“Home”schooling So Far
Friday marked the end of Week 8 in the kids’ schooling, so this weekend I need to type up a progress report to each of their teachers, which we’re expected to do every two weeks. It’s an exercise that makes me reflect on how Colly and Kyle are doing, how Morgan and I are doing as parents/teachers, and whether this whole “roadschooling” experiment is working as well as it could.
While in Colorado, the kids got a tour of the University of Colorado Special Collections department, including a peek at their great-grandfather's archives.
As my first post on our quasi-home-schooling detailed, I had a lot of concerns that tempered the alluring prospect of taking Colly and Kyle out of school and teaching them while we travel. So here’s the gist of how it’s going so far: It’s working out better than I could have hoped, and all four of us find the arrangement nearly ideal. We have independent study contracts through their school district, which effectively means we’re doing a hybrid of homeschooling and traditional schooling. We generally follow the schedule and content of their grade-level core curriculum, with some long-distance guidance from their teachers, but tailor their studies to leverage the educational opportunities of our travels.
A homeschooling "Everyday Math" lesson: Kyle practices addition and learns about probability while his grandfather teaches him Blackjack.
The kids’ minds are expanding, they’re learning the basics that they need to know to pass the 3rd and 6th grades, and they say the only thing they miss about school is the other kids and a couple of favorite teachers. We all tremendously appreciate the gift of time and flexibility that homeschooling gives. Back home, their peers are in school from about 8:30 until 3, followed by an afternoon of scheduled sports and activities, followed by lots of homework. By contrast, Colly and Kyle spend about two to three hours, four or five days a week, doing required schoolwork (e.g. math, language arts, science and history basics) — and then they’re done. There’s no more rushing to get from Point A to B on time, no more homework hassles and scheduling stress. No more time wasted on transitioning from one period to another at school and zoning out while the teacher helps other students. No more being told to put away what they’re working on — even if they’re in the middle of working on something they care about — because the classroom schedule says it’s time to do something else. Colly’s blog post on homeschooling describes her perspective on what we’re doing — and the fact she wants to blog is a prime example of travel-inspired learning.
Nonetheless, I question how we’re handling things and see room for improvement. Are we doing too much “schoolwork” (which is hard to define) or too little? Are Morgan and I providing too much structure and direction, or not enough? Are we blowing the opportunity to maximize the benefits of genuine homeschooling by following their schools’ assignments?
Take the last two weeks, for example. Colly plugged away at a chapter in math, wrote a creative short story, answered questions on a worksheet about a history chapter, reviewed vocabulary lists and took a grammar quiz. Kyle completed worksheets for math and language arts, wrote in his journal and practiced cursive. Both kids read novels on their own, and also read and discussed Time’s weekly kids’ edition. Those were all assignments from school, and they all seemed pretty worthwhile (though we’ve debated whether Kyle learning cursive is a waste of time. We concluded that the process of developing fine motor skills and taking care with words is useful, as is being able to read cursive, even if he never writes much cursive himself because he’s going straight to a keyboard).
Colly's interest in writing has blossomed over the past two months. Here she's writing a story as we drive across Arizona.
For the most part, however, the best learning moments were sparked by the surroundings and our time together. When we got to Argentina and found ourselves surrounded by the metric system, we spent a morning measuring things in meters and comparing containers in the refrigerator that are in liters, which got the kids doing calculations involving addition, multiplication and decimals. On Thursday, we took a day trip from Buenos Aires to Colonia del Sacramento, Uruguay, so we learned where Uruguay is on the map, how “Colonia” means “colony” and discussed a bit about what colonialism was all about. When we got there, they learned to convert Uruguay prices to Argentinian pesos (divide by 5) and then to U.S. dollars (divide by 4). On another recent morning, Kyle wrote a detailed letter to family back home and Colly added a “recommended reading” page with mini book reviews to her blog. Almost every day, we read aloud a chapter from Three Cups of Tea (Young Reader’s Edition), which gets us talking about what’s going on in Pakistan and Afghanistan. We’re picking up Spanish vocabulary and noticing cultural differences around the clock. And we’ve become hooked on Brain Pop videos, since the kids can’t get their TV fix from Spanish TV.
I cherish the time Colly and I were playing around with word choices while reviewing her blog, and she leaned into my arm, put her head on my shoulder, and said, “Thank you so much.” Or the time Kyle and Morgan spent the better part of a day learning a graphic design software program together. Or the time Morgan took the kids on a creepy tour of the Buenos Aires cemetery to marvel at the tombs and hunt for Evita’s.
All these impromptu lessons are hard to quantify and don’t necessarily “count” toward the kids’ independent study obligations, but they seem more meaningful and engaging than the school assignments, in part because they’re as much about family dynamics as about their education. Colly and Kyle are collaborating, growing closer to each other and also to us. They have two parents who are fully engaged in their lives. I wouldn’t trade these times for anything.
They think this is just "cool" and "fun," but they're also plotting strategy, figuring out spacial relations and resolving sibling conflict. (Colly laughed and mocked my seriousness when she read that caption!)
But, nothing’s perfect and easy (and wouldn’t it be boring if it were?). Speaking of family dynamics, one bump on the roadschooling road has been the working relationship between Morgan and me. Our somewhat different approaches to homeschooling reflect — and sometimes magnify — differences in our personalities. He’s a less-is-more, let’s-be-flexible-and-try-new-things guy. I’m a more-is-better, let’s-stick-to-a-schedule-and-do-what-the-experts-say gal. He points out that the kids will have to spend the rest of their academic careers loaded with work and doing what their schools require, so they should do the minimum they need to do to meet independent study expectations for schoolwork this year. That way, he says, they’ll have more freedom to develop and nurture their intellectual interests, become self-directed learners and absorb what the foreign environment has to teach them. I see his point, but — the kids are returning to regular school next fall, and I want them to succeed, not struggle, then. I say we should take advantage of this extra free time and the opportunity to work one-on-one with them to do all the schoolwork and more so they can master and even exceed the grade-level standards.
On good days, we balance each other out in a way that benefits the kids. Occasionally, though, we disagree over details and teaching styles. The conflict gets to the heart of my conflicted feelings over the way we’re homeschooling. I admit it: I think Morgan’s approach is the better one, and I would like to be able to see and do things more his way. But it’s hard for me to cede control over the kids’ education because I care so much about it and hence want to be (overly)involved in every aspect. I also feel accountable to the kids’ school since we agreed to follow their independent study plan. In hindsight, we could have completely withdrawn the kids from school, had an unstructured and experimental year of education, and then let them repeat their grades if necessary when we return (which wouldn’t be so bad, considering their spring birthdays make them relatively young for their grades). But none of us wanted to go down that road; we liked — and still appreciate — the curriculum and teacher guidance the school plan provides.
It's easy to get excited about writing and literature when you're with my brother David. Here, Kyle reads his essay aloud to his uncle, which prompts a silly yet stimulating discussion.
Now I sometimes think, “What if we really homeschooled?” It’s unlikely we’d do that now, since both kids want to get back to their school’s social scene, but I’m more open to it. I also hear Morgan echoing my brilliant brother’s view — my brother David, the writer and teacher, who together with my sister-in-law successfully homeschooled their two kids (who went on to earn numerous honors and merit scholarships at two prestigious colleges). They did full-blown homeschooling, in which “schooling” is not so much a separate, scheduled activity as a fully integrated approach to life. They trusted my niece and nephew to set the agenda by following and kindling their curiosity, and they moved through basic subjects such as math at the kids’ pace. My brother likes to quote Emerson:
… the secret of Education lies in respecting the pupil. It is not for you to choose what he shall know, what he shall do … only he holds the key to his own secret. By your tampering and thwarting and too much governing, he may be hindered from his end and kept out of his own. Respect the child. Wait and see the new product of Nature. Nature loves analogies, but not repetition. Respect the child. Be not too much his parent. Trespass not on his solitude.
I’m grateful we spent the first leg of the trip living with my brother and sister-in-law in Colorado and started our “roadschooling” year with them as role models. I admire their perspective and am coming around to it more and more — which means I’m caring less about the kids “keeping up” with what their peers are doing back home, and trusting and respecting them more to do what they want and at their own pace.
I increasingly have faith that learning is taking place all the time, and they’re more likely to remember lessons that sprout from their curiosity and are in the context of their real lives. I’m trying to step aside and act less as a manager, more as an on-call consultant, and to not interfere when Morgan is doing things his way with the kids.
Plate tectonics, ancient seas, sedimentary rock layers and erosion become more interesting when you're dazzled by the end result.
So here we are, about two months or one-fifth of the way through Kyle’s 3rd grade and Colly’s 6th grade, and you could say we’re all “learning as we go.” Despite my hand-wringing and over-analyzing above, we all love this new world of roadschooling and anticipate that it will be very difficult to go back to school next fall — not because the kids won’t be ready academically (I’m now confident they will be), but because we don’t want to give up this arrangement. Every time I ask Colly and Kyle how they like school this year compared to years past, they say it’s “way better.”
I’d say they’re developing a genuine curiosity about the world, becoming independent learners and risk-takers, making connections between academic disciplines and feeling that their education is relevant.
Morgan, to his credit, would probably say, “They’re being kids. They’re doing fine.”
Related posts:
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- Essential Gear For Long-Term Travel
- Halfway There Together: Surprises and Changes So Far
- “Back to School” Becomes “Leave to Learn”
- A New Season, A New Way
Tags: family travel, homeschooling, Roadschooling, RTW travel, Sarah_Lavender_Smith, travel advice
Dear Sarah,
What wonderful, thoughtful insights to your year of travel and views on road schooling. What you and Morgan are teaching Colly and Kyle cannot be matched in the ‘physical’ classroom and observing, touching, seeing and experiencing out in the real world is something that none of you will ever forget. These are truly life’s lessons. Soak it all in. -Sarah
School is overrated…lol. Seriously though, as someone who attended 13 different schools between k and 12 (technically k and 11 since I skipped my junior year in high school) I can vouch that you can learn more out of a classroom than in one, and that it only takes a couple of weeks to catch up to any curriculum. You are doing a fantastic job! Don’t worry so much about an imagined “perfect education”..you’ve raised smart,inquisitive kids. Make sure to keep having fun. Love and miss you
Sounds like it’s going really well! Congrats to you and Morgan for making this happen for Colly and Kyle. Love you guys -
Sarah,
Great post.
My first impulse was to keep this comment short: “Morgan is right!”
But given that this is an issue close to my heart, I figured I’d go ahead and explain just why I think he’s right. And, to give you (and your readers) some perspective, Karen was Morgan (and I was the fretful you) way back when she first started wondering just why we should send our kids, whom we were having so much fun with, to school in the first place—and this was when we had tuition-free access to Monica Ros, a terrific private pre & elementary school in Ojai.
I freaked—much as you seemed to be doing, Sarah—and my first impulse was to try and recreate the classroom at home (there’s a useful distinction to be made between “homeschooling”—whose not entirely unjustified stereotype has an overly large family of fundamentalist Christians all gathered around their desks—arranged in neat rows as if this were really school, not home—dutifully saluting the flag and reciting the Pledge of Allegiance, God and all) and “unschooling” which is what we quickly wound up practicing (c.f John Holt’s Growing Without Schooling website) and toward which Morgan seems currently inclined.
Kids are naturally curious. They’re going to learn if we can simply get out of the way. When you think about it, autodidacts—doing essentially what Colly and Kyle are doing right now—have a much, much longer history than those “institutionalized” learners, whom we for some reason now take as the model. Certainly, they’re the norm; but when you think about it, what’s really “normal” about what happens in school? John Taylor Gatto (twice New York State Teacher of the Year) presents a pretty scathing critique of the public school system in his “Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling” in which he includes a useful analogy between the public school and the public library (in the former, learners are segregated by age and ability; they read books written by committees, not individuals; and just as they’re getting into a subject, someone blows a whistle in their ear and tells them to move on to something else). Another book you’d really enjoy is by those unrepentant Marxists, Stanley Arononwitz and Henry Giroux, who, in their terribly titled “PostModern Education” unwittingly make the academic case for homeschooling (both are big believers, as I am, in publicly funded educational opportunities, but question whether public schooling, as currently constituted, represents much of an opportunity for education).
Anyway, as a public school educator, my biggest concern is with the way in which the very institution of the public school manages to teach all these terrible lessons even before we get the kids in the classroom. The most insidious of these is the lesson that learning is time and site specific—i.e. that for these 45 or 50 minutes (and only during this time) you’re going to learn about math; and then you’re going to move on to another room and learn about something which we adults are implicitly telling you is entirely unrelated. Emerson also wrote that “nothing is more sacred than the integrity of your own mind,” and yet, one way or another, public school—as an institution—is forever dis-integrating learning. The next step for something that is presented as unrelated is to have it become irrelevant in the child’s mind, and I worry that, as an indirect result, the first thing we crush out of kids is their natural curiosity (and this happens long before they reach my classroom as juniors or seniors). Ask a kid—any kid—what their favorite part of school is, and I’ll wager their answer will either be lunch or recess. In other words, kids see the best part of school as NOT school. Clearly, we’re doing something wrong.
Of course, many teachers can and do overcome these obstacles to authentic learning; but speaking from experience, it’s hard (and frustrating) work. By contrast, taking a much more holistic approach to learning—letting young people experience life unmediated by state-sanctioned lesson plans and their corresponding standards and benchmarks—just seems so much more appropriate for kids like Colly and Kyle. And what incredible opportunities you and Morgan are creating for them!
So relax, have fun, and be amazed at their growth in the coming year!
Great post, and a great concept I can get behind: “road-schooling.” Not much of a home-schooler, but given children a chance to see the world for a year is something I consider to be one of the best education opportunities you could possibly give a child.
Re: your conflicting teaching styles:
Both of the mind sets informing the two approaches are equally valid (obviously). I would want to give my children an exposure to a healthy dose of both philosophies and step one for me would be structure and predictability. Block out days or big blocks of time in which the dominant philosophy to dictate the course of the day will be yours and on another day let the dominant philosophy be that of your husband’s.
I would never present it as such to the kids because I think it is important personally for the curriculum to be someone opaque and not one where parts are strongly associated with “mom’s way of doing things” vs. “dad’s way of doing things.” Just agree with your teaching partner what the schedule is and make them head-master for that day.
But just my 0.02, or 0.001 Uraguain pesos I suppose.
Inspiring post! I can’t wait to follow it through out the year!
um, I’m really jealous! Schedule’s stink! i love the idea of being able to learn about stuff that makes you think than stuff that makes you want to rebel against modern society!(And its too high standards) Where did the times go when you learn not lectured! Even though school is really fun i think it is great that you let them see a whole new perspective on life. It will last them forever.
sorry if that comment was cheesy
I’m so glad the road schooling is working out for everyone. It really inspires me. I’ve been worrying about the teaching ‘requirements’ for kindergarten. while we are on road..which include a lot of drawing and writing letters. Nothing Bode is interested in. He did mention wanting to make laws after visiting the Parliament in Canada and knows more about volcanoes than I ever will. I’m pretty sure he will learn to write at some point in his life, but won’t ever have these opportunities. Colly and Kyle are really lucky, and they’ll learn more this year than ever!
Thanks for pointing me to your blog after I left a comment on your daughters. I’ve spent a very interesting hour reading all about your road schooling thoughts and experiences, an issue which I’m naturally very interested in as we’ll be doing the same thing this time next year. Our children are a little younger than yours at 7, 5 and 3 (8, 6 and 4 when we head off), so I’m not too worried about the 2 littlest ones, who’ll need to learn to read and do simple sums, but not too much else. When we went to our eldest’s parent teacher meeting a couple of weeks ago and mentioned our plans her first comment was “wow, what an education she’ll get”. The head of her school has also been supportive, so I guess many teachers can see the value in getting out of the classroom for a while. I’m hoping that a few workbooks like you mentioned, plus reading novels, lots of currency conversions, learning new languages, plotting routes on maps etc will more than cover what she needs to know. I’m glad you’re finding a balance, I know I don’t want to travel half way around the world and end up spending too much time indoors doing school work.
Lots of food for thought, thank you!
PS I’ve added you to our blog roll
Sarah and Morgan –
Congratulations for your efforts and thoughtfulness about teaching Colly and Kyle. It’s never easy, and I’m convinced that kids will learn and be resilient in spite of their parents! But with such caring and thoughtful parents, I think you can’t go wrong. Give yourselves credit for the experiences you are providing them by traveling and exposing them to the real world. As people point out to us while we are here in Kenya, not all children get the chance to experience another culture and live in other countries. It will shape their lives in ways that we can’t anticipate (hopefully mostly positive!).
Because we are staying in one place, we have enrolled the girls in a local international school that follows the British system. We could have gone to an American international school, but we thought this would be more interesting (no point in coming here just to try and make it like home). Plus it’s closer to our house. The girls love their school and their new friends who come from all over the world. I have brought along some books from school and bought some online including leap pad books (which they love). Plus they have their diaries and write a newsletter every month for 4-H and Carlee’s school paper. I feel like as long as they have the writing, math and reading down, the rest is icing on the cake. East African history is not in the California State Standards, but frankly it’s much more interesting! Our biggest problem is fitting in all the travel I want to do before we have to go home! I’ll play a game with Carlee to teach her the states and their capital cities later.
Thanks for your very descriptive posts. We’ll have lots of notes to compare later!
Fantastic post and comments – thanks, seeing someone who has first hand experience of home-schooling on the road and that it hasn’t completely disrupted your childrens education and actually is only enhancing it is a breath of fresh air. Schooling on the road is the one thing that worries me and I think it’s just because you are going against the ‘norm’ which frightens people, who feel it’s their duty to tell you that you are doing the wrong thing. So thanks for presenting another side to the argument
As a family on an open ended, non stop world tour since 2006, living large on 23 dollars a day per person, with no end in sight ….I have to agree with Morgan & David.
Follow your brothers lead, now & when you return. They don’t need school to maintain friends & can SOAR without a dying school system. Always choose freedom!!
Nice post about homeschooling. We’re from Marin and doing the same thing at about the same time; we’re currently in Italy.
Here’s an interesting post on homeschooling from our blog:
http://alpaca-suitcase.blogspot.com/2010/02/okay-well-admit-that-having-our-14-and.html
Keep it up!
Jason
We’re doing unschooling now. It does, to be honest, work so much better. Learning comes much more easily. And I think one thing you confront as a parent is how much time in school is spent doing things other than learning. Sitting quietly, for example… I’ll be interested to see where you end up with schooling now that you’re home. I wrote about our experience here…
http://travelswithanineyearold.com/2010/05/23/homeschooling_unschooling_travelling_family_rtw_education_learning/
As a teacher for many years – and a parent – I have always believed that children learn best when supported by 2 loving parents such as yourself and Morgan. Your post was reflective of all of that. Although you are all “home” now and life has resumed to its pre-roadschool travels, I am sure you are still participating in your children’s education. As a teacher I was taught that the first teachers in a child’s life are their parents. If more parents participated in their child’s education there would be better public education all around. We can’t do it all as public school or even private school teachers. We can’t fix the problems of the family this child comes from. All we can do is show them the way to be independent and self-sufficient in this complicated world we live in. Your children have been exposed to a wonderful experience that they will never forget. And you, as the parents, will never forget the part you played in letting your children “fly” out of the nest with all the unconditional love you give them. As they grow you will see changes, but you will also see the influence you had on them in many good ways. You are both the “teachers of the year.” And for every year after. Keep up the good work. OH, and don’t let the differences in “teachers” dissuade you from sticking with what you believe to be the “best teaching practices.” The reason your child has so many teachers during their growing up years is so they can learn to adjust to different views and different personalities. I love the creative approach of Morgan. It’s how I teach. But when I team taught with another teacher, he was the one who did the creative thing and I was the one who said “We have a curriculum to follow, which I wrote for the district by the way!” We worked it out…the kids really benefitted from our different views of how to teach. One way or another, they “got it.”
Thank you parents for being the kind of parents we as teachers absolutely adore.
hi we are considering traveling for the first semester of next year in Europe with our children…. this blog was sent to me through fodors and is very encouraging…. actually our kids are the age yours are in these stories of your travels…. homeschooling is the most daunting aspect of the experience for me… and leaving my furries behind for so long:)… thank you!