Welcome to Boldschoolers! Today, we’re continuing to lay the foundation for learning outside of school. Though I started working with homeschoolers 15 years ago, my first experiences in working with children came out of the public schools. My interest had been in creating immersive, interactive learning environments for groups of children. I often spoke to parents about following a child’s interests and employing at least some self-directed learning, but it wasn’t until I met Megan that I truly saw an example of a homeschooled child immersed in something called flow, and the lights turned on for me in a new way.
Thirteen-year-old Megan thought school was bearable but struggled to get her assignments completed and turned in on time. Her teachers suggested that she had ADHD because she couldn’t seem to focus, but from her perspective, she thought school was just tedious and not very useful. When her mother offered to homeschool Megan and her sister, Megan was hesitant, but the family had just moved to a new state, and it seemed like a good time for a fresh start. Her mother, Samantha, talked to Megan about her interests and Megan mentioned that she wanted to learn how to digitally animate stories. Megan was a fan of graphic novels, though she didn’t think she was much of an artist herself. Samantha found a free online program, and Megan dove in. For the most part, Samantha left her alone with her new computer program, but she was present and available, if Megan reached out. The first day Megan spent 12 hours on the program, only stopping briefly to meet basic needs. That wasn’t what Samantha had in mind, but Megan was driven, actively teaching herself the geometry and algebra she needed to progress forward in the program and commenting later that she had lost track of time, that she was completely into the experience, loving it! Megan adapted the program to creatively build what she imagined in her mind, redefining what was possible. Over the next week, Samantha placed some time boundaries around the computer program, and Megan continued to drop into a state of deep focus and motivation again and again. Samantha and Megan didn’t realize it, but this state has a name: flow; and scientists have been studying it for decades, considering it the source of happiness.
Not everyone has Megan’s experience, What I’ve noticed is that many people spend most of their day doing shallow work. I don’t know about you, but it’s pretty easy for my day to be hijacked…grocery shopping, returning emails, phone calls, kid requests, shuttle duties around town and on and on. …important stuff, but shallow work isn’t very meaningful and multi-tasking, what I call, task-switching, doesn’t create much new value in the world.
What’s rare in the world, though, is intense focus on meaningful curiosities. This might look like a fluidity between who our kids are, what they are doing and how they are doing it. How might our culture shift if children could easily apply long periods of intense focus to problems and interests that they find valuable? What if these kids could drop into the mental and physical state Megan experienced, called flow, and in that state, learn faster than others, tolerate risk, embrace uncertainty, and challenge the status quo? What if those children became their most capable version of themselves in the process? What if we all could do that? Imagine the shift from kids sitting in their seats waiting for someone to tell them what to do and how to do it…waiting to be filled up or maybe they’re simply checked out, mind surfing in their imaginations. Either way, I don’t think there’s a great deal of value there. Kids that can focus deeply on ideas and projects that matter to them become producers in life, rather than consumers of it. Think about your own life and then your child’s. Do you spend time producing or is most of your time spent consuming?
