Tammy Takahashi
Tammy Takahashi lives and learns with her three children (10, 7 and 4) and supportive husband in California. She is the author of Deschooling Gently: A Step by Step Guide to Fearless Homeschooling. She also serves as the editor of the California HomeSchooler magazine, a bi-monthly publication for the Homeschool Association of California. You can read more from her about education and homeschooling on her website. And you can email her at tammy.takahashi @ gmail(dot)com.
To get the "official" stuff out of the way, I am the editor of one of California's state-wide homeschooling magazines, the California HomeSchooler. I do some other stuff too: I run a local monthly homeschool information night, I speak at state conferences, and I have an alternative education blog called Just Enough and Nothing More. I also hold several advanced degrees, and some miscellaneous certificates which give me very little advantage in my current work as a homeschool advocate and mom. Oh, and I suppose I should mention my book, Deschooling Gently: A Step by Step Guide to Fearless Homeschooling.....
Is Deschooling All that Important?
I first heard the term “deschooling” five years ago on the Homeschool Association of California (HSC) Yahoo! Group e-list. I was new to homeschooling, and I didn’t think the concept of deschooling really applied to me, since my kids had never been in school. Over time, I found the deschooling discussion to be, in fact, the most valuable of them all ...
When It's Over... That's the Time to Fall in Love, Again...
Homeschooling retirement. For many homeschoolers, that might be a long way off. For others, it's right around the corner. What happens when it's over? What happens to mom when she's no longer a "homeschooling parent" ...
Two days ago, my six-year-old daughter and I had an argument over the volume of one of her toys. Yesterday, my 9-year-old son had a meltdown because he didn't have any clean pajamas. I had a meltdown in response to his meltdown. All week, the kids have been bickering, yelling and yanking things from each other ...
Recently, I, and all of my homeschooling friends, were accused of being arrogant. It was a comment on my blog, in response to my Real Cons of Homeschooling piece ...
Raising New Group Executives or The Winds of Change
Change. It's one of the hardest things for the human mind to accept, yet the most natural thing in the world. If there's anything we can count on, is that everything changes....
Learning to the Music: An Intellectual Jam Session
Have you ever been to a jam session? Where maybe a guitarist, bassist, pianist and drummer come together and just mess around with their instruments? Each person has their interests and expertise, and brings something different to the table....
I have three children, and each child has a distinct personality. And, each one’s personality is different from my own. To make it more complex, my husband’s personality is different from all four of us. How can five people, with their own way of dealing with learning, stress, people, sleep, food, and everything else, live together under one roof?...
I have wondered if I should sell a curriculum completely based on games. I think I have the experience to come up with a pretty decent list - at least for elementary school....
In many ways, I consider our family "normal". At first glance, we really don't stand out as a homeschooling family. But, as with all homeschooling families, there are things that make my family unique....
We don't appreciate sleep enough. I used to say, "I wish I didn't have to sleep so I can get more done." Now that I actually get enough sleep, I get more done. Pretty cool, eh?...
How and why do we impart our knowledge on our children? Now, that’s an important question! I guess it depends on what we want for our children....
Today, my eight year old learned the basics of fractions. He had no difficulty understanding the concepts, worked out some problems with me, and figured out how to change an improper fraction into a mixed number.
Great! Now he knows the basics of fractions, right?...
Questions About Homeschooling from a Teacher
As part of my volunteer work, I handle incoming questions about homeschooling from sources other than homeschoolers. Last month, I had the pleasure of talking to a teacher with legitimate concerns about how kids learn without school. This was part of our conversation....
One of the things that impress me the most about those who live a life without school is their integrity. They know what they believe, and they live their lives according to their values. Or rather, they live their lives according to a personal, family and educational philosophy. It impressed me so much, that I made it a point to understand our own educational philosophy and to see if what we do on a daily basis lives up to our goals....
Successful Element for Homeschool Success-Relationships
The more I get involved in homeschooling and as my kids get older, the more I come to realize that only about 10% of homeschooling success is about the scholastic education of my children....
Zen and the Art of Homeschooling
By far, the most important element of preparing our children for their future is to teach them how to learn. No matter what specific facts or skills we teach them, so long as they have the ability and confidence to learn, they are prepared for any path they choose....
As most of us know, one of the main concerns people have about homeschooling is whether ample opportunity is available for (proper?) socializing between children. Arguments aside about whether socializing between equal age children is necessary for a healthy childhood, homeschooling proponents claim that in today's modern age of easy communication and travel, that socializing while home educating is a non-issue....
How can parents possibly teach their own children how to read? Reading is so complicated. There are phonics and sight words and grammar rules and about a million different theories and hundreds of programs to choose from. How can a parent, without years of experience and training, wade through all of the information to know where to even start?....
What would life be like if you were never inspired? That's what Stella Resnick asks in The Pleasure Zone. Published in 1998, it's a little old as self-help books go. However Stella's observations still ring true today; our culture spends a lot of time and energy moving away from the things that give us pleasure....
"Credentialism has existed for centuries in one form or another as groups with an information or knowledge advantage have tried to maintain their position of superiority with everything from guilds and associations to secret societies and esoteric languages. And even though teachers and educators have noble intentions, their position in our economy, by design is dependent upon a psychology of the scarcity of knowledge." Quoted from here....
Accepting What We Know~Wanting to Know More
This, to me, is the essence of education. Teaching people to be happy with who they are and what they have, while at the same time giving them tools to achieve their goals. This gives them everything they need to be a success.....
When asked what kind of learning approach we follow, I reply that our main focus on education is from the inside out. Our path to finding our homeschooling approach came from the inside out as well....
Education: What's the point? We all know how important an “education” is, and how, in our modern culture, the perception of how to be successful is deeply tied to education. But what does having an education really mean? What does success really mean? Who gets to define these words for us? What is the crux of what makes us happy humans in our world if not our life-long culmination of experience and education?....
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