Welcome to Boldschoolers! Today, I want to talk about school at home and raising our awareness to the choices that we make when deciding how learning outside of school will look and function in our home. When children come home to learn, many parents think that quality homeschooling means replicating a typical school experience at home.
When we don’t know exactly what to do, the normal thing is to look to our own history and do what we know. It’s familiar and because of that familiarity, it calls to us. In many instances it’s all we know. Even when we understand that that style of teaching and learning (often based around memorizing and regurgitating) might not be the best choice for our particular child…it still calls to us.
Most of us adults had a very standardized approach to learning as a child. We went to school, listened to the teacher talk and did what she (and usually not a he) said. We read our textbooks (or not), completed workbooks or answered questions off the blackboard, had homework, crammed for tests and sat in our seats for long periods of time during the day. Subject areas were approached as separate units of study. Maybe we had some opportunities to work with other children, but maybe not.
Now, you may have had a very different school experience, but for many of us it was a traditional one. Inside our hearts and minds, we might seek out a different way to school and maybe that’s why you’re here…yay!...but you still may feel the pull of that familiarity because it doesn’t just call from our history…. it’s all around us, as well.
Even parents that employ a lot of creativity will answer the call to supplement with traditional learning, such as workbooks. I get it…my oldest, now grown, son will attest that I sent him to an alternative Waldorf school during the day and then because I was worried he wasn’t getting enough, I gave him traditional homework at night. We both agree now it was utter madness, but the call is strong and as one of my families said this week, “It’s hard to go against the grain!”
I want to say that there’s nothing wrong with workbooks, but I’m going to clarify that statement because really I think there are many choices better than workbooks… but I will say there’s nothing wrong with workbooks if they are relevant…from a child’s point of view…and a stepping stone to a bigger goal. Perhaps a child needs to learn some math to be able to charge his customers for the one-of-a-kind woodworking projects he creates. Yes…bring out the book or a video and a paper and pencil to learn those skills. That very real objective will drive your child’s interest in learning that information.
If a child needs to understand how to write a formal letter to a local company to request a donation of materials for a project, then by all means, grab a workbook or other method that teaches that skill. And, of course, if your child loves workbooks, learns tons and thrives…then great! But what I hear from kids every week is…”I hate the workbooks! Why do I have to sit there and do all those pages?” Why indeed.
This is not to say that there’s no place for drill work. Some information needs to be automatized so that it’s readily accessible to the brain when it needs it. Drilling addition and multiplication facts is a classic example of information that serves us well, if memorized to automaticity. If our brains have a firm grasp of such things, then lobby chairs in working memory aren’t wasted to hold the information while working on more complicated challenges. That makes the experience of higher math much more accessible for a kid. That makes sense. What doesn’t make sense to me are random pages thrown at a kid to make us feel better, to make us feel like our kids are actually doing “school.”
We often expect kids to learn from workbook pages in isolation of any true context, annexed from real life and without any meaningfulness or relevancy to frame them. Many kids half-heartedly trudge through them without much attention or thinking because we’ve told them to. How can we call that kind of shallow work learning?
How often in adult life do we sit down and do workbook pages? I might find usefulness in something like a reflection journal or an action guide, like you will find in Boldschoolers products, but I see those as different than a workbook. Hopefully, reflection takes you deeper into the learning and ideally an action guide, helps you put something you’ve learned to good use. Doing something meaningful with learning is the point of learning.
So, what is learning and why we do it? I’ve been reflecting on that question for the past few days. In my own life, I learn things because I think those things will help me or others have a richer life experience in some way. I’m motivated to learn because those things help me meet a goal or teach me something that will make my life or the lives of the people I care about, better either right now or in the near future. There’s an immediacy to that kind of learning and I’m usually motivated by the “need it now”, rather than waiting five or ten years to see a benefit. This type of learning is relevant and meaningful and aligned in some way to my values and pursuits.
Another type of learning I engage in is curiosity-based learning. I seek out answers to my questions. I simply want to know, so I go find out to satisfy my own curiosity. There are holes in my understanding of the world in some way and I’m compelled to fill those holes by asking questions, breaking information down so that I can understand it and then putting it back together in my own mind until I get it. The reflection journal and action guide are a way to put information back together in our minds, to make sense of it and use it in some way. When I think of learning in these ways, it’s like I’m building a beautiful piece of architecture.
Workbook pages don’t often add opportunities to reflect or apply learning. Because most kids don’t like workbooks Some families choose to reward their kids for doing work they don’t want to do and often it’s the textbooks and workbooks. Even though reward systems seem to work because kids are completing tasks, I’d like you to ponder other options. Why? Well, carrots and sticks (rewards and punishments) are low on the hierarchy of types of motivation and there can be negative consequences from relying on them.
If you didn’t have to reward kids for doing their work, what would they be doing? Can learning be built around those individual curiosities and passions? When possible, I think kids should be applying their learning in contexts that they will use that learning in real life. If learning to read, then read good children’s literature for pleasure and also for craft. You can read on two different levels and we can learn a lot about how to write well from good models and examples. If learning to write, then write something meaningful and important for a purpose. If learning numbers, then use them in real life. As I mentioned before, yes, there are times for drill practice and building automaticity, but those practice sessions aren’t the whole of learning. There are also daily opportunities for superpower focus that’s required to master a skill that will propel a kid forward. That’s again for a determined portion of the day and ideally all that focused effort is going into goals that your child has chosen.
When kids understand WHY they are learning a topic and how it’s relevant, they can then become curious because they have buy-in and ownership of the learning. If you feel that particular learning goals are necessary, can you create a frame around the learning such that kids enter into the activity willingly, even excitedly because it’s meaningful to them. For example, Justin didn’t enjoy learning about geometry and he complained daily until he learned that a great deal of geometry was used in cinematography.
Cinematography was something that Justin was super curious about and he was passionate about film making. As soon as he could apply his learning in geometry to the topic he loved, he was highly motivated to not only succeed in geometry, but to go above and beyond what was expected. He applied the geometry skills he learned to his photography and within his next movie. Adding purpose to seemingly meaningless schoolwork can make all the difference in our kids’ perspectives and engagement.
So, when kids tell me, “I just don’t want to do my workbook.” There’s a reason they feel so strongly and I believe we need to listen. Frame the activity (i.e. be able to state clearly why it’s important from your child’s point of view) and if you can come up with a good reason for learning the skill, then think about alternative ways that the skill might be experienced within some type of kid-relevant context. If you can’t frame it, then don’t spend time on it until you can.
Sometimes I think we use workbook pages because it’s a quiet solo activity for kids to do on their own to give us a few minutes of peace. That’s no small need. We must build in self-care during the day for our own mental sanity, but perhaps there are additional ways to get it. Maybe a vendor class or coop experience a couple times a week. Maybe reading a good book or working on a typing program, watching a documentary, or finding flow in something our kids are passionate exploring.
There may be times that you go to a workbook…your kids may even ask to do those workbooks because they enjoy them from time to time. Just don’t make it your go to for learning. Sometimes parents say to me that they don’t know what to do with their kids for learning, so they just do workbooks and field trips and maybe a vendor program or two. Experiences can be great, if they are part of a conscious plan for learning, rather than just a fun thing to do for the day.
When planning experiences for your child, I’ve found the value is in the debrief and if we and our children don’t have any goals to debrief around, we leave it up to our children to find the value on their own. Find the curiosity and debrief around the questions that arise before and after an experience. Create a practice of discussion and debrief, tying new learning, to things your kids already know.
In summary, learning is not memorizing, let your child’s curiosity drive the learning process. Kids become curious when we frame learning, meaning we help children understand why the learning is meaningful and relevant to their lives.
Everyone learns a little bit differently and we all have different knowledge frameworks in our brains to build upon, so you and your child can explore how learning best happens. It may start with a goal or it may be curiosity driven, but learning happens when we engage with what we’re learning. Kids need to break the learning down into little pieces through their questions and conversations with you and others, through reading, writing, watching and listening and then put that information back together in a way that makes sense by doing something meaningful with it. Doing something with it might mean teaching it to someone else, drawing a diagram, writing something, crafting a presentation, role playing or building some type of project. Your child can choose how to engage with the content, in a way that’s most meaningful and offers your child the most clarity for that new learning to connect to existing knowledge.
As a guide in this process, you may need to let go a bit because curiosity isn’t neat and tidy. When I was teaching in the classroom, many of the best learning moments were the tangents that we somehow ended up following. These tangents were kid curiosity, they were the moments when I was able and wiling to let go of my hallucinations, also known as my lesson plans for the day, to follow their curiosities. When homeschooling, you have the freedom to follow curiosity.
A textbook or a curriculum might make sense to some people, but it won’t be the best method of learning for other people. Being flexible and following your child’s lead will help you come to understand the way your child learns best. If children are asking questions, it means they are thinking. We want to celebrate all types of diversity and one type of diversity is in how your child learns best, so as homeschoolers we get to celebrate, honor and individualize that.
To take a deeper dive in learning how to successfully debrief, as well as the full picture of the technique, Framing, head on over to Boldschoolers Blueprint at boldschoolers.com and join a stellar community of homeschoolers doing education differently. You and your child will learn how to learn, as you help your child construct a deeply engaging, skill-rich learning environment.
Comment below...I'd love to hear your thoughts on workbooks, as well as other types of learning experiences. What are you curious about?
