Article Claudia Wrote

[Claudia Franklin]

25 Things I Know About Home-Educating
Notes for Newbies and Old Hands



by Claudia Franklin



1. Where to start? Get a library card. If you don't know how to
do advanced searches and requests for books from your home computer—a
crucial skill if you intend to home-educate—make time with the
librarian and learn.

2. Once you have the library card, request every book on
homeschooling and read (around in) them.

3. If you are still unwavering in your intention to home-
educate, realize that you're now the principal of an experimental
school, a school with no real estate, no classrooms—but full of
possibilities. Congratulations—stand tall and proud. You've got the
most exciting, rewarding, daunting—the loneliest job in the world.

4. Learn the law regarding home-education in your state. Learn
how to make a portfolio or a notebook in September, so that you don't
go mad in May. Keep appropriate records.

5. Your school has only one word in its mission statement: FUN.
If you, or your children, are not having fun—take the day off.
Rethink. Regroup. Try again. Try something different.

6. Commit to making every day special in small ways: make pizza
from scratch, go for a walk, go for a swim, have a treasure hunt, stay
in your pajamas, have pancakes for lunch, etc. You only have this one
precious life. Make it memorable. Make sure your children love their
life.

7. Master the art of making deals. As the principal of your
school, you can meet your children not just half-way—you must meet
them wherever they need to be to learn.

8. Think outside the box. If your daughter hates learning,
teach her 10-minutes of every hour that she's awake. If your son is
hyperactive, he might do best if you begin school at 7:30 at night,
when he is tired. If he hates to sit, teach him lying down, or while
he is flying by on the swing.

9. Join a homeschooling group—not because your children need to
hang out with perfect strangers in a park group in the name of
socialization, but because you will need help. You will have
questions, you will need resources, you will hit a wall, you will have
doubts, you will need support. If you're lucky, you and your children
will make friends.

10.Become knowledgeable about different educational materials.
Become a curricula wonk. Ask others parents to engage in curricula
show-and-tell. The perfect educational materials are out there,
waiting to give your child an amazing educational joy-ride—it is up to
you to find them.

11. Once you've made a fabulous educational plan, involve your
children in all final decisions. Be prepared to scrap your plans and
begin anew.

12. Go to homeschooling conventions. At these conventions, the food
is processed, the accommodations tight and dingy, the light
depressing, and the company most conservative; however, what you will
learn from listening to the talks and from browsing the products is
invaluable—even if you disagree with what you hear and are offended by
some of the products. You will emerge wiser, sharper in your
convictions, and poorer from all the great stuff you bought.

13.Commit to fostering expertize and leadership, to encouraging actual
mastery in a handful of subjects. The world is full of charming
dabblers, jacks-of-all-trades, people who know a little bit of this
and that—good folks who cannot write their way through a paragraph.
Dabblers make entertaining waitresses (been there, done that, you can
have the t-shirt) but lousy professionals. If you pursue knowledge
about a subject for 15 minutes every day for 10 years, you will be an
expert in that subject.

14.Ask questions: who, what, where, how, when and why. Why is very
important. Why is about motives. Why forces analysis and critical
thinking. Why prepares you for college and for life.

15.You will hear again and again that homeschooling only takes two
hours a day. That is not true. Ideally, your child needs to be
engaged in learning activities every day for the same amount of hours
as his grade: five hours in 5th grade, nine hours in 9th grade. Of
course, this only applies if learning at your home is fun. Sit down
for long meals and talk about Genghis Khan, World War II, Mozart.
Order great books from the library by the dozen. Read. Read some
more. If your child is not hooked on reading books—then get
audiobooks. Audiobooks are great. Limit all screens—TV, video-games,
computer.

16.Over the years, you want to work towards greater and greater
independence. At first, you sit with your children through all their
lessons. By the end of high school, you just meet for a weekly
conference.

17.If you're participating in enrichment programs, make sure they are
not just social gatherings with a theme but are also rich in
educational content, especially if the kids are older. Search for
classes taught by gifted teachers.

18.Help your child make and keep friends by encouraging 1:1 play-
dates. Make the calls. Do the driving. If there is little
reciprocity but you know the kids like each other, continue making the
calls, doing the driving.

19.Be prepared to have fellow home-educators tell you things about
your children that you might not want to hear. Home-educators are--by
nature--people who are good at fixing problems. If they think you, or
your child, might benefit from from reading this book, or from hiring
that professional, they will tell you. Take a deep breath and remember
they mean well; they know something you don't; they may notice
something you missed. There is always something useful in the advice,
if you think about it long enough. If I got upset every time a home-
educator gave me unsolicited counsel, I would have no friends in that
community.

20.Remember that your children are, for all intends and purposes,
powerless. Don't act in ways that remind them of that fact. Make sure
that at your school they feel competent, creative, successful,
respected, hopeful. Try hard never to yell, never to give ultimatums,
never to threaten. Every time you yell—and we all have yelled—you
crush your children's self-esteem. Moreover, every time you yell, you
give your children permission to mistreat someone smaller, weaker,
powerless. And somewhere down the line—they will.

21.Try humor. Take a break. Take a walk around the block. Don't
over-react. Let me repeat that: Don't over-react. “You hate me—
really? You say I'm evil because I asked you to write a paragraph
about Washington? I'm sad to hear that because I love you so much and
I know you can do it. Let's play Stratego and then try again.”

22.Every time you have a problem with a child regarding his learning,
involve him in the solution. How can we make this better? What do
you need me to do to? What do you like? What not?

23.Remember that your children will be the ones hiring whoever changes
your feeding tube or catheter when you are old and gray. You want
them to hire someone patient and ever-so-gentle. Be patient and
gentle.

24.This is the hardest job you will ever do. You will have to deal
with people who question your parenting, your judgment, your
credentials, your integrity, your sanity, and your knowledge of how
the “real” world works. There will be no paycheck, no bonus, and very
few pats on the back. It will cost your hundreds, even thousands of
dollars. Furthermore, once you go forth into the world of home-
educating, you will meet good and courageous people from all walks of
life with whom you share a fierce commitment to home-educating, but
quite often, little else. You will feel isolated.

25.It will take you a year—or two—to feel competent, to trust you made
the right decision, to meet one, or two, or three families that will
join yours on this journey. Until then, you will be full of doubts.
There will be sleepless nights. There will be tears.

I leave you with this: My son has built a large castle out of Lego in
his room. The king of the castle is called Good King Pie Five, and he
rules over the Kingdom of Florbirth. In Florbirth, all children learn
at home. In Florbirth, children have special treats, like movie night
and milkshakes. In Florbirth, they take naps everyday, lying down
with their moms and a pile of books. They can do their work anywhere
they like, even on top of the swing set. They can choose what they
want to do first. If they want to do drawing first and piano second—
that's OK. If they want to, they can make a deal and just read or draw
all morning and finish their work later that day, or on Saturday. Good
King Pie Five is a lot more relaxed than I am.

It wasn't always this easy and joyous—I have made lots of mistakes—but
I know my son loves his life, loves getting up every morning and
facing his day, even all the days replete with books and learning.
He's full of enthusiasm about the future. He wants to make robots.
Or fight alien monsters. Or maybe, to my amazement—write a book.

I wish you all the best. Making certain your children learn matters.
Teaching them well matters. Your children matter. Their futures
matter. Their lives are on the line.



About the author: Claudia Franklin lives in Miami, Florida, where she
home-educates her 11 year-old son, Simon. Together with Toni Deveson,
she runs www.theexaminedlife.org , a net-based support group for
families teaching a secular curriculum in the Miami area. The group is
inclusive, welcoming families of all faiths—or lack thereof, and all
life-styles. The Examined Life runs a small enrichment co-op for
children in grades 4-6. This year, the co-op is covering biology, art
appreciation (nine painters), music appreciation (seven composers),
history—the Renaissance and beyond, and Latin. All the portfolio-
ready materials that Claudia and Toni have developed themselves are
available for free at their website www.theexaminedlife.org ,
including a comprehensive 36-week enrichment curriculum for the above
named topics. The website also has a bookstore that carries all the
books necessary to teach the curriculum.

www.theexaminedlife.org
cla...@theexaminedlife.org