Instead of Scheduling

This is the time of the year when calendars, schedules, and plans take on increased importance.

Today all of the secular holidays are behind us, and today is the official beginning of the new semester for the neighborhood kids who are schooled.


Even among the homeschooling crowd, attention has moved from celebration to new energy and purpose for the coming months of home education. In the homeschooling blogosphere, I have read many detailed accounts about shopping for new calendars, drawing up new plans, and reconsidering schedules set in the fall. Some of this discussion has sounded so enjoyable that I was momentarily tempted to go buy beautiful paper and make my own calendar. Why not? I am creative, if not artistically talented, and I could come up with a great and wonderful schedule that would knock your socks off.


But I didn't do it. If want to go out and purchase beautiful paper, it will need to be for something other than planning a schedule. You see, we don't make schedules. Or rather, to be accurate, I don't make a homeschooling schedule, post it on the refrigerator and then all goes according to plan. No. We negotiate scheduling my time commitments based on the goals of various family mumbers and then we adjust them as life happens.


It didn't start out this way for us.
In the summer of 2006, when we decided that N. would be a homeschooled kid, I spent hours on the computer developing a scope and sequence for the core subjects, unit plans and lesson plans. I developed a homeschool daily schedule that accounted for six and a half hours a day, five days a week, holidays, and Holy Days. I even developed a special unit plan for the six weeks leading up to N.'s Bar Mitzvah. I put all of this stuff into a three ring binder, designed a lovely cover insert for it, and put it on the homeschooling shelf.

It was a beautiful thing.

And that's good, because all of that time was not totally wasted. At least it looked good sitting on the shelf. Because within the first week of homeschooling, I began to see that I had left out one important element.


N.




You see, as a trained teacher (MA in Special Education), I was used to setting goals and making plans for a dedicated period of time in which students had no choice but to sit in my classroom and do what I told them to do. We were required by the state to post the standards and learning objectives for a lesson in classroom, but we certainly never considered asking the students what their goals were. Well, that's not entirely true. When I taught gifted, as I wrote each student's IEP I would meet with him or her to discuss IEP goals. But generally, I was the master of the curriculum and methods and it was incumbent upon me to select the goals and make sure I was meeting standards.



Homeschooling is an entirely different ball game!




Immediately, N. began to have opinions about what we should do and when, and he didn't think that homeschooling should include scheduled recess and snack and lunch times.





And I had to admit, he was right. Much of the rigidity in school scheduling has to do with the fact that large groups of people must be kept occupied over a given period of time. But at home, with one person being taught, this was not only unnecessary, but downright ridiculous. As I think about it, I suppose one could say that the schedule was the first casualty of our evolution from school-at-home to unschooling. However, it was only the first. The scope and sequences, the unit plans, and the daily lesson plans fell like dominoes, as N. demanded more and more autonomy in his education. (You can read more about how we moved gradually from school-at-home to unschooling here and here).




As it stands, we don't do scheduling in a traditional sense. But that doesn't mean that we have no daily routine and weekly set of commitments to think about. For us, that would not be unschooling, that would be chaos. All of us are busy people, all of us study, and all of us have involvements outside the home. In other words, we have lives. And since we live those lives together, planning and routine are critical to having Shalom Bayit--peace in the house.



Our daily, weekly and monthly routine must take into account the fact that I am a graduate student and my commitments at the university change on a semester basis. Bruce not only works as an engineer and has an avocation as an amateur astronomer, but is also educating himself in green building practices in order to gradually move into a post-retirement consulting business. N. is not only home educated, but also has commitments to religious training, Taekwondo, and Boy Scouts. And we have all the usual family and religious obligations.

So how do we develop daily, weekly and monthly routines for N.'s education at home?





At this point, we have developed a plan. Yep. A PLAN. We just can't get away from it. This plan started in August. N. and I held a meeting to discuss his learning goals for the fall. He wanted to increase his math skills so that he could study algebra, finish one packet of Kamana I, and begin studying martial arts. Starting with these goals, we drew up a reasonable weekly plan--one that included Holy Days, holidays, and N.'s other activities. N. asked me to develop a sensible scope and sequence for the math, (that was easy because he had chosen a video course from The Teaching Company) and to take a very active role in guiding him through it.
Since he wanted me to be present during his math learning, we did have to plan routine times when I would be able to give it my undivided attention. He works much more independently with Kamana, although we do some family reading for it, and we meet periodically to see what he needs from us to be successful. As for the martial arts, we decided together on Taekwondo because we knew of a very good school for that. It works on a membership basis, and together we choose 2-3 session per week (out of seven possible) for his adult beginning classes.





Right now, our routines are in flux, interrupted by the secular holidays just past, and due to change according to new commitments in the upcoming university semester. But we are careful to keep this in perspective. It is the routine that has been haphazard, but learning has not been interrupted. Both formal and informal learning continued, although the emphasis has been on the informal.

And that is the beauty of unschooling. We know that learning does not require a separation from "regular life." It is a part of regular life--holidays, commitments, obligations, recreation and everything! The difference between us and those people who educate their children in schools is only that we are more conscious of it.

Learning is 'life, the universe and everything!'

The pictures are different calendars: The first is an old Roman Fasti, the second is the Jewish Zodiac, the third is a Chinese calendar, and the last one is a Mayan calendar.

Spring 2001 Term Started Today!

...And it was a pretty good start!

N. grumbled a bit when I shook him awake at 7:30.
He was drowsy at the breakfast table--but who wouldn't be? The outside temperature was -1.5 degrees F.

He perked up when we prayed the morning service. I let him lead today even though he still uses the Shabbat nusach (tunes). Tomorrow, I will take charge so that he can learn the weekday nusach and so that I can shorten the service to a manageable time.
After the service, I asked him to collect his dirty clothes before we started math. (He left some things out as I discovered when I went to sort them).

Math was LONG! There is a lot to do with Saxon and it took him 20 minutes to practice 100 simple division problems--even though he had the Times Table Grid right in front of him!
He was easily distracted and the dogs kept barking at some MLK day skiers who were cavorting in our meadow. I chalked it up to first day back after the Bar Mitzvah and a break. We'll see how it goes tomorrow. However, it was nearly 11 AM by the time we got done with Math.

I sorted the laundry while he did the Lesson practice sheet. I noticed that there were some missing socks from his skiing trip--so when he finished and checked his work, I had him do a "redo!" on the dirty clothes gathering. This time, we got it all.

After the "redo," we did our first activity for Brain Engineering. In this one he had to find 17 hidden pictures in a picture puzzle. As he circled each one, I dropped a coin into a cup. This is supposed to help him connect his "Opticoder" (that part of the brain that processes visual information) with his "Lexicoder" (that part of the brain that processes verbal information). He did this readily in a little less than 3 minutes. He wanted to do more of that--he felt very successful with the hidden pictures after having a difficult math morning.

However, he had an appointment with his room! I gave him a trash bag and told him to go through his room and pick up every piece of trash. "Trash in the trash bin, on the floor, under the bed, in the closet, on his desk, under his desk and in his book crates." He pointed out that I forgot to mention the trash on his night table and under it, but cheerful did the job. His room was a royal mess due to having his cousins sleeping in it last week--but after 15 minutes of "trash detail" it looked considerably better! (I was happy that pointed out my omission because it means that he is "getting multi-step directions).

After "trash detail," N. took the dogs for a (short) walk--it was only 17 degrees F outside, and nobody wanted to be outside very long. While they were out, I made hotdogs for lunch.

After lunch, we began reading "Black Ships Before Troy" together. I find it easiest to get him to read some of the literature that goes with the Ancient History spine, by reading it together. He has one book and I have another. I read aloud most of the time and sometimes he does. Reading aloud is difficult for him, although his Bar Mitzvah gave him a significant boost in ease and confidence. We talk about the story as we go along, giving N. a chance to identify important characters and events that move the story along.

When we were finished reading, N. and I loaded Word Roots A1 onto the computer. This program is from Critical Thinking Press. We had begun last fall with the workbooks--but N. hates workbooks! I think this goes back to third grade, when he called his teacher "the ditto queen" and claimed that she "worshipped at the altar of the Xerox machine." (This is what comes of reading the Torah to your child with emphasis and meaning!) At NAGC in November, I visited the Critical Thinking Press booth and purchased the Word Roots series for computer. So anyway, N. worked happily away on the computerized version, in which he is building a city out of bricks made from Latin roots.

Now he is writing Thank-You notes to people who gave him giftes for his Bar Mitzvah. I gave him a template:

Dear _________________,

Thank you very much for the _________________________. (e.g. check for
$18.00). I plan to ______________ with it. I was happy that you joined
me for my Bar Mitzvah.

Sincerely,
N.
When I checked his first cards, I noticed that he wrote the message on the back of the card instead of inside of it. I corrected that, but I left his other innovation alone. He was putting a smiley face instead of sincerely! (Anything to get out of writing more words!). N. has great difficulty with writing out anything by hand, much preferring to use Microsoft Word (TM)). But Thank-you notes must be handwritten! (We discussed the meaning of the word etiquette). So he will do 5 a day--I will address them for him because the envelopes are so small and his printing is so big. (He is much better at cursive--but refuses to use it! Go figure).

Soon, we will watch a video about Ancient Greece from the Wonders of the Ancient World series.

For tomorrow, I have to figure out how to add a 1.5 hour phone conference at 8:30 AM to our schedule. That is the weekly Brain Engineering "Ask the Doc" session. Unfortunately, I think I will have to get up half-an-hour early (6:00 instead of 6:30 AM) so that we finish the morning service BEFORE 8:30 AM. Then I can start him on his Math and Logic work. We can check the work after the conference. OY! One point for homeschooling was that I could rise a little later in the morning! Like at twilight instead of full dark. Well.