Things that I wish that I had known when I started homeschooling.

Things that I wish that I had known when I started homeschooling.

1. Home Education versus Schooling at home: The goal of homeschooling isn't to emulate or reproduce what is done in a regular school. Home education is creating an environment of learning, growth, discovery, imagination, creativity, and personal development. No bell is needed. No formal classroom is needed. Modeling your home after a regular school will probably only bring frustration and disappointment.

2. Observe: Take time to simply observe and notice what your child needs. How does he learn? About what things does she like to learn? What are his strengths? What are her weakness? Does he have a talent, hobby, or interest that he loves? As you focus on these things, you can create your home education around things that excite and fascinate your child.

3. Do what you LOVE: Do you have hobbies, talents, or interests that you love? Share these with your child. If you love music, engage him in your world of music.  If you love to cook, share that with her (cooking is a great way to easily understand fractions).  Do you love the outdoors? Make it a part of your  family's educational life. Have your child draw, write, hike and explore nature(that is Art, Language Arts, P.E. and Science for those looking for course titles).

4. Don't Worry: Worry makes you unhappy, which makes your kid unhappy. So don't worry about finishing a curriculum, scores on state testing, living up to other's expectations, and being the fairytale of the "perfect  homeschooling family" . It doesn't exist.

5. Spiritual/Ethical/Character Development: One of the many advantages of home education is that you can teach your child to be a GOOD person. Incorporating spiritual, ethical, moral, or character concepts into your learning is essential to inspiring your child to be a well rounded, contributing member of society. As you read together, take time to discuss and ask questions about what you are reading and how it fits into your family's world view. If you are a spiritual person, make time to pray together in your homeschool. As a homeschooling parent, pray daily on your own and pray to know the needs of each individual family member.

6.Play and Learn: Your child learns best through play. Mindful play (not entertainment by electronic media) is a child's form of work and how they understand the world. Use this attribute to teach your child. So many games are available to teach your child, for example Boggle and Bananagrams for Language Arts or Monopoly and Life for Math. Beyond board games and computer games that teach, creating play in all aspect of your home educating will be rewarding. I remember helping my youngest child learn subtraction using a truck to take away Lego pieces from a pile of Legos. It taught the concept much better than flash cards.

7. Trust yourself: Know for yourself what works for your family. Trust your "gut", not your fears. The "experts" don't know your exact family situation. Advice that may be generally good for most people may not work for your family.  Also, if you need help along your journey, seek out mentors who you trust and respect to guide you in this adventure.

8. Take care of YOU: Too often, you may spend so much time taking care of your child that you don't take care of yourself, which always ends up backfiring. If you are not feeding your own metaphoric "fire" , you won't be able to give light and warmth to your child.  Take time to keep yourself physically, emotionally, and spiritually healthy. Also, a child learns the most from example. If you demonstrate a thirst for learning and growth, your child will emulate that example.

9.Read, read, read: Read with your child, no matter what the age. Do it daily for at least 20 minutes. Especially when a child is younger,  because so much is gained through reading aloud. It is a time when you can share your interests with your child, but also a time for them to feel comfort and closeness with a parent. Also, a child needs to hear words read aloud so that they know how to pronounce them. (My example; as a child I loved Greek Myths and read them often, but I never heard the words read aloud, thus I didn't learn how to pronounce the name Hephaestus until I was an adult. ) Audio books are also a great tool in the home educators tool kit.

10. Start Slowly:  Pretty self explanatory. If you plan to do five different subjects for one hour a day on the first day of school, everyone will end up in tears. Slowly build up the amount of time that you spend each day, but also remember NOT to equate it to public school. You usually don't need to spend the amount of time at home working on a subject that you would in a regular school setting. This leads into the next subject...

11. Realistic Expectations: This is for your child and for you, expecting more than is possible will lead to disappointment and frustration. That means that certain things in life need to be dropped in order to make time and energy for what is most important. For example, if your child is struggling with reading, right now wouldn't be a good time to try to teach Latin.

12. Make it joyful: Homeschooling for me is not always easy nor is it something that comes naturally, yet, I have seen the joy and peace that it brings to my home. When I choose to be positive and joyful in home educating, it is contagious and makes learning so much easier for all of us.

13. Don't bind yourself to a curriculum or lesson plan: Home education is so much more than finishing a text book or fulfilling a lesson plan. It is assisting your child in "learning to learn" and learning to think. If the curriculum or the lesson plan get in the way of real learning, drop them and do something else. For those involved in state sponsored homeschool programs, if the student learning plan is stressing you more than it is helping you, then change it.

14.  Involve your spouse: Make home learning a family affair that includes the parent who is away from the home the most. Weekend projects or evening story telling or music practice are just some terrific ways to involve your spouse. For example, in my home, I am the teacher and my husband has taken on the role of the principal. When there are discipline issues, my husband takes care of those problems when he gets home. Additionally, my husband will purposely create "challenges" and projects for our children to complete that are fun and educational.

15:  Decide which hoops are worth jumping through:  Certain state requirements are necessary to homeschool. Beyond those requirements, you need to do a "cost benefit analysis" of what hoops you are willing to jump through in order to get certain benefits.  You may want your accountability to the state to be as little as possible. Or you may be a person that wants more direction, curriculum,  classes, etc. that can be provided by state run programs. So before you enroll in any state run programs,  be honest with yourself as to whether you are willing to commit yourself and your child to the additional "hoop jumping"  required to participate in these programs.

Shaking my FISTS

Have you ever shaken your fists at God and asked, "WHY?"

For the last 10 days I have been praying for my friend, Haley Morales, who now lives in New Jersey. At the young age of 36 she went into cardiac arrest (had a heart attack). She was without blood to her brain for an hour. She was placed into a medically induced coma to help her body and brain recover, BUT, it didn't. Today she died. She leaves behind a husband and 5 children, the youngest of whom is 1 years old.

At times like this I ask the age old question, "WHY?" and shake my fists at God. His reply might be, "Why not?"

Or His answer may be, "I have plans for Haley and her family that you can't comprehend or even imagine."

All I know is that I am sad. Sad that she doesn't get to raise her children here on earth. Sad that her baby won't know his mother. Sad that JJ has to struggle on without his wife. Sad that such a bright star was taken from the earth, when so many people basked in her light.

I wish that faith in God's plan would immediately heal all wounds, but it doesn't. I understand that this great plan of happiness helps us make sense of our eternal purpose, yet it isn't an instant salve for the burns on our heart. And, I believe it is perfectly acceptable to believe in the Lord's plan and still feel sadness, anger, hurt, and frustration. As long as we don't spend our lives wallowing in those emotions, feeling them is perfectly natural. Just because you feel a deep understanding of God's plan doesn't mean that you aren't allowed to mourn. After all, you aren't mourning for the person who has passed on, you are mourning for the people who are left behind and will terribly miss the deceased.

This past 10 days, along with others, I have been praying and fasting for a miracle, yet Haley still died. Does that mean that I don't believe in miracles? No, it means that miracles sometime manifest themselves in a different way than I want. I now pray for the miracle of "peace that surpasses all understanding". I pray for the Spirit to lift and guide JJ as he continues his mortal journey without his wife by his side. I pray for the miracle of healing . Most of all, I pray for the biggest miracle, that it will all work out in the end and turn into a "Happily Ever After" story.

Thus, I will unclench my angry fists, bring down my upraised arms, and prayerfully say, "Thy will be done, oh Lord", turning my fist shaking into hands clasped in hope.

Pointing Fingers

Have you ever noticed that when news agencies report on a statement or interview with a politician, that the politician blames some other entity for current problems? Ex. It's G.W. Bush's fault! It's Obama's fault! The Democrats caused this mess! The Republicans are blocking progress! I anxiously await the day for a politician to take responsibility for the mess that our country is in.

Good leaders follow a principle called, "window and mirror". This means that when they accomplish something good, productive, or beneficial, they shine the light on others (out the window). They downplay their role in the accomplishment and focus on all of the people on their "team" who contributed to this success. Transversely, when their is a failure or mistake, a good leader looks in the mirror and takes full responsibility for the error.

Wouldn't it be refreshing to have political leadership that practiced "window and mirror" leadership!?!?! Imagine how politics might be different if finger pointing was only used to praise other people instead to blame them? With that kind of humility, politicians might actually get around to the business of fixing the problems in our country!

Why not?

WARNING- this is an opinionated, terse, and sometimes "in your face" post. Read with caution.

The other day someone asked me the dreaded question, "Why do you homeschool?" and then gave me two answers to choose from. A little problematic because I don't homeschool my children for just one reason. I homeschool my kids for hundreds of reasons. The longer that I homeschool, the more that I enjoy it and the more reasons that I discover for "why do I homeschool?"

So, for those of you who are interested, here is a short history of my family and schooling. After that, I will dive into some of the reasons that I homeschool. This isn't a treatise in defense of homeschooling or to convince you to homeschool, it is simply a way for me to concretely express some of the thoughts floating around in my homeschool mind.

The pre-History of my homeschooling

For the first five and a half years of my marriage, my husband and I lived in the rural community where he was raised in south central Washington State. Needless to say, it was a hellish five and a half years for me (that is a story for another time). Sadly, this small town had horrible schools. Some of the worst in Washington State. I knew I couldn't send me children to school there, so I tried to do something about it.

First, I talked with my dear friend Tiffany, who is the smartest woman I know-a true Renaissance Woman. She is the only woman I know who is equally comfortable doing Calculus, drama, writing, and computer programing. I scoured her brain for ideas. Tiffany homeschooled some of her kids off and on, and she introduced me to different educational ideas like A Thomas Jefferson Education and the book, The Well Trained Mind. But I wasn't interested in homeschooling, so I listened but negated those ideas because, "I could never homeschool my kids".

Next I learned about doing cooperative homeschooling from Jackie, who had been a part of a coop in another town. I tested the waters and asked other people in the community if they would be interested in a coop, but all of the answers were negative. This also included the idea of starting a private school in this small community, but once again, only negative answers.

What amazes me is that my daughter (my oldest) was still a baby, but even back then, I was concerned about her "proper" education.

From there, I decided to do something about the crappy schools. Miraculously a spot opened up on the local school board and I applied. I was only 27 and I was so confident, cocky really, that I was so much smarter and better educated than those ignorant farmers (wrong). I thought I could teach them something about how to run their community. Imagine my disappointment and anger when I wasn't appointed to that position. But looking back, I don't know that being on that school board would have made much of a difference. I would have been trying to bale out a leaking boat with a spoon.

Thankfully we moved out of the hellish rural community to a larger community only one hour away. In this new town there were PRIVATE SCHOOLS! Excitement welled up in me when I learned of a small private school that was run by a woman in our ward(church congregation). It seemed perfect. I will call it school A.

Two years after entering school A and participating in school A politics, we were kicked out, because my husband questioned the integrity and practices of the "powers that be". We had some great friends and teachers who stood by us and also left the school because of the situation. This little group decided to start their own private school- school B. Yep, in about 3 months, we created a fully functioning and state approved private school B. It was a miracle!

This little school B lasted for one glorious, perfect year, and then it too fell apart. So we "merged" with school A because the previous administrators had left or kindly been shown the door by the school board. It was weird to go back to school A, but my husband and a good friend were on the school board, so I thought that everything was under control. (Do you see the pattern yet?) Guess what, now school A was run by an administrator 10 times worse than the original administration that was there before. Teachers left or were fired, and many students left school A. That was the last year that we participated in private school.

You may ask, what is the point of this abbreviated glance into the pre-history of Christina homeschooling? It is a reflection of part of who I am, i.e. I rarely follow the status quo. Meaning, I like to do my own thing and think my own thoughts. This applies to the my homeschooling pre-history in that I have constantly been searching for something "more" than what traditional schooling has to offer. I found it in homeschooling.

I clearly remember that first day of homeschooling my children two years ago. We started our homeschooling day with the Pledge of Allegiance, a prayer, some scripture reading and a song. As I stood in front of my class of three beautiful children, I remember the Holy Spirit whispering peace, joy, and confidence to my heart. It was my confirmation from God that what I was doing was right for my family.

Why? Just a few reasons and definitely not the entire picture.

-First off, why not? What is the great and powerful entity that stated that conveyor belt, public education is right for everyone? *In the early part of this country's history, there was almost no public education system, and guess what, the literacy rate was higher and the people were better educated. Why? Because education was a blessing, a gift really, a way to better yourself, and it was viewed as a blessing, not an obligation. Oh, and guess where most of those people learned to read and write? Yep, at home.

-One of the biggest reasons for me is something that you can't measure quantitatively- it is called peace. Since homeschooling, our home has become so much more peaceful. The more time I spend with my kids, the more patient I become (but that takes a "breaking in" period). The more time we spend together, the less my kids fight, because they have to get along with each other. My children don't come home at the end of a school day physically and emotionally exhausted. I get to see them at their best. When we are all "worn down", we take "alone time" to recharge ourselves.

Also, I am not running around catering to the schedule of a school. I don't have to put my kids on the bus at 7 am or pick them up at 3 pm from the bus stop. We get to school and do activities when we want. So if we want piano lessons at 9am, we can. If we want to go swimming or play at the park in the middle of the day, we can. This freedom brings peace.

-Each of my children are distinct individuals and as such, they each learn differently. They also have different needs, personalities, and strengths. By homeschooling my children, I don't have to pigeon hole them into a "one size fits all" education model. Instead I get to cater to their strengths and gently work on their weaknesses without destroying their self worth.

- Socialization is a fallacy. If my children grew up in a box with no outside influence, I might be worried. Instead my children are being raised in a loving home where parents try to model proper social interaction. They also meet with other kids and play and interact with them a number of times a week. I have discovered that the "socialization" that many parents want their kids to be involved in is actually delinquent behavior.

This is how I view much of the interaction that parents are so keen to have their children model under the misnomer of "socialization" : girls being sexualized at an early age is socialization, boys acting like pimp rap stars is socialization,bullying is socialization,only thinking what you are told to think is now part of academic socialization,learning bad language is socialization, believing that your parents are stupid and ignorant is socialization, and rebelling against the core values that your family teaches is socialization. You get the picture. I have found very few positive social skills learned in the public school system.

- I believe that the public school systems is like a conveyor belt,producing workers not thinkers or leaders.** In fact, the public school system in the US was strongly influenced by Andrew Carnagie, J.P. Morgan, John D. Rockefeller, and Henry Ford in order to create better factory workers. I see public schools as teaching "what to think" not "how to think". I would much rather my kids learned to use their amazing brains and discover the world through mentored learning than be force feed information that they may never use or need. In other words, I see that homeschooling creates independent thinkers who love to learn.

- The contrived institution of public school leads to emotional abuse and cruelty that usually don't happen to such an extreme in the "real world". No where else will you find a system where a group of people with different talents,strengths, backgrounds, and experiences are lumped together in one group based solely on their age and then expected to all produce the same results.

--My personal experiences in elementary and junior high school were horrible. The cruelty of other kids in the forced prison of a school lead to some humiliating experiences that I still remember. Peer influence did not help me to be a better person, instead it made me unhappy. True friends were nearly non-existent and very few were trustworthy.


Closing thoughts
These are just some of the reasons that I homeschool. Some are reasons that are positive for our family and some are because of the negative things that I see in the "system". Whatever my reasons, schooling should really come down to one reason- is it right for my family? What works for me doesn't work for everyone. As I mentioned earlier, I don't believe in a "one size fits all" model for education. That includes how other families choose to educate their children. That is a decision made within a family, not a decision that should be made for your family by someone else.





Endnotes

*See An Underground History of American Education by John Taylor Gatto pg. 52. The data from 1840 in Connecticut and Massachusetts shows that 93%-100% of the population were literate. In Connecticut, only one in 579 citizens was illiterate.

**See An Underground History of American Education by John Taylor Gatto pgs. 37-48

Come on IN!

This blog is a place for me to vent, create, and expound on things I have learned. It is less about my life and more about my thoughts on life.

If you want to read more about my actually goings on,especially with my family, ask me for an invite to my other blog, "Hermaughanster".

The first item that I have re-posted is my little easy entitled, "Beauty and the Beast"

Here is hoping for consistent posting and brain diarrhea!

Beauty and the Beast

Most of us know the story of Beauty and the Beast, or at least we know the Disney version of the story. Here is my interpretation of the story slightly altered to fit my purposes. The Beast is a prince who was once vain and selfish. He allowed his obsession with physical beauty to prevent him from seeing the true beauty inside of others. Due to this flaw, his outward appearance was magically changed to reflect what he truly looked like on the inside-a monster.

I often wonder what our world would be like if you couldn't enhance your physical appearance with lotions, make-up, Botox, exercise, plastic surgery, pedicures, or facials. What if the only way to become more beautiful was to become a better person!?!? Your teeth became straighter and whiter if you only spoke kind words. If you gossiped and crap talked other people your teeth became yellow and crooked. What if your hands and feet only looked well cared for as you used them to do nice things for other people? Perhaps your eyes would truly be a window to your soul and reflect the true intentions of your heart. What would your eyes look like? Would they be bright, beautiful, shinning with thick luxurious lashes or dull, rimmed with dark circles and bags?

Since you and I don't live in the world I described, our outward appearance isn't a true reflection of who we are inside. So, if the only thing that really matters on this earth is how we treat our fellow human beings, why do we spend so much time focusing on appearance? I want to reflect a bit on this question and other issues surrounding beauty as I take a sometimes personal journey into my thoughts and feelings about beauty.

I was raised in a wealthy beach town just north of San Diego. Needless to say, I grew up with a warped sense of what was "thin" and "beautiful". That transcended into a deformed view of what things makes a person perfect. I always imagined that other people weren't just beautiful, but also intelligent, kind, talented, hard working, etc. , all of the things that I wasn't. I equated beauty with perfection, something that I dearly wanted to attain. Perhaps this is a distorted view of the LDS ideal to eventually become perfected through the Atonement of Jesus Christ, i.e. not only do I feel the need to be perfect in how I act towards God and my fellow human being, but I needed to be physically perfect too. So, perhaps I confuse the ability to one day become perfected with the incorrect idea that I must be perfect RIGHT NOW in every aspect of my life.

This twisted ideal of perfection "here and now" through physical beauty is probably best manifest in the good old Mormon state of Utah. My younger sister claims that(and I have no scientific evidence to back this up, only the many billboard advertisements along I-15 in Utah) second to Orange County in Southern California, Utah has the highest plastic surgery rate in the country. I interpret that to mean that many LDS women not only want the picture perfect house, car, family, and testimony, but also the perfect body. All of this "right now" or we somehow feel like we are less than worthy. Contrast that possibly false statistic and false ideal with the words of a leader of the LDS Church, Elder Jeffery R. Holland, "I plead with you young women to please be more accepting of yourselves, including your body shape and style, with a little less longing to look like someone else. We are all different. Some are tall, and some are short. Some are round, and some are thin. And almost everyone at some time or other wants to be something they are not! But as one adviser to teenage girls said: “You can’t live your life worrying that the world is staring at you. When you let people’s opinions make you self-conscious you give away your power. … The key to feeling [confident] is to always listen to your inner self—[the real you.]... Every young woman is a child of destiny and every adult woman a powerful force for good. I mention adult women because, sisters, you are our greatest examples and resource for these young women. And if you are obsessing over being a size 2, you won’t be very surprised when your daughter or the Mia Maid in your class does the same and makes herself physically ill trying to accomplish it. We should all be as fit as we can be—that’s good Word of Wisdom doctrine. That means eating right and exercising and helping our bodies function at their optimum strength. We could probably all do better in that regard. But I speak here of optimum health; there is no universal optimum size." ( "To Young Women". November 2005, Ensign.)

To continue on with Elder Holland's thought, I wish that I treated myself the way I treat my daughter. I tell her constantly that she is beautiful and amazing. How often do I tell myself that? Yep, not very often. If I expect my daughter to believe my words, I need to not say bad things about myself like "I am fat. I am ugly" etc. Daughters do mimic their mothers. The only way to stop the cycle of self loathing is to not pattern it for the next generation.

I feel more beautiful when I surround myself with love. I feel like a giggly school girl when my eight year old son tells me that I am beautiful at the most random times, like when I am wearing my favorite muumuu, no make-up, and my hair in shambles. My husband seems to think that I am a reincarnation of Aphrodite and the most glorious woman to walk the earth. Having the unconditional love of my family makes me feel beautiful, even when I am not at my best. Sometimes I believe that my family sees me as God does, as His treasured, beautiful daughter. When I feel that kind of love, I can shrug off the cellulite on my thighs with a laugh and an "oh well".

In my life journey, I have gone through many stages of how I feel about my body. Sometime it is loathing, sometimes admiration, sometimes gratitude, and sometimes just pure dissatisfaction. Yet as I age, I have become more and more at peace with this physical body that God has given me. I recognize that I won't ever have 16% body fat again, have perky breasts, or even a completely clear complexion, but I do know that I feel healthy, happy, energized, and strong. That is something that outward beauty will never replace.

I know that some women spend their lives worrying about every little imperfection, the minor flaws or even the major flaws. Women who aren't ever content with how they look, constantly searching for a beauty panacea. Many women don't, but some of us, me included at times, buy into the notion that we need to be more attractive to love ourselves or to be loved. In my experience, when a woman tries to fill the emptiness inside of herself with outward physical fixes, it only leaves a greater void. A friend of mine remarked on the effects that breast augmentation surgery had on her best friend. She told me that her best friend become more selfish, self-centered, and it was "all about her". Or as my husband stated after watching a TV show about people getting dramatic plastic surgery makeovers, "Their outside has changed, by who they are inside hasn't". Striving to be more physically beautiful doesn't make you any happier.

Also, here is a snarky, supercilious, random thought; in my personal experience, I have noticed that women who relay too much on physical beauty tend to lack. Lack what? I find women who rely on their looks to be lacking in depth, understanding, the ability to self reflect, and a general love and compassion for their human colleagues in this mortal experience. Like the Beast from the movie, vanity and pride have blinded them to the more beautiful things in this life. I desire for these women the ability to be magically transformed and learn about the beauty that resides outside of their bodies.

Some of my closest friends are people who don't have an ideal figure. Maybe I am romanticizing being overweight or stereotyping people who are as "jolly", but I swear that my bigger friends are more fun. They seem to not be as uptight and worried about life. They have a little more zest for living, more laughter. Perhaps it is because they don't spend their lives worrying about what other people think or worrying about not eating yummy food. Whatever it is, their beauty transcends size and makes them my most affable friends.

So, does it sound like I am saying, don't exercise, don't wear make-up, never have plastic surgery, let your hair become greasy and gross, and wear a burlap sack everyday? I am not. In fact, I exercise four times a week to keep myself sane and I wear make-up almost every day, because I like to look at me when I look my best. I do it for me, not for anyone else. Yes, I will admit in an almost contradictory statement to my previous paragraph that I like to look my best, but I recognize that the make-up or exercise don't change who I am on the inside. If I act ugly or feel empty inside, no amount of make-up or weight lifting will change that.

So, where is the line between taking care of myself/being healthy and diving into the deep abyss of beauty as self worth? It lies in the heart. Is my heart set on the latest fashion to make me happy? Do I obsess about having a perfect body? Am I willing to spend exorbitant amounts of money to have the latest beauty treatments? When trying to make yourself physically beautiful takes up more time and energy than trying to be a "good" person, it is a problem.

Lastly, what is beauty? To that I would say that beauty doesn't have much to do with outward appearance. Beauty is a reflection of how you treat others. It manifest itself through your eyes, your words, your smile; even if the eyes have crow's feet and the smile isn't perfect. I have noticed that a good person, a kind person exudes a beauty that has nothing to do with perfect skin or a toned body. I think of Mother Theresa and the beauty that emanated from her face, even though it was covered in wrinkles and age spots. Like my earlier analogy of a world where you could only enhance your beauty by the type of person you are inside, true beauty is simply a reflection of how your treat others.

With that thought in mind, my hope for myself, for my daughter, and for women everywhere is for them to become beautiful. Not beautiful like the beastly prince from the fairytale (attractive on the outside but cruel and selfish on the inside), but beautiful like Mother Theresa. May our wrinkles, our age spots, our cellulite, and all of our many physical imperfections be trumped by a good, kind, beautiful heart.