Daffodil week, mini-beast week, Victorian week, Civil Rights week… My home school planning sits in a special folder on my laptop, presumably never to be used again.
But for some reason I can’t let myself delete it, and I’m not sure I ever will.
I used to think home schooling (or home education, as is often preferred within the community) was for the weird and the extreme and American (sorry!) But some friends of friends, a home schooling family, let us holiday in their beautiful orderly home, with its handmade finishes and folders of sweet learning, and the set-up looked so attractive. Our church had an influx of American military families who were home schoolers and spoke so positively of the experience. Another South African family with five delightful home schooled children joined our church and, oh my goodness, their children – so polite, confident, well-read, with great general knowledge, comfortable to talk to adults and children... It was a revelation. Finally, two of my best friends set up a home school co-op together and suddenly the idea seemed less of a freakish choice and more… an enviable alternative.
I gather that home school set-ups vary and of course my exposure is very limited. But you’d have to see my friends’ idyllic-looking set-up to believe it. One has a massive garden which the children frolic in and have turned into a magical and evolving land. The children learn well in a wonderful community and have some impressive party tricks, like knowing the names of all the countries (I thought of them as I struggled to locate European states on a map during Eurovision) and they are currently learning a song with a whole timeline of history. More families have been drawn in, a lovely supportive network of parents committed to teaching and training their children.
So when we were all plunged into lockdown, I was selfishly delighted – this was my legitimate chance to try it!
I appreciate that as two teachers we were uniquely well positioned in approaching the mammoth responsibility that is home schooling. In the first lockdown, the expectation for state school teachers to be available live was minimal and my husband’s rota-ed in days were rare, which meant there was scope for us to juggle the children between us, and complete our regular teaching commitments in the gaps. (This was largely recording and uploading lessons, and responding to work submitted. So. Much. Marking. Which I did in the evenings. But anyway…)
After the first few days we clocked on that it was impossible to cover the three different sets of work being sent home for three children, and that aside from maths and phonics we’d all just have to learn about the same topics together. And so we did. And whilst I had PLENTY of wobbles and tears along the way, we also had a lot of adventures.
As a teacher and a school-gates mum, I’m aware of some of the struggles and challenges people faced during that time. How draining, for example, to be a single parent trying to complete your own work whilst simultaneously, magically supervising your child/ren’s learning – completely impossible. How miserable for the children whose parents just weren't able to support and stimulate them, like some of my own students, who turned into nocturnal X-box players and never clicked on the assignments I'd spent hours putting together (because every time I was audio recording someone came in to interrupt). But then I’m also aware of parents like in our family where dipping our toes into the world of home schooling was a positive experience, who appreciated more time with their offspring, who liked being involved in their education, who recognised they were uniquely positioned to support the needs and interests of their children. And of children like mine who quite enjoyed having more of their parents' time and attention, and were happy to be at home. So whilst for some brave people it was a time of struggling and suffering, for others it was a real opportunity, a gift. And maybe it made us realise that home schooling wasn’t such a strange and extreme lifestyle choice after all, that there are definite upsides to it.
Last March, our South African friends wrote some words of encouragement and advice to the families at church as we began our home schooling journeys. They began their top tips thus:
1) As parents we are responsible for our children’s education. We delegated it to their school, and the Lord has, for a time, delegated it back to us. This is helpful because it reminds us that it is always our role to oversee our children’s education.
For me, this was a real shift in thinking: I had always been responsible for the boys’ learning really, it was just that I largely outsourced it and ignored it – here was my chance to reclaim it.
One magic thing I noticed is that when you’re directly involved in a child’s education, you begin to see the connections and opportunities that you miss out on when your understanding of what they’re learning is based on a cursory glance of the school’s weekly overview sheet. We just spotted things where we were able to say, “Oh yes – do you remember…?” and suddenly learning wasn’t about subjects and boxes but more a sort of learning journey together. My goodness, that sounds cheesy. But Civil Rights week somehow dovetailed into the Black Lives Matters campaign. VE day made sense of ‘The Sound of Music’. We had natural, spontaneous learning conversations, where, for example, they volunteered to make stop animation videos for church about bringing our own cups for coffee time, after we were surprised to learn together that every day we make enough plastic cups to circle the Earth. I was full of self-doubts but it really was a special time and a real challenge to me to take more of an interest in what they are learning so we can make more of those connections outside of school.
I’m happy for everyone that we’re all back at school. Students need to be properly supported in structured tailored learning (as opposed to my ‘make it up a week at a time’ approach, often based on not exactly age-appropriate topics like Shakespearean tragedies, because that's what I know about!). One of my boys in particular needs the structure and routine that comes from school, and appreciates the interactions with his peers more than time with his brothers. But there are PLENTY of good things I’ve learnt from home schooling, and if a zombie apocalypse hit and we had to repeat the experience, I’d be not so secretly pleased.
After all, it would be pretty sad to not want to spend more time with these lovely little humans we’ve created, wouldn’t it?
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