This is a marathon not a sprint

My sister, who is starting to homeschool her oldest son (4yo), texted me this morning saying, "Public school is looking pretty good day!"  So this post is for her!  This is an idea that has been rattling around in my brain for quite some time.  There are lots of reasons that people home school and often it is a stop gap measure until they settle down in a permanent situation.  Some of us, however, take up homeschooling as a lifestyle choice and for us it is a marathon not a sprint.  Now lest you think I am a runner, let me stop you right now.  My sister-in-law runs marathons and my sister half marathons and other crazy races like the Ragnar; I am the un-athletic one in my family.  I do, however, understand the principles of pace.  When you choose to homeschool full-time, it is all about pacing yourself.  Over the twelve years I have been homeschooling, I have watched a lot of super moms give up and put their children back in school because they were running a sprint.  They went total gang busters out of the gate and made all these super lessons and spent hours and hours planning lessons and making cute cut outs and planning huge things.  I learned really quickly that if I was going to homeschool long term that stuff wasn't going to work for me.  So after a few times of falling on my face I settled into a pattern that works for us.  We simply make learning a part of everyday life.  We turn off the television and the electronic junk and we learn.  Some days are these wonderful aberrations of the perfect day and the next day as we struggle through I wonder what on earth I did different today than yesterday.  The answer is absolutely nothing!!  We are flawed and imperfect human beings and so are our children so why should we think that education should be perfect every day.  So what I have learned with two children graduated out is that it simply doesn't matter.  Good days come and so do bad days and in the end these beautiful children that we sacrifice to love and nurture and teach turn out to be just great.  We are doing God's work and His hand is in it even when it doesn't look pretty and in the end He took my meager abilities and mixed it with lots of family love and helped my children be amazing.  So my message to my sweet sister and all of you who feel like public school is looking pretty good is simply to hang on.  The harvest is great even when the larborers are few and exhausted!

My thoughts on testing

It is April here in North Carolina and that means annual testing at my house.  In NC all home schooled children are required to test every year using nationally standardized tests.  I personally hate achievement tests.  I hated them growing up when we were all required to sit at our desks and listen to the teacher drone on for the umpteenth time - "Fill in the bubble make your mark heavy and dark and if you want to change an answer erase your mark completely."  Where did all this come from??  Achievement tests to me are about the stupidest thing we do to children.  This is no measure of the knowledge of any child I know and only frustrates and humiliates children who do not test well or cannot communicate what they know in little round bubbles that must be colored in heavy and dark.  My high schooler's test is full of political correctness and some time I want someone to tell me what in the world that has to do with intelligence, reasoning, or the ability to communicate.  We do these tests every year because we are required to by law and I am also trying to teach my children about being good citizens and obeying the law, but I ignore the results of these tests completely.  I know full well what my children can and can't do because I am with them every day.  I know that children develop at different rates and not on a linear scale.  I also know that my ten year old has math days and non-math days.  There are days he gets up in the morning and for whatever funky reason he can't do math.  When these non-math days happen we simply read math books, biographies of mathematicians or play games, and then return to the math book the next day and he is fine and goes gang busters.  But if he tests on a non-math day people would think he is innumerate which he is not.   I know testing is not going away anytime soon so my April's will continue to contain this silliness, but I am so grateful that we live in a free land where we can homeschool our children and minimize the damage these tests can cause.

PS- I found this article today (April 20, 2013) and thought I would add it here.  Great article!

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2013/04/17/eighth-grader-designs-standardized-test-that-slams-standardized-tests/