Families Like Us

One thing I've already enjoyed about homeschooling, before we've even started, is seeing families like ours - with more than one or two children.

Our family just doesn't seem large to us.  I mean, we usually remember all of our children's names, and we know where they are and what they're doing more often than not (just kidding!) .  Super-Smart Hunky Husband (SSHH) and I talk about it often - our family just doesn't seem big to us.  Will it seem big when we have enough for a basketball team?  Or a baseball team?  I don't know.  But I do know that we haven't reached a point yet where we feel like we need to be "done."  Maybe we are done.  But even after this last, difficult pregnancy, we aren't throwing our hands in the air and saying "enough!"

Doodle's birth seems to have pushed us over some sort of invisible "big family" line.  When I was out and about with three kids, people would smile, offer to help lift something into my shopping cart - you know, generally be nice.  When I'm out with four, I get "wow, that's a lot of kids," "so are you done?" and even occasionally "you're crazy!" or "you know what causes that, don't you?"  And from complete strangers!

And then there are those who assume that a Catholic woman with a large family must be either ignorant, oppressed, or brainwashed - "oh, you're Catholic - that explains it," as if the Pope is personally going through the drawers in my bathroom to throw out the birth control, or my husband is keeping me barefoot, pregnant, and in the kitchen (SSHH does actually laughingly point out to me every time I really am barefoot, pregnant, and in the kitchen).  Everyone chooses their life, but as someone who converted as an adult, my choice to live this life was absolutely intentional.  God, the Pope, or my priest didn't tell me "hey you, go forth and have a herd of kids now," but Catholicism cultivates a concept of love, marriage, and family that posits a large family as a blessing.  Life is always a gift - your life, my life, everyone's life.  To bring life into this world is a gift.  I buy that.  As a mom, I've now been lucky enough to have lived that, and to know that no less excitement, anticipation, or joy attends the birth of the fourth child than was there for the first.  I still could spend hours watching the baby sleep.

People assume that there can't be enough love to go around, or that the kids must be getting shortchanged because they "have to share."  Aren't we supposed to be teaching them to share?  And since when are there limited quantities of love?  Doodle is usually a giggly happy content sort of baby.  When I mention that to people, they often reply, "well, she has to be - with three others, she has to wait her turn and share!"  I say it's because she's loved beyond all measure.  When she's nursing, someone invariably comes over to give her a kiss on the head.  The big kids argue over who gets to throw away her dirty diapers and help with her bath.  When she's on her playmat, she ends up in the center of her family, with everyone cheering her on as she picks up her head and swats at her toys.  There is so much love around her all the time, in ways that poor Sprout, the first, just didn't get to experience - of course she's happy!

The kids - and us, too - are learning that love isn't about yourself.  That's another thing Catholicism is good at - love is self-donative; love requires sacrifices.  If you aren't giving all of yourself, you aren't loving.  So mommy nurses baby for a couple of years, because she loves baby.  Sprout gives half of his crayons to SweetPea, because he loves SweetPea (and that was his idea, not ours).  With plenty of people around, it's impossible to be the focus of everything, and it's impossible to get by without some true self-donative love.  That's a good thing, and it's wonderful to see the kids start to recognize it as a gift and not a burden.

When we announced our first pregnancy there was general congratulations and jubilation.  When our second came along, we heard comments like, "well that's nice, now you have your boy and your girl," as if we'd just filled some sort of magical child quota or something.  People seemed perplexed by the third, and with the fourth, we heard "wow... again, huh?" and even "was this planned?"  Was it planned?  Whose business is that, and does it matter?  We're expecting, we're ecstatic.  The only acceptable response to that news is "congratulations!"  Children are never a burden, they are never a wrong choice.  They can be difficult, they change plans, they require sacrifices.  But it doesn't matter if it's my sweet squishy snuggly baby or the sweet squishy snuggly baby of a scared, alone teenager - that child is never a wrong choice.

The Catholic homeschooling families we've met get that.  You can tell them you're about to have your first child and they'll beam and hug you and truly be entirely happy, no reservations. You can tell them you're about to have your tenth child and they'll beam and hug you and truly be entirely happy, no reservations.  Adding some people like that to our circle of friends can only be a happy, positive, loving thing.

We're not all the same!

Full disclosure: I made the initial push for homeschooling our kids this year.  Super-Smart Hunky Husband (SSHH) was skeptical at first... after all, homeschoolers are weird, hyper-religious nutjobs who are paranoid about the big, bad world.  Why would we want to sign on for that?

But the beautiful thing about homeschooling is that the only one who decides what your experience is like - is you.  There are as many different ways to homeschool as there are families who do it, and the family down the road who seems a little "odd" has no bearing on what you do with your children.  The whole point is that you, the parent, are in the driver's seat, and your child's educational experiences are what you choose for them.

We were recently chatting with some friends who homeschool, and who have chosen a far different path than ours.  Their children rarely use the internet and were only recently allowed TV.  Their reading and friends are closely monitored.  Their girls wear skirts and keep their shoulders covered; their boy wants to enter the seminary.  Their lives revolve around their faith and their homeschool.  The kids are happy, polite, social, and well-adjusted.  They've loved being homeschooled.  The oldest two are in college with numerous scholarships.  They've taught their children very successfully.

But their life isn't our life.  We watch mindless shows and listen to top-40 music; we enjoy off-color jokes sometimes and have let enough four-letter words slip around the kids that we've occasionally heard them repeated.  We read books from all sources and have friends from all places.  I've been known to wear a bikini at the pool (okay, not since kid #2) and SSHH listens to rap music.  And we have no problem with our kids doing the same at an appropriate age... Sprout may still end up a priest in spite of his family - since we're fine with him turning his room into a church and making a messy "altar" on his bed!

But both of our families are trying to raise well-educated, faith-filled kids and we both believe that the best way to do that is in the family.  And today SSHH hit upon it brilliantly: we are all called to live out a similar vocation in different ways.  A cloistered Carmelite nun is no more or less holy or Catholic than a Jesuit missionary.  She's just called to live the same faith differently.  Neither would look at the other and say, "you're doing it wrong."

And so we're trying to look at other (Catholic) homeschooling families in the same way - we are trying to raise our children to live lives of faith out in the middle of a secular world, a world that they should love and understand and succeed in.  That's always been our goal, but this year marks a change in how we're approaching the task: rather than starting with the most common educational systems and making the best use of them that we can, we're starting by looking at how we'd like our children to end up and the childhood we'd like them to have, and we've chosen the path that we think will get us there.  Our path doesn't look like anyone else's, but it may be equally fruitful and faith-filled, just like the Carmelite nun and Jesuit missionary's lives look nothing like each other, but ultimately they serve the same end.

Our friends have chosen one route to get there, and it looks very different from ours.  They're not wrong, and neither are we.  Homeschooling allows you to own your family's education like nothing else.  It's liberating, to have the freedom to create the lessons and experiences that you want your children to grow up with - not necessarily always pleasant or easy ones, but always yours.

Saints

Pope Francis, World Youth Day 2013

"We need saints without cassocks, without veils - we need saints with jeans and tennis shoes. We need saints that go to the movies that listen to music, that hang out with their friends. We need saints that place God in first place ahead of succeeding in any career. We need saints that look for time to pray every day and who know how to be in love with purity, chastity and all good things. We need saints - saints for the 21st century with a spirituality appropriate to our new time. We need saints that have a commitment to helping the poor and to make the needed social change. We need saints to live in the world, to sanctify the world and to not be afraid of living in the world by their presence in it. We need saints that drink Coca-Cola, that eat hot dogs, that surf the internet and that listen to their iPods. We need saints that love the Eucharist, that are not afraid or embarrassed to eat a pizza or drink a beer with their friends. We need saints who love the movies, dance, sports, theater. We need saints that are open sociable normal happy companions. We need saints who are in this world and who know how to enjoy the best in this world without being callous or mundane. We need saints."

Preparations

It's been a busy week here!

Sprout is now officially enrolled at Kolbe Academy for the upcoming school year.  Along with that, we ordered the books he'll need - about thirty of them (my Visa is crying)!  We'll be doing a bit of pre-K work with SweetPea, too.

We also filed our Notice of Intent - that's the official State documentation that allows us to legally homeschool.  So we're "official!"  Among other things, we had to tell them about our curriculum and provide proof that we are sufficiently well-educated to teach our kids.  I sent them our graduate transcrips and pictures of our diplomas...

We're starting to hammer out the details of schedules and plans.  Homeschooled kids are required to have 180 days of school each year, just like everyone else, and most families choose to roughly follow the traditional school calendar - everyone needs summer vacation, after all.  We'll be starting right along with the public schools after Labor Day - although the kids are really excited and want to dive in now (ever heard kids ask if they can do math worksheets in July?  yeah, we're an odd bunch.).

And we're always thinking about keeping him involved and having fun outside of school, too.  Sprout's "other stuff" is starting up - he camped in the outfield after a minor league baseball game this weekend, volunteered with Super-Smart Hunky Husband (SSHH) at a Special Olympics event, and went to track practice in the rain.  He's turning into quite the runner - he goes out with mom a few days a week and wants to run his first 5k at the end of the summer. 

And we went shopping for school supplies today - there's nothing like new folders and notebooks and pencils to make you feel ready!

Kolbe Academy

Since we're brand-new at this homeschooling thing, we decided that it would be best not to work without a net for the first year, at least.  Legally, you don't have to follow any particular curriculum.  Homeschooled children in our state simply need to take any national standardized test each year (remember taking the "Iowa test" in school?  That's one of them.). As long as they can get through the test, the state is fine with whatever they're learning.  So the ways of homeschooling are as varied as the families who homeschool.  Some families "unschool," following the child's interests and learning in a free-wheeling way 365 days a year.  Some families operate as "school from home," with schedules and breaks and a traditional learning style.  We're somewhere in the middle - one of the great benefits of homeschooling is that kids can drop everything on a moment's notice to pursue an interesting tangent, but no matter how dry geography may be, at some point you just have to chain yourself to the desk and learn it!  And while learning should happen every day, kids need breaks from formal learning, so we'll be roughly following the regular 9-month school year.

And in the interest of actually having a well-educated child, we'd like to teach more than the minimum, and this is where a curriculum provider comes in.  They provide textbook recommendations, lesson plans, and will help determine appropriate grades.  Some are accredited and may be affiliated with traditional private schools.  Some will help keep official transcripts of coursework.  Some have tutors and academic counselors on staff for when learning and teaching get sticky.

There are dozens of curriculum providers, and you can find one to fit any need.  We knew we wanted one that focused on Catholic education, and that narrowed the pool significantly.  And when we looked at the choices, Kolbe stood out as far and away the best fit for us.

While we wanted a Catholic curriculum, we aren't homeschooling to keep our kids away from the Big Bad World, and it was important to us that their education teach them how to live a life of faith out in the world.  That was surprisingly hard to find - many religious curriculum providers seem to have a very insular perspective.  Students read Catholic literature, learn to draw with Bible stories, and even add and subtract with a religious bent.  Science texts were broken up around the days of creation.  It was hard to picture a child with that foundation coping well in a secular world.

Kolbe is different.  The students read everything under the sun, from Aristotle to Huckleberry Finn.  They're encouraged to ask questions and draw their own conclusions.  They're invested in teaching kids how to think, not what to think.  And, importantly for us, they firmly believe in putting parents in charge of their children's education.  If their curriculum isn't a good fit in a certain area, they want and expect parents to change it.  They're there to help in the homeschooling endeavor, not to oversee and "replace" the  role of a traditional school.

They're accredited, which for our purposes means that should we ever decide to send the kids to a traditional school again, they'll have recognized, complete transcripts to back up what they've learned at home.  They have advisors who will be there should we have questions. And their kids are doing quite well, growing up into well-rounded young people.

We read this, about two recent Kolbe grads:

http://www.rappnews.com/2010/06/03/home-scholarship/

Who wouldn't want their kids to grow up like that?

Going Public

Well, we "went public" this week with our decision to homeschool.  We encountered overwhelming support from a lot of people - my sweet grandmother wrote "BRAVO!!!  I'm behind you 100%!!"  which absolutely touched my heart.  We even heard from a couple of friends who are themselves considering homeschooling, and who will be reading about our journey over the coming year to see if it might be a good fit for them!

But as overwhelmingly supportive as the initial response has been, there are bound to be a few bumps in the road as we go on, and we've spent a lot of time thinking about how to handle them.  Our decision to homeschool this year has been made and is not up for debate.  Suuper-Smart Hunky Husband (SSHH) and I are prepared to defend that decision to anyone who asks.  What bothers me, though, is the possibility that Sprout may be obliquely attacked for a decision that his parents made in his best interests.  I've  read of acquaintances of homeschooled children "pop quizzing" them:  "Oh, you're homeschooled?  What's 458x73?  Who was the 23rd vice-president of the United States?"  I've heard of not-so-subtle jabs:  "Why won't your parents let you go to school?  You'd have so much fun!"

I worry about this.  We've read hundreds of pages and talked for dozens of hours about this decision.  We've considered every advantage and drawback.  But it was our decision, and while we talked to Sprout about it, his opinion (he wants to try homeschooling, if anyone is wondering) was just one more piece of the puzzle.  He shouldn't be called on to defend or validate this choice of his parents any more than he has to defend the house we live in or the groceries I bought today.  He's a seven year-old child.  For some reason, though, I've heard of a disturbing number of children being prodded for their parents' decisions on education by people who were probably well-meaning, but - in my opinion - very ill-informed. 

Thoughts on how to handle these situations when they inevitably arise?

Homeschooling: The Why, Part 3

These are by far the least of the reasons to homeschool, and they're entirely self-serving, but that doesn't mean they're not real reasons.

We want *us* to be the ones to enjoy our kids. They're awesome little people.  We don't want to hand them over to a teacher for eight hours a day, the hours when they're bright, engaged, excited to learn new things, and then get them back a tired mess at the end.  We want to have the good hours, too, not just the picking-up-the-pieces hours.

We've read in several places that parents hardly recognize their kids once they start homeschooling. The reactive, temperamental, whiny, grumpy kids become more polite, happy to help, engaged, able to moderate their feelings.  We don't know why exactly that happens, but we want that.  We want to not only love each other but to enjoy each other.  We think we could not only love our kids as we do now, but like them more.

Getting there will require self awareness and willingness to learn and change from all of us.  Homeschooling will be hard work.  But the potential is so great that *not* give it a good chance... if it doesn't work for us, there are other options. If it does, we've gained so much.

Homeschooling: The Why, Part 2

 

 

I started to think about the sort of skills that I use in my career.  Becoming a civil servant is admittedly not very lofty dream, but we're supporting a family of six and my colleagues seem to think I'm doing a bang-up job, so maybe it's worth something.

I got hired for my PhD and on the recommendation of a coworker. The letters after my name didn't wow anyone - one of the interviewers had a doctorate as well and knows that it isn't all that impressive - but they told me that the degree meant I could think about a problem, analyze it, and solve it, and that it showed that I could work independently. They were happy to give me all the information I needed about homeland security and emergency management if I'd bring those skills to the table.

In the past four years, those have been the skills that they've relied on me for.  My boss will call and say, "yo, PonyMommy, Congressman X is being obnoxious about issue Y, we need to do something about it. Go." It's up to me to research it, frame the issue, present the argument in the best way for the audience, pay attention to nuance (do you know how many definitions and connotations to the word "risk" there are in homeland security world?), and put it all together. No one wants to see an outline and a canned format won't work. They want me to get it done independently and on time. If I can do that, they go nuts.

When I have meetings, I'm expected to lead, teach, respect authority even as I argue with it, and be a learner- often in the same meeting.  My colleagues are old, young, well-educated newly minted doctors and crusty old firefighters, people from all sorts of backgrounds. I need to work with them all, adapting to their styles of communication, to get things done. All of this happens in a mixed up jumble all day, every day. There's not a meeting of crusty old firefighters, then one with newly minted doctors, then one with administrative assistants. Everyone does everything together.

But I sure didn't learn any of this in school. Some of it came in graduate school, but that's pretty late in the game. A lot of it came from working and teaching at barns - I'd teach someone 30 years my senior, and at the same time need to take direction from them about a horse care issue. I had to explain myself to someone who had no idea what I was talking about. I needed to relate to a lot of different people. In grad school I learned how to put together an argument and follow a long, multifaceted project through to completion without help.

The point, though, is that no one cared about my knowledge of German or calculus or chemistry or history. Those are good in and of themselves, and necessary for some careers, but what is most important is having an ability to learn and work independently, to relate to and communicate well with all sorts of people, and to be able to produce good, critical, thorough work. The rest of it is details - my colleagues thought it was entirely unimportant that I didn't know squat about emergency management, but they cared about problrm solving and independence and communication.

These are things that a good education could produce much earlier than the end of grad school... I certainly took the long route to get there. I think these are skills that homeschooling fosters - not that traditional schools don't, but they have to focus a lot on facts to get through all the tests, and large classes don't lend themselves to independent thinking as well as more individualized teaching.  And the best way to gain confidence in working with many different people is to work with many different people of all ages and backgrounds - not the same group of eight year-olds every day.  These skills make for a really marketable person who will do well out there in the world. Most people don't have one career throughout their working life these days, and the most valuable thing to have is transferrable, foundational skills that translate well in a lot of different positions.  From that perspective, homeschooling will set our kids up to be successful in whatever they choose to do, and will just help them develop into all around good people to have out there. That, combined with the more moral/spiritual aspects in yesterday's post, could make some pretty awesome people.

Homeschooling: The Why, Part 1

Homeschooling our children has been something we've tossed around for years. Public schools are good.  Our local Catholic school is good. This isn't a reactionary decision.  But when we picture what we want for our children, it's something very different, and something that neither the Catholic school nor the public schools can provide. 
 

We want our children to be free to explore their academic interests.  Sprout loves science and struggles with history? Fine, we can adapt to that and provide challenges and support where it's needed. He loves robots? Cool - we can encourage him in math and physics and help him apply that in ways that interest him. He won't need to be held back in reading because we don't want him in with much older kids. He won't need to be confused in math because the teacher doesn't have the resources to explain it at an appropriate level for everyone.
 

We want our kids to love learning. The things above will help, but learning in a non-stressful environment will help, too.  We hated seeing Sprout so stressed at the end of the week this past year.  We hated hearing him groan as he got into the car about how there was so much work and so many worksheets - and we think for him much of that was probably busy work and not learning. He still loves to learn, but we can see it becoming a chore in that environment.
 

We want our kids to learn about God and the Church in their lives. Biology? Wow, God's creation is awesome. History, literature? Look at how great people and ideas have been influemced by and influenced our beliefs and practices. It doesn't have to be heavy-handed, but we want that learning woven into the fabric of their lives in a way that even the Catholic school doesn't do.
 

We want our kids to learn about service, in ways big and small.  the Catholic school tries to do this and they do a pretty good job. But it could be even more completely and seamlessly made a part of life. We serve Sprout as we teach him, plan, correct.  Sprout serves SweetPea as he helps her witth reading.  SweetPea and SweetPotato serve Sprout as they are quiet while he takes a spelling quiz.  Sprout serves us as he learns and helps. We all serve others as we go to daily Mass together sometimes, help at the food bank, rake leaves for John and Sue two doors down. We can do those things anyway, but with so much time taken up by the school day, it's hard to integrate them with learning and life.

 

We want to grow in love and respect as a family. As we all learn together (we will have to remember long division!), we can't help but discover new things about each other and develop closer and more respectful relationships as we not only play together but work together, too.

We want to have time to build forts, find frogs, and go hiking.  We want those to be learning opportunities, too. Right now there's just no time for that, and standing outside of Sprout's school experience, it's hard to integrate those moments with what he does inside the school building.
 

We want to emphasize to our kids that friends and work and Church are important, but family is the center around which everything else is built.
 

We want to have time to become more involved in our church with the kids. Teaching CCD for the wee ones with Sprout, things like that.  We want to model that as integrated with our daily life, too.

 

All of those things could be done with the kids at Catholic or public school. But they won't be fostered the way homeschooling will do it. The challenges - easy access to music lessons and sports, playtime with other kids - are easily overcome with some planning and reaching out. But the benefits are so awesome, if we do it well.
 

These are the things we want for our family and feel like we haven't quite been able to have. Good grades are nice, and homeschooling can provide that, too. Ivy League is nice, and homeschooling can do that. But the other, less tangible things are more important and harder to reach.