[UnschoolingDiscussion] Can you Unschool part-time

[Sue Persaud]

Hi All, Just wondering if anyone out there is unschooling part-time. My children are currently enrolled in the OCDSB (Ottawa's school board), but I was thinking about keeping them home maybe one day a week to do other activities. One is in Grade 3 and the other SK. They are both currently enrolled in the Early French Immersion program as I want them to learn French as the Ottawa area is all bilingual and most good job opportunties require bilingualism. My son is doing excellent in French and my daughter is just starting out. I do not know enough French to teach them myself. I know more than my daughter, but my son's way past me!!! Anyone else doing something like this? Will the school's let you do this? Is it a good or bad idea? Any comments would be appreciated. Thanks, Sue

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[Joyce Fetteroll]

On Sep 12, 2009, at 3:12 PM, Sue Persaud wrote:

Just wondering if anyone out there is unschooling part-time.

Letting go of schoolish ways and conventional practices is hard! This particular list exists to help those who want to let go. Discussing how to combine school with free learning would hamper those the list is intended for.

If you have questions about free learning, you'll get answers here :-) If you want to figure out how to make free learning work with school, the answer you'll get is to drop school! (If you ask around enough, you're likely to find other ways besides school to help your kids become bilingual.)  If you want to figure out how to teach your kids something in more relaxed ways, then eclectic homeschooling is more likely what you're looking for:

http://homeschooling.gomilpitas.com/methods/Eclectic.htm

The foundation of unschooling is that kids learn what they need by following their interests, by parents feeding those interests (even when the interests look nothing like something they'd do in school like TV and video games and mud wrestling), and by parents running things that might interest them through their lives.

If that intrigues you, you can start reading here:

http://sandradodd.com/help

http://joyfullyrejoycing.com

The question in your subject line delves into philosophy and semantics. The broad answer is that it depends how someone defines unschooling. If someone defines unschooling as learning outside of school, then everyone does that. ;-) If someone defines unschooling as the parent involved in the child's free exploration, then Guerilla Learning by Grace Llewellyn might by helpful:

http://tinyurl.com/qq4ybj

and Sandra's page Public School on Your Own Terms:

http://sandradodd.com/schoolchoice

But to help people let go of school, unschooling is defined here as full on unschooling. Anyone wanting less or to combine unschooling with something else, is welcome to take what will work for them from the list and figure out how to fit anything extra in on their own.

Joyce

[Rina Groeneveld]

Hi Sue,

I just want to mention the fact that sending your children to school is not the only way to help them become bilingual. We lived in Germany for four years and after by the end of that time, all 4 of our children were bilingual to some degree or another, although we were unschooling and only spoke English at home. Currently we are living in an Irish-speaking area of Ireland (Connemara), where everyone speaks English as well, so becoming bilingual here is a little more difficult, but my daughter has picked up a little of the language since we were here. I have been going to Irish lessons and if it was important to me for my children to learn Irish, I would try to involve them more in my learning. If Irish were important for their future career, then I would probably make more effort to help them find situations in which they would have an opportunity to hear and speak the language. Even so, who is to say that, in the future, they would be working there, where they need to be bilingual?

Maybe you could examine your assumptions about school being necessary for bilingualism. Combining unschooling with school is very difficult, as school places all sorts of requirements on a child that are in contradiction with unschooling. (In cases where it is the child's wish to attend school, the child is aware of this trade-off and is prepared to deal with this).  What is more important to you - unschooling or attaining bilingualism through the "short cut" of a school immersion programme? Only you know the answer to this.

Regards, Rina

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Date: Sat, 12 Sep 2009 12:12:57 -0700
From: happydu...@yahoo.ca
Subject: [UnschoolingDiscussion] Can you Unschool part-time
To: unschoolin...@googlegroups.com

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[The Philip Family]

Sue,

 

Are you on the Unschooling Canada yahoo group?  They might be able to help you find someone in the Ottawa area who is bilingual and can help where learning french is concnerned.  There could also be families on the list with ideas on working with a school, though you'll probably get some responses similar to Joyce's because unschooling is a way of life, not just a 'way to learn.'

 

Here's the link: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Unschooling_Canada/

 

Good luck!

 

Peace,

Amanda

Mum to Timber (7y) and Rush (2.5y)

Happily unschooling in Hamilton, Ontario ... but hoping to move north soon <grin>

[nellebelle]

==but I was thinking about keeping them home maybe one day a week to do other activities.==

 

Others have already made good points, but consider this. (Dont need to answer them here, it is just logistical details for you to ponder.)

 

What would you say to the teachers? Although parents certainly have the right to keep their kids home, schools have all sorts of policies for the children enrolled there. It is hard for me to imagine a teacher saying, "sure, we think your kids will be better off staying home with you one day each week!" You could say they were sick, but that would be dishonest.

 

How would you expect your children to make up work that is missed on their days off from school? When would they do work that they might otherwise be doing while in school?

 

So much easier to just keep them home all the time :-)

 

Mary Ellen

[Maria Zamparelli]

Hello everyone. I would like to comment on bilingualism and school. I live in Puerto Rico were due to our political relationship with the United States it is believed that to be bilingual is of great advantage in order to enter the work force. Thus learning English is considered of great value.( We were a posesion of Spain for 400 years. Our first language is Spanish.)

In terms of education the school system places great enfasis on teaching English. The results (in pulblic shcool system) are very poor. In private schools children use English text books except for Spanish class.The result in  private schools is that children favor English to communicate amongst themselves and think .

I decided to homeschool as my son was about to start first grade. Amongst the many reasons was that I wanted him to learn Spanish well before learning a second language (I do not believe we can be bilingual. We can manage to learn more than one language, but we need one language to fully express our thoughts and feelings).

So I read him books in Spanish, he saw television in Spanish and so on. This doesn´t mean that no English was permited or available. But I emphasized the correct use of Spanish.

The other night I overheard my son as he read Calvin and Hobes in English!!!!! He was pronouncing words as he did in Spanish but other words he prononunced correctly.

This is one expecience that has reafirmed my decision to homeschool and now to unschool. He will learn anything he is interested in ( a language, math, history, etc.). That I have seen proof of. 
María