This new edition combines two popular books under one cover. How a homeschooling mother learned to trust her children-and herself-to learn in new ways. Covers elementary years through high school. These books are especially good for anyone wrestling with the question of "how much structure should there be in a homeschool?"
Book Description
Editorial Reviews
About the Author
Agnes Leistico, mother of three, is a La Leche League leader and a homeschooling advocate. She and her family live near Lompoc, California.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Being in a classroom frustrated her because she never felt she had enough time to pursue her studies in her own way and often had to waste time waiting for her classmates to finish up a project so she could go on. She told my husband and me, "School puts too much pressure on me. It makes me feel hot all over and uncomfortable. At school I can't learn what I want to when I want to."
Often Susan will play with her dolls and have lively conversations with them. After one particularly lengthy session during which I overheard her making many remarks about geography, she looked over at me and explained that this is her favorite way to learn something. Acting it out with her dolls impresses it on her mind. She also hastened to add that she liked to have her homeschool friends over for the same reason. With her friends she is able to have interactive learning.
Shortly after I had started homeschooling, I wrote to a friend: At first I was puzzled by "motivation" battles I had with Jim and Laurie which always resolved themselves in surprising ways. After one such incident I really had doubts about what was happening to Jim and Laurie. But the last couple of days they have really astounded me with their activities. Jim has been willingly working in his algebra book and Laurie picked up a couple of math booklets I found at the textbook center but did not think either one would be that interested in. She found several projects which she became engrossed in. One was making geometrical shapes and boxes out of paper. Both of them conducted separate crystal garden experiments without any prompting from me yesterday.
With the passage of time this anxiety has eased. I see how many ways there are to indicate a growth in learning. My file cabinet is filled with examples of their creativity and projects. I realize I had unrealistic expectations. My youngsters are ordinary youngsters, yet I was expecting extraordinary feats. When we are relaxed, learning abounds, but when I am anxious about progress very little is accomplished. The biggest lesson has been to accept each child for who she is and myself as I am. Trust is not static. It changes with circumstances so I must also change and allow my students to change. What worked yesterday will not necessarily work today.
There certainly are days when I question what is taking place. While the youngsters are doing very well, I am the one feeling pressured to get them to perform some externally measurable school work. There is that nagging worry about someone demanding to see proof acceptable to them that learning is taking place. I personally see invaluable learning occurring but still worry that it is acceptable to "others," whoever "they" are.
My children need to know that I have confidence in them in their quest for knowledge. In my own efforts to learn to use a computer I quickly retreat whenever I lack confidence in myself. I am influenced by what I perceive others think of me. I have to remind myself that it is okay to feel uncertain of myself. I am the one who has to choose to rise above my current level of ability.
My years of experience with life spans many more years than those of my children. I know from experience that the struggle to master the computer is worthwhile. I consider it my responsibility to inspire similar confidence in my children so that they, too, can expand their horizons.
I will not inspire this confidence if I am their judge and their manipulator. I want to encourage their efforts in problem solving and thinking skills. This includes nurturing their interests and respecting their capability to decide what is of importance to them. They do not need to compare themselves to others. First I want to instill in them a feeling of competence and self-worth.
A remedial reading teacher, Ellen Brandoff Matter, wrote an article in Learning 88 describing her experience with a wood working class offered at an adult night school. She wanted to make a six-foot cabinet that would fit in her dining room. It was an ambitious undertaking for a beginner. During the construction phase she had to overcome many frustrations and misunderstandings as to how to proceed. The finished product was far from perfect but she was proud of her accomplishment. Because of this experience she began to appreciate what her students face on a daily basis as they are asked to learn new skills. Her comment was, "By becoming a student again, I got a chance to walk in my students' shoes, and ended up with blisters."
As I read her article I mentally compared my experiences in learning how to use this computer and word processing program to how my children learn. At first I doubted I could ever learn to use the computer. It seemed so complicated. I could hardly understand the manuals, and when I asked questions about the computer the answers I received sounded like they were in a foreign language. The demonstration disks did not help me that much as I preferred to start out on a real project.
The books, manuals and instructors I questioned assumed I knew more than I did. For instance, it took me many months to figure out why I could not get my sequential page numbers to print. In the meantime I avoided using page numbers or else used the typewriter to put them in place. This was tedious. One day, quite by accident, I happened to read one vital sentence buried in a place that I did not expect to find it. I had been putting the correct codes in but was also unknowingly cancelling out the codes by one simple keystroke.
We do our youngsters a disservice by introducing them to grades and testing before they are ready. Letter grades on the elementary level are irrelevant and can be detrimental. This is the time to concentrate on learning the basic skills and laying a firm foundation for the future. With sadness I watched some youngsters fall behind in the first grade when I was a classroom volunteer and had the time to closely observe what was taking place. As I followed their progress, several of them became used to receiving low grades and could not catch up to their classmates later on.
Seeing no educational value in giving grades on work accomplished, I do not grade my youngsters. They and I know without any doubt how they are performing. When they experience a problem we work it out. Sometimes it means dropping a project temporarily until that child is ready to proceed. Other times it is apparent the topic was inappropriate for that particular child. I am not placed in the position of a judge and they are not being judged by anyone other than themselves.
What real purpose do letter grades serve? My grades in high school have had little influence on my lifetime activities. Going to several of my high school reunions I noticed that academic success was not recognized. My classmates who excelled in sports or social skills were given recognition during the festivities.
During my studies at junior college I participated in an interesting experiment. Students were expected to do their best but were not told what their final grades were. I felt freer to pursue my interests in my studies without worrying about my grades. Only when I enrolled in the University of San Francisco three years later did I learn of my final grades, which were right where I expected them to be.
Reading Game
A friend (GWS #3, "Capable Children") writes about a good reading game that she plays with her children. She writes a number of sentences, and the children circle those that are true and scratch out those that are not. One day they were going to the grandparents' house for lunch. There was one of those common arguments about which child sits in what seat, which produced this list of sentences (instead of circling or scratching them out, as the children did, I will just mark T or F):
F does not want to read books in the back seat. T
F wants to read books in the front seat. T
We are going to Grandma's house. T
We are going to eat lunch there. T
We are in a green car. T
We are in a green car. T
We are in a yellow car. F
We are in a green airplane. F
We are in a purple rocket. F
We love Grandma. T
Grandma loves us. T
We love liver. F (Ed. this one scratched out many times. Is there a child in the world who likes liver? Maybe, with enough bacon) and so on.
One of the many things I like about this game is that it gives children, and parents, too, a way to get outside of, to see from a different perspective, what may at the time have been unpleasant events. In this case, what had been a quite fierce quarrel about who sat where was turned, so to speak, into History, something which the children could use. Of course, we have to steer clear of sentences which might just start the quarrel all over again.
This is the first issue of a newsletter about ways in which people, young and old, can learn and do things, acquire skills, and find interesting and useful work, without having to go through the process of schooling. In part, it will be about people who, during some of their growing up, did not go to school, what they did instead, and how they made a place for themselves in the world. Mostly, it will be about people who want to take or keep their children out of school, and about what they might do instead, what problems come up, and how they cope with these. We hope, also, that children who are, right now, growing without schooling will let us know how they feel about this. If they do, we will not identify them as children, except as they do in their own writing.
Growing Without Schooling, or GWS as we will call it from now on, will be in part an exchange. Much of what is in it, we hope, will come from its readers. In its pages people can talk about certain common ideas, needs, concerns, plans, and experiences. In time it may lead to many informal and personal networks of mutual help and support.
I have come to understand, finally, and even to accept, that in almost everything I believe and care about I am a member of a minority in my own country, in most cases a very small minority. This is certainly true of all my ideas about children and education. We who do not believe in compulsory schooling, who believe that children want to learn about the world, are good at it, and can be trusted to do it without much adult coercion or interference, are surely not more than 1% of the population and perhaps much less than that. And we are not likely to become the effective majority for many years, probably not in my lifetime, perhaps not in the lifetime of any reader of GWS.
This does not trouble me any more, as long as those minorities of which I am a member go on growing. My work is to help them grow. If we can describe the effective majority of our society, with respect to children or schools or any other question, as moving in direction X and ourselves, the small minority, as moving in direction Y, what I want to do is to find ways to help people who want to move in direction Y, to move in that direction, rather than run after the great X-bound army shouting at them, "Hey you guys, stop, turn around, you ought to be heading in direction Y!" In areas they feel are important, people do not change their ideas, much less their lives, because someone comes along with a bunch of arguments to show that they are mistaken, and even wicked, to think or do as they do. Once in a while, we may have to argue with the X-bound majority, to try to stop them from doing a great and immediate wrong. But most of the time, as a way of making real and deep changes in society, this kind of shouting and arguing seems to me a waste of time.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
21 of 21 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
An excellent resource,
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This review is from: I Learn Better by Teaching Myself and Still Teaching Ourselves: And, Still Teaching Ourselves (Paperback)
One of my favorite books about home education. The author allayed my fears many times when I picked up this book to reassure myself that I wasn't crazy for backing off on the structure and letting my kids learn from what the were doing. Her writing makes you feel as if you are along for the ride, as she shares her thought processes and the experiences that led her to ultimately trust that her children were learning from life. Since this book covers the early years of home education and concludes beyond college entrance, one is given the overall picture. Definitely a must-read. The author will help you find the middle-of-the-road between unstructured and structured learning.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Wonderful Book,
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This review is from: I Learn Better by Teaching Myself and Still Teaching Ourselves: And, Still Teaching Ourselves (Paperback)
This is a great book for anyone working with children. If you are new to homeschooling, you have family that is homeschooling, you want to understand unschooling or you just want to learn more about how learning can take place in different ways this is a great place to start.
This book is very easy to read, very interesting and enjoyable. If you liked "Homeschooling Our Children, Unschooling Ourselves" I think you will like this book too.
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