the squibix family blog

We've been reading chapter books to the boys since Harvey was four, or maybe even three. I think we started with the Borrowers series, or maybe Little House. So just for bedtime reading—and let me tell you we've done a lot more than just bedtime reading!—that's about half-an-hour a night for the last eight years. Or say 20 minutes; sometimes we're short on time. That's about 970 hours, or 40 days, of chapter book readalouds! I wonder how many books we've read together? Or which ones?! The other day we were trying to think of what we were reading three books ago, and had some trouble; one of the boys expressed a wish we had written them all down. Yes, if only we had: what a record that would have been! But we didn't. So I suppose we can't start now.

But we can start a new book! Tonight we dipped into The Purloining of Prince Oleomargarine by Mark Twain and Philip and Erin Stead, and we're all liking it so far. And after it will come another...

I did think it was interesting comparing one facet of Pine Island Home with a book I read on my own a couple days ago: Fighting Words, by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley. It's about a pair of sisters who are in foster care, with their mom in jail after blowing up a motel room cooking meth. The narrator is ten-year-old Della, and she's a fantastically convincing and compelling character with plenty of development. The book deals with—is about!—issues of sexual abuse and child poverty, so neither of my boys for whom it would have been appropriate felt like they wanted to read it, which is fine. But I felt like it was a super valuable read.

The big difference between the two books was their treatment of foster care. In Pine Island Home the kids—four girls from 8 to 14—lose their parents to a tsunami and then, after some time with a caretaker, are sent to Vancouver to live with their great aunt only to find on arriving that she's just died as well. Since nobody else is looking out for them they decide to live in the house on their own, and their greatest fear throughout the story is that they'll be discovered by social services, separated, and taken into care. In Fighting Words Della also begins the story frightened of social services: her mom's abusive boyfriend, who took Della and her older sister in after their mom went to prison, threatens Della that he'll send her to a group home if she complains. But once she actually does enter the foster care system she finds it's made up of people who really care about kids and are willing to stand strong in support of her—even when she's not able to give them much in return.

That arc makes Fighting Words read as real and true. Pine Island Home not so much. That story's four girls aren't rich, but the way the story goes what stands out the most is their privilege. There's some talk of the trauma of losing their parents, but it doesn't really seem real. And they land on their feet in a beautiful multi-acre property on the ocean where they have a real chance of living on their own unless they get found out. I think I understand why the story plays out that way: we want stories about independent kids but we don't want them to be too traumatic. And in the 21st century it's hard to think of kids having realistic independent adventures that aren't. But Fighting Words shows that there are actually plenty of kids having adventurous lives against their will. When Della hears that some kids in her new school never have to worry about where their next meal is coming from she's amazed; she'd never known anyone who wasn't food-insecure. Unfortunately that's very much a reality in 2021, and it's wonderful to have stories that reflect it.

I was super excited to go and pick them up. In retrospect, I could have extended that excitement to the boys by requesting some books that would be particularly delightful to them; I didn't do that. Mostly it's picture book biographies of poets, since that's what I've been thinking about. Still, such is the demand for reading material around here that Harvey has now read every word of all of them (he accomplished the feat in just slightly under 24 hours). Good thing there are more coming! Including some requests from the boys. What I need now is some way for them to access the library website and put in their own holds when they want something... any chance I can manage that before the library reopens for real?

It also helps, of course, that the boys all really love being read to, and that all three of them are interested in a wide variety of styles. In the last couple weeks we've read Misty of Chincoteague and The Tale of Desperaux (that's a new one for us; Leah found it at Savers), and now we're working our way through My Family and Other Animals, an autobiographical account of zookeeper and naturalist Gerald Durrell's childhood on the Greek island of Corfu in the 1930s. I don't think I would have tried to read it to them a year ago at the beginning of the pandemic: it's more episodic and atmospheric than plot-driven, and while it's filled with beautifully written description it's not necessarily a story you'd expect would be enjoyed by a seven-year-old. But it's also silly and full of animals, so I guess that's a winner.

That's not to say I wouldn't much rather have the option, at least, of finding some good new books at the library. Every time we reach the end of one book I start to get nervous that, this time, we've really come to the end of our supply. Everything else is open now: even the elementary schools are now back in person four days a week, and middle and high school will be going back full time in a couple weeks. And we can go to supermarkets and malls and, for all I know, bars and movie theaters! So why not libraries?!

The Jacksons didn't read all those books, all those hours. Other parents and grandparents stepped in for a few—I read three, myself—and a couple kids even did some reading. But they carried the bulk of it, and all of the scheduling effort, and they were definitely the heart and soul of the project. The 30 or so kids who were there that first week back in March didn't all stick around, of course: as schools' remote learning started up some of them got too busy, and others drifted away when the weather got nicer. But that just meant the group that stuck around became more and more of a community (interestingly, all but one of the diehards were homeschoolers...). After the reading ended each day they'd stick around to chat and share games and pictures with the "share screen" function, for 45 minutes or more if they could get away with it. Human contact is precious these days! There was a party on Wednesday to wrap things up, and it definitely felt like something worth scheduling.

At this point, to be honest, we're ready for a break from screens. That full schedule I described in the linked post up again (here it is again if you don't want to scroll up) eased up a bit as the months of the pandemic passed, but not that much. We're doing Kids Church on Sunday, then it's no Zoom for a full week—more, if we can manage it—while we clear our brains and get ready for fall. We're planning a little more (careful) human contact, but we know that there will be plenty of virtual interaction too. Which is fine: because the Jacksons have shown us how well it can go! Yay for Zoom Through a Book!

The book is available now on Amazon if you want to take a look at it: only $12.99, or free on Kindle Unlimited! (whatever that is...). I also have one spare copy that I can pass on to the first person who lets me know they want it!

Or if you just want to read my chapter (totally understandable! but the others are good too) here it is:

ABOUT OUR FAMILY

I sometimes tell people that we fell into homeschooling by accident. Our oldest was still four the year we got a kindergarten registration packet in the mail for the first time. He would have been one of the youngest kids in his class, we didn’t feel like kindergarten would be that good for him, and we enjoyed having him around . . . so we kept him home. That year we just kept on doing the same kinds of things we’d always done together as a family, and it was fine. Then when the new school year arrived we wanted to stick with that routine, so we filed a home education plan like the state wanted us to. The next thing we knew, we were homeschooling three boys age ten, eight, and five! Amazing.

Only that’s not really the real story. And anyone who sends their kids to school can probably spot the clues in that first paragraph. Like, why didn’t our son go to preschool? How did we ever think that “just keeping him home” was an option? And why on earth did we want to?! Really, our thoughts about the childhood we hoped he could have were non-standard from the beginning. And that’s despite the fact that I’m trained in Elementary Education and worked in public schools.

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT HOMESCHOOLING

One important reason we home educate is that we like being with our kids. We’ve been lucky enough to have flexible work schedules to make that happen—my wife, Leah, was home when the first two boys were little, then we each worked part time for the “preschool” years, and now she’s working full time while I hold things down at home. I enjoy doing things with my kids, and I want to make sure that they’re able to do the things that they find important and valuable. Also, we don’t want to waste their time! I’m 100% committed to the existence of public schooling as a public good, and I think most public school teachers are fantastic people—but schools require kids to be there in that building for six or seven hours a day to get maybe an hour of relevant instructional time. It’s better for them to be free of those walls.

Our home education is shaped by two sometimes competing impulses. First is our belief that kids are human beings with an inbuilt drive to learn, and with the capacity—and right!—to make many decisions for themselves. (I keep John Holt’s How Children Learn and Agnes Leistico’s I Learn Better By Teaching Myself on the bookshelf above my desk to remind myself of that when I start to get stressed out.) I recognize that a big part of learning comes through play: For example, I’ve had moments of despair at failed attempts to get my kids writing, but then I notice them playing with little figures and narrating a complex, multi-character story. Learning also needs to be driven by genuine interest: Nobody can learn something they don’t care about.

At the same time, though, I am trained as a teacher and sometimes I like teaching things. So I don’t think you could really call us unschoolers. A few days a week we have some organized instructional time, all together or one-on-one. Some weeks it’s every day! Sometimes there are even worksheets. But that more formal work is always conditional on the kids’ voluntary engagement: I try to make it explicit that they don’t have to participate if they’re not interested (though sometimes the frustration in my voice when I say it undercuts the message—something I have to work on!). In my more self-aware moments I call our less-inspired instructional time “playing school” and recognize that, at best, it’s giving the kids tools to do their own learning later. But sometimes it brings real engagement in the moment. Like this week when our study of reproduction and genetics led to the creation of a pencil-and-paper game that had us breeding monsters for the next two days.

I think what I love most about home education is flexibility. When it’s rainy and there’s nothing to do, we can read books together and talk about them. Maybe something in a book will inspire us to do some drawing. Or maybe we’ll just play a board game. On sunshiny days anyone who wants to can be outside for hours, observing—even if only in passing and by accident—the natural world. Sometimes math instruction is practicing times tables (is there any way to learn basic multiplication facts except by doing them over and over?), but sometimes it’s building a picnic table and calculating the angle to cut the pieces for the legs. How many degrees are in a triangle? I’m not good at planning, so I’m happy to come up with a general idea—talking about reproduction, say—and see where it takes us.

I also feel that it’s incredibly valuable for my kids to be able to learn as individuals. Even beyond their particular interests, which they may or may not be able to develop in a school setting, school norms would force them into possibly uncomfortable boxes. Watching the three of them grow up I see that their learning and development doesn’t move forward in a linear way but in fits and starts, and at different rates for each of them. Because of that, I can’t think of them as a “fifth-grader,” a “third-grader,” and a “kindergartener,” and compare them to their peers in each of those grades. Neither of my older two boys learned to read before their second-grade year, which would have meant hours and hours of separate reading instruction had they been in school; now they both spend endless time absorbed in books. And I don’t even have to call that a success story: In the home education setting, not liking to read would also be fine! Home education lets each child really be themselves.

HOMESCHOOLING CHALLENGES

That’s not to say there aren’t challenges! Some challenges are wrapped up with the same things that attracted me to this lifestyle in the first place. Flexibility, for example, goes both ways. It can be hard to abandon my designs for the day when it’s clear the kids need something else. And sometimes it’s hard to come up with any ideas of what to do! If there was a plan that we had to follow—if somebody else was telling us what to do—then at least I wouldn’t have to worry about coming up with all the ideas. Also, as the “education planner” in the household, I sometimes struggle with knowing when to intervene: Should I work to make sure my ten-year-old can write his numbers the right way around, or to encourage my six-year-old to use a “proper” pencil grip? If I don’t teach them math am I allowing them to develop their interest in the subject naturally and organically, or am I denying them the foundation they need to discover a love of more complicated mathematics later? I don’t know.

Enjoying spending time with the kids can also lead to challenges: If I didn’t like being with them, I wouldn’t need to work so hard to engage them! Lots of people with kids in school imagine home education means my kids are asking me what to do all the time; that is not the case. Most of the time they’re happy to ignore me and do their own thing together or individually. That dynamic also interacts with my teacher sensibilities. When I think there’s something they would enjoy learning then I need to work hard to present it in a way that will draw them in. And sometimes it’s a complete bust anyway! It’s discouraging to come up with what I think is a fascinating project or outing that, when offered, doesn’t elicit anything more than a vague “no thanks” from behind a book. On the other side of the coin, sometimes it’s hard for me to see value in what they’re choosing to do because it’s different than what I would choose. Screen time, for example, is an ongoing issue in our house that hasn’t yet been entirely resolved by democratic and non-coercive means.

There’s also some stress around other people’s expectations. People asking if our six-year-old is reading, for example, or offering pointed questions about “socialization.” Not to mention reporting and state standards! A few years ago, for my annual progress report to the school district, I sent in a writing sample for my oldest son. He had worked so hard on the skills it took to be able to write out an entire page, and I was so proud of him. In the letter we got back from the school district, the only personalized note—the only personalized response we’ve ever received in four years of reporting—was a suggestion to look into tools for online spelling practice. Sometimes all those expectations get to me, and I find myself saying things to the kids like, “I know you don’t want to, but you absolutely must produce something that the state will see as learning.” That’s dumb, right?

Because, really, I know that they’re learning all the time (even if I sometimes need John Holt to remind me). They learned to ride bikes, to swim, to draw and write comic books, to wash dishes, to make jigsaw puzzles, to know when to walk away from a friend who’s making bad choices. And I didn’t teach them any of that! Although I did offer tips on the jigsaw puzzles and, more pointedly, the dishes. I do get to teach them some things—about seeds and eggs, about converting fractions into decimals, about our country’s history of racism, about the poems that I love. Put it all together, and it’s totally worth it. In our house, education isn’t something that happens somewhere else, separate from the rest of our life. It’s just another part of everything we do together as we work, play, relax, and adventure together. And I love it!

PARTING WORDS

Should everyone have their kids learn at home? Lots of the time I think that, yes, of course they should! But I also think that everyone should keep chickens and travel by bicycle and listen to weird music and go to bed when it gets dark. My personal preferences, that is to say, are sometimes idiosyncratic. I recognize that for many people the reality of jobs and schedules means that there’s no time to think about organizing home education. That’s fine! Despite some strong words above, I think public school is a great option. I liked most of my own time there, both as a student and as a teacher. But when parents tell me, “I could never teach my own kids!” I have to disagree. If you want to, you can! You’re already teaching them all the most important things in their lives. And all the rest—math, history, science—is just learning together!

While I was sick the other day I read Barbara Kingsolver's Flight Behavior, which I enjoyed even if a few things about it troubled me. Mainly how strongly its main themes were presented as moral lessons: that monarch butterflies are tremendously valuable both for their beauty and for their role as a proxy for wider environmental issues, which I agree with, and that you should leave your spouse if you're not totally in love with them, on which I have more nuanced opinions. Although maybe you shouldn't trust my review of the book since I was pretty loopy with fever when I pushed through the whole thing in basically one sitting (one "lying-in-bedding?"). But yes, monarchs. Yay monarchs!