh . . . oh, yes,  sweetie." Waking from my ruminations, I realized I hadn't heard a word of it. "Now what was that line again?" I asked lamely. As is often the case on our daily after-school walk to the mailbox, my two girls had spent nearly the whole 10-minute trek talking incessantly while I somehow managed to "Mmm hmm," "Wow," and "Really?" in fairly appropriate places without paying any real attention.

Segi's enthusiastic question suddenly made me realize that, though the three of us were walking side-by-side down the same lane, and occasionally even interacting, we were having radically different experiences. There I was, making mental checklists of to-dos, fretting about not-dones, and otherwise obsessing over the trivial details of our everyday lives, while they were formulating and enacting heroic adventures: testing strategies; negotiating complicated relationships; traveling through time and across continents; and waging battles of good vs. evil.

Is it possible that this stark phenomenological contrast could hold a lesson for us chronically ruminating (and these days, texting and web-surfing) parents? Perhaps we should be asking ourselves how often it is that we are together with our children without really being present with them. We might find that it is more often than is good for them--or for us.

Logic will get you from A to Z; 

imagination will get you everywhere.

--Albert Einstein

How would the quality of my own life be affected if I added even a fraction of the imagination and creativity my daughters employ to the ways I think and act? It would certainly be more exciting--and perhaps a little less stressful. After all, I suspect it is hard to get terribly out of sorts about forgetting to pick up bananas at the store if you're busy working out how LaDansa will save the child locked in the burning apartment building.

. . . Who, you may ask, is LaDansa? She is just one of the many characters Segi and Simi have created in their daily "playings" (their own term for the dramas they script and act out). Perhaps meeting her and a few of the other prominent characters will help me clarify what I'm trying to get at here. So here goes:  . . .

• Gilbert: A bumbling fire chief who blusters about, issuing unreasonable orders and meting out ridiculous penalties to those who don't meet his expectations. Unfortunately, he is also completely inept and--to top it all off-- has a habit of singing off-key every time he takes a shower. (Many of the stories are set at the fire station, and many of the characters are part-time firefighters.) 
• Chrysanthemum: Gilbert's co-chief and sister, she is everything he is not: competent, fair, and effective. She scolds him on occasion and runs to hide under her desk whenever he starts to sing. 
• LaDansa: One of the firefighters, LaDansa was born in a barrio in Mexico to her loving but impoverished parents, Wheat and Martha. She is the "Super Woman" of the drama, often performing über-human feats while generally maintaining heroic integrity. Her one major weakness is that she despises Elizabeth, who is from Spain, because Spain colonized Mexico.
• Buttercup: She is LaDansa's little sister and--strangely enough--is from rural East Tennessee. (The family's move from Mexico is a long and complicated story; I'll spare you the details.) She loves to lie down in fields of buttercups and read library books.
• Cherry: Perhaps the most sinister of all the characters, she thinks she is better than all the other firefighters because she is (she claims) from Scotland. In her affected British accent, she constantly denigrates her colleagues, and sometimes does others outright harm. The only person who escapes her wrath is Charles, on whom she has an incurable crush.
• Charles:  Born a prince of the esteemed royal family of Peaceland, Tennessee, he enjoyed a privileged childhood. But some years ago, Charles' parents were murdered by an unknown assailant. After the attack, Charles ran off into the woods and took up residence in a hollow log. He prefers communing with animals over socializing with other humans. He does not have a crush on Cherry. Instead, he is in love with her daughter, Aniponi, who is much closer to his own age. In fact, they recently married. His most famous faux pas resulted in the prominent scar he bears on his chest. At first it appeared to everyone to be evidence of his heroic escape from his parents' murderers, but it turns out that he incurred it while in dance class. He had been laughing at Buttercup for slipping and falling, and was bragging, "Of course, I never fall!" At that very moment, he fell right out the window and crashed onto the rocks below--just like, Buttercup noted, "a flat balloon."
• Aniponi: Cherry's daughter. She's 20 years old, pretty, smart, and very nice. Needless to say, her mother does not approve of her relationship with Charles and, in fact, did not show up for their wedding.
• Elizabeth: Born Spanish through no fault of her own, is a detective. She is a good detective but recently had a setback when she got attacked and bitten by Chocolate, the firehouse beagle. She is good friends with Caddie.
• Caddie: One of the newest characters, Caddie is very bright and good-hearted. She is a tomboy from Iceland. She thinks that being a tomboy means being a cross between a boy and a girl, but this doesn't bother her: she embraces her mixed identity.
• Francia: Not surprisingly, she is from France. She is the chief detective. She likes whiskey a bit too much, but despite her indulgences, is good at her job. She is LaDansa's best friend.
• Copy and Copy: Two of the youngest firefighters, they are twins, and copy everything each other (and often everyone else) does.

Some of these characters have been around for more than two years now, and other ones have emerged only recently (characters are constantly being created, refined, and on occasion, chucked). The girls also have three different make-believe lands they've conjured up: Sunshine Land (populated by itsy-bitsy people who live much our ancestors did in the 19th century), Flower Land and Peace Land (where Flower Language and Peace Language are spoken, respectively). Then there is Ragamuffin, the sock fairy who lives on Segi's left shoulder and sneaks family members' socks while we sleep. (She only borrows them, Segi insists; she never steals.) And the fairies and unicorns we sometimes glimpse during our hikes through the woods. And, of course, The Jolly Roger Pirates Gang. Composed of characters based largely on livestock we've had here at the farm but have had to get rid of for one reason or another (the 3 Nigerian Dwarf goats, the rooster Captain Haddock, and Ellie Mae, the wayward donkey), this group travels the world carrying out all kinds of naughty tricks on unsuspecting farmers.

Fairy Tales are more than true;

not because they tell us that dragons exist, 

but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.

--G.K. Chesterton

When my girls and other young children immerse themselves in make-believe worlds and act out imaginary dramas, they are not just goofing off. They are also mastering importance social and intellectual skills. In the abstract to her article, "The Role of Pretend Play in Children's Cognitive Development," Doris Bergen of Miami University writes,

there is a growing body of evidence to suggest that high-quality pretend play is an important facilitator of perspective taking and later abstract thought, that it may facilitate higher-level cognition, and that there are clear links between pretend play and social and linguistic competence.

Unfortunately, kids these days are engaging less and less in such pursuits. Lengthening school days, then homework afterwards; a wide array of extracurricular activities; and endless opportunities to "plug in" to computers, televisions, cell phones, and other hand-held devices--all this leaves very little time for wandering around dreaming up fanciful adventures.

Our family has come to think that one of the best things about homeschooling is the unstructured time it gives us: time for thinking, time for dreaming, time for working, time for playing, and time for just being together doing nothing much at all. It's in some of those times (like on our walks to the mailbox) when the very best moments of our days often happen. That is, when I'm not too busy "doing" inside my head to actually notice.

Here, then, is yet another opportunity to learn a significant lesson from my children--and, it turns out, from Dr. Seuss, Gloria Steinem, Carl Sagan, and Albert Einstein.

Think left and think right and think low and think high.  

Oh, the thinks you can think up if only you try!

--Dr. Seuss, Oh, the Thinks You Can Think!

“Without leaps of imagination or dreaming, we lose the excitement of possibilities. 

Dreaming, after all is a form of planning.”

--Gloria Steinem

“Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were, 

but without it we go nowhere."
--Carl Sagan

“I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.”

--Albert Einstein

School Year Prep: Revisiting the Whys and What-Fors

"We must remember that intelligence is not enough. Intelligence plus character--that is the goal of true education. The complete education gives one not only power of concentration, but worthy objectives upon which to concentrate." 

--Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.  

Is it really time already to start gearing up for the school year??? All around the country, kids and their parents are scratching their heads, wondering how the summer has managed to pass so quickly. Wasn't it just a few days ago that we were all celebrating that first week of unstructured fun and sun? Undoubtedly, some parents are breathing a sigh of relief, anxiously anticipating the return to a quieter, more scheduled home life. Others will be trying to make the most of the few weekdays they have left to hang out at the pool, visit the zoo, have picnics in the park, or just laze around the house.

While most homeschoolers are not hitting the stores for new backpacks and lunch boxes, or perusing the mall for "back-to-school clothes," many of us are also in the midst of gearing up for the year ahead. In our own household, it is time for me to put together the lesson schedule for the coming fall and spring semesters; to purchase the books and supplies we'll need; and to thoroughly clean and reorganize our "Discovery Room."

It is also the time when I revisit the list I started several years ago of the objectives that G-P and I hope will guide our girls' education. This is the "big picture" list of the qualities we hope to encourage through educating our kids at home. I thought I would share them here as food for thought and as an invitation for insights from other parents and educators. As you'll quickly see, none of our objectives is unique to our family or even particular to homeschoolers. But revisiting and revising this list each year has been a helpful exercise for me--perhaps more helpful than any of the other myriad preparations I might be making for the months ahead. When I am wrapped up in the day-to-day tasks of studying and working together with the girls, it is all too easy to lose sight of why we are here, doing what we are doing.

Under each of the qualities that make up the list, I have briefly described one or more of the specific ways we try to encourage it.

WHOLE WORLD HOMESCHOOL'S 
GUIDING OBJECTIVES

What qualities do we wish to encourage through homeschooling?

•  A genuine love of learning



Studying Density and Buoyancy 

• Kids love to learn. They especially love to learn when they are pursuing knowledge of topics in which they are sincerely interested, and in ways that feel comfortable to them. We hope our girls will always love learning, and that learning will be a central delight in their lives well beyond "the school years." To try to ensure that our own school is encouraging their innate love of learning, I hold a meeting with the girls before, after, and halfway through each school year. I ask them to share with me what they think worked well and what didn't work so well during the previous weeks and months. I ask for their suggestions on both the content of what we will study next and the activities we will engage in. I write down their responses on a white board or large flip chart so that they can see I am taking them seriously, and then I take these notes and use them in planning upcoming curricula. They get a kick out of knowing that they helped to formulate our lessons, and I get to relish how pleasurable it is to teach when students are excited about learning. 
• A recognition that learning is an everywhere-, anytime-, lifelong task



Learning Math While
Plotting Out the Garden

• Both G-P and I have also tried to demonstrate to the girls that learning is not something that is done solely--or even primarily--in the context of schooling, but that it can happen wherever we are, at any time. That is why we named our school "Whole World Homeschool": we aim to see the whole world as our classroom, our resource center, and our subject of study. Starting up this farm together has given us a wonderful opportunity to demonstrate to the girls the importance of learning for adults as well as children. They have watched us repeatedly seek out new knowledge and acquire new skills, and then enjoy applying that learning to taking better care of our animals, our little piece of land, and ourselves. 
• Active curiosity 
• Kids love to learn because they are incredibly curious. If you've ever watched a little girl stand mesmerized over a pile of dirt, trying to work out the comings and goings of a colony of ants, or watched a little boy's eyes light up as he finally sees the difference in a dragonfly and a damselfly, then you know what I'm talking about. Too often today, education involves taming and inhibiting children's curiosity in favor of instituting order and guaranteeing test results. It is a tragedy, and probably one of the main motivators of many homeschooling parents. One of the ways I try to nurture active curiosity in my own girls is being curious right alongside them--rushing off to the meadow to try to identify the bone Simi found there, or stopping everything to look up the meaning of a word Segi came upon in the chapter book she's reading, and then the playing around with some of the many ways we can use it. I've found that getting to learn fascinating things alongside my kids is one of the most delightful perks of homeschooling. In fact, on most days I am not so much a "teacher" as a facilitator of our collective learning. 
• A sense of wonder and awe



Celebrating the Wonders of
Our Creek

• We go on nature walks at least once a week, very often through the an ecological preserve on our way to visit the our local library. Despite my adultish tendency to prod the girls to keep moving (Why do we do that to our little ones so much?), we stop often to examine and exclaim over some of the many small wonders that populate our route--the particularly beautiful rock, the newly blooming flower, the bird's nest high in a tree. More often than not, we also spot signs of fairies, and sometimes even glimpses of unicorns, on these walks. More than any biology text, more than any religious scripture, it is my daughters who have taught me that the world is truly a wonder-ful, awe-some place. I hope their education will nourish and expand this perspective in them, not temper or civilize it.
• An ability and willingness to listen well to others and to carefully observe the world around them



Investigating Soil

• This is--perhaps as much as the love of learning--an indispensable key to becoming an effective learner. It involves being able to quieten one' mind, to see beyond one's assumptions, and to open oneself to new realities. One of the ways I've tried to teach this is by occasionally sending the girls out into our yard, or the woods that surround it, to sit for a certain period of time in location of their choosing. While there, they are to do nothing but sit and listen (or, on another day, to look or touch). After the time period is over, they come back and share what they noticed about this place that they have been to so many times before, and then we discuss the importance and rewards of attentiveness.
• A global perspective (knowledge of and respect for other cultures, ethnicities, classes, religions, races, and lifestyles)



Making an Australian Fruit Salad

• As an anthropology professor, I spent a great deal of time teaching global awareness to college students--a more formidable task than I had thought it would be. Many of them had graduated from high school (often with honors) with without learning much at all about the world beyond our nation's boundaries--or even beyond their own state, or subculture, race or class. We want our girls to grow up to be global citizens--to understand that there are many different ways to be human, and to know that they can learn a great deal from people who live very different lives than they do. To this end, during the past school year, we studied a different country each month. During that month, the girls read books about the country, watched educational videos about it, wrote mini-essays about it, learned about the everyday life of a child growing up there, prepared and ate typical dishes, made one or more traditional crafts, and listened to some of the country's music. 
• An awareness of who they are, where they come from, and where they fit in the larger world
• We have also studied Nigeria, Tennessee, and Appalachia--the "homelands" of our girls (that is, where their parents and most of their ancestors were raised). Later on, we will do more in-depth study of the state of North Carolina and the history, geography, and cultures of the United States. 
• A commitment to being good citizens: of their community, their state, their country and their world



Collecting Trash Along Local
Roadways on Earth Day

• The girls and I have integrated into our studies a variety of service projects, including being farmer's helpers at an educational farm in Ohio, delivering meals for Meals on Wheels, participating in environmental clean-up projects, purchasing and packing up school supplies for kids in our town, and writing letters to government officials and CEOs. I hope we will be able to do more of this kind of work together as the girls grow older. (Few volunteer programs allow young children to participate, so that has been a real limiting factor for us so far.)
• An appreciation for "worthwhile work well done," and a recognition that the work they do is important 



Cleaning Out a Barn Stall

• After our girls wake up each morning, dress themselves and make up their beds, they go out to the barn to start their farm chores. Simi (the 6-year-old) is in charge of cleaning out the goat stall and Segi (the 7-year-old) is in charge of the chicken coop. I assist them as needed, and we work together to feed all the animals, evaluate their health, check their waterers, and haul the heavy buckets of muck we've collected into the woods to the compost pile. On a typical day, they will carry out a variety of other chores as well. G-P and I have tried to make it clear that the contributions they make to the workings of the farm--as well as to the workings of our household more generally--are critical, and that we value and appreciate what they do. To see them learn the satisfaction that comes from completing a tough physical task has been just as rewarding for us as watching them successfully complete writing and math assignments. In fact, as Laura Grace Weldon points out in this article, research has shown that children who regularly do chores are more likely to succeed both academically and in adulthood.
• A love for the natural world and an understanding of the importance of caring for that world
• A great deal of our science studies so far have involved investigating the plants, animals, water systems, and habitats right around us. We not only discover fascinating facts about these things, but we also learn how human behavior impacts them. We continually talk about what it means to share the world with other creatures and to care for the earth that supports us all. For the girls, as for most children, all this makes perfect sense. They have not--as we adults have--learned to see themselves as separate from and superior to non-human beings. We hope they will continue to consider themselves citizens of the natural world who are both beholden to and responsible for the well-being of the earth.
• Empathy, kindness, respect, helpfulness, and politeness



Contemplative Practice

• One of our favorite activities during the 2011-2012 school year was Angel Bear Yoga. It is a yoga program written especially for kids. The girls and I practiced it at least a couple of times a week, and sometimes more. Each of our yoga sessions would focus on fostering an important character trait such as thoughtfulness, truthfulness, or compassion. We discussed the traits together, sharing how we understood them and thinking about ways we could practice them in our everyday lives. Then we did yoga poses that resembled the forms of animals and plants whose characteristics reflect those traits. 
• An understanding of the importance and power of cooperation



Pulling Together

• Learning in our school is not a competitive task. The girls are encouraged to work together to learn, and they seem to enjoy doing so. In fact, they often cheer one another on during a particularly challenging task. Of course, I cannot prevent siblings from sometimes feeling competitive with one another, and it does happen. But it helps a great deal that I do not give grades or dole out rewards for individual work. I hope the girls will come to agree that gaining knowledge and improving one's skills (i.e., learning) are their own rewards. And much more satisfying in the long run than grades, stickers, or candy!  
• An ability to communicate effectively and express themselves creatively



The Playwrights Acting

• When the girls are practicing their writing skills, more often than not, they are writing about a topic, or writing with a purpose, that they themselves have chosen. The "assignment" may be a mini-essay about their favorite dessert animal, or a letter to a relative or a friend--whatever the case, they are genuinely trying to communicate something. This not only increases their motivation to do their work well (they certainly do better on such assignments than on filling in the blanks of worksheets); it also gives us a chance to discuss their interests and ideas.
• I encourage the girls to express themselves and communicate their thoughts and feelings in many other ways as well: through painting, coloring, and drawing; through dancing, music-making, and drama; through crafting; through building (with clay, with stones, or with wood, hammers, and nails); through poetry composition; and so forth.
• Patience and perseverance



Learning Patience (and Mechanics!)
 from a Neighbor

• Since patience and perseverance are central both to effective learning and to contented living, teaching them to my girls are part of what I try to do every day. I thus encourage--and generally require--them to finish the tasks they start, even the most difficult and frustrating ones. Of course, like so many of the other traits listed here, these two are perhaps best taught by example. Unfortunately, as my girls know all too well, patience is not my greatest strength. (Actually, I never realized what an impatient person I was until having children!) Thus, central to my attempts to nurture patience in them is struggling to model patience myself. This has been one of my biggest challenges as a homeschooling parent.
• Self-acceptance
• Our girls look different than most of the kids around them. And they often act differently, too. We hope that the education they get at home will encourage them to love and accept themselves for who they are, no matter where they end up on the scale of normal to eccentric. We hope our studies of human diversity will help us here.
• Courage
• We also hope their education will foster in them the courage to follow their hearts, and to do what is right when they are faced with life's challenges and dilemmas, matter how difficult or unpopular their actions might be. To that end, we regularly read about the lives of courageous women and men: Amelia Earhart, Martin Luther King, Jr., Ang San Suu Kyi, Wilma Mankiller, Mahatma Gandhi, Wangari Maathai, and others. We have also read together many fictional books featuring courageous girls and boys: The Railway Children, Caddie Woodlawn, The Little Princess, The Conch Bearer, The Birchbark House series, and The White Giraffe series.

As you may have noticed, there is not anything in the above paragraphs about learning to recite the multiplication tables or memorizing the names of all the U.S. Presidents or state capitals. Yes, we will work on many specific skills and facts in the course of our studies together, but G-P and I believe that that sort of learning is not nearly as important as acquiring the characteristics I have listed above. As Einstein pointed out, and my Grandpa so loved to paraphrase, "An education is what you've got left after you forget everything you learned." We don't mind much if our girls can't recall at some point that 8 x 8 = 64, or that they can't remember the name of the twenty-first President. What is important, we believe, is to help them acquire the tools they'll need to live well and responsibly in our world, and to effectively pursue the dreams of their hearts. If we can do that for them, then their schooling will have been a success.

Now where are those lesson plans I'd started? . . .