The Life Without School Community Blog

Learning to Love Reading

by Marian, Guest Author

A child only pours herself into a little funnel or into a little box when she's afraid of the world when she's been defeated. But when a child is doing something she's passionately interested in, she grows like a tree in all directions. This is how children learn, how children grow. They send down a taproot like a tree in dry soil. The tree may be stunted, but it sends out these roots, and suddenly one of these little taproots goes down and strikes a source of water. And the whole tree grows. ~ John Holt

My son is what I call a 'square-peg child'. He has a condition called Sensory Processing Disorder that makes him uniquely sensitive to outside stimulus such as noise, light and quick transitions. You can imagine that school was a nightmare.

I came to homeschooling through my experience with my son. I realized that he was an unusual child quite early on and started reading about homeschooling then, but always thought it was a pie-in-the-sky notion of mine. When I realized just how damaging school was to my son's fragile ego, it happily had to become a reality.

One of the most troubling things to come out of the school experience was the fact that my son, the son of two avid readers, hated books. He hated not only books but anything to do with reading.

Well, no wonder. The readers that were sent home from school were published in England. They were incredibly dull books with no meat to them. And then, there was the whole concept of 'levelled readers'. While the teacher never made mention of levels, the children, of course, knew exactly what they meant and knew who was reading at which level and were not shy about comparing their successes with their peers.

What was more disturbing was that the second a child succeeded in reading a level with only a few mistakes, they were given a harder book. There was never any ease or comfort in reading. It was always a hard, boring chore. Children were not allowed to linger in a level to acheive fluency, to enjoy the reading, they were always being forced to struggle through to the next stage to try to keep up with provincial requirements.  My son was giving a D in reading on his first grade one report card. Imagine giving a small child a D.......how is anyone supposed to pick themselves up from a blow like that?

Once we started homeschooling, I quickly realized that unschooling was where we needed to be. I completely back away from the whole concept of teaching my son to read. I stopped asking him to read to me. I continued to surround both of my children with good books and created a comfy space for reading. I read to them frequently. Occassionaly, I'd find my son poring over book and muttering to himself. He mentioned casually, that he could read some of the Dr. Seuss easy readers, but had no desire to read them to me. Suddenly, he started reading signs and posters on the streets.

Then one morning he read a two page comic to me. He proudly announced that he had learned to read in secret.

Self-directed, reading for enjoyment.....all that reading of John Holt suddenly rang so true for me.

Marian is an ex-teacher, software trainer to "special needs" children and a home-schooling mom to two fabulous children.

 

Do Schools Kill Creativity?

by Jena

My oldest son Peter likes to think and learn about education.  One day he ran across this video on ted.com by creativity expert Sir Ken Robinson. The website describes it this way: Ken Robinson "challenges the way we're educating our children. He champions a radical rethink of our school systems, to cultivate creativity and acknowledge multiple types of intelligence." He's not a home schooler or a home school advocate, as far as I know. He's an academic, speaking to the establishment. But he's anything but boring. Trust me, if you are on this blog, you will love this guy. Just listen to the first two minutes and you'll be hooked. The video is about 20 minutes long. Get some hot chocolate, a cozy blanket, and enjoy!

Jena began homeschooling in 1994. Her three children are now teenagers; one is graduated and attends  the University of Chicago on a full ride scholarship, the next one is 16 and pursues life without school in the arts, and the youngest is a freshman, trying out public school for the first time. In 2005 they bought a 7000 square foot church building and converted it into their home. You can read more about their adventures on her blog, yarns of the heart.

The Boys Project

by Laureen

A friend online recently pointed me to The Boys Project. And so I thought I'd share with you guys, yet another wonderful example of why parents of boys should keep them home.

The mission of The Boys Project is:

To help young males develop their capabilities and reach the potential that their families and teachers know they have. The Boys Project seeks to accomplish for young men what the Girls Project so successfully accomplished for young women--- to increase academic skills, to increase college success, and to develop the confidence, drive, and determination to contribute to American society.

OK, forget your horror that such a thing is necessary, for a moment. The education system started as a boy-only institution, then girls were allowed after much fighting, and now boys require a whole support system, because girls are adapting to the system better than the boys are, now. That just makes my head spin. The site goes on to say,

We are  losing young boys to a sense of failure that comes from schooling  poorly adapted to their needs. We are losing adolescent males to the depression that comes from feeling neither needed nor respected. We are  losing young men to life tracks that include neither college nor any other energetic endeavor.

A large,  sullen, poorly educated group of men will not keep the nation vital in  the twenty-first century. The nation needs the energy, initiative, and  ambition of its young men as well as its young women.

Aha! You mean.... the school system isn't meeting the needs of an entire gender? Fascinating.

As a mother of two sons, I suppose the other stats on the site should be horrifying and chilling.

For every 100 girls ages 15 to 17 in correctional facilities, there are 837 boys behind bars (which says more, I think, about the "justice system" than it does about gender issues per se, but anyway...).   For every 100 females ages 20 to 24 that commit suicide 624 males of the same age kill themselves. For every 100 girls diagnosed with a learning disability 276 boys are diagnosed       with a learning disability. And so on and so on.

And as much as I can admire the concept that we have to band together to save our boys from what school will do to them, banding together to help them cope better with an institution fundamentally unsuited to their basic natures seems, somehow, a fool's errand. But it's nice at least that someone's seeing it.

Laureen is a writer, a professional editor, a scuba instructor, a beginning  sailor, a traveler, and an obsessive researcher who's chiefly focused  on, and delighted with, her husband Jason and her sons Rowan and  Kestrel. She's a lifelong Californian, which lends a very distinctive  spin to both her ideas and her politics, and she's discovered, in her  peregrinations, that the world is far smaller yet far more fascinating  than anyone gives it credit for being. She holds forth her opinions on  that in her blog, The ElementalMom.

The Natural Products of Our Training

by Laureen

I'd like to direct your attention to this article in the Washington Post, "Pearls Before Breakfast." That article illustrates to me that public school in America is absolutely successful at what it sets out to do, and that the vast majority of us are the natural products of our training.

The article covers a social experiment conducted by some of the Post's staff writers:

 

He emerged from the Metro at the L'Enfant Plaza station and positioned himself against a wall beside a trash basket. By most  measures, he was nondescript: a youngish white man in jeans, a  long-sleeved T-shirt and a Washington Nationals baseball cap. From a  small case, he removed a violin. Placing the open case at his feet, he  shrewdly threw in a few dollars and pocket change as seed money,  swiveled it to face pedestrian traffic, and began to play...

 

In the three-quarters of an hour that he played, seven people stopped what they were doing to hang  around and take in the performance, at least for a minute. Twenty-seven  gave money, most of them on the run -- for a total of $32 and change.  That leaves the 1,070 people who hurried by, oblivious, many only three  feet away, few even turning to look.

 

"He" is Joshua Bell, arguably one of the best violinists of all time, and what he played was a sampling of some of the best music ever written for violin. He played for free, on his Stradivarius violin, posing as just another busker at rush hour, to see if beauty could transcend context.

These people, these passersby, are largely government workers.   The world does not end if they're ten or fifteen minutes late, but we are so conditioned by the bell ringing to be in our seats on time or face the direst consequences the bureaucracy can throw at us, that we no longer are even able to stop for beauty. We have a time clock to punch, and that is the all-important priority in the morning. We have to be in our seats on time, and twelve years of public school indoctrination has drilled that into our habits so completely, that as adults, we're still doing it, and allowing it to be done to us. "Do you have time for beauty? Shouldn't you? What's the moral mathematics of the moment?" asks the article.

In this case, the opportunity cost to these people of this habitual behavior was to miss out on something irreplaceable. Something that they will never see again, was determined by their force of habit, to be less worthy than being to work on time.

 

In his 2003 book, Timeless Beauty: In the Arts and Everyday Life,  British author John Lane writes about the loss of the appreciation for  beauty in the modern world. The experiment at L'Enfant Plaza may be  symptomatic of that, he said -- not because people didn't have the  capacity to understand beauty, but because it was irrelevant to them.

 

"This is about having the wrong priorities," Lane said.

In the subsequent article, it was determined that most of the passersby didn't even recognize the music for what it was. We don't listen to music outside our own very narrow preference range, usually. There's no benefit to it. We listen to whatever the radio's playing, with no time or appreciation or attention for whatever isn't. It was noted that at least one person rushing by couldn't even hear what was being played, due to his iPod. It's especially true of urban dwellers, but as a culture we're increasingly surrounding ourselves with us-ness, and cutting ourselves off from the  experiences that could illuminate, expand, or challenge us. Which is hardly surprising, since we've spent twelve years being told to read the book and only the book, and answer questions only on the material the teacher deems important and that therefore by extension anything else is either wrong or irrelevant. If it was important, I would have been taught it somewhere along my educational career, right? So if I don't know what it is, it must not matter.

 

It was all videotaped by a hidden camera. You can play the recording  once or 15 times, and it never gets any easier to watch. Try speeding  it up, and it becomes one of those herky-jerky World War I-era silent  newsreels. The people scurry by in comical little hops and starts, cups  of coffee in their hands, cellphones at their ears, ID tags slapping at  their bellies, a grim danse macabre to indifference, inertia and the dingy, gray rush of modernity.

 

Even  at this accelerated pace, though, the fiddler's movements remain fluid  and graceful; he seems so apart from his audience -- unseen, unheard,  otherworldly -- that you find yourself thinking that he's not really  there. A ghost.

 

Only then do you see it: He is the one who is real. They are the ghosts.

Our need to rush on to the next thing, to keep our schedules, to ignore the fascinating things happening all around us isn't inherent, it's trained. Trained by years of having just 50 minutes per class, then ten minutes to rush to the next thing, sit down, settle down, focus on the next checkbox until the next bell. We are not born this way.

 

A couple of minutes into it, something revealing happens. A woman  and her preschooler emerge from the escalator. The woman is walking  briskly and, therefore, so is the child. She's got his hand. "I  had a time crunch," recalls Sheron Parker, an IT director for a federal  agency. "I had an 8:30 training class, and first I had to rush Evvie  off to his teacher, then rush back to work, then to the training  facility in the basement."

 

Evvie is her son, Evan. Evan is 3.

 

You  can see Evan clearly on the video. He's the cute black kid in the parka  who keeps twisting around to look at Joshua Bell, as he is being  propelled toward the door.

 

"There was a musician," Parker says, "and my son was intrigued. He wanted to pull over and listen, but I was rushed for time."

 

So  Parker does what she has to do. She deftly moves her body between  Evan's and Bell's, cutting off her son's line of sight. As they exit  the arcade, Evan can still be seen craning to look. When Parker is told  what she walked out on, she laughs. "Evan is very smart!"

 

The  poet Billy Collins once laughingly observed that all babies are born  with a knowledge of poetry, because the lub-dub of the mother's heart  is in iambic meter. Then, Collins said, life slowly starts to choke the  poetry out of us. It may be true with music, too.

 

...But the behavior of one demographic remained absolutely consistent.  Every single time a child walked past, he or she tried to stop and  watch. And every single time, a parent scooted the kid away.

Those children  knew what over a thousand adults passing by had been conditioned to ignore; that something fantastic was happening, something worthy of attention. And their parents, who were on a time crunch (for what? We'll never know) physically blocked that spark of curiosity, that urge of their child's, to explore what they were hearing. At three years old, Evan got the message that schedules and time crunches and whatever he was going to be being taught that day was more important than hearing the art coming from a man who can command $1000 a minute for his talent, who was sharing that talent for free, in exchange for nothing more than a temporary, almost fractional pause, in the daily grind.

 

Bell headed off on a concert tour of European capitals. But he is back  in the States this week. He has to be. On Tuesday, he will be accepting  the Avery Fisher prize, recognizing the Flop of L'Enfant Plaza as the  best classical musician in America.

Something fundamental, something primal and critical and necessary has been crushed out of the American people. Is it unreasonable for me to think that we are behaving just like well-trained monkeys? Twelve years of steady conditioning is not inconsiderable. It takes far less than that to achieve results with rats. Have we become a juggernaut of widget-crankers, incapable of spending even  scant minutes on glory?

Apparently. 

We can do better, we must do better, and as parents making the choice to step away both from the training and the scheduling, we are making our stand against the pressure to mindlessly conform. We have the opportunity to model for our children that art both great and small is happening all around us all the time, and that these transcendent, transitional moments of grace are available to be captured in the soul. As fortune favors the prepared, creating a life that allows for effervescent moments to be experienced, I think, is something that is a calling.

Laureen is a writer, a professional editor, a scuba instructor, a beginning  sailor, a traveler, and an obsessive researcher who's chiefly focused  on, and delighted with, her husband Jason and her sons Rowan and  Kestrel. She's a lifelong Californian, which lends a very distinctive  spin to both her ideas and her politics, and she's discovered, in her  peregrinations, that the world is far smaller yet far more fascinating  than anyone gives it credit for being. She holds forth her opinions on  that in her blog, The ElementalMom.

Navigating the Labyrinth

by Steph W.

One of my biggest challenges as a home schooling parent has been casting out my own assumptions about learning. These assumptions, which grew throughout my own years in public school, are sometimes unconscious. They surround me - thick, sticky, and sometimes invisible - like cobwebs.

I was taught that the path to learning follows a predictable pattern and must be followed step by step.  Then I became a mom. At times, my kids' development unfolded in a predictable sequence but, just as often, it didn't. A child who confidently toddled across the room one day crawled the next. My older daughter, as a preschooler, seemed to have a primitive understanding of DNA and heredity one day; the next day she asked, "How did God put on our noses -- tape?" My ideas about the linear nature of development began to dissolve, and I learned to revel in the twists, turns, and spirals in the path we traveled.

Then I became a home schooler. During the past four years, I have been slowly learning what -- to seasoned home schoolers -- is as natural as breathing: that there are myriad paths to learning, each one as individual as the learner.  I have also come to understand that learning styles -- being an auditory, visual, or kinesthetic learner, for example, or being "right brained," "left brained," or "whole brained" -- are not niches we can slip learners into. These models are helpful in understanding how people solve problems and gain knowledge. But they don't categorize people. Each person's way of learning and understanding the world is multi-faceted and unique.

My first challenge as a home educating parent was discarding everything I'd been taught about learning math. I remember being told that it is a clear, linear process. Certain steps must be followed precisely in order, and -- by all means -- SHOW YOUR WORK. There is nothing wrong with this approach, I suppose, except that is doesn't fit either any of my children.

My older daughter is a creative, verbal learner. Her thinking often does not follow a straight, step by step pattern. However, she has a mild learning disability that causes her to struggle with visual spatial and mathematical concepts. Because she has NVLD, she doesn't easily grasp math intuitively (often thought of as a right brained process) . However, she is not really a "left brained" learner either. She doesn't learn best by rote or by learning scraps of information in a way that isn't meaningful. She needs to see the "big picture" to learn, yet the "big picture" is often hard to hard to glimpse.

Sarah had spent four years in public school, taught by smart, dedicated teachers straight-jacketed by the increasing demands of government mandated standards and testing.  She had received intensive help with math, thanks to her IEP, and had achieved "proficiency" on the all important state SOL test. But she didn't "get it." She'd look at a problem that traditionally requires "regrouping," for example --

   55
+89

She'd try to "carry" the from the "ones" column to the "tens" column, and she'd make an error. She couldn't correct her mistake. When asked to explain her thinking, she'd insist, on the verge of frustrated tears, "that's just the way you DO it" or "that's what my teacher TAUGHT me." She didn't really grasp the concept of place value. She was grappling with a concept that's fairly abstract and complex, if you think about it, with no tools except some poorly learned rote skills. (I've since learned, with the help of Marilyn Burns, that this is a common problem with schooled students).

For most kids, hands-on activities would be the key to understanding. However, Sarah was not a particularly "hands on" child. She lived in the world of ideas, and like a "right brained learner," she needs to glimpse the broader meaning of what she's learning. However, she had difficulty with mathematical and visual-spatial ideas. It was a conundrum.

Our best chance was to introduce math concepts through verbal ideas. After all, this is her strength. She did many verbal logic puzzles. There are plenty of interesting books that gently present mathematical ideas. The Living Math site offers a treasure trove of suggestions.

I also discovered that word problems help. Conventional wisdom -- based on those old assumptions I was taught in public school -- dictates that word problems are "harder" that straightforward math and rote problem-solving. In school, children are taught a math problem through "drill and kill" before they are introduced to story problems using that concept. For example, after several pages of practice with problems like 38 x 14, the child is allowed to grapple with "If you earned $38 dollars a day for two weeks, how much money would you have?"

The problem is that the "story" is what gave the problem meaning in the first place. Without meaning, some kids don't really learn. When presented with 38 x 14, Sarah would shut down. If we talked about 14 shelves with 38 books on each one, perhaps discussing titles of some of her favorite books, the lights came on. Since she doesn't learn by rote, and she doesn't relate intuitively to math concepts -- well -- the story's the thing.

We created elaborate story problems. We talked about the math concepts that arose in novels. We focused on "real life" math, such as keeping track of her allowances in a bank book and shopping. We also used some conventional curricula. We made progress. Sometimes understanding would logically follow. Sometimes it would happen months later, after the concept had been set aside and just given time to germinate. She mastered factorization months after I finally gave up trying to teach it to her. The seeds were there, waiting to sprout. She just needed time and space; when the time was right, the connections happened.

My son James, on the other hand, seems like a classic right brained learner. He turned all my assumptions about early literacy on their head when, after years of making little progress with phonics games and easy readers, he taught himself to read, curled up -- cat-like -- by the heating vent, with a well worn "Calvin and Hobbes" collection. But that's another story. He is quick, imaginative, impatient with step by step processes, and full of pure, manic energy.

James refuses to solve problems on paper. I might present him with 38 x 14, laying a 38 x 14 rectangle of blocks in front of him. He refuses to write the problem, and he won't look at the rectangle. What? A visual, hands-on kind of learner who won't use manipulatives? Nope -- he won't look at the blocks. He covers his eyes. "Wait! I'm straining my brain!" He calls out. He shifts the numbers around in his mind, seeking the answer.

A year ago, I realized he wanted nothing to do with regrouping. In school I was taught that "carrying" and "borrowing" was the only key to solving these problems. There's is nothing wrong with that approach, of course, except that it just doesn't "click" with James. So we just kept practicing these skills in a hands-on way, through games, until he was ready to jump in and just DO it, devising his own methods. His way of learning is not step by step, or through learning a set of rules and techniques, but through intuitive leaps.

I find the way he approaches math problems quite interesting. For example, I once broke down and showed him the “traditional” way to subtract with regrouping. It is hard to exorcise many years of public schooling, after all. The conversation went something like this:

65
-38

Me: O.K. … look at this column (on the right). 5-8. You can’t subtract 8 from 5 so … (I was about to show him how you “borrow” from the 10’s column)

James: Yes, you can subtract 8 from 5.

Me: You can?

James: Of course. It’s negative 3. (Obviously, he’s completely right. Saying things like “you can’t subtract 8 from 5″ is a lie we adults tell to simplify things. But James, who has a strong internal picture of a number line - for lack of a better way to put it - understands the concept of negative numbers very well.)

Me: Huh. You’re absolutely right. Five minus eight is negative three.

Soon, James worked out his own method of solving this problem. 65 -38 He thinks: 60 - 30 = 30 and 5 - 8 = -3 ... 30 + (-3) (or 30-3) = 27. There you have it! No need to go “borrowing from your neighbor.” I thought it was pretty cool. What do you suppose are the odds that he would be allowed to work through this process, honoring the way his brain works, in a public school classroom?

Sometimes James surges ahead in math. When he reaches a point where he can't do the calculations mentally, he refuses to turn to the traditional pencil-and-paper methods I use. He stops. When this happens, I have learned to take a break from scope and sequence-type math, often waiting months before returning to a concept. Meanwhile, we play games. Sometimes we cook together. Recently, he has been teaching himself to play chess using an Usborne book, reveling in the chance to try out new moves.

Much about growing and learning has turned out to be different from what I expected. This included subjects, such as math, that I once thought were simple and predictable. The road to learning and development that I once envisioned traveling with my kids, step by step, has turned out to be more of a labyrinth, twisting and turning, often in unexpected directions. And here's another thing I didn't expect:  this has turned out to be one of the most exciting parts of the journey.

Stephanie W. lives with her family in the beautiful Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. She has been learning at home full time with her three wonderfully creative, feisty and quirky children -- Sarah (13), James (9) & Patricia Elizabeth (4) since 2003. Her other interests include literature, writing, editing, and the internet.

Homeschooling a Child with Aspergers

by Dory, Guest Author

I will be beginning this journey of homeschooling in the next few weeks with my precious son who is six and diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome, a form of autism.  I have a background in psychology and education, so I’m not too worried about how things will turn out.  My son is very bright, creative and enthusiastic about learning.  He just doesn’t fit in to the mainstream of public schools.  His abilities are seen there, not as strengths, but as challenges that thus far, public school has not been able to meet. 

As a former public school employee for over 15 years, I never thought I’d be walking down this road, but I’m certain that I made the right choice to do so.  I always thought I would teach, and bring my child to work with me so that I could share his day right there in the moment.  I have always enjoyed my jobs as teacher assistant and substitute teacher, even feeling a “calling” to be there.  At the ripe old age of 35 I decided to pursue a graduate degree in education.  Now I know that my experience and studies will only make this adventure that much more fulfilling.

My child is also, (at the moment), an only child.  One of the areas of concern for Aspie parents is the socialization of their child.  Many Asperger’s kids have difficulty interacting with others, especially same-age peers.  We have joined a local homeschooling group to aid us in this area.  I feel confident that homeschooling will be the perfect fit for us as we can have better control of the social situations that we will encounter.  My son does not have to be bombarded with social interactions that make him uncomfortable. He can determine which activities we participate in and how long we stay.  This makes it a much more positive experience for him as we practice those give-and-take relationships in a smaller group setting.  We also look forward to meeting children of various ages, something that wouldn’t necessarily occur in public school, where kids are corralled into same-age groupings throughout their day.

Another plus to learning at home for Aspies is the flexibility of schedules and material content.  Since my son has an intense interest in construction, I can compose lessons that focus on his area of interest.  Instead of relying solely on paper and pencil worksheets, we can incorporate building blocks, pretend play, and real-life field trips to study his favorite subject across the curriculum.  He will be able to contribute his ideas about subject matter and all I have to do is figure out how to weave it all together!  I can’t imagine the feeling of confidence it will bring him to know that he is creating his own education.  With regard to schedules, most Asperger’s kids do better with some sort of routine.  In fact, it’s sometimes a coping mechanism, as they need that sense of predictability to feel comfortable.  Since we are on our own time clock, I can help him to ease out of some of those rigid ways of thinking and show him that there are other ways to do things.  My son is just now coming to the realization that everyone has their own thoughts and ideas, and this is the perfect opportunity to encourage that type of expanded thinking.  He knows that it is safe to try things a different way at his own pace.  There is so much potential to add these types of “life skills” lessons into our daily routine.

Most children with Asperger’s score above average on IQ tests.  My son has been evaluated by a host of so-called “experts” so that the most appropriate placement for him could be found.  It’s such a relief to know that I’ve finally found it!  He can now work above grade level instead of being bored because he has to do what the other kids are doing.  He can think outside the box without being judged.  His creativity is an asset, not something to be stifled.  He doesn’t require any labels, or “exceptionalities”, as it is euphemistically called.  He can just be who he is, all of the time and run with it. I just hope that I can keep up with him!

I look forward to looking back next year at this time and seeing the progress my son has made because he didn’t have to cope with the stress of too many people, too much stimulation and not enough one-on-one attention.  The gains will be made in academics, yes, but more importantly; I think he will improve in the areas of social skills, self-confidence and in his already-present love for learning.  Homeschooling is such a gift and I am so grateful that my Aspie and I can open it together.

Dory Hubbard is a homeschooling mom (leaning toward unschooling). Her amazing seven-year old boy, Carson, happens to have Asperger's syndrome.  She, her husband Kevin and Carson share their home in Central Florida with their pet Betta, Bluey.

Coming Home Again

By Sara~Guest Author

Quick – list the top ten words that describe you.  Since you’re reading this, you probably put “homeschooler” close to the top of your list.  For most of my life, I identified myself that way also, but for a while I thought I’d leave that behind and become a “normal person”.

You see, I was homeschooled as a child.  I never went to school, the first time I took a test was for my driver’s license, and I entered college with the blissfully naïve notion that I should read every word of an assignment.  I loved being homeschooled when I was young; I felt so much more independent and mature and free than my schooled peers.  I would refer to school buildings as “prisons” and talk about not wanting to be “institutionalized”.  It was a wonderful childhood, and I came out of it with a better-than-average education. 

When I started taking classes at my local community college, I was hooked.  Unfortunately, I was hooked on two things: learning and external approval.  The learning was great, and it was just like being homeschooled only with more resources immediately presented to me.  I didn’t have to go find the books, the videos, the expert, or the equipment.  It was all right there for me, and I eagerly soaked it up.

I also eagerly soaked up the approval.  In my very first class I got a 4.0, and I was thrilled.  My parents were also thrilled – here was validation that they had done a good job educating me.  I kept doing well, and I bragged a lot about my GPA.  It was wonderful to do well in college, but it started me down a path that got increasingly difficult to continue.  Before I went to college, I thought I’d like to be a paramedic.  Soon, that seemed too small for how “smart” I was, so I decided to go for nursing.  People encouraged me to be more ambitious, because after all I was so “smart”.  I went for pre-med, and transferred to the University of Washington.

At the University, the reality of competitive education took me by surprise.  Somehow, I’d ignored the dark side of “the curve” that insures that the success of some students will mean the failure of others.  I hadn’t realized how hard people have to work to “stay on top”.  A really good teacher wasn’t someone who made sure all their students learned the material – it was someone who had a low passing rate and flunked a lot of students!

I looked back to my days of home education with nostalgia, and I was still convinced that I had been very lucky to receive that educational opportunity.  My only complaint about having homeschooled was that I was single.  I saw other college students in couples, and I was sure that if I had gone to high school I would also have a boyfriend!

Then I found a wonderful boyfriend, and he happened to be someone who was still in touch with lots of his high school friends.  We talked about homeschooling, but he thought it was weird and he couldn’t imagine not having gone to high school.  I was still aiming to be a doctor, so it was natural for me to imagine that I wouldn’t be able to homeschool my own kids.  After all, someone has to stay home with the kids to homeschool, and I was not going to be a stay-at-home mom.

At this point in my story, I had a crisis on my path to medical school.  I wasn’t sure I wanted to do that anymore, and I wasn’t sure I really wanted to feel so stressed all the time.  But I still loved school, especially the science courses I was taking.  So I made a pretty radical decision – I decided to become a public school teacher.

I was asked by other teaching students why on earth a homeschooler would decide to teach in school.  Looking back, I don’t think I had any idea what public school would really be like.  I just loved learning, and I loved helping others learn, and I wanted a way to stay in school for the rest of my life.  I entered a Masters program that would take two years to complete.  I also had a baby.

Going into the schools for observations and student teaching was a real eye-opener.  I found them to be loud and overwhelming in their crowded and noisy way.  I was surprised to find that the students and teachers had such antagonistic relationships.  When I student taught, I felt more like a security guard than a guide for learning.  Other people have done an excellent job of listing all that is wrong with our schools, so I don’t need to catalog it all here.  It’s enough to just emphasize how shocked I was to see it for myself.

Along with my disillusioned state about schooling, I was also finding myself disillusioned with daycare and leaving my son in others’ care.  More than anything, I felt a longing to just be home with him.  I found myself in a full-circle situation, wanting to go back to being a homeschooler!  After some discussions with my husband, I chose to not look for a job after I graduated.

Now I have truly come home again.  I’m running a home daycare, to pay off those pesky student loans.  My son is three years old, and we’ve begun playing with preschool.  We also have a baby girl, and we plan on homeschooling them both.  How could I possibly send them to school?  Maybe there are good schools out there, but there is no replacement for the one-on-one and flexibility possible in homeschooling.  And, homeschooling provides me with everything I wanted as well, because I get to continue learning and exploring right along with my kids.  Homeschooling was the right choice for me as a child, and it is also the right choice for me as a mom. 

Sara Lewis grew up as the oldest of four homeschooled children, in a family home daycare her mother operated.  Sara served six years in the National Guard and has a Bachelors of Science and Masters in Teaching from The Evergreen State College.  She currently runs a family home daycare, in addition to educating and caring for her two young children.

Thoughts About Diversity

By Missy

I've missed two deadlines with this piece. Two. Usually I'm a little late because I'm tweaking things at the last minute. But to miss it completely? I've never done that. (well, except in 9th grade when I simply disregarded the due date of our poetry project for no other reason beyond that I just didn't feel like turning it in. I don't quite understand what I was trying to prove--it was completely finished. The only reason I still remember is that my mom--even now--won't let me forget...)

But this...This is hard. In almost every setting, in almost any group, the topic of race and racism puts everyone on edge.

Many academics will assert that race is just a social invention. It doesn't really exist. Which works in theory, if you never leave your house.

But we do. Relatively frequently. And, when we do, we're reminded that the cultural impact is real.

The number of African American homeschoolers is growing rapidly. They made up around 3% of the homeschool population in the mid-1990's; now, roughly 10% of homeschoolers are black. Which, statistically, implies that--in a group of 300 kids--my kids are it. In our experience, that's pretty accurate.

Way too often, my family is the diversity.

Sometimes, it doesn't matter. But sometimes, off-hand comments are dropped carelessly and I worry about what my kids will internalize and so I listen and watch.

For some reason, it is always, always, about the hair. And when someone mentions hair--and inevitably someone will--it's my cue to listen because their questions and comments reveal more than they think. There are a lot of stereotypes wrapped up in hair.

When my daughter was in public school, the racism did not surprise us. Not only were we teachers in the system and therefore on the "inside" and acutely aware of the systemic climate, we also knew the history of the region and how it continued to feed that climate. Too many children don't know what to be aware of and too many parents have been taught not to question, and so racist presumptions and assertions creep in quietly--unchallenged--until they become part of the academic fiber and part of our children.

As homeschoolers, we have the time and the opportunity to identify racism and to confront it head-on. We see what our children are exposed to and we have a chance to seek out the truth with our children instead of accepting the traditional air-brushed text. We have a chance to tell our kids that, yes, color does matter--let's figure out why.

It is exhausting sometimes to be the lone family of color at a homeschooling activity. Or to be the second family of color. I've seen my kids literally pulled over to greet a new family, as proof of diversity when there is no other common element. I've listened to stereotypes tossed into a discussion and tried to effectively weigh the cost of not speaking up against the certain discomfort that would come if I do.   

We live in an emotionally, if not physically, segregated culture. It's hard to realize the full impact of race unless it's had a direct, absolute and continuous presence. Homeschooling within the black community is still seen as extremely unusual; some even view it as a betrayal. Activists fought for the right to attend integrated schools. People died for that right. Only in very recent years have some parents realized that the right to be inside the same school building doesn't equate to the same education or the same opportunities. Bigotry didn't evaporate; it merely shifted and attacked from a different angle, and homeschooling provides a leverage that isn't available in a school. 

I've learned that, if I'm not watchful, my children will end up as the diversity-du-jour and that's not fair to them. Those individuals who loudly proclaim their ability to be color-blind and who express profound and extensive--and, yeah, loud--disgust at blatantly racist words and actions are usually the same individuals whose conversations are subtly laced with the same stereotypes that inundate the media and, ultimately, give racism its power and allow it to grow. It's those individuals who openly acknowledge that they *will* say something stupid, and ask that you call them on it--because they want to learn and move forward--who will make a difference and who I will trust with my children because they genuinely care.

It angers me a little when parents talk about pulling their children out of school because of the diminishing patriotism or tarnishing of the Founding Fathers, because schools haven't even begun to touch on the truth. And if the little bit that is present in school, in isolated moments, is too uncomfortable, then how much truth will be hidden at home? And how will it spill into conversations as our kids get older? Because my kids know their history, even the tarnished bits that are probably singed by the heat of hell. 

So we drift in and out of communities, and I step carefully, wondering if my boys will be safe. And, rarely, I find a place, where we're not alone. Where I can speak and be heard--and understood. Where my fears are accepted as real and no one tries to soften them with an optimism lined with pink clouds and rainbows and unity songs. Where we settle in and speak comfortably, where hair and skin is simply beautiful and not exotic, and where, beneath that skin, our kids have brains and an imagination and power. 

Missy's homeschooling journey began when she realized that the walls surrounding her daughter's classroom were too narrow; there was no room for exploration, no space for stretching. Now, she and her three children stretch and explore the world together. My blog: caffeinatedjive.

NCLB and Me

By Marsha

I just spent some time perusing a website (1.) all about No Child Left Behind. I haven’t paid a lot of attention to this issue prior to now, because our children have all been homeschooled for the past sixteen years.  Homeschoolers are exempt from NCLB.  However, I do remember hearing President Bush’s inaugural speech when he became president for the first time, and I also remember shaking my head and saying out loud, “More testing is not what this country needs.” 

No Child Left Behind.  It sounds so positive.  But the initiative itself builds on so many of the things that are wrong with the education system today.  Let me explain my thinking.

Here’s a quote from NCLB:  “Although education is primarily a state and local responsibility, the federal government is partly at fault for tolerating these abysmal results. The federal government currently does not do enough to reward success and sanction failure in our education system.”  Huh?  Whoa there, folks!  Education is, in my not so humble opinion, primarily a parental responsibility.  And the government’s idea of reward and sanction is about giving and taking away money.  The lack of connection of money to educational success has been proven over and over again by that same government.  This article says so, just a few paragraphs below my first quote:  “Over the years Congress has created hundreds of programs intended to address problems in education without asking whether or not the programs produce results or knowing their impact on local needs. This "program for every problem" solution has begun to add up -- so much so that there are hundreds of education programs spread across 39 federal agencies at a cost of $120 billion a year. Yet, after spending billions of dollars on education, we have fallen short in meeting our goals for educational excellence. The academic achievement gap between rich and poor, Anglo and minority is not only wide, but in some cases is growing wider still.”  I couldn’t have said it better.

One of the first suggestions of NCLB is to increase testing, so parents will “know that their children are learning”.  News flash!  Testing proves no such thing.  If you don’t believe me, just get acquainted with FairTest (2) to learn more than you ever wanted to know about testing, and why it doesn’t do what test makers, school districts, government and public school officials and a whole lot of other experts are telling you:    They explain so clearly all the answers to your questions including why tests aren’t unbiased, why they don’t really show what students have learned, and why test scores aren’t reliable.   Increasing testing, one of the very first premises of NCLB, is flawed. 

Another NCLB suggestion is to empower parents.  The problem with this is that the public education system, in its present form, makes parents feel powerless.  Except for the occasional mover and shaker parent, who volunteers in the school, chairs every committee, and is room mother, chaperone, and field trip organizer; most parents prefer to stay fairly far away from the school their child attends.  They often get just close enough to drop off or pick up their student.  They may attend parent night, concerts, and the occasional school function, but in many cases, they don’t even do that.  Why?  If you ask them, they may tell you, “I don’t like to walk down the hall of a school. The smell brings back too many bad memories.”  “I had a teacher who tied my left hand behind my back and made me write with my right hand.  When I finally got a different teacher, it was hard for me to catch up.”  Or “My kid does okay; he (or she) doesn’t need his old man in there acting dumb.”  Huh?  It’s true.  There are a lot of parents out there, sending their child to school, who had such negative (i.e.: horrific) experiences that they don’t really want to go there, and yet they are sending their child there because they feel so powerless that the thought of taking responsibility for their child’s education sends them shrieking in the opposite direction.  I know.  I’ve heard their comments, when they tell me why they don’t homeschool.  (I didn’t ask them, by the way. There’s something about homeschooling that makes people feel they have to defend their position.)  “I don’t have enough patience.”  “I didn’t do very well in school; I don’t know enough to teach them.”  “They wouldn’t listen to me.”   

My eldest son struggled, a square peg in a round hole, for six long (and I mean LONG) years before we learned about homeschooling.  I had met a homeschooler prior to that but it certainly never occurred to me to attempt such a thing!  I thought she was some sort of radical person.  But finally my back was against the wall, and I felt like I’d tried every avenue within and without the system that was possible;  pull-out programs, private tutors, patterning, testing ad nauseum, even special ed.  Yes, my bright, articulate, auditory-kinesthetic learner was put into special ed because he could not read at age five.  He failed kindergarten!!! The words learning disabled and dyslexia were bandied about.  Looking back now, and after totally homeschooling a younger son with similar learning style, I know that Ryan was not the failure.  The system failed him.  A system that depended upon photocopied worksheets and quiet seat work was not a good fit for a kinesthetic, hands-on, auditory learner.   The constant questions had been replaced with negative self statements.  After a summer of knowing he was going to be homeschooled, some of his confidence and zest for learning re-appeared, although it was quite a while before the mantras, “I’m dumb” and “That’s not how my teacher said to do it.” disappeared from his vocabulary.

Another quote from NCLB that stopped me short:   “States and school districts will have the flexibility to produce results, and may lose funds if performance goals are not met.”  What?  If more money is the key to success, then why are we taking away money if the school is not succeeding?  Shouldn’t schools that are not succeeding get even more money, if this is the case?  This all sounds like double-speak to me, but what do I know?  Well, I know that we have successfully lived and learned with a trio of boys, two of whom are already responsible, contributing, successful, happy adults, each pursuing life and learning and making us proud of who they are and the things they have accomplished and are accomplishing in their lives.  The third one is still at home, young enough not to have made a lot of waves since his graduation, but, as he puts it, he “has a life”.  He’s working full-time in the family business, going to college part-time, and has both short-and long-term goals regarding his education.  My point?  We have never spent more than $1,000 per year on homeschooling, even when we were paying about $450.00 a year to a cover school, thanks to legal issues in our state.  Even when we were homeschooling all four, we didn’t spend more than $1,000 per year on materials or activities.  Sometimes we took trips, paid for private lessons or tutors, or bought educational toys, but usually those were things we would have done whether we were homeschooling or not.  So even though those things contributed to their education, you could say that if they’d been in public school, they would have only been considered supplemental, so counting them is optional.  Our kids haven’t made headlines due to their achievements, but neither have they made headlines for any negative reason.  They aren’t rich, haven’t received meritorious honors or awards of any great significance, but then, none of those things were reasons why we decided to homeschool.  Those weren’t goals we set for our kids.  At under $350.00 per kid per annum, we’ve achieved our goals.  Money is not the key to reaching the children, teaching them more, or giving them the ability to do better on a standardized test.  (The first standardized test that Son #3 took was the state driver’s ed test!  Oops!  He didn’t know what the bubble answer sheet was for at first, but managed to get a 97% anyway.  The second was the ACT, and he managed to get a college scholarship with that one.)

Okay, another subject.  Focus on early literacy is another bugaboo of the NCLB initiative.  I quote:  “States that establish a comprehensive reading program anchored in scientific research from kindergarten to second grade will be eligible for grants under a new Reading First initiative.”  While putting reading first sounds very positive and high minded, studies have shown that many children are not ready to read at such a young age, and indeed, can be harmed by having it introduced before their eyes are developed enough.  Why don’t the educators know this?  Of course, we have to remember that this initiative was put together by politicians, but one would want to assume they had very well-versed educational consultants advising them, wouldn’t one?  Dr. Raymond Moore and his late wife Dorothy (a reading teacher) support their contention that reading should not be pushed, with scientific studies! (3)  Their book, Better Late than Early, explains their position, along with a bibliography of the studies they used to support their position.  Isn’t it amazing?  There are scientific studies used by NCLB to promote early reading and scientific studies used to promote later reading by a homeschooling advocate! 

All I can say is that my brother told me years ago that you can prove anything with statistics.  So perhaps the same holds true with scientific studies.  I cannot cite any scientific studies with assurance, but I can point out that I had two later readers, one who struggled to fit in to the school setting, and one who was never “schooled”.  With the intervention of homeschooling, and the environment of a household where reading aloud was the norm, and books occupied more space than any other single item, our older son eventually became a reader.  In fact, I have often said that he “read his education” after we began homeschooling him.  However, that reading sometimes took place auditorily, through books on cassette or family read-alouds and bedtime stories.  His reading was supplemented extensively with hands-on activities and real life experiential learning, modalities that suited him well.  He began pursuing reading more avidly when he realized that he could learn how to repair the engines and motors he loved, by reading service manuals and instruction books.  My second later reader never lagged in his education due to his inability to read at age five, six, or seven.  Indeed, even at eight, he was able to keep right up with anything he needed to learn because an older sibling or parent was always available to read to him.  He taught himself to add and subtract using an old workbook and a calculator, supplementing those materials with his incessant questions about what the plus and minus, multiplication and division symbols did.  We played some games that introduced phonics (letter-sound correlations) and bought him a phonics program with cassette tapes and accompanying books.  When reading clicked, he was almost nine, and from that point on you would be hard pressed to know that he had been a later reader.  Within six weeks, he was reading aloud fluently, and comprehending adult materials with absolutely no problem.  I know, I know, it’s not scientific.  It’s anecdotal.  But it’s true.  It hasn’t been tweaked or twisted.  I know how hard it was to simply trust that with the right environment, and a little patience, with a lot of books and fun and laughter, eventually our obviously bright son would learn to read.  When he was ready.  To watch another local homeschooling family whose son was even older, almost twelve, when he learned to read.  And to hear later that he finally learned to read so he could follow an investment his mother helped him make; since then I’ve head that he is investing money for others and succeeding beyond what older “trained” investors were achieving.  Anecdotal.  But it gave me courage at the time.  As a parent, I was very aware that I would be responsible if this child didn’t learn to read.  That if he was illiterate and jobless I would be responsible, as well, for supporting him.  But having observed and read and talked and e-mailed with homeschoolers across the country, and even in other countries, I persevered in letting him proceed at his own pace.  At nine, he reads.  He comprehends.  He’s presently devouring an annotated unabridged version of Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn.  He previously studied the Constitution.  He amazes me with his insights.    My kids are “outlearning” me!  It’s great!

What were my goals for my kids, the ones that I think are more realistic, and which I know are much cheaper, and more meaningful than NCLB?  I wanted to provide them the opportunity to learn to think, to love to learn for the sake of learning, and to have values about God, family, and community.  I wanted to educate them in such a way that they would have their own opinions and be able to defend them articulately, to provide for themselves and their families, and to give back. They have exceeded my expectations.  That’s more than you can say for educational reform.  While the politicians and the educators wrangle over NCLB, may homeschoolers continue to live and learn.  Homeschooling allows each family unit to initiate learning in the way that suits them best.  They can take into consideration every facet of their life, and how each piece fits together to form the whole.  They can flex and bend as children grow, and interests and needs change.  When disasters and emergencies happen, when a parent is deployed, or ill, or a family member needs special help, the homeschool simply reconfigures and the learning continues.  There is no need for the time-consuming flux of legislation, and trickle-down theory, or any of the unwieldiness of a “system”.  Families and homeschools are more flexible and more personal, more attuned and aware, than a public school could ever be.  While we don’t need written policies and we certainly don’t want to get involved in mandating what another homeschooling family “should be” doing, it is lovely to be able to look back and see where we’ve come from, and how our expectations have borne fruit.  And the fruit is sweet.

Bibliography:

1. http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/reports/no-child-left-behind.html
2. http://www.fairtest.org/facts/whatwron.htm
3. http://www.homeschool.com/articles/bookexcerpt/default.asp

A freelance writer, Marsha serves as a homeschool resource for her local library and has written articles for "Home Education Magazine" and a column for "Home Educator's Family Times." She has served on the planning committee for her local homeschool cooperative, taught creative writing, edited the newsletter, and been a member of the HUB Homeschoolers United Building advisory committee.  Her book, "The Complete Idiot's Guide to Homeschooling" was published in February 2001, and she has spoken at homeschool conferences and curriculum fairs in Texas, California and Michigan.  She also works part-time outside the home as an office manager for both the family business and at a local church.

Standards of Learning (or One of the Reasons I Fled the Public School System & Haven’t Looked Back)

By Stephanie~Guest Author

About four years ago my older daughter was in public school, my son was in day care, and the little one was not even a glimmer in her daddy’s eye. I was working full time with a community mental health agency, doing consulting & counseling in the schools and community.

One day, I visited a second grade classroom to pick up a little boy I was scheduled to see. His teacher, a kind, soft-spoken woman, told me I needed to wait, because the little fellow was in the middle of a test. Not a problem. I sat down, wondering what kind of “test” a second grader would be taking.

The teacher read the questions to the class. I listened. “Supply and demand?” “Economic interdependence???” I tried to keep my jaw from dropping. This just seemed too surreal. But the kids sat quietly, filling in the answers. Even the little guy I was there to see, who I knew was extremely hyperactive and coping with an abusive family situation, seemed to be with the program. Amazing.

When it was time to go, I smiled at the teacher and thanked her. Then I said, “Ummm … I am very impressed at what your second graders are learning. I never heard this stuff until college.” The teacher, who was a very sweet person, got a look on her face - for just a moment - as if she wanted to disembowel someone. “Standards of Learning,” she explained.

At that time, my older daughter was already in first grade, so I was very familiar with “Standards of Learning.” It was the reason “Anne” HAD to learn to write her name correctly in Kindergarten, even though she had fine motor delays and would have been much happier playing with play dough and Wikki Sticks to hone those skills until she was ready to write. It was the reason even Kindergartners got precious little recess time. But this was my first exposure to college economics for seven-year-olds. I was stunned.

Happily, I now have my own copy of the Standards of Learning (thanks to the day care kid who scribbled all over it with a marker, forcing me to purchase it from the library). So I can share this with you:

Economics - (SOL 2.6)

“The student will explain the interdependence of producers and consumers in a market economy by describing factors that have influenced consumer demand and describing how producers have used natural resources, human resources, and capital resources to produce goods and services in the past and the present.”

Now … go read that to your seven-year-old, and see whether he sees the relevance to his life.

I mentioned the economics test to my daughter’s first grade teacher. SOLs were a hot topic in her school. The faculty’s frustration and anxiety was palpable. (That was before a worse disaster struck - President Bush’s “educational reform,” No Child Allowed on the Playground … I mean No Child Left Behind.) Recess and free play were being pushed out of the lives of kids as young as five, and the teachers - who were gifted, dedicated, and knowledgeable about child development, were hamstrung, unable to do their jobs correctly.

“Anne’s” first grade teacher told me that before the SOLs were implemented, meetings had been held to solicit teacher input.

“We all went to the meetings and told them how developmentally inappropriate the social studies objectives were. It made no difference.”

Of course not. They didn’t really want teacher’s input. (Take the opinion of a classroom teacher with 25 years experience with first graders - or, God forbid, a parent - over that of a bureaucrat? Never!) The machinery was already in motion, and the effort “to solicit teacher input” was merely a formality.

Several years later “Anne” was in third grade. It would be her last year in public school. Her school was still struggling to come to grips with SOLs and had just been hit with NCLB. “Anne” and her classmates sat in a classroom for about 7 hours a day, with a scant 15 minutes for recess. That 15 minutes was forfeited if the kids didn’t keep up with their schoolwork, which included passing timed drills on math facts every day. (You don’t crank out all those math facts correctly in two minutes - you don’t get recess).

The teacher was busy pushing those math facts, reading skills, history lessons and so forth and - probably - thanking God it was her last year before retirement.

In case you’re worried that they were neglecting those crucial elementary school economics skills - don’t fear -

Economics (SOL 3.7) - The student will describe the economic specialization and interdependence involved in the production of goods and services in various types of communities in the past and present.

Economics (SOL 3.8) The student will explain in simple terms how opportunity cost, scarcity, and price influence economic decision making.

Economics (SOL 3.9) The student will explain the relationship between taxation and government services. (Is there a clear relationship between taxation and government services? - See http://www.taxpayer.net/awards/goldenfleece - But I digress.

Third grade is also the year students take SOL tests for the first time. It consumed much of the instructional time that Spring. We could have papered all the walls of my house with all the “practice tests” Anne brought home to study. Her days in public school would soon be numbered.

Well … this is the closest I’ve come to posting a political rant on a web log. (I’ll stop now … I promise!) In my own defense, it is not a partisan political rant (one party bothers me nearly as much as the other) … but a political rant all the same.

Yes, I have a bit of a chip on my shoulder. That’s a good thing, though, because on my worst days - when I am in tears and anxious to put my little hooligans on the school bus and get them out of the house *for their own protection,* and when I tell myself that surely a professional teacher - ANY teacher - could do a better job than I … I need to remember these things.

I LOVE our freedom.  My kids can have recess all day long if we like. We can cast aside our bookwork at times when it just isn’t coming together. I can let them run around in costumes wielding toy swords. I can let them dig in the dirt, roll in the grass, or play in the rain. We can spend a whole “school” day reading a great book and eating popcorn and chocolate. They can be kids.

We are free to tailor the lessons to where THEY are, instead of trying to reconfigure the kids to fit the lessons. They can find things that are meaningful to them. My very kinesthetic son can play with Legos or bounce on a big ball during “school.” They can learn to write and memorize math facts at their own pace - when THEY are ready. They can focus on their gifts, rather than the things that they “can’t” do.

I love the way the kids are learning, and I am thankful that we live in a country that allows us such freedom.

I still peruse the SOLs from time to time (believe me … after that economics stuff, it gets even better) I read about NCLB in the newspapers. I often feel sad for all the wonderful teachers and students in the school system - particularly the kids who aren’t “typical.” I sometimes get angry.

And they wonder why we home schoolers fight against government intrusion into what we do?

Stephanie is an eclectic home schooling mom of three bright, creative and very spirited children. She lives in the beautiful Shenandoah Valley of VA with her best friend & husband of 16 years, their 3 kids, two dogs: Elissa & Lea, a blue-tongued skink named Samwise Gamgee, a snail named Pippin, & various fish, worms and other assorted critters.