Maybe You *Can* Do This Homeschooling Thing
Thinking about it? Consider “deschooling” first
It’s safe to say every parent and teacher is ready for the 2019–2020 school year to be done and down in the history books. Right?
Over the summer as plans for the next school year get modified and solidified, families will naturally fall into two camps: The “Can’t Wait for School to Get Back” and the “Maybe I Can Do This Homeschooling Thing.”
If you’re in the first camp, I trust the eventual return to school is accompanied by reverence for how educators contribute to our future and enable the rest of the economy to function. And then I hope you lobby and support paying them commensurate with that value.
If you’re in the “I Can Do This” camp, you may be reconsidering everything about your child’s education.
You may be thinking about how you just might be able to homeschool and do a better job of meeting your child’s educational needs.
If that’s you, I’d like to offer one strategy homeschoolers are familiar with. It’s called “Deschooling.”
Deschooling is the decompression phase when going from the highly structured school environment to the wide-open, grassy fields and forests of learning outside of school walls.
When a family decides to leave school for independent learning, the possibilities can be exciting.
But they also can be disconcerting and overwhelming.
Some people jump right in and buy a bunch of curriculum. Some sign up for a ton of classes. Others try to recreate the school day at home. Most worry whether they’re “doing it right.” That may be especially true if leaving school is forced by current conditions.
That’s why many veteran homeschoolers recommend a period of deschooling.
Deschooling means taking some time to learn how to not do things the school way. It means stoking the natural love of learning by giving kids the time and space to explore on their own terms.
No agenda other than to get back to enjoying learning until the path ahead becomes clearer.
This can be super uncomfortable for students and parents alike. Students are used to class schedules and assignment deadlines, raising their hands and asking permission.
So when they don’t have to do that anymore, they may not know what to do with themselves for a while. They might want parents to entertain them. “I’m bored,” may be a refrain.
They might resist your ideas for doing schoolwork, no matter how creative and resourceful you are.
At the same time, parents are used to learning that looks like textbooks and homework assignments, graded papers and exams. They may not see themselves as qualified teachers. So when those scaffolds are gone, it can be hard to facilitate, recognize, and measure progress. Parents might start to freak out that they’re not doing enough or that students are getting behind.
Soon enough, though often not soon enough for worried parents, kids start to get curious. They play around with a new interest or immerse themselves in self-directed projects. They might spend a lot of time online or sleeping. That’s part of deschooling, too.
When my own student left middle school, she deschooled by reading books for a whole semester because she never had time to read for pleasure while in school. But the amount of pleasure learning that happened in that self-directed time was astounding.
Among the dozens of books she read by her own choice that second semester of seventh grade was Beowulf. Then she got curious about Old English and looked it up. She compared the translation side by side with the original. She listened to Beowulf read aloud in Old English on YouTube.
Though arguably, she stumbled on history via her exploration of Old English, she didn’t do math or social studies or science or anything else that looked like school. But after that, she was ready to expand her horizons.
By her first year of homeschool high school, she was taking classes at the local community college and things looked a little more like school. But by then, learning was on her terms and she did it with enthusiasm.
I recognize that many people are scrambling to figure out work and child care and contingency plans amidst uncertainty. I also acknowledge that some people are barely able to meet basic needs and having kids out of school constitutes a crisis.
But if it is available to you as you face figuring out what the heck to do with your children, I offer for your consideration the strategy of deschooling.
Times are overwhelming and stressful enough. Nobody needs the added pressure of having to figure out how to educate their children, too. Instead, play. Explore. Watch documentaries. Read. Make art. Cook. Try a language. Listen to history podcasts. Meditate. Plant a garden. Do kitchen science. Take a nap. Help a neighbor. Read some more. Do nothing.
Let your child teach you something.
Most importantly, let your child show you more of who they are. What are they interested in? Where does their curiosity take them? What do they learn when liberated from cajoling, reminding, or busywork?
Be in awe of your child. Watch them learn.
If this resonates with you, perhaps the concept of deschooling can offer a framework for thinking about this next temporary phase of your child’s education in a constructive way.
Then you’ll have much more insight about how to move forward with your adventure in homeschooling.
P.S. I’m a credentialed California teacher and homeschooling parent. Ask me anything about homeschooling in the comments and I’ll do my best to answer.
