How To Not Fail

Homeschooling is like learning to swim. You get good at it by doing it. As much as you wish you could be good at it before you start doing it, that’s just not how it works. You’ll make many mistakes—plan on it, and use them—to learn and improve, not to shame yourself. Mistakes don’t determine your experience or ultimate success.

Your experience will be determined in part by the temperature of the water, but mostly it’s your desire to learn and the support you line up for yourself that matter.

Your success will be inevitable as long as you don’t quit.

As for the temperature of the water, this usually is not something you have much control over. Some pools are warm and inviting. Others are a shock. But even if the water’s not as warm as you like, you can trust that your body will adapt. And if you want to learn, you’re willing to experience the discomfort.

Your desire to learn is the most important. If you don’t want to swim, how likely are you to try it? And if you do try it, but do it against your will, how quickly will you learn? How much will you enjoy it?

If you’re overcome by fear and anxiety, you’re going to have a tough time putting on your suit. A tough time getting in the water. A tough time trusting your teacher. And it’s understandable. Why would someone put their head underwater willingly if they don’t know if or how it’ll come back up again?

So number one, decide for yourself if you’re going to do this. Number two, get clear on your reason why. Number three, make sure you like that reason.

Then, only then, can you get to peace.

Once you’re there, all that’s left is to begin.

…

If you’re swimming, you need a pool full of water, a swimming suit, and a towel. Sunscreen and goggles are big plusses. This is the setup. In homeschooling it might be the books, the curriculum, the pencils and paper and chalkboard and desk….or whatever the tools and environment are that you need for your style of homeschooling. Oh, and don’t forget the children. You’ll need at least one of those. But simply gathering these things together doesn’t magically teach you how to homeschool. You can dive in and sink or swim. Some people learn this way, through trial and error, without much help. That’s how I started. It took a long time. And it was hard.

If you’re smarter than I was, you’ll do these three things:

1. Line up a teacher. Not just someone who’s been doing this longer than you, but someone who can explain it. Someone who remembers what it’s like to be a beginner, and can guide you through. A mentor who inspires you.

2. Get a life coach. Just like a life guard, if you’re scared or unskilled and out of your depth, she can spot it and pull you out of danger and into safety. She’s trained for this. She’s calm and qualified and can see the big picture. She’ll help you.

3. Lastly, make sure you’ve got a friend or two. Learning to swim doesn’t have to be miserable. Knowing you’re not alone can make all the difference.

When it comes to homeschooling, you might feel alone at first. But if you look around, you’ll discover you’re surrounded by friends. There’s no shortage of homeschool co-ops, nature groups, and community resources. If you can’t find a group, you can start one! But you don’t have to do the group thing if that’s not your style or reality right now—all you really need is to find one person you know who’s chosen the same path for educating her kids, and spend some time with her. You can bounce ideas off of each other, share the tips and resources you’re discovering, and cry on each other’s shoulders. Trust me. You’ll need to.

As for a teacher, make sure you get one with experience, and a style and demeanor that you’re drawn to. Watch the way she treats her students. Watch the way she “swims” in her own homeschool. And see how you feel when she talks about it. Is she passionate? Is she bored? Is she militant? Is she flexible? Watch her. Learn from her. Above all, ask for lessons! I really underutilized my mentors when I was learning to homeschool, probably out of fear or shame. This was a mistake. People are happy to help, but they need to know you want it!

As for a coach, I highly recommend someone who’s been trained by The Life Coach School, or has other training that gives them concrete tools, processes, and frameworks that make your time together productive. You need someone who can teach you how to deal with emotions, how to set and reach goals, and how to look at your life in a way that reveals all your options to you.

…

I’m a homeschool mentor and coach. To me, those are different skill sets. As a mentor, I’m like the swim teacher. I’ve learned, studied, and practiced. After more than a decade of parenting and homeschooling my five kids, I’m proficient, and I’m pretty good at teaching it. I can show you how I homeschool and why. I can help you avoid pitfalls and teach you strategies to move things along. I’m passionate about what I do, I love doing it, and I can help inspire you to catch the vision, get started, and keep going.

As a coach, I am trained to teach you two skills that are the whole ballgame when it comes to homeschool success, regardless of the method, approach, or style of homeschooling you’re going for. The skills are: what to do with negative emotion, and how to achieve your goals. I have tools and processes in place to do this in a structured way. And I’m watchful and can see where you’re drowning and use my tools and processes to pull you back out. I’d be honored to be your coach and take an objective look at your life and what you want, and help you figure out how to get it.

Your fears might feel new to you, but they are not new to me. You can learn to put them in their proper place so they don’t sabotage your homeschooling. You’re not the first person to choose to homeschool. It’s actually a beautiful, well-trodden path. You need a coach and mentor to guide you through it (I volunteer). You need to see others doing it (get a friend), and consider that they might even be enjoying it. And then you need to look inside yourself and believe that maybe, somewhere, somehow, you might be able to do learn to do it—even enjoy it—one day.

What should my homeschool look like?

I get asked about homeschooling a lot.  Many people have entered my home for one reason or another, and almost immediately asked, “Do you homeschool?”  I used to be one of those people, curious about this alternate universe and wondering if I could, or should, live there too.  What would it look like?  How would I know if I was doing it right?

When I decided to homeschool, I went looking for answers.  I was quickly tempted, disoriented, then discouraged by Pinterest searches.  It was full of contradictions.  Everyone claimed the best schedule or curriculum or method or blog or room layout or supply list.  I learned I needed less suggestions, not more.  One or two mentors was better than ten or twelve.  A straw, not a firehose, is the only way to drink in homeschooling.

Plenty of online strangers were more than happy to tell me the right way to homeschool.  But when I asked the mentors whose opinions I most value about curriculum or classroom furniture or daily schedule, their answers seemed nebulous. 

And now, as a mentor myself, I know why.

Because schedules and curriculum and classroom setup may seem like the logical place to start, but they’re not.  Not only that, but they are subject to change.  And they are unique to each family.  They were not the formula for successful homeschooling that I was searching for.

So what is?   What will make sure my kids get a quality education?  Everyone says to do what’s right for your family, but how do I know what’s right for us?

Start with your why. 

Pin down not how you’ll do this homeschooling thing, but why you’ve decided to do it in the first place.  Why you want it, why you’ll keep going when it gets hard. 

Then figure out your philosophy of education. 

Then look at your children (and yourself) as people, as learners.  How do they learn best?    What are their strengths?  What are yours?

Then write your mission, and a vision will slowly materialize.  Get clear on your why and on your commitment, and the how will take care of itself.

I remember wanting so badly to feel solid in the curriculum, schedule, and homeschooling method that would be right for us.  But the truth is, they will always evolve.  Just like everything else in parenting, the minute you think you have it figured out, it changes again.

But that won’t sound so scary after a while.  Because you’ll slowly realize what really makes a homeschool a homeschool. 

I have found that when the environment, the role model, and the relationships are sound, my children’s learning follows.  So the longer I homeschool, the less I worry about and research curriculum, and the more I work on myself and my relationships with my kids.

As Charlotte Mason famously said, “Education is an atmosphere, a discipline, a life.” 

Everything you think you know about school and education will crumble almost immediately when you begin homeschooling.  It will put your flaws and shortcomings under a microscope.  And it should.  Because homeschooling isn’t just for your kids.  It’s for you.   You will be forced to rethink your beliefs, broaden your views, and redefine things you thought were set in stone.  Just as we want our kids to learn to do.

Your children will learn exactly what they are supposed to, sometimes because of—and sometimes in spite of—your best efforts.  And a more beautiful, more compassionate, more intelligent you will rise from the ashes.  

Your only enemy is fear.  And your fears are imaginary.

So let your goal be not to mold your children a certain way, but to allow your children to surprise you.  Choose the child over the lesson.  Run with your strengths, and have the courage to let them run with theirs, no matter what it looks like.

Homeschooling will be nothing and everything like you imagined.

Be willing to surprise yourself. 

Because you will.

Process

My son was five years old.  His two little brothers and I ran, breathless, to keep up with his endless quests for knowledge.  I provided endless strewing and modeling.  Anything I threw at him, he'd absorb.  He split light, built a telegraph, raised a butterfly, read chapter books silently, and memorized nature encyclopedias for pleasure.  At night, we'd lie in bed and read E.B. White's The Trumpet of the Swan.  This was his kindergarten year, though I never told him that.

Our homeschooling success hinged upon two things: a rich, authentic learning environment, and my silence.  He seemed born knowing how to drive his own education, and my early attempts to require any sort of script-following in the name of standards or learning outcomes were unnecessary at best and damaging at worst.  

I hadn’t planned on homeschooling, but the nearer he got to school age, the stronger and stronger became my instinct not to send him.  It was undeniable and slightly terrifying, and I had to dig deep to figure out why.  I had to define for myself what school and learning really were and examine their relationship.  (If you haven’t done this for yourself yet, I recommend you start now.)

The main reason I chose to homeschool him was to protect and nourish his holy curiosity.  I had to come to terms with the unsettling irony that sending him to school would sabotage his learning and his identity as a learner.  I do not think this is the case for all children, but it is unmistakably true for him.

Although my conviction of this was clear and solid, it took some time and some work before I would learn to release my self-imposed restrictions and root out the limiting public-school-absorbed beliefs I still held of what a school could look like.  And of course, I had to face my fears.

The times I am least effective as a parent and educator are when I react to the fear of being different or trying to please somebody else.  My mama-bear instincts and experience are strong enough to now to keep such fears in their cages.  But I was a new, fiercely dedicated homeschooler who was determined to get it right, and every time I hit a bump in the road, I came face to face with those fears.

When his progress wasn't steady in a particular area, or if we hit a wall, I worried I was doing it wrong.  Trying to push him up and over a hurtle did nothing but frustrate and distance us.  Even my offers to let him sit on my shoulders to get a better view were rebuffed.  I laugh now to think that steady progress and no obstacles should be either possible or desirable hallmarks of a quality education—homeschool or otherwise.  But at the time it felt like the goal, and while I may not have reached it, I had to at least outdo the public school system.

I know now that there must be walls to climb for growth to happen, and growth is the real education.  My son showed me time and time again that he had to climb over the walls himself.  I learned that my job was to provide him with the tools he’d need and get out of the way.  He’d build and climb the ladder.

We had been reading about animals and food chains, and I thought it would be fun to create a mural and hang it on the low wall in our foyer.  (Yes, we had a foyer where we lived.  That is a story for another time.)  I cut a long piece of paper from our easel and handed my son a roll of teal, patterned washi tape to secure it to the wall.  I envisioned the hanging of the paper to be a quick, efficient process, which would be followed by hours of enjoyable, collaborative mural-making.

My son had other ideas.

He was taking much too long.  Instead of just taping each corner of the paper as I had expected (but not instructed), he seemed to be intending to tape the entire perimeter of the ten-foot-long banner.  His face fell and the light in his eyes dimmed as I lectured him about wastefulness, took the roll of tape and walked away.

It took me maybe sixty seconds to come to my senses.  I was no poster child when it came to efficiency or thrift.  I radiated hypocrisy, and stung with shame.  I wondered how I had missed the mark with my vision of this learning project.  And then I realized it had been my project, not his.

I approached my crestfallen child, still kneeling on the ground beside the unfinished work I'd snatched from him.  I crouched down, looked him in the eyes, and said, "I'm sorry.  I shouldn't have done that.  Tape is meant to be used.  Use all you want."

He seemed to re-inflate the moment my respect for his work returned.  "Thank you, Mommy," he said, and resumed his process.

The mural hung there for months, with only a few sparse pencil sketches my son made at my request.  (I suppose if it had been that important to fill the paper with the colorful animals and habitats of my imagination, I would have drawn them myself.)  But they were surrounded by a vibrant, painstakingly-applied border—the real masterpiece.  My project had fizzled, but his was complete.  Authentic, hard-earned, and beautiful.

Proof

You ask for proof.  Performance.

I show you leaves and roots.

You ask for experts.  Answers.

I show you the sun.

You ask for data.  Scores.

I show you smiles.

My evidence abounds, but you dismiss

what is green, not red or black.

How can a sprout or wisened oak

speak to a bottom line?

You fear delays and wasted time.

I watch no clock--

only yellowing.

Photosynthesis

is equal parts math and magic,

formula and faith.

Sometimes I wish I could learn

to count,

to speak your language,

to please you.

But my tongue is tied

when you ask "how much?"

because my answer is...

my whole soul.

I sense the smallest pebble

of skepticism in your hand--

the wall shoots up, diamond strong,

granite thick, mountain tall.

Cold, impenetrable,

to guard my heart: living, breathing

outside my chest,

planted in the richest soil

I fetched from faraway.

There's one small window

and a door.  Can't you see?

The handle is unlocked.  Walk through,

I beg wordlessly.

You’ll see the children have been picking

all day,

and find them slumbering in sunlight

with fruit-stained cheeks

behind the garden shed.

But you look through the window,

see me napping on the grass

amid heaps

and heaps

of dirt. 

No baskets of fruit upon the ground. 

Hundreds of invisible stems.

Pulse

One of the highest honors of my life is to be a daily witness of how each of my children navigates the world.  The interplay between how they see the world and how they are received by it so often seems divinely orchestrated.  It's like their very beings were made to nestle into the world just so.

And yet this carries with it not only ease but friction.  Because each of us, inevitably, will often encounter spaces in which we do not fit.  I am grateful in these moments that I am not merely observer of my children, but mother.  That God in His infinite mercy not only gave my children to me, but me to them.  To fall back on when they smack into one of life's glass windows like a bird, unawares.

I give my children the  gift of homeschooling both to enable and to protect.  To free and to limit.  To play to their strengths and provide for their weaknesses.  To allow us both to be surprised by what those are.

Because as mother, my hand is on their pulse.  My chest rises and falls with theirs.  I know when to push and when to pull back, when to immerse and when to dry off.  When to work, when to play, when to eat, when to rest.  It's both well thought out and completely intuitive.

While my children are young, I will sit behind the wheel and make the micro adjustments needed to stay safely on the road.  Someday they'll take their turns in the driver's seat.

Squabbles, yes.  Wrong turns, absolutely.

But we are headed somewhere worth going.

And worth going together.

Bricklaying

Early in my homeschooling journey, my two boys and I were perusing the local bookstore when a title caught my eye.  I purchased it, took it home, and put it on the top of my bubble bath book stack.

It was a book about education reform.  On the first page, it asked me to consider if school really was as pointless as most of us think it is when we are going through it.

He believed it is.  He said the big problem with our traditional public school system is that learning has become decontextualized.  That we think with each assignment, each lesson, each test, we are giving a child a brick.  The idea is that after they have enough bricks, they will have built a house.  The reality for far too many children, he claimed, was that instead of having a house at the end of their twelve years in school, all they have is a pile of bricks.  And they don’t have them for long.

It painted a pretty bleak picture, and yet it resonated with me.  I appreciated that he was willing to challenge assumptions, even at the risk of the reader’s discomfort or outright outrage.

He didn’t offend me.  He turned on a flashlight.

I worked hard to give my children not only bricks, but blueprints for how to build a house.  I was keenly aware that my example was that of master architect, and I was keenly aware of my every misstep.  I learned as I went along, with only the occasional brick thrown back in my face. 

After a few more years of homeschooling, however, I discovered something.  The purpose of these days with my children is not to help them build their houses.

We’re building something else entirely.  And I’m not the master architect.

Because they may not want or need a brick house when they turn 18.  It’s not my job to prescribe that for them.  There’s no crystal ball, no way to know what they’ll be asked to face ten, twenty, thirty years from now.  The world is changing too fast.

Then what are we doing here, day after day, brick after brick? 

We’re laying these bricks not for a house, but a path.

I don’t give my children bricks very often.  They find them everywhere.  They pick them up and come running, shouting, “Mom!  Look at this!  Is this a good one?”  My job is to show them that bricks are worth finding, lifting, and laying.  So I send them outside, I give them some mud, provide some trowels, and set to work myself.

It’s messy work, and snail-slow going.  But we’re on hands and knees together.  And I’ve noticed that they only grumble when I do.

Our path is a little longer now, and stretching toward green hills.  You can stare too long at the brick in your hands, and forget how far you’ve come.  You can sit, discouraged, on the path you've built and wonder why you're not getting anywhere.

Or you can go find another brick, and trust the process.  Sometimes there's sun, sometimes there's rain.  Sometimes you're hungry or tired.

And you think to yourself, "Well, if we're hungry, we'll stop to eat.  If we're tired, we'll take a rest."  And you keep on going tomorrow.

Your neighbor is riding an escalator into the clouds.  A passerby, or maybe even your child, asks why you're not.  "Oh," you say, "I suppose it's because that's not where we're trying to go."

"Why not?" he might say, curious now.

"Because," you answer.  "That's not where things grow."