Here’s another homeschool/unschool nugget of wisdom I ran across:
“Instead of seeing myself as a “teacher” needing to find lesson plans and curriculum, I came to see myself more like a librarian who was helping my children to find the resources they needed. This empowered our family to move outside of my “schoolish” mindset and encouraged my children to pursue their passions. During this process, I began to learn to trust my instincts concerning how children learn.”
Here’s an interesting article about unschoolers who play World of Warcraft.
When we started out homeschooling the boys, we took a very rigid, curriculum based approach. As time went on, we realized that these boys just don’t learn like that, which is one of the reasons they aren’t in school anyway. These days we have more of an unschooling approach. Sometimes, I see their breakthroughs in learning and their curious questions about different subjects and fill with pride. Other times, I think we should remove all electronics from our house and make them read more!
Anyway, after reading the above article, here’s the part I gleaned the most from:
“If that sounds like a full-time proposition for parents - it is, and it should be, asserts Dr. Mike Sacken, a professor of education at Texas Christian University in Fort Worth, Texas. “Boy, you can’t be casual about this!” he exclaims. “If someone wants to be able to do this, they need to be available full time, guiding the child’s inquiry-based learning. It’s not like you can leave a child alone most of the time and at the end of the day, you can do reflection with them and they’ll have discovered physics. You have to be with them all the time.” “
Of course, I work full-time, and sometimes go to school in the evenings, so I personally cannot be with them all the time - their grandma or dad is doing that. My insight, based on this, is that when I am with them, after school, on the weekend, etc… I need to spend more time BEING with them, and being less of a lazy parent.
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