How We Came To Homeschooling

I wasn't one of those moms who knew from the outset that I wanted to homeschool.  When we adopted C (who is from China, by the way), I envisioned her trotting off to public school and having a long and successful school career in the midst of the diverse school community there.

Kindergarten through fourth grade went great.  She went to our local public school (a medium-sized K-6 school) and we were delighted with the quality of the teachers there. C is quick and picked things up fast, so academics were never a problem.  But as the fourth grade year went on, we starting seeing signs of ... something.  C would often come out of school sad, or crying, or grumpy about having hated the day.  She liked her teacher, she was sailing along with the school work, but the social world was becoming complicated.  We chalked it up to the whole girl clique thing, and her teacher told us that C was clearly gifted and gifted kids don't always fit in well with their peers.  It was clear that C just wasn't interested in the things the other girls her age were interested in.  By the end of the year, C was flat-out miserable, so we started taking her to a counselor who specializes in working with kids, Judy.  And Judy immediately wondered whether Aspergers was at issue, although she agreed that if so C was presenting "borderline" symptoms.  We also wondered whether the issues stemmed from that particular cohort of girls in her grade, few of whom seemed interested in school or in doing well.

For 5th grade, we moved C to a very small local public school to see if a new mix of kids and a smaller environment would help.  For a while, it did.  C got a wonderful, experienced teacher whose focus was on helping the kids to identify their own learning styles.  She was flexible and allowed the kids to do what they needed to do to learn comfortably.  For C, that meant that she often chose to sit outside and read by herself where it was quiet and she could focus.  We wondered further about Aspergers, kept watch, but overall it was a pretty good year.

That all went downhill fast in 6th grade.  C's teacher was pleasant but pretty clueless woman whose classroom strategy seemed to be to put them into groups for constant group- project work, and if problems arose to leave them to deal with it themselves until things really got out of hand.  It was a disorganized, noisy room, just the sort of environment in which C had the hardest time.  She was frequently unhappy, and started having melt-downs in class.  We became more confident about an Asperger's diagnosis, and realized that she was spending a huge amount of energy to cope with the environmental stresses of noise, chaos, negotiating the social skills necessary to work in groups, and a clueless teacher no matter how many times I went in to talk with her.

We eventually had C undergo an in-depth evaluation by a neuropsychologist, who confirmed the Aspergers diagnosis and was able to pinpoint some specific issues we'd seen C experience but hadn't really understood.  We learned that she has an amazing memory but that she has a hard time selecting material out of a bigger pool of information.  We learned that she has specific difficulties recognizing faces and, to some extent, facial expressions.

Armed with that information, we decided that our public junior high school option was not a viable one.  It is a big, chaotic place, with even less oversight by teachers (especially at unstructured, out-of-the-classroom times that are the hardest for Aspies) and we knew C would not cope well there.  We enrolled her in a very small, new private school in our community which promised very individualized attention and very small groups.  C's 7th grade class had 12 students in it.  We'd talked to the headmaster and teachers about C's Aspergers, how that would affect her in school, and what sort of support she would need from them.  They said all the right things, and off we went.  The first few months were great.  C was happy and reported that she liked school.  Her best friend was there too, to C's delight.

And suddenly, things changed.  We still don't know why.  C started having almost daily migraine headaches, often so severe that she could do nothing but sleep all day until it went away.  She hated going to school and often begged to stay home.  We weren't able to learn about any specific issues causing all of that -- and believe me, we asked questions and watched and tried to figure out what was going on.  Now, looking back, I know that there was some subtle bullying going on, and that C's core homeroom teacher -- who was also the person designated as C's "safe" person to go to if she was having any difficulties -- provided no assistance or support at all when C went to her.  She got more migraines, then missed more school, then fell behind, then was even more stressed and got more migraines.  It was a miserable time for all of us, especially as we worried about the causes of her migraines.  A neurological work-up with a pediatric neurologist assured us that she had no organic issues, but "just" suffered from chronic migraine syndrome which can get quite severe during puberty when hormones are running rampant.

I could rant for a while about my unhappiness about how that teacher and the school in general treated C and us through all of that, but suffice it to say that we realized that C was not just missing school constantly, but also that her being at school seemed to be affirmatively harming her emotional state and self-esteem and feelings about learning.  I spent a lot of time at that school during those months, and what I saw from C's core teacher just appalled me.  She didn't understand Aspergers and, it seemed, she didn't want to.  Ultimately, we chose to remove C from that school and allow her to just focus on feeling better.

So, suddenly I was homeschooling.  We signed up for Time4Learning, an online learning site that has game-like lessons in the core subjects.  My thinking was that the main goal was to have C be stress-free and have schoolwork be really different from classroom work and more like game-playing.  We figured that academically C was ahead of most 7th graders her age anyway, so the academic content took second place to the low-key and fun aspect of it.  We also arranged to have C meet once a week with the science/math teacher from 7th grade, a guy who was amazing and delightful and made learning fun.  He "got" C, and made her feel good about her abilities.  So school during that phase meant daily online lessons through Time4Learning, and weekly tutoring.

And it worked.  Having the time away from a school schedule meant that we could focus on getting Grace's migraines under control.  We let her sleep and play as much as she wanted to.  We went on field trips, to the local parks and to the city for museums and zoo trips.  Life started looking up.

We were so encouraged by C's improvement that we wondered if some sort of virtual school-from-home program would work.  We liked that a virtual school - where you "attend" by being at your computer with microphone and webcam at class times to participate with other students and the teacher online -- would give C the ability to be at home while also maintaining contact with classmates and teachers.  It seemed an ideal solution.  And, we wondered, if the environmental and sensory stresses of being in an actual classroom were removed, would C just zoom forward with the academics?

We ended up applying to Stanford University's "EPGY" -- "Education Program for Gifted Youth" program.  It's a virtual school with solid looking academic classes, a great deal of flexibility, and the whole virtual thing.  Husband and I were greatly reassured that if C had to do a "nontraditional" school path, at least it'd be something with a reputable name attached to it.  C wrote her entrance essay (shades of applying for college -- it was a detailed application), was accepted, and away we went for C's 8th grade year.

I'll cut to the chase.  Some things worked, some didn't.  The virtual aspect was cool and worked well.  C's classmates were located all over the world.  The teachers were, for the most part, really excellent, and the content they covered was well presented.  But we saw that C started in with migraines and stomach aches, even while she had A's in all of her classes.  She could handle the academics.  But the schedule of work, even with virtual classes, seemed to stress her out a lot.  She'd get sick, then fall behind, and we'd be in that same circle of stress-sick-stress-sick thing.  By Christmas time, we saw that she was starting a decline in her health again, and she was increasingly depressed.

By spring of 8th grade, it was clear: this wasn't good for her.  She had A's in her classes, but she was falling apart emotionally.

Homeschooling, here we come.

It's all about the learning

I never thought I'd wind up homeschooling my daughter, C.  In fact, I can vividly remember attending a moms' club meeting back when C was just a toddler, and listening to a school district guy talking about homeschooling as a great educational alternative.  I listened, and sure, it seemed like a reasonable alternative for some people ... not just me.

Flash forward to two years ago, when 13-year old C was miserable at school.  She has Aspergers Syndrome, so the world of school and its social life and smells and sounds and the ever-present crowdedness of it all hasn't been the easiest one for her.  But she started truly suffering, and the decision to explore an alternative educational path for her has taken us all on a journey I'd never have anticipated.  I've decided to write about it here, because I've already learned so much... and I'm learning more every day.

And I thought homeschooling would be about C's learning!

So, an introduction of the cast of characters:  There's me,  Diane.  I'm a work-from-home, part time lawyer and fiber artist, although luckily enough my work situation is flexible enough that I can turn work away when life gets too busy ... and with homeschooling entering our lives, I've not worked all that much lately.  There's my husband, a college professor at a local community college.  And there is C, a beautiful, creative, funny teenager who just isn't cut out for the typical school setting.  We've learned that the hard way, I might add.  Husband is off at school most days, so C and I are home with a rambunctious lab mix dog and two cats. 

Husband and I have really re-defined our goals as C has gotten older and we've gotten further down the educational path.  We used to worry about test scores and grades and "fitting in" and college entrance exams some day.  Now, we aim for having a happy, well-adjusted and emotionally secure daughter who enjoys the learning process.  And we are all happier and, I'm delighted to see, the learning that is taking place feels so much deeper.

But more details on all of that later.  I look forward to sharing my journey with you and hope, if you are homeschooling or the parent of a child with Aspergers, that you'll share your experiences here too.

A Whole New Semester

I thought I'd update you on the latest installment of Adventures in Homeschooling, because a) I haven't talked about it in a while; and b) I'm feeling rather excited about where we are.

First, the thing that makes me really really really happy is that, considering how reluctantly I came to this whole homeschooling thing, it has worked wonders around here.  Miss C is happy and doing great.  We don't agonize over whether to call in sick from school when a migraine seems like it's approaching.  We don't agonize over hours of homework.  Miss C has even grudgingly admitted that maybe learning IS NOT quite as awful as she thought.  (See that?  HUGE victory.)

One of the cool things about homeschooling is that it lets you look hard at your child and consider ways to shape the education FOR them.  And one of the ideas that hit me last summer was that no matter how well Miss C does academically with the content (and, I say shamelessly, this kid is SMART), she gets stressed out by having to juggle a bunch of things at the same time.  I think it's an Asperger's issue, that too many things to keep track of is overwhelming and stressful for her even if each thing is not hard at all.

So I proposed an experiment, with the idea that we could adjust if we didn't like it.  Rather than start her off in September with a year-long courseload of 5 core subjects and the occasional elective, I suggested that we try something different and do fewer classes at a time but in bigger time blocks.  So, over the last months, Miss C has done "double" English and Geometry and a semester's worth of Japanese, in order to finish a year's worth of English and Geometry in a half of a year.  The idea was that she'd do the same work, but just be juggling fewer things.  (I know some homeschooling families who do ONE subject at a time intensively -- math for a month, english for a month, etc.  But I thought that might be too boring, to just work on one thing all day every day.)

And, so far, it has worked beautifully.  Miss C has just finished her English unit and Geometry.  She did great academically, found the workload manageable, and really did seem less stressed with fewer balls to keep up in the air.  She even took on the task of writing a first draft of a 50,000 word novel for National Novel Writing Month in November, and blew me away with her creativity and writing skills.  So I'm feeling very successful.  But really, the best part?  The smile on her face every day, and the way she tackles her school work without complaint.

So today we start Semester 2, and  begin History (World History from 1000 to 1800) and Biology.  Japanese will continue along.  I'm excited because the materials look fun plus I've ordered some lecture sets from The Teaching Company to supplement.  (I'm excited to see the lectures by Linwood Thompson, an award winning teacher from Los Angeles who dresses up as historical figures and talks to the class from the perspective of the person.  Sounds very creative and fun.) 

I'm gonna go sharpen some pencils now.

Learning Anywhere

You know that expression "never say never?"  I've been thinking about that a lot lately.  When we were getting ready to put Miss C into kindergarten and examining all of the area school options, my husband and I -- strong public school supporters that we are -- thought we'd never put her in a private school.  By the time 7th grade rolled around, we knew the public school option available to us was just not right for her... and there we were, entering the world of private school education.  And I remember SO vividly, from the days when Miss C was a toddler and I heard a home-schooling expert speak at a local mom's club, thinking that I'd NEVER homeschool.  I just couldn't imagine it.  And homeschooling for high school?  That seemed the worst possible idea.  Me?  Teaching geometry and world history?  How could a home-schooling parent set a child up properly for college?  I just couldn't imagine. 

But, as these things happen (another saying seems appropriate here: "We plan, God laughs...") we saw that Miss C is just not the sort of kid who learns best in a structured school setting.  I've talked about the Asperger's, and her migraines, and throw in the fact that she has a hard time in noisy and smell-heavy environments (and what is life in a classroom full of teenagers, if not noisy and smelly?) and suddenly we're well off of the traditional school paths.

Despite my certainty when Miss C was 4 years old that we wanted her to have continuity in school and move forward with a group of buddies and have a school community where she could see her kindergarten teacher in the hallway on the way to her 6th grade classroom, my naive vision didn't match up with what Miss C actually needed.  So, we went from a large public elementary school (for K-4), to a small rural and very personal public elementary school (5-6), to a private school (7), to an online virtual high school for gifted kids with some homeschooling and tutoring mixed in (8).  They all had their wonderful qualities, and for our needs, they all had drawbacks.

I've had such an education -- and the most important aspect of it, I know, is that I have a much different way of thinking about how learning should and/or does happen.  Most of all, I know that it's different for different kids ... Hugely different for some of them, in ways that a structured school system can't accommodate very well.  I've researched the options in my area, which include things like special ed-focused schools, public school programs that are essentially full-time independent study with regular check in with teachers, public (and State paid for) virtual schooling (where the State checks out a laptop computer to you for online lessons, even)... The options that exist are amazing.

And I've discovered that home-schooling isn't scary at all.  For many families and kids, it has enormous advantages.  You know where I'm heading, don't you?  My biggest NEVER about Miss C's education is about to happen -- she'll be doing this 9th grade year via homeschooling.  (And after that?  Who knows.  I've learned that we see what happens and then adjust -- year to year, month to month, day to day if need be.)


What has changed my views?  Well, necessity, for one thing.  (Funny how that works.)  But mostly I've spent hours and hours reading and talking to homeschooling people and emailing and learning via online homeschooling groups. The resources are terrific. I've found really helpful information at Homeschooling Extraordinary Kids, and through Homeschooling Toward College , and on the forum at The Well-Trained Mind.  I now think of the parent's role in homeschooling high school as being a general contractor, whose role is to hire a bunch of subcontractors for various specialties, and then to oversee it all to make sure it's going smoothly and the work is getting done.  Really, you help your child orchestrate her own education -- following her learning style and interests within the framework of legal requirements and what colleges will be looking for, of course.

So we have mapped out a plan of interesting but challenging work, and we've got materials winging their way to us from all sorts of sources.  Miss C will be exploring the Renaissance, Reformation and Enlightment for history, integrated with art history, music, personalities, and architecture of the period; literary analysis using the Lord of the Rings trilogy for English; Japanese I (using amazing materials that integrate learning the language with Japanese manga); geometry (with a local tutor), and biology (yep, there will be a virtual frog dissected along the way if that is not the first thing she does because she's so excited about it).  I'll sneak in some other stuff along the way -- etymology with greek and latin word roots, logic and critical thinking using some fun books called "Fallacy Detective," art history, and the usual abundance of art creation and creative writing.

And I love that we can take the work with us if we go somewhere.  We can go spend the morning at Starbucks, working all the while.  We can adapt the schedule to fit the times we want to take vacations and to suit Roger's work schedule.  Miss C can continue her horseback riding and volunteering at the local animal shelter and see her friends, too.  If she has a migraine, no problem.  Neither of us has to stress about falling behind or making up something she missed because she couldn't be in class.  Frankly, this thing I thought I'd never do is feeling pretty good right now.

Oh, and there's this:  Along the way, I've found so many amazing educational resources, great for adults as well as younger students.  I'm sort of itching to start some of these things myself!  For example:

The Teaching Company sells sets of DVD and audio lectures, presented by lively professors from leading universities, on all sorts of topics: art history, "how the earth works," game theory, "life lessons from great books," and more.  Miss C and I will be watching some lectures on the Art of the Italian Renaissance over the next few months, to go with her renaissance history.  Imagine, if you could have learned American History or Astronomy that way?

Were you grossed out but fascinated by having to dissect a frog in biology?  Or do you feel cheated because you never got enjoy that experience?  The Digital Frog lets you do it without smell, mess, OR harming a real animal.  It's not too late!  (If you want to see what it's like, you can watch clips on YouTube, here.)

MIT (Mass Institute of Technology) has FREE open courseware, which provides full web-based publication of course content from actual courses that have been offered at MIT.  While you don't get course credit from MIT, the material is all there to use, and can include syllabus, readings, assignments, lecture notes, and even audio and video material.  They have foreign language courses that include the software to hear the spoken language.  I'm excited about a course called Kitchen Chemistry,  which uses cooking to explore chemistry principles.

There are tons of interesting looking videos available online (many of them free) from The History Channel, 
The Biography Channel, The Discovery Channel, National Geographic Channel, Animal Planet, The Science Channel, and more.

See?  Once you start looking it's downright astonishing how much educational material is available at our fingertips.

I'm kind of wishing I could have done high school this way.

A New Look at School

Like a lot of other folks these days, we are getting ready for the start of another school year. But last spring we veered off of the traditional school track, and I don't think we'll be jumping on that train anytime school. That means our getting ready for school has been a bit different this year.

Once it occurs to you that maybe the traditional school model isn't the best one for your child, it's simply amazing the options that you can find.

For example, I knew that the option of home-schooling was out there, but I envisioned that it'd be me, standing over the kitchen table with a ruler in one hand and a text book in the other while my child sat waiting for me to lecture her. Not something I wanted to do, really! But once I started researching it (and interrogating my friends who home-school) I learned that there are tons of options out there. There are amazing websites that can give you tons of information so you can figure out what is best for your child and family. Here are a few:

www.homeschool.com
www.homeedmag.com

One of those programs, Time4Learning, was a godsend to us last spring when we decided to remove Caroline from school. We were able to pull her out on a friday and have her pick up the subject matter she'd been studying on Time4Learning by Monday.

But the more I looked the more I found. Did you know that now, thanks to the Wonderful Internets, there are all sorts of options for distance-education and online middle and high school?
When a good friend and fellow quilter mentioned that her son was doing high-school from home, I quizzed her intently (with a level of desperation that didn't even put her off at all.) Turns out that various universities and private programs around the country offer high school distance learning programs, too. Who knew? Take a look at these options!

Stanford University's Online High School for the Gifted and Talented
University of Nebraska's Independent Study High School
Kaplan College Online High School (remember those Stanley Kaplan test prep courses? These are the same folks)
Brigham Young University's Online High School
Laurel Springs School (a flexible schedule, online school used by lots of actor and athlete kids)

The list goes on and on. And, even more amazing is the fact that there are so many programs where your child can do some hybrid thing.... Take a class or two at your local school, and do the rest through online or distance ed classes. Some of these have self-paced classes; some require you to be at your computer at a certain time for a real-time online class. Once I started looking, I learned that almost every state offers some FREE "school at home" option, some even where they provide you a laptop and books and materials and have teachers oversee your child's progress.

Truly, the options are (I'll say it again) AMAZING.

And that means that if you have a square peg sort of child, you really don't have to shove her into a round hole sort of school. You can go carve your own... hole ... well, I mean, school. :-)

So, we have enrolled Caroline in an online school and will start in a few weeks. (NOT UNTIL SEPTEMBER! I'm sorta crazed about that.) I'm so grateful that we have the option to decide what SHE needs, and there are options out there that really do seem to fit very well.

I've spent a lot of time researching this over the past few months, and it's been on my mind a lot as we've sorted through choices, filled out applications, and attended umpteen "virtual open houses" online. And I can't begin to tell you how many people have said "I wished I'd done that for my son -- he really needed something different for high school" or "I was miserable in school, I wish I could have done something like that." We are so fortunate, it's clear, to have so many options.

Oh -- and in case you are wondering, these school programs tend to build in pretty terrific social options too. A lot of them have online chatrooms (monitored for safety and only accessible for enrolled students) so students can meet and make friends even though they're all over the world. They have student clubs. They coordinate activities so students in the same geographic area can meet. Some schools have end-of-year dances and parties for those who can come to the physical school site. And if your child does sports, art classes, other local recreational activities, he or she can maintain and make friendships with local kids, too.

I just gave away all the school uniform clothes from last year. Boy, did that feel good!

Honing In

Every day of our new unschooling life teaches me new things.

Here's the newest revelation: it's about MY ONE CHILD learning. I was thinking (and worrying a bit) about how it was that at school, they'd spend an hour on history or grammar, and Caroline has been completing the work in less time here at home. I was thinking that I wasn't making the work hard enough, or complicated enough, or that I should be making things last longer.

And then it hit me: in a classroom, it takes the time it takes because there's that "pass out the papers, get everyone settled down, make sure people have the right pages in their books open" time... And then it takes time to make sure that 10 or 20 kids understand the concept.

But at home? It's just about Caroline. And when she gets it, she gets it. We don't need to beat it to death just to fill an hour. She can learn the day's lesson, and move on to other things. She's currently working on an in-depth science project about cats -- and so she's engrossed in learning cat anatomy and researching about ears and whiskers and all.

DUH! Bigh light-bulb moment for the New Head of School.

Another realization? We can be spontaneous! Last week, we were thinking that today we'd take taking a field trip into San Francisco to visit the new Science Center, and see an exhibit of Nick Cave costumes at the Yerba Buena Center we've heard raves about.

But it dawned on me earlier this week that maybe this isn't the best moment to spend time with hoards of kids in a densely-packed Science Center, what with this swine flu thing... And then, this morning, Caroline woke up with a migraine. So, we're not going anywhere this morning and maybe we'll just go do some volunteer time at the animal shelter this afternoon.

We can decide what we want to do, and then do that!

Taking a Break

Now that Caroline is home for "unschool," our daily schedule has changed significantly. And the cool thing is that we don't really NEED to have a schedule. We get up, have breakfast, I get her started on her work, and we take breaks as needed.

Yesterday just before lunchtime we decided that we all needed to get outside, especially Gemma. Away we went, to the fields on the edge of our neighborhood. One of my favorite things about walking there is that the colors are soft and beautiful -- the hills are tinged with yellow and orange from the masses of poppies growing there.



And then you get into the field, and there are lovely spots of color.



We made it home just as it was starting to rain, so we were able to snuggle in for lunch and our afternoon viewing of Ken Burns' Thomas Jefferson video. It was a good day!