Teach, Mama, Teach!

By Edie Downs

​I am not an early adopter. I did not ever envision myself homeschooling despite several friends having chosen that lifestyle. I belonged to the “I could never do that” club. Yet I longed for more time with my children, the opportunity to influence their character development, and additional control over our schedule. My older two girls were well ensconced in the neighborhood elementary school when the seed of homeschooling began to take root in my mind. We reluctantly made the leap when DD #1 was about to enter middle school.
 
Initially uncertain, I began to feel the Lord moving in my heart as I turned 180 degrees to embrace this adventure. Playing teacher was my favorite game as a child, and I now couldn’t wait to set up my “classroom”, thumb through curriculum, plan, and teach my little darlings. Reality struck quickly as I realized the difficulty in scheduling and executing work for four children aged 3-11.

​Enter unit studies. We originally bought used Konos manuals from ebay. Coordinating with friends, we started our unit studies. The results were amazing - albeit a little heavy on the planning side - using “real books” at the different reading levels of the children, themed by character traits and covering reading/writing, literature, art, science and history.
 
Buried by the intensity of the planning involved and reeling from the sudden need to care for my husband after a serious motorcycle accident, I again began to seek an alternative. Some early adopter friends had already made the switch to Tapestry of Grace curriculum. The price of the books and the curriculum seemed daunting at first, and my laggard mentality held me back. But when a clever friend on a different curriculum cycle suggested joint ownership of the books, using Tapestry became economically feasible. Reading assignments and projects are laid out in a careful and organized manner for the different ages, solving my planning problem, and we could continue to study the same things together at each girl’s individual level.

​A few problems presented themselves. Tapestry of Grace does not cover math or science. The math we handled separately for each girl, through trial and error over several years figuring out which curriculum made the most sense for whom. We decided to also approach science with a unit study mentality. In a later article, I’ll describe what we used and how it worked.

​Lest you think these years passed peacefully and effortlessly across our homeschooling landscape, let me assure you, they did not. I was often overwhelmed, spending too much time in one area, not enough in another, dealing with one child’s issues while sometimes ignoring others, realizing weeks had gone by and no math had been done by anyone anywhere in my home, refereeing sibling disputes, and trying to get something like dinner on the table for my husband. You get the picture. Although I’ve joked about my resistance to change, it served me in the rough times. I was not likely to change course when one – or all – children became unhappy with homeschooling. I was not willing to quit because we missed half a year of math, or my child couldn’t put together a paragraph. Month by month and year by year, I made very tiny adjustments and along the way I found some helpful tips that I would like to pass along.

1. Homeschool Tracker. For several years, I struggled with how to present the agenda to each of my children and how to make sure they stayed on track from week to week. When I adopted the use of Homeschool Tracker (www.homeschooltracker.com) I was able to set up their assignments and give them a daily checklist, which included things like chores, Bible study, and musical practice.
2. Finding my style. Homeschool moms are always interested in what other families are doing, which almost always sounds superior to what we are doing. Not true. Although I benefited from friends’ experiences and ended up using a few of the things they had already tried, I also strove for rigid structure our first few years, because I saw others succeeding at it. I only found success when I gave my children their lists and let them format their own time. They slept late, did art before math, and (presumably) learned to manage their own time. If they completed their agendas, I was happy. No one loves your kids like you do. Will they remember a stressed-out mom who hated her job as their teacher, or will they gain the life skills necessary to thrive after they’ve left you?
3. Being my child’s teacher. As my children entered high school, it became necessary to outsource certain classes. But when they were younger, we learned together. We sewed costumes and ate foods from the historical periods we studied. We read aloud and did science experiments. They learned, and I learned right beside them. It wasn’t always measurable by some standardized rubric, but these experiences were intrinsic to my kids’ education.
4. Co-ops. Tapestry of Grace has been the cornerstone of our curriculum, and when my elder daughters hit high school, it became difficult to preserve accountability and to have those deep Socratic discussions which make the curriculum so rich in the high school years. Unable to find families to work with in Albuquerque, we found a virtual co-op. For the last 9 years, we have met online every Tuesday morning at 7:30 am with families across the country and across the globe. I still control the learning that happens in my home, but I share the teaching responsibilities, and this has been a priceless experience.
5. “Never hurry, never rest,” is a saying attributed to Dr. Shinichi Suzuki of violin pedagogy renown. With so many options available today, you may be tempted to try everything. But if your reasons for homeschooling parallel mine, don’t make big decisions too quickly, and do as much of the teaching yourself as you can. “Slow and steady” doesn’t necessarily win the race, but it does get you to the finish line.

Edie Downs

In her thirteenth year of homeschooling, and 2 years from the “finish line”, Edie is the wife of Jeff and mother of four daughters, 24, 22, 18, and 15