Kamana and My Evolution from "Sage on a Stage" to "Guide on the Side"

Although it is Spring Break--at least for me due to UNM schedule--N. has been working on his Kamana. The weather has been so wonderful that he does the reading outside. He does a reading in the morning and practices an awareness exercise all day and then he journals about it in the evening. That's the Wilderness Awareness Trail. Then, every other day, he also does the Resources Trail--which involves researching in his North American Wildlife book, map study, listening to the Native Voices cd's, and more journaling. Both sets of journaling also involve detailed sketching of various organisms and field observation.

It is so wonderful to see N.'s absorption in his Kamana studies. He is no longer paying attention to whether he is "on break" or not. He has started managing his learning for himself, so that it is just another part of daily life. It is my challenge to let him alone and not intervene unless he requests help. That help usually involves me driving him to library or helping him find resources on the internet. It may involve solving technical issues with the computer. It is very rare that I am actually "teaching" him or even arranging his studies.

One of my professors in gifted education said that was important to use the Autonomous Learner Model so that students would become learners--guiding their own studies. And teachers would evolve, becoming "a guide on the side rather than a sage on the stage."

This was very difficult to do in today's classroom. Even though I taught a gifted resource the last two years, the general educators who were in charge of my students' time were very jittery about the NCLB testing and wanted to know exactly how what I was doing was meeting grade level standards--even though my students were working above grade level by at least two years. If one of my kids goofed off during computerized testing and got a poor score on even one question they were put on a "watch list" for an Academic Improvement Plan (AIP). This led to a lot of micromanaging of classroom performance and activities. The one thing missing was the sense of patience that is required of a good teacher. "Outcomes based learning" is not based on a year's work. It is about making each child produce every single day. And every single day there must be improvement. No one is to have a bad day, a lazy day, a sick day.

Good teachers know that this is not the natural rhythm of learning. People seem to need periods of intense activity followed by periods of rest and consolidation. People seem to need to explore sometimes and to focus sometimes and to just lie and look at the stars sometimes.

The type of education that is being promoted today is a system that does not take into account the organic nature of learning nor is it based on human reality. It is the factory model sine quon non!

And what I am realizing is how much my work in that system has turned me into someone who needs to see unrelenting progress every single day in order to feel that I am being accountable for N.'s home education.

And yet I know--somewhere deep down--that this is not the reality of deep learning.

So, I am biting my tongue and sitting on my hands a lot--just like a good midwife. I tell myself not to interfere in a natural process. That just as there is no textbook labor, so there is no "textbook" autonomous learner.

Sometimes I fail and then I see the consequences of my impatience. It usually sets us back for some time and I have to reconnect with N. and we both have to come back round to a place of trust in the process.

This appears to be more of a struggle for me than for N. He has been de-schooling himself unconsciously for some time now. I am somewhat behind in the process--having many more years of schooling to resolve. There is a lot of grief in the process. I find myself remembering all the myriad ways in which school deformed my learning and all that I lost in the process. And yet, I am also remembering all the wonderful ways my parents did guerilla learning with us--totally without plan. So it is a matter of getting back to that child that is buried deep within my adult self.

It is also a matter of observing N.'s instinctive knowledge of what he needs to learn and allowing that to be my guide.

This is hard when I let myself get in the way. And at the same time, it is easy and joyous and I watch it evolve.

This is the most fun I have had "teaching." Except that "teaching" is the wrong word. Now I am doing what I truly wanted to do in the first place when I decided to become a conventional "teacher." I am learning with a child. My child. And learning to know him--his heart, soul, and mind--is truly the most fulfilling experience I have had as his mother.

I am so full of joy that we started on this journey. It has certainly taken us somewhere other than I had planned. And that joy is constantly with me, running deep beneath the monkey-mind chatter that keeps me sitting on my hands and biting my tongue.

Thoughts on Standards and Credentials

Well, I am at it again! I read a newspaper article from Seattle that profiled a program in which the public schools provided some services to homeschooling families in the area. Foolishly, I went to the discussion board for the article. Naturally the discussions used the article as a starting point for discussions about a lot of concerns regarding homeschooling. One such discussion was about standards and whether "amateurs" could teach their children properly. In other words, the concern is about credentials for teaching.

I couldn't help it--I just spent about 2 hours crafting an essay in response. It that forum, it is probably pearls before...well, it is probably politically incorrect to finish that sentence, but you know what I mean! :) Here is an abbreviated version of what I said:

About Educational Standards:
There has been much discussion about standards. I hold a public school teaching license (Secondary Science/Math/Social Studies and K-12 Special Education).I taught public school for 10 years. In my experience, the standards we are required to teach to are often vague, poorly stated, or so numerous that they cannot be met in the 180-day school year. I served on an advisory board for the science standards in my state when I was teaching genetics at the university level. I learned that the development of standards is often a political process in which it was more important to use politically correct jargon and to make sure not to offend anyone than it was to make sure that our students graduate with the content knowledge and skills necessary to function in an increasingly "flat world."

Am I against the very concept of standards? Not at all. The standards that I use to educate my son are higher than those of the public schools in which I taught. I demand that he can not only read and report back what what he reads (decoding and comprehension), but that he gains the background to ask questions about what he reads and compare the ideas in a particular piece of writing to other ideas that he knows about. I am educating my son to participate in the "great conversation" that is Western Civilization, and to appreciate how his life and his ideas are part of something much greater than himself; something that preceded his stay on the planet and that will continue after he is gone. My issue with the current standards movement is not that standards are bad. It is that standards ought to proceed from an integrated set of ideas about what education is and what it ought to accomplish. I do not see that in the standards that are being promulgated in my state at this time, and I do not believe that that the the current emphasis on testing can solve our current educational problems because the standards upon which they are based do not rest on a solid foundation of a well thought out set of ideas. I have many other concerns about NCLB that are tangential to this conversation about standards, but that is another discussion.

Are parents amateurs if they do not hold teaching credentials?
Most of the parents I know who are homeschooling their children are college educated people who have at least a BA or BS in their field. That is what is required of a public school teacher. The courses in education that I took focused primarily on classroom management, discipline, the legal responsibilities of a teacher, testing and other topics of importance to someone who is going to need to teach and manage large groups of other people's children. These skills are not terribly important in the situation of homeschooling because the parent is not managing large groups of other people's children. In this case, the concern about "amateur" v. "professional" is like comparing apples to oranges because the situations are not the same. The characteristics that made me a "good teacher" in the sense of being someone who could organize and convey information in a way that students could understand were not taught to me in any school of education. Rather, they came from my content knowledge, my experience and the experiences shared with me by veteran teachers. Much of what it takes to be a good teacher in this sense comes from the ability to observe a child and learn what it is that he (or she!) needs in order to learn. When I was teaching, parents were often my best source of information about the children I taught, because they knew their child intimately.

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There it is!

No photos, no anecdotes, today!
Tomorrow I will be more chatty! Today, I just had to put my thoughts down--somewhere!