Homeschooling and Libraries

New Blog!

2007-01-09T18:42:00.000-05:00

After a whole lot of thinking, I've decided to convert Homeschooling and Libraries to a wordpress blog. I'm sorry to make everyone update their bookmarks and feeds, but I think the temporary inconvenience will be worth it. See if you agree. Check out the new blog at:

http://homeschoolingandlibraries.wordpress.com

All Homeschooling and Libraries updates will appear there from now on. Thanks!

Interview with Maureen Wittmann, Part 7

2007-01-08T18:23:00.000-05:00

Adrienne: One last question for you. How did you get into writing about homeschooling?

Maureen: It just kind of happened.

As a kid, I wanted to be an investigative reporter. However, I was told by more than one school counselor to get my head out of the clouds and get real. They never read anything I'd written – that didn't matter. What mattered to them was that there were more graduates with journalism degrees than there were jobs. My career took a completely different route and writing got sidetracked.

(As a side note: Four years ago I started a teen writing club for this reason. The club is designed to help high school students who want to make writing their life's work. I believe in encouraging children to explore their dreams and to strive for excellence.)

In the 80's I volunteered to publish a bimonthly newsletter for a nonprofit organization. My only qualification was that I owned a home computer – not very common in those days. I learned a lot and enjoyed it immensely.

When I started formal homeschooling, I began to think about how I could apply my desktop publishing experience and my writing skills to help the homeschooling community. I asked my friend Rachel Mackson if she would like to publish a homeschool newsletter with me. Rachel very wisely pointed out that a newsletter requires a regular commitment. With small children there would always be the possibility of a wrench thrown into our publishing schedule. Rachel suggested writing a book together instead as it would be a one-time commitment.

There was one problem. Being new to homeschooling, I was uncomfortable telling other parents how to homeschool. I suggested we put together a compendium instead. It was a perfect match. Rachel set to work recruiting friends to write for us, while I worked at editing. At first, we self-published A Catholic Homeschool Treasury. It was a lot of hard work that bore few fruits. When Ignatius Press picked up the book we were ecstatic!

However, putting together a book isn't even half the work. An author must work hard to promote her book if anyone is going to read it. One way to do that is to get speaking engagements. I humbled myself and wrote to organizers to ask if I could speak at their conferences. Another way to market your book is to get articles published in periodicals popular with your reading audience. I began sending queries to various homeschooling and Catholic magazines. It wasn't long before I was getting published.

It's been nine years since that first book went to print and, I have to say, writing for the homeschool market has been a great blessing. I've had the opportunity to connect with other writers and editors, to meet homeschoolers from all over the country, and to learn a great deal about my vocation as a homeschooling mother.

Adrienne: Before I let you go, would you like to tell us a little about your forthcoming book? I, for one, am very excited about it.

Maureen: I'm excited too! For the Love of Literature is many years in the making and I'm so happy to have it with the publisher. (It'll still be a few months before it's available.) It's a book designed to help parents use literature in their homeschools. Though it could be used by any homeschooling parent, it does have a Catholic ethos to it since I'm Catholic.

When I began homeschooling, I decided early on to concentrate heavily on real books, using textbooks and workbooks only as supplemental material. Over the years, I kept track of the books I used, making notes on what worked and what didn't. It wasn't long before I had a pretty extensive reading list.

I pulled the list together into a booklet to accompany a conference talk I give on teaching core subjects through literature. I was surprised how popular the booklet became even though I didn't promote it. I gave one to my friend, and writing mentor, Mike Aquilina and he encouraged me to pull it into a full blown book. (Mike wrote the Foreword.) Then Joan Stromberg, Ecce Homo publisher, approached me at a conference and suggested I write it for Ecce Homo. How could I resist?

The reading list in For the Love of Literature contains just over 950 books. Each book has a short description and is coded for reading level. The books are broken down by subject matter (music, art, science, math, and history). I tried to arrange the list so it would be easy to use by a parent teaching children of all ages.

I include chapters on using the library (your favorite chapter Adrienne!), the art of reading aloud, classical education, Charlotte Mason, literary unit studies, and more.

It's my hope that homeschoolers will take my book and make it their book. I hope they will continue to write the book long after the publisher has put it into their hands. They should highlight the titles already on their bookshelves, make notes next to favorites, red line titles they don't like, and write in new titles.

The making of this book has been a labor of love and it is my gift to the homeschooling community.

Interview with Maureen Wittmann, Part 6

2007-01-07T18:35:00.000-05:00

Adrienne: To bounce to another topic, it seems to me that homeschoolers who are Catholic have been the biggest growing segment of the homeschooling population over the last five years or so and have become a more visible/vocal group. Is that your perception as well?

Maureen: It's interesting to look at the origins of contemporary homeschooling. (If you do an Internet search, you should be able to find several articles on the topic.)

Many people assume homeschooling is a conservative Evangelical movement. However, homeschooling had a more liberal, grassroots beginning in the 1970's by advocates of child-led learning such as John Holt. Evangelical Christians discovered homeschooling in the 1980's because of a great dissatisfaction with public schools.

Catholics were late coming to the homeschooling table as they had their own schools. Private Catholic schools are easily accessible in most parts of the country. Many of the Catholics who were homeschooling in the 1980's were dissatisfied with changes taking place in Catholic schools.

But then something happened. People began to discover the very real benefits of homeschooling. I began to hear parents in the 1990's saying things such as, "Even if the very best Catholic school was next door, I'd still homeschool." It's during this time you start to see more people of different faiths homeschooling, as well as more people of color.

I don't have any statistics, only anecdotal evidence. From what I've seen, traveling the country, speaking at conferences, and moderating several email lists, Catholic homeschooling is still growing strong while Protestant homeschooling is leveling off.

Homeschoolers are not easily pegged. We come in all shapes and sizes. All colors and creeds. We've gone mainstream.

Adrienne: One thing I notice about Catholic homeschoolers is that many are devoted to the ideas of classical education and/or using real books/great books. I think part of it is because so many got into homeschooling less for religious reasons but more, as you note, because they saw the benefits of homeschooling over institutionalized schooling. I wondered if you had any thoughts on this.

Maureen: Catholic homeschoolers are all over the board. We come in all shapes and sizes. But you're right – you do see a lot more dedication to the classical model, the trivium, as it is something that has deep roots in the history of the Catholic Church. Of the eight big Catholic home study schools, four are classical.

You also see a lot Charlotte Mason advocates in Catholic homeschooling. Miss Mason was not Catholic but she borrowed a lot of her ideas from the classical model. Her promotion of real books, training of habits, dictation, and so on, are easily "baptized."

I think, ultimately, homeschooling for us does come down to sharing the faith. Heaven, not Harvard, as they say. (Though, most of us are shooting for both.) What better way to share our religion, than to live it, side by side, with our children. Faith is better learned, and nurtured, within the family, than by an institutionalized school.

Interview with Maureen Wittmann, Part 5

2007-01-06T12:41:00.000-05:00

Adrienne: It’s interesting, too, to be at the point where you have kids right through the range of ages. Is your oldest starting to think about things like college and career ideas? Will this be his last year of official homeschooling? (Of course, we all know that one can never *really* stop learning at home....)

Maureen: Yes, it's definitely interesting having children in all the stages of learning. Hard sometimes, but certainly interesting!

My oldest is a high school junior. He has one more year at home before going off to college. He's already been thinking about college and his future for some years now. He has his heart set on Franciscan University in Stuebenville, OH. He wants to major in journalism, and also philosophy or theology. He's discerning the priesthood, but hasn't made a definite decision. As it should be – that is the kind of life decision that requires time and much prayer.

It's an interesting thing to watch your oldest child grow into a man. He's no longer a little child. He's capable of making sound life decisions on his own. Sure, he looks to me for guidance, but I trust him implicitly in making right choices. I'm not quite sure how that happened. Was I blessed with children who are naturally good or did I somehow make enough right parenting decisions to help them blossom into great kids?

So many people dread the teen years, but in all honesty I love them. (Not just as a mother, but also as one who leads a teen group.) I will go so far to say teenagers are a gift from God and we should be grateful for the time we have with them. Teens are incredibly interesting people, caught between childhood and adulthood. They are fervently seeking Truth and trying to make sense of the world around them. As their parents, we have the awesome responsibility to guide them through these years.

Adrienne: I know you’re at work on a book about teens, so I’d love to ask you to talk a little more about working with teens.

Maureen: By the time a student reaches high school they're ready to engage in the art of expression and articulate their ideas about what they've learned so far.

Think about teens and telephones, or instant messaging. Teens love to chat. This is the time to engage your child in conversation. Don't be afraid of the generation gap, your child will be happy you are interested enough in him to seek his opinions. (Just ignore the eye rolling and sighs.)

This is not the time to let our children go, but to continue to help them flower, guiding them gently. We need to challenge their thinking skills and make them defend their intellectual and religious positions. Ask them probing questions that will help them make connections and come up with their own insightful conclusions.

It is during this time we can move from simple narrative stories to challenging debates and critiques. Think about how much more interesting this is to the parent. Think about those days of reading the same picture books over and over again. Now, you have the opportunity to not only read deep works alongside your child, but to discuss them in-depth. You have not only the opportunity to teach your child, but to learn from him. How cool is that!

Science can include ethical debates such as embryonic stem cell research and cloning. Math can include looking into how the great theorems came to be discovered. History can include primary documents, looking deep into the why and how the turns of history took place. Religion can move beyond Bible facts and get into apologetics. The Early Church Fathers can be studied, looking to see how their leadership shaped the way Christians worship today.

So often, homeschoolers place their children into a site-based school when they get to the high school years. But, I think this is THE time to homeschool. It's a great opportunity to show a child how to get to the very core of Truth. And that, in my opinion, is the end goal of an educator.

Interview with Maureen Wittmann, Part 4

2007-01-05T14:52:00.000-05:00

Adrienne: Now for nitty-gritty questions. What does a typical day for your family look like? Do you follow a schedule? Do you have planned "school" time? Do the kids follow different schedules?

Maureen: Again, this is something that changes and evolves over time. Our schedule today is so different from our schedule eleven years ago. Then my family was small and my children were little. Today, I have seven children, ages 4, 6, 8, 11, 13, 15, and 17.

I'm at the pinnacle of our homeschooling experience, with a preschooler, grade schoolers, middle schoolers, and high schoolers.

I begin planning in the summer. I sit down with each child and discuss what our goals are for the upcoming school year. We look through the homeschooling catalogs together and decide what will work best for said child (and said mother). We lay out a plan, which is tweaked after the school year begins and real life takes over.

The three older children, having been homeschooled all their lives, are pretty self-directed learners. They create their own weekly itineraries on Sunday night or Monday morning. (I have my planning forms available for free download at my website if anyone is interested, www.maureenwittmann.com.) I try to take the older kids out for breakfast or lunch once a week to go over their progress and chat about the books they're reading.

My 11-year old, on the other hand, needs constant direct supervision to get anything done. He definitely has the Edison Trait (a.k.a. ADD or ADHD). Like Thomas Edison, he's very smart but can't sit still. I try to give him enough space to explore subjects on his own, but he would never do the basics (especially language arts) if I didn't work with him one-on-one. He's also my one reluctant reader – thank goodness for books on tape!

The 6- and 8-year olds are learning to read together. I use Orton Gillingham, a multi-sensory, phonics intense, reading program. I work with them after I get Thomas Edison engaged in something he's happy to do on his own (science experiments, LEGO building, BOT, etc.). I also pay one of my teens to tutor the two grade schoolers and the preschooler. I've used this tactic for years. It frees up some of my time to help older children, the littles get some special attention, and the big kids learn from it too. Also, We take lots of breaks for outside play and exploration.

My preschooler spends most of his time just having fun being a 4-year old. He begs to "do school," so I supply him with a kindergarten math workbook, plus give him lots of space to paint and color. He loves to go out and jump on the trampoline while the other kids are working. And, of course, there is loads of read aloud time. I often have older children read to the younger children. It gives the older kids practice and the little kids love it!

On Tuesdays and Thursdays, I babysit two preschoolers for just a couple hours in the morning. This actually frees up some of my time, as they play so nicely with my preschooler. They occupy themselves very well.

Except for 8 a.m. Mass on Wednesdays and Thursdays, I don't schedule any outside activities before 2 p.m. I'm not disciplined enough to get back on track after being gone all morning. If schoolwork isn't done in the morning, we don't go out in the afternoon. There is one other exception, sometimes we'll pick up our books and go to the library for "school."

Outside activities include shooting sports. During the school year that only means one evening meeting a week. (Summertime is a different story – 3 to 4 practices a week, plus competitions!) We also have Teen Wednesdays. This is a group I lead, with about 20 homeschooled teens. The first Wed. is Writers' Club, second and fourth Wed. is Socrates Cafe, third Wed. is Readers' Anonymous, and if there is a fifth Wed., we do something special. A new activity for the Wittmanns this year is Science Olympiad. The kids will compete with other kids (mostly from public and private schools) in the area of science. This is a national organization, http://www.soinc.org/.

I don't have an hour-by-hour breakdown of each day. We're more laid back than that. But basically, we get up in the morning, eat breakfast, get right to work, eat lunch, do some chores, the olders work on special interests, the littles play, sometimes we go out to the library or an activity, we make dinner, welcome home Daddy, and enjoy our evening together.

Adrienne: I love some of the strategies you've come up with to make things work – creative, positive, working with everyone's strengths. :)

Maureen: A lot of educational reforms that have floundered in public schools, work beautifully in the homeschool. Unit studies, child-led education, each child progressing at his own rate – these are all grand ideas, but very difficult to implement in a large classroom setting. Yet, with a mother working with individual children, these pedagogical approaches can, and do, work, and often with grand results. For example, I know several unschooling families whose children went on to receive full college scholarships and do very well in their university studies.

Interview with Maureen Wittmann, Part 3

2007-01-04T08:13:00.000-05:00

Adrienne: How would you describe your homeschooling philosophy? I know, for instance, that faith is an important part of your family's life, but I know, too, that you have strong feelings about academics and the use of literature.

Maureen: Oh gosh, where to start. You know, it's something that evolves over time and I'm not sure how to put it into a nutshell. But I'll try :-).

One's belief system is integral to that person and I don't know how it can be severed from everyday life, much less academics. As a Catholic, I strive to weave our faith into our studies.

I remember when I first began homeschooling, I attended a talk by Fr. John Hardon. Father, bless his soul, was an academic and prolific author. In his talk, he stated if all we teach our children is to love God and the world He created, then we can consider ourselves successful as homeschoolers. At first I was scandalized, but then Fr. Hardon went on. He explained that children who truly love God will want to know more about this world we live in. History, science, math, music, art – all gifts from God.

We are made in God's image. Let's think about that for a moment. What does God do? He creates. He created us and the earth. Therefore, it is only natural that we have a desire to create. It feels good to create, to learn, to explore, to discover. I try, as a parent and homeschooler, to take advantage of these natural tendencies in my children.

It's important to me to keep "school" fun and interesting. It shouldn't be a bore or drudgery. I don't mean that it shouldn't be hard work. But, if we know there will be great fruits for our work, it's not really drudgery is it? I try to focus myself and the children on the outcome. And, yes, admittedly, there are times when my children aren't entirely excited about learning. However, by keeping focused on the children's natural sense of wonder and discovery, those down times are few.

I do this several ways. One, I let them have a say in their studies. I have the final say, but I consult them when I plan out the school year. If a child comes to me and tells me his or her current course of study isn't going anywhere, then we'll work together to find an alternative.

Something else that works well for us is focusing on "real books." Oh, we do use the occasional textbook, but they are in no way central to our learning. My experience has been textbooks and fill-in-the-blank workbooks are often formulaic, rather than thought provoking. They can take the life out right of the story, bringing it down to bare bones.

Let's look at history for an example. History is story. It's the story of mankind from creation to today. Why not share it as story? Which will excite a child? Which will remain with the child for years to come? A list of bare facts? Or, an exciting biography or historical fiction?

Real books, used correctly, can awaken a child's imagination through their God-given curiosity, and sense of awe, in a way that's enjoyable. They take education our of the classroom and into the child's everyday life. Shouldn't that be our goal as educators – to take education out of school and into the world?

Finally, I work to learn alongside the children. How can I expect them to find joy in education, if they don't see it in me? I let them see my joy in discovering new things. For example, I keep about a month ahead of them in our history studies. When they were studying the High Middle Ages, I was reading about the Renaissance. They saw me curled up on the sofa, sipping tea, reading about history. They saw me put down my book now and then and discuss an exciting tidbit with my husband. Emotions are contagious!

So, I guess the nutshell version is: We look for God's hand in our studies, use real books, and find joy in learning.

Interview with Maureen Wittmann, Part 2

2007-01-03T09:18:00.000-05:00

Adrienne: When did you start homeschooling with your kids?

Maureen: From the moment I whispered into my firstborn's ear, "Hi, I'm your mommy and I love you."

Adrienne: I get variations on that answer over and over, and I love it. :)

Maureen: I believe all parents are homeschoolers, no matter where their children receive their academics. The most important lessons learned are from our parents. Faith, morals, work ethic, manners, and so much more. And whether or not we do well in "school" depends a lot on our parents. A child will more than likely do well in school if his parent is supportive and has a positive attitude toward education.

But, if you mean from an academic viewpoint, I've always homeschooled. The first day of kindergarten for my firstborn was in our living room, and he's still there twelve years later.

Adrienne: It seems to me that the homeschooling landscape has changed a lot in the last 12 years. What kinds of regulations did you have to deal with when you were starting out? Did you run into any of the roadblocks one so often hears about?

Maureen: I've really been blessed in this area. Michigan used to be one of the hardest states to homeschool. You had to be a certified teacher and your home had to meet the same safety standards as a public school, such as lighted exit signs and sprinkler systems. The law was overturned by the Michigan Supreme Court. I began homeschooling a few years after that.

What's important, I think, is to never forget those days when homeschooling was illegal for most parents. Twelve years ago, it was not unusual to meet other parents whose homeschooling experience was part of an underground movement. They couldn't let their children play outside during school hours, they blackened basement windows because of nosy neighbors, etc. But now, with the passage of many years, we don't hear from those homeschooling pioneers so often.

Here, in Michigan, we have a new state representative who has publicly stated his first act as a legislator will be to put restrictions on homeschooling. Hopefully, homeschoolers will stay vigilant, recall the past restrictions, take seriously their parental rights, and keep this from happening again.

Interview with Maureen Wittmann, Part 1

2007-01-02T08:04:00.000-05:00

Thanks to the Internet, a couple months ago, I was lucky enough to meet Maureen Wittmann, who, among other things, is an author and homeschooling mother of seven. She has generously shared all manner of information with me over the last few months and agreed to an interview for this site and my book. Maureen is coeditor with Rachel Mackson of A Catholic Homeschool Treasury: Nurturing Children's Love for Learning and The Catholic Homeschool Companion. She’s the author of the forthcoming For the Love of Literature and is currently at work on a book about teens, No Question Left Behind. A contributing editor to Heart & Mind, she also blogs, moderates a few Yahoo groups, and recently started a monthly column at CatholicMom.com. Talk about busy! Her outlook is positive and inspiring. I hope you’ll enjoy my conversation with her as much as I did.

Adrienne: I'm going to start with the first question I ask everyone these days: how did you get started in homeschooling?

Maureen: When I was in the eighth grade, I had back surgery and was out of school for six months. During that time, a tutor came to my home every school day for two hours. However, we only spent about an hour on schoolwork. The reason being that I had to advance at the same pace as my fellow students. My tutor met with my school teachers every Friday. If she found I was getting ahead, she would have to hold me back.

Even though I was only a child, this had a profound effect on me. I resented that I had to spend seven hours in a school building, when I knew that I could receive a quality education at home in just two hours. I wondered if there was a more efficient way to educate children without giving each child their own private tutor. Then, in college I befriended a homeschool graduate. I was fascinated – I had never heard of such a thing. My friend shared how much he loved homeschooling (even though it was pretty much illegal in those days). He loved the self discipline it fostered and he loved having time to work on his favorite subjects.

I was hooked and I knew from then on I would homeschool someday – even though it was ten more years before I even had children.

Resolution

2007-01-01T16:55:00.000-05:00

Happy new year everyone!

The good news is that I had a wonderful holiday with my family and friends. The bad news is, well, you can see that I haven’t been updating this blog. That’s all about to change, though. The coming weeks will see a multipart interview with Maureen Wittmann (in the meantime, visit her web site and blog – great stuff!), reviews of books I’ve read over the last several weeks, and, with luck, some thoughts and ideas for developing library skills classes. I’m looking forward to a new year, and I hope you are, too!

Better Late Than Early

2006-11-30T20:01:00.000-05:00

“Once a child enrolls in school he usually becomes locked into institutional life for the remainder of his childhood years….”
Better Late Than Early: A New Approach to Your Child’s Education by Raymond and Dorothy Moore

It's a little chilling when you think about it that way, eh?

100 Top Picks for Homeschool Curriculum by Cathy Duffy

2006-11-28T08:30:00.000-05:00

Here is another must-have for all libraries that seek to serve homeschoolers.

An active homeschooler and writer, Cathy Duffy has put considerable time and energy into helping homeschooling parents navigate the ever-growing world of curriculum options for their children. This book turns out to be much more than a simple listing of her top hundred picks. The first sixty pages start with the basics: introducing readers to the various movements and trends in homeschooling, helping parents formulate their own educational philosophies and goals for their children, and discussing the idea of learning styles. Duffy asserts that one can’t effectively pick a curriculum without thinking these things through, and she offers a variety of questionnaires and worksheets to make the task less intimidating for those lacking a background in education.

Duffy says that she wants to encourage readers to “become goal-oriented rather than ‘curriculum-driven,’” a goal I think she achieves. I love the way she talks about respecting and building on learning styles and the benefits of being flexible in one’s approach to homeschooling. She also offers suggestions for how to handle practical considerations such as the amount a family has to spend, how many children they have, and how much time a parent has to devote to homeschooling. Duffy writes from a Christian perspective but. at the same time, has respect for a variety of homeschooling options and includes many secular curriculum materials. Her bias is most evident her choice of science curriculums, but, then again, she also encourages families to eschew curriculum and try a “real books” approach to science (as she does for history). Many homeschoolers will appreciate Duffy’s commentary and suggestions on curriculums that incorporate Christian content.

From a librarian’s perspective, one of the saddest things about the book is that as many times as she talks about ways to save money and time and to use real books, she never suggests using the public library as a resource. When she talks about using real books to teach science and recommends Janice VanCleave’s books, when she talks about finding additional phonics readers for practice, when she talks about identifying historical fiction titles, I kept thinking, “The library! The library! The library!” It’s hard to imagine a public library that wouldn’t be a great place to find all of these things and more. Maybe we can convince Duffy to mention the library a little more if she decides to update the book in a few years. :)

In the meantime, Cathy Duffy updates and expands on the reviews in her book on her web site at http://www.cathyduffyreviews.com. It’s a great book and site to recommend to patrons, and it’s also worth a look if you’re trying to identify materials to purchase for your library’s collection.

A Word about Advertising to Homeschoolers

2006-11-27T14:44:00.000-05:00

Because homeschooling is a movement comprised of people operating outside an institutional environment and under a wide variety of beliefs and philosophies, it can be difficult to figure out the best ways to reach them. When libraries first start to offer programs and services to homeschoolers, they sometimes find that they have a difficult time drawing an audience and wind up feeling frustrated, sometimes giving up on the idea of offering programming to homeschoolers entirely.

I have a few thoughts about this.

Homeschoolers have their own communication networks in any area/region, and sometimes it can take a while to figure it all out. The best way is to start talking to homeschoolers. Try to figure out what organizations are operating in your area, and try to connect with someone in a leadership position who will help spread the word to members. Even if you manage to do this, you might find you’re still getting low response when you first start to offer programs. Part of this is because while homeschoolers are a growing population, they’re still a relatively small segment of the population. Also, like any other family, homeschoolers are busy and need to pick and choose among activities. What you’re offering isn’t going to be interesting to all families, and, if a library is new on the homeschooling scene, many may opt to hold off trying your programs until they hear about how wonderful they are from other homeschoolers. Word-of-mouth advertising is invaluable to any library’s programs and services, but it’s particularly strong in homeschooling circles. People talk to each other and readily share things they’re excited about and that they think work. A great example of this happened just a couple weeks ago when I was doing a library orientation for homeschooled kids. After the class, I was hanging around in the Children’s Room when I overheard two moms standing in front of the homeschooling section. One mom was enthusiastically and knowledgeably educating the other mom about all the programs and services we’ve developed. I could have told this mom all about the same things, but it has so much more authority coming from another homeschooler. It was a great thing to see.

So, when you’re just starting out, remember that if you only manage to get a small number of homeschoolers to come to your programs, if those you reach are impressed with the content and format, they’ll share that information and word will spread. They’ll even teach each other. If you continue to offer programs and services of high-quality and interest, you’re going to reach your audience – just perhaps not always in the ways you’re used to.

“When You Are in a Subculture of a Subculture, You Often Get Painted as the Freak Family”

2006-11-25T17:46:00.000-05:00

Here’s an article on unschooling from The New York Times.

It’s a weird piece to come out of the Times, more like filler than actual news. Personally, I’ve never met an unschooled child who didn’t strike me as bright, curious, and interesting, and I hate to see such a superficial article from a major news outlet that throws questions at the philosophy without exploring them in depth. This strikes me as just the sort of thing that makes people who feel negatively about ANY type of homeschooling feel justified in their negative view, which is a shame.

What I think librarians can take from this article is the feeling of misunderstanding evident in the mother talking about being thought of as “the freak family.” It goes a long way toward explaining why we run across homeschoolers who can be reluctant to talk to us, sensitive, and sometimes even defensive. It isn’t easy to have your way of life constantly – and often casually – called into question. Thankfully, as more and more people homeschool, this is getting to be less and less of a problem, but prejudices and misconceptions about homeschooling are still very much alive.

Library Elf

2006-11-16T22:27:00.000-05:00

In a recent discussion with Maureen Wittmann about homeschoolers and libraries, I realized that one of the nicest things we could do for our computer-savvy homeschooling patrons would be to tell them about the Library Elf. If you don't know about the Elf, it's an excellent service for families who do a lot of borrowing and/or have multiple cards. Basically, you set up the Elf account to send you a daily email or RSS that summarizes the current state of your library account(s) in one nice, tidy email. So let's say you have four kids: you can get all of the books from the four kids' cards as well as the two parents' cards in one summary. If you prefer, you can get individual summaries for each card. Each summary includes the status of holds, overdues, and then a nice list of what you have checked out in the order that it's due. I've been using the Elf for a year or more now, and I'd recommend it to any heavy borrower.

Homeschool Library Connection

2006-11-09T00:18:00.000-05:00

HomeschoolLibraryConnection is a Yahoo Group that gives members suggestions of books they might want to consider asking their local libraries to purchase and also gives some excellent advice about how to best go about getting a library to actually purchase a book.

This is interesting on a number of levels. Reading the list of advice ("Don't give up if you feel that your suggestions are ignored.") reminds me of how important it is to make it easy for all of our patrons to suggest items that they think the library should purchase. I want everyone to feel comfortable making suggestions and like their voices are being heard -- even when I can't purchase whatever is being suggested. It also strikes me that librarians should be just as interested in this group as homeschoolers, perhaps even moreso, since it's a great way to learn about titles that might be of interest but are often not covered in standard review journals. The traffic isn't that heavy on the group (1-2 posts a month so far this year), so even the busiest librarians should be able to keep up....

So What, Exactly, Is This Book You’re Writing?

2006-11-05T20:12:00.000-05:00

For months now, I’ve been alluding to this book I’m writing, but I’ve left it shrouded in mystery – mostly because it’s my first book and the whole thing was a little overwhelming when I was first getting started. Now that I’ve written quite a bit and am getting more of a handle on the book as a whole, I’m feeling ready to say a little more about it.

The book is aimed at librarians and has two main goals: to teach librarians something about homeschooling and to help them build effective programs and services. In my experience, most people – including librarians – know relatively little about homeschooling or, if they do know something, their knowledge is limited to a particular segment of the homeschooling world. I think some librarians are reluctant to jump into building services for homeschoolers simply because they don’t know much about homeschooling. Other librarians hit roadblocks when they try to build services because they misunderstand the population. I believe that if more librarians understood more about homeschooling and saw the ways that homeschoolers’ goals are so much in line with core library values, they’d be excited to learn more and to do what they could to work with homeschoolers in their service areas.

To this end, my book is divided into two parts. The first half examines homeschooling as a series of movements and philosophies. It seeks to examine the many different reasons people homeschool, the resources that have built up to support various segments of the homeschooling population, and what different types of homeschoolers might expect from libraries. The second half of the book delves more specifically into ways libraries can build programs and services targeted specifically at homeschoolers. Each chapter contains basic information, profiles of real homeschoolers and thinkers in the homeschooling movement, and concludes with suggestions for librarians who want to further explore the topic at hand. I’m working on two appendices: one is an annotated core list of homeschooling materials for public libraries, and the other is an annotated listing of homeschooling periodicals.

Of course, I’ve been doing all this at the expense of, say, cleaning my house, so I’ve been appreciating the links, comments, and general positive reinforcement. It helps keep me working.

Homeschool Diner

2006-11-03T13:16:00.000-05:00

The Homeschool Diner is a relatively new web site owned and operated by homeschool mom and lifelong learner Julie Shepherd Knapp. Knapp says she wants to create a useful resource for all homeschoolers, and I think she’s figured it out. The diner motif is charming, and the site is extraordinarily well-organized. She has extremely useful information for those new to the unschooling world, including her fun “Click-o-matic Homeschool Quiz” and useful, concise summaries of homeschooling approaches/philosophies. She also includes links to learning resources (annotated and sorted by subject), and she maintains a discussion list on Yahoo Groups. Nice site, good info -- well worth Knapp’s time and ours.

Auction Site

2006-10-22T19:16:00.000-05:00

I'm a little bit behind on this, but the Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA, a conservative Protestant organization that believes gay marriage would be a potential threat to families' ability to homeschool their children -- see #9, especially interesting given the number of homosexual couples who homeschool their children, but I digress) has started an auction site specifically for homeschoolers where people can buy and sell used and new homeschooling materials. Anyone can sell, but only HSLDA members can buy, which I don't get. From an organizational standpoint, it would seem to make more sense to make either everyone or no one become members, but, then again, I don't run an organization with thousands of members. :) The HSLDA folks know what they're up to.

I gather this move is in response to eBay's refusal to allow the sale of teaching items that contain answer keys, another policy I don't understand. On the one hand, we don't want kids cheating, but, on the other, eBay shouldn't have to be the cheater police. There are plenty of legitimate reasons people might want to buy and sell teacher editions of books and whatnot. Sad, sad.

It's worth noting that Amazon sells used homeschooling materials via their Homeschooling Store, and there are several other places where you can swap and otherwise get your hands on used homeschooling materials. That, I think, will be a blog entry for another day....

[Update 11/4/2006: Amazon's selling policy also doesn't allow for the sale of used items that contain answer keys: "Manuals or teacher's editions that provide answer keys to student textbook editions are prohibited" (see the full policy). Interestingly enough, they do sell new workbooks and whatnot that contain answer keys in the Homeschooling Stores. Again, it seems odd to me that companies feel the need to get in the middle of this. Thanks to Maureen for pointing the amazon.com policy out. See her comment on this entry for more ideas about places to go for homeschooling materials.]

Status Report

2006-10-19T21:52:00.000-05:00

Sorry to be silent so long. I've been absorbed in writing chapter two of my book over the last couple weeks, and I'm happy to report that I finished a draft that I'm really happy with tonight. Woo, hoo!

Next we'll see what my readers and editor think, and then it's only ten more chapters to go....

Homeschooling on the Road

2006-09-27T10:10:00.000-05:00

Comics author Scott McCloud (Understanding Comics) and his family – wife Ivy and daughters Skye and Winter – are off on a year-long tour to promote his new book, Making Comics. The family is homeschooling the kids (6th and 8th grade) while on the road, and they’re doing some really fun things like podcasts and video interviews with comic artists they meet along the way. And the whole family’s blogging. So far it’s been fun to peek over their shoulders while they’re homeschooling, traveling, and meeting interesting people. I saw the McClouds when Scott was speaking here in Rochester at RIT, and I’d highly recommend taking in one of the family’s presentations if they come to your area. For their evolving schedule, visit the Making Comics 50 State Tour web site.

An Interview with Mary Griffith, Part Five

2006-09-21T20:38:00.000-05:00

Adrienne: What can you tell me about Viral Learning? I love the title, and it sounds like it's going to be an interesting book.

Mary: After I'd finished the 2nd edition of The Homeschooling Handbook, my then-editor asked me what homeschooling book I wanted to do next, and at the time, I simply had nothing else to say about homeschooling. She asked me if we should do a revised edition of The Unschooling Handbook, but we couldn't figure out enough that needed changing – their standard for a new edition was about 40% new material. (Aside from updating the resources, I don't think there's that much I'd change now, either – that book was pretty much exactly what I wanted it to be.)

So she asked what other homeschooling books I wanted to write. I didn't have any other homeschooling books I wanted to write, and I couldn't face the idea of rehashing and repackaging what I'd already done into other titles just to have something new. So I didn't do a series of Unschooling Your First-, Second-, . . . , Twelfth-Grader.

But with Christie heading off to college this fall, it occurred to me that 2007 will be the ten-year anniversary of the publication of The Homeschooling Handbook, and I got to thinking that maybe I did have one more homeschooling book in me. There's a bit in one of my talks (Hidden Hazards of Homeschooling) about how homeschooling is contagious and the individuals most vulnerable to the contagion are the parents of homeschooled children. When we as adults spend so much time trying to foster our kids' curiosity, encouraging them to follow their interests wherever they lead, some of that is bound to rub off on us. So "Viral Learning" is an extension of that idea: how do long years of homeschooling affect us, the parents – and by extension, society at large? And what will the long-range effects be with our kids? I see parallels in other fields such as political blogging, where citizen activism in some areas is bypassing both the political establishment and the mainstream press. A few years ago, such effects were pretty isolated, but with the Internet explosion over the past few years, the effects can become almost viral – what happens when larger and larger chunks of our society become more independent and self-directed and involved with ideas and activities they find important?

I think it's going to be a fun book to write.

Adrienne: It sounds like it's going to be a fun book to read! Thank you so much for answering my questions and sharing your thoughts.

[Editor's Note: Remember that you can keep hearing Mary's thoughts over at her Viral Learning blog.]

An Interview with Mary Griffith, Part Four

2006-09-20T08:58:00.000-05:00

Adrienne: Did the girls ever want to try institutional schools?

When Kate was 12, her best friend, a homeschooler, decided she wanted to go to junior high because she was tired of her current friends. Kate seriously considered going to school then, but it only took her about five minutes, she said, to decide that the odds of making a new best friend were not high enough to offset the disadvantages of not being able to read whatever she wanted whenever she wanted or sleeping late or not having to raise her hand to go to the bathroom.

Adrienne: What prompted you to start writing about homeschooling?

Ah, there were two stages there. Early on in our homeschooling, I got involved with what was then the Northern California Homeschool Association – when I offered to help the editor with the newsletter, she invited me to the next board meeting, at which, when they were divvying up jobs for the next few months and everybody seemed to have one already, I took the one that was left – newsletter editor. I never had to resort to the previous editor's occasional need to write articles under two or three different names to fill the thing up, but it did mean I wrote regularly about homeschooling.

Eventually, I was also elected to the board and was dragged into other fun and games like conference planning and legislative watch and marketing and outreach (we eventually became the HomeSchool Association of California, which meant we had a much bigger territory to reach). We – the board, that is – used to talk about doing a book about homeschooling as a nifty big project worth doing someday.

Which gets me to the next stage. One day I got a call from a woman at Prima Publishing who said they were considering getting into the homeschooling curriculum market and wanted more information about homeschooling. I sent her a bunch of stuff (HEM, HSC newsletters, GWS, etc.) and eventually they asked me to come take a look at what they'd come up with and tell them what I thought.

What they'd come up with was completely silly (blank box with yet-to-be-developed board game and yet-to-be-written text as English curriculum for unspecified grade level(s) at a price point of $50), which I told them, and I went home, thinking it had been a fun little lark.

But a couple of weeks later, I got a call from a different editor there, who said they'd scrapped the idea of the curriculum but thought there might well be a market for a trade book on homeschooling. She invited me to submit a proposal, which I did, and they accepted, and that's how The Homeschooling Handbook came about. I proposed The Unschooling Handbook almost as an antidote for me, in reaction to some of the school-ier stuff in the HH, and it took a bit of persuading to talk them into it. But I think the fact that the HH had done so well right from the start made them willing to trust me a bit. (Of course, after Prima sold itself to Random House, the whole proposal process is an entirely different matter now – my nice little mid-list books chugging along aren't quite the volume of sales they're really looking for.)

Anyway, it's not a leap to say I just fell into writing the books.

An Interview with Mary Griffith, Part Three

2006-09-19T22:20:00.000-05:00

Adrienne: One of the many things that has interested me in Holt's writings is what he describes as his continual struggle to turn off his "teacher brain," and I would think that would be such a challenge. I would imagine that letting go would be even more of a struggle when you're talking about your own kids....

Mary: I think I spent a lot of time consciously trying not to be teacher-y, though I can remember driving around in the car, I'd see something interesting and say, "Ooh, look at that!" often enough to drive the girls nuts. One of my internal rules, though, was never to try to get them interested in something I wasn't interested in myself. I used to see an awful lot of families doing that, and it never worked to do anything except make the whole family miserable. That's not to say that I wasn't willing to be a bit bored in order to help them with something they were interested in – I was always willing for them to have and indulge interests that none of the rest of us shared.

Pedagogically, I'm definitely a constructivist. I loved that my kids were curious creatures, but I also always thought they needed to do things at their own pace, with breaks and plateaus as needed, and that it was important to allow them to piece things together for themselves. It often meant their knowledge was a weird hole-y patchwork, and that they learned weird things at weird ages. Kate went on a mythology bender as a 6-year-old, the sort of stuff I had in junior high – one of my favorite memories is of her scorn when some adults not only failed to recognize her costume with the googly-eyed pipecleaner headdress as Medusa, but didn't even recognize the name. We learned a lot of history, from biographies and genealogy and historical novels and movies and living history events, but hardly ever chronologically. We'd sometimes talk about what order things happened in, but mostly we let them figure out for themselves how things fit together. Science was haphazard in the same way, except that we had the live-in science guy to supplement Bill Nye.

As they got older, we sometimes got more formal. Kate was very much a liberal arts type, skewed severely to the literature and history, so mostly she just read more and more on her own through her teens. Knowing that what she needed for the acting schools she was interested in was only a GED and a decent audition, she never did much that could be called formal coursework. Christie knew she wanted to fence in college, so she went a bit more formally with the math and other high school courses. She probably wouldn't have had much trouble getting into college as a less formal unschooler, but the NCAA is currently inflexible enough that we decided we'd have more luck adapting to the NCAA than forcing it to adapt to our way of doing things. So she did a few high school topics more formally, often using textbooks, but using them at her own pace, doing just enough problems to be sure she understood a concept rather than entire pages of problem sets.

One of the aspects of kids' lives today that we (parents and kids both) constantly noticed and commented on, was the whole process of resume-building. So many kids and their parents, even before the high school grades, seem to spend so much time doing activities and taking courses because they think they need to in order to have the appropriately loaded permanent record to get into that college, so they can get into this graduate program, so they can have the important and successful career. When are they ever supposed to get the chance to figure out their likes and dislikes and just enjoy what they do for its own pleasure?

That's one of the things I’m proudest of about how we raised our kids – they had a minimum of drudgery-boredom. When they were bored – and they were – there was always enough around to do that if they were bored, it was their problem and not mine; it was that they couldn't decide what they felt like doing or hadn't found their Next Cool Thing.

An Interview with Mary Griffith, Part Two

2006-09-18T19:04:00.000-05:00

Adrienne: Did you unschool from the get-go? Did you try any programs or curriculums through the years?

Mary: I think what I did was just extend preschool for another five years or so. When the girls were 3 or 4, we did tons of reading out loud. (Another useful thing to know about my youth (and entire life, for that matter) is that I've always been a complete bookworm.) We always had lots of books around, plus lots of paper and pens and crayons and paint and blocks and Legos and cooking and Dad's science toys (my husband works for Pasco Scientific, which is one of the leading manufacturers of school science lab apparatuses in the country, so asking him a science question always prompted at least a half-hour lecture with hands-on demos) and whatever else we happened to think looked like fun.

There were a couple of things we used that could be described as more or less formal programs:

A very big element for us was the Brownie Try-It Handbook. Several of us started a homeschooling Brownie troop which met weekly or biweekly (I can't remember) for almost seven years before we left it just after Kate became a Cadet Girl Scout. I was a leader or asst. leader for most of that time. But the Brownie years were especially fun, because all the badge work at that level (at least, then – I haven't seen the program for several years now, so I don't know if it's still the same) was so good. We'd poke through the book and find things that looked like fun and do them – everything from science and nature projects to plays and poetry and games and playing with numbers. I'm of the opinion that if we completely did away with the primary grades in school and just let kids fiddle around with Brownie badge work as they felt like it, they'd end up learning more and enjoying it more (and I'd be willing to bet they'd do better on the damn standardized tests, too, if they could stand being bored long enough to take them).

That 5-step reading program (Read to them. Read to them. Etc.) I describe in The Unschooling Handbook is what we used. The hardest part for me was being patient enough to wait for them to be old enough to really appreciate all the books I was looking forward to them enjoying as much as I had when I was a kid. And then there were all the nifty new ones published after I'd grown up. Kate and Christie both went through stages where they resisted reading something I'd suggest, just because I'd suggested it, and then discovered they loved it when they finally got round to it. The sardonic "I hate you, Mom" that was a kind of reverse "I told you so" got to be something of a family joke.

Christie, my younger daughter, went through a stage after Kate started reading seriously on her own (they're almost four years apart) when she wanted me to teach her to read. I hated the idea, but she felt she wasn't learning on her own and wanted to be explicitly taught, so we toddled around a bookstore looking for something appropriate, ending up with Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons, mostly because she thought it looked serious enough. I think we struggled through to Lesson 63 before we finally gave it up. She hated it most of the way (and we made tons of snide remarks all along about how stupid some of the stories were) but had to persuade herself that it was okay just to go back to reading real stories together instead. (I'll spare you my reading instruction rant, but I'll never understand how anybody could come to believe that draining interest and meaning from texts would make them better to learn from.)

An Interview with Mary Griffith, Part One

2006-09-17T19:44:00.000-05:00

Recently, Mary Griffith, author of The Homeschooling Handbook and The Unschooling Handbook was kind enough to answer some questions and share her thoughts with me about homeschooling and unschooling. I’m going to share excerpts of our Q&A every day this week. Here goes:

Adrienne: So may I start with my first question? It's the one I ask everyone: How did you get started in homeschooling?

Mary: The short and flip answer is "I had kids."

I think, though, that I was primed for the idea by my own school experience. I was one of those kids school people consider shining examples: I got my straight As without much work. I had a knack for understanding ETS item writers' thinking. I was well-behaved and involved in school activities. I was also bored out of my skull (despite thinking of myself as somebody who liked school) and felt like a fraud most of the time.

Until I had kids, I never had much experience with babies or toddlers, so most of what I did with my kids was trial and error, based on what I read. This was the 80s – I had Spock and Brazelton and Penelope Leach, and somewhere in there among the three of them I could always find justification for whatever it was I wanted to do.

Sometime either while I was pregnant with Kate or when she was a toddler, I happened to run across John Holt's Teach Your Own in a bookstore, and I was immediately attracted by the idea. I loved watching Kate explore and play and learn, and I couldn't stand the idea of her having to sit still in a classroom and get all that knowledge doled out to her in appropriate little bits, not to mention all that waiting around for the next thing. I figured if one was to be bored through large chunks of the day, one could at least be somewhere comfortable. Plus, California at that time was in the midst of one of its periodic "phonics is the only possible way to learn to read" paroxysms, so there was no way I was even going to think of letting her attend school until after she could already read.

Essentially, I had fun with my kids as toddlers and preschoolers and could see how easily they learned from just being alive and active, so I didn't see any reason to suddenly change things.