Homeschooling (again).
Teachers, parents and students survived the crisis of the spring. Can we make the remote learning experience better this time around?
“My parents have decided to homeschool me, but they haven’t decided which home.”
Approximately 2 million families home-schooled prior to the pandemic, and about a quarter of homeschooled students had parents who took a course to prepare for their child’s home instruction.
That means most parents, including yours truly, are (reluctant) rookies at this new educational norm.
I thought the spring was…hard. Really hard. If you’re like me, you don’t want a repeat of the same experience. So, is there a way to approach remote learning differently this fall?
Rachel and I talked to a homeschooling expert to find out.
Letty Rising is a credentialed Montessori elementary school teacher with a Master’s in Education and over 20 years of experience in schools and classrooms. Previously, Letty was the Principal at a Montessori and San Diego-based homeschooling charter school for families of children in grades K-8. For the past year, she has traveled across the United States and around the globe as a Montessori consultant. At the beginning of the pandemic, Letty and her colleagues published an e-book called “Montessori Parent Coronavirus Survival Guide” to help parents support their children from home using the Montessori approach.
— Erin
PS: If you’re interested in more information on the impact of the pandemic on American education, Valerie Strauss, an education reporter at The Washington Post, is a great resource.
Name: Letty Rising
Hometown: Southern California
Current Residence: Idyllwild, California
Living Situation: Rented cabin with two adult daughters moving in and out
Age: 47
Occupation: Montessori education and homeschooling consultant
Photo caption: Sitting in my cabin doing hours and hours of Zoom meetings.
In March, you started a Facebook group for parents of children attending Montessori schools who suddenly found themselves thrust into homeschooling. The group now has 6,500 members. What are you hearing from parents about how they’re coping as first-time educators?
Parents have been freaking out. They have been writing to me saying things like “Oh my gosh, I feel like a terrible parent, and I feel like a terrible teacher.” And then I say, “You know what, during good times, when we are in a good place in life, and we can focus on self actualization, and we can be sticklers about screen time and eating healthy and sleep schedules and all those other things. But these parents have been in survival mode since quarantine. There's this outpouring of fear and pain and a generalized feeling of “I'm not doing enough.” Parents have been expressing that they want validation, they want connection, and they want support, and these things haven’t been as easy to come by while living in isolation.
What are some preconceived notions about homeschooling that you wish you could correct?
I guess the preconceived notion is that somehow you as the homeschooling parent are sitting down at the kitchen table with papers and pencils and that you are maybe working in a workbook with one kid and then you have the other one over here next to you doing something different. And you're doing that for maybe 4 or 5 hours and you set times for breaks. Basically, a lot of people think that homeschool means you’re re-creating school at home. But that’s actually not the case! In fact, most homeschoolers will integrate their younger children and their older children into work together as much as possible and they collaborate with their kids to find a unique schedule. And they are not sitting at the kitchen table all day! They are moving around, maybe sitting at the kitchen table for a while, but then moving into the bedroom, working on the floor, and learning through conversation while sharing in household chores.
Also, most homeschoolers usually don’t stay home! They’re out in the community at museums and parks, meeting up with other homeschooling families and learning together.
People also don't realize how much homeschooled children are involved in household responsibilities. Your house gets so messy when you're homeschooling, more so than if they're at school during the day. It's like shoveling snow while it's still snowing! A lot of parents don't want to start their kids doing chores when they’re two, three, or four because they're like, “They're not going to do it right, they're going to make an even bigger mess.” Well, first of all, if you put your three year old at the sink with the chair and tell them to wash some dishes, they love water, they're going to be there for a good 30 minutes and yes, they're gonna make a little bit of a mess. But it's probably worth it that you have that 30 minutes to yourself while they're making that mess. And eventually, after they’ve practiced long enough, by the time they're five, they're actually going to be really good at washing dishes. Whereas if you wait till they're six or 7 to start them on washing dishes, they're likely to be resistant because elementary children don't have a natural desire to want to do chores like primary-aged children do.
Photo caption: I watched one of my daughter's college graduations via YouTube. That was hard!
So, what would you say are the three chores parents should really try to get their kids to do when they’re little?
One of them would be to help the kids learn how to keep their room tidy. It doesn't help to go tell a kid, “Go clean your room.” That's very vague, and it can be very overwhelming for most children, especially those who are big-picture thinkers. Instead, try saying “Okay, it's time to clean your room. That means to pick up your toys that are on the ground and put them on the shelf. That means to take your clothes that are in the corner and put them in the basket.” Be very specific and clear.
I think that choosing chores should be individualized according to the needs of each family, whether it's sweeping the floor, mopping, unloading the dishwasher, things like that. It’s about identifying the areas your children can help with.
How does a parent work while teaching? Is that actually possible?
It isn’t easy but it is possible.
People don’t realize that a lot of homeschooling, especially for Kindergarten through around 3rd grade, involves a lot of exploration. If you as a parent can sit down twice a day for twenty to thirty minutes and have some targeted instruction with them, that’s about the same amount of time you would take a break for lunch at work. If you look at this as part of your work day and embed it into your schedule where you can, you can do it. Does that mean you need to be sitting down with your kid all day? No! What works for a lot of homeschoolers is to sit down with your kids at the beginning of the day and give them your full attention for 20-30 minutes, but then you can each go on and have your individual schedules for the day that you’ve planned out. With elementary kids you can talk about your day and let them know times when they can talk with you and times when you aren’t available. Your kids will learn that you’re off-limits during important meetings. School also doesn’t have to go between the hours of 9:00 and 3:00; it can be after dinner, early in the morning, or even on weekends. If your child gets at least one hour a day of focused instruction, then you’re doing well. If you’re doing any more than three hours, then you actually shouldn’t be doing that as it is too much; normal school has downtime and transitions, and there are many children for a teacher to attend to. Those things take a lot of time, and homeschooling is more time efficient.
Some parents have described homeschooling this spring as “a battle to be won”. How do we change that thinking for the fall?
I think that many parents will have to shift their mindset about learning. First of all, learning happens all the time, not just between 9:00 and 3:00. Also, learning is an enjoyable experience, and parents can model that for their kids. It takes some planning, but finding independent activities that kids can enjoy by themselves, like posters and reports on topics they like, are really important. It’s more about them “doing” than us “teaching.”
It’s important to be patient with yourself. Learning to become a teacher takes years, and Montessori certification takes at least a year. It isn’t realistic for parents to expect themselves to learn all of this new information really quickly.
I also think that it’s very humbling as an adult to have to learn something new. As parents and teachers we ask our kids to confront new tasks all the time, and now as you are learning how to teach you are doing that exact same thing! It can be frustrating to have to adapt quickly, and you can have empathy for your kids in that aspect of the learning experience.
If you're a parent of more than one child at home, and they're of different ages, how do you empower the older ones to set the example for the younger ones?
Elementary children are in the age of the reasoning mind; they want to know the reasons why you’ve asked them to do something and what the purpose behind the task is. So if you can explain to the older ones that you need their help guiding the little kids, so that you can have focused time for your own work, and so that you can have time together later on, they’ll get it. Brainstorm ideas with them on how they can invite younger siblings into their work, and also how they can kindly ask them to step away when that’s needed, too.
I think parents are both grateful for, and overwhelmed by, the endless amount of schooling resources out there. It’s hard to know where to start and which ones to consider most useful. What’s your advice?
So I tell everybody to just keep it simple. Sit down every day with your kids and pick four things to accomplish: some sort of reading, some sort of writing, some sort of math and some sort of activity or project.
Online resources and workbooks are great for math. For writing, copywork is great for younger elementary kids. Also, you can have them tell you a story in their own words, write it down, and then they can copy that onto a separate piece of paper. Also, projects involving things that they’re interested in are a great way to integrate reading, writing, and science.
Photo caption: A stack of pandemic reading.
What do you want to take to the other side of this?
I think that schools, as large institutions, are going to change. I love the idea that we're going to be re-engineering society infrastructure to some degree. We're going to need to have more outdoor spaces because we can’t pack a lot of kids into small classrooms anymore, we will need larger classrooms to give kids more space between each other, that kind of thing. Having more space dedicated to children can only be positive.
Education is going through a revolution. I mean, we are in a pandemic, and we’re also grappling with how to better address the topics of anti-racism and anti-bias. I think that the hardest thing for parents is that, right now, nothing is on autopilot. But we're also not as alive when we're on autopilot. We are more alive when we have to be thinking creatively everyday about how life is changing, and at the same time we also have to recognize that some structure and stability in our lives is also very important; there’s freedom in predictability. I think that the best advice I would give parents is to set up their environment so that their family has a sense of freedom within a predictable framework.