Day 94 (September 24): Homeschooling Update
Let it be not forgotten, dear reader, that we're also trying to educate our kids in a conventional sense. Please picture this: on a typical day, we try to conduct achieve two hours of parallel productivity for four students in the same small space where we have just prepared, consumed and cleaned up breakfast. Most of our activity is online so we are at the mercy of the local wifi, our mobile hotspot or our cell phone hotspots (the latter two being dependent on cell service).
It reminds me of when Montana didn't, in a strict sense, have a speed limit. Signs announced "reasonable and prudent" and one local explained that the enforceable limit depended on three conditions: the condition of the road, the condition of the weather and the condition of the officer's marriage.
In the name of candor, let's talk about this morning. We were in an RV park with good wifi. When we checked in (yesterday) I noticed that they had a community room next too the office that had tables and chairs and few/no distractions. So, after breakfast, we loaded up our gear and headed to the room. All the stars were aligned except for one critical nebula: the children.
Almost immediately, it became apparent that the kids were utterly exhausted and totally lacking in motivation and focus. We pushed through for about an hour, with Elise retreating to the RV with the twins to work on handwriting with markers instead of addition with tablets.
Back at work, the language I would use to describe this would be the difference between successful strategies and successful tactics. At a high level, I'd say Henry, Ali and Cate are in a good groove (strategy) but, on this occasion, the tactics failed. In contract, our approach to Lily's schooling, which is basically an online version of a traditional school day and week, is a total disaster and entirely at odds with the modus operandi of our trip.
This means we're having to figure out how to transition, a month into the school year, from one strategy. Thanks to the internet gods, we were able to order a new math curriculum and deliver it to an Amazon locker in Birmingham, where we'll fetch it later this week. That leaves "English" (known these days as "language arts") and on this topic we are pretty confounded.
Again, strategies and tactics. Obviously, there's no problem picking books to read, assigning essays to write, picking discussion guides to structure the process...but then there's the tactics. We (Elise and I) agree with the collective perspective in the world that it's ideal, especially with a tween, to externalize the structure of the syllabus. Better to have a calendar that is a third party than ourselves. So while it might be easier to be entirely self-paced, that means the tension is between child/student and parent/teacher. And so the search continues.
Meanwhile, we arrived today in Montgomery, Alabama, for the start of our civil rights "module." I've been looking forward to the education I hope we will achieve here. I'm optimistic. But it's like a microcosm of the last month. From the outside, this trip is an epic education and it seems like the more we "do" the bigger and better the learning. But we still have the basics to cover. Almost every day, we face this tradeoff between the conventional and the unconventional education.
It reminds me of when Montana didn't, in a strict sense, have a speed limit. Signs announced "reasonable and prudent" and one local explained that the enforceable limit depended on three conditions: the condition of the road, the condition of the weather and the condition of the officer's marriage.
In the name of candor, let's talk about this morning. We were in an RV park with good wifi. When we checked in (yesterday) I noticed that they had a community room next too the office that had tables and chairs and few/no distractions. So, after breakfast, we loaded up our gear and headed to the room. All the stars were aligned except for one critical nebula: the children.
Almost immediately, it became apparent that the kids were utterly exhausted and totally lacking in motivation and focus. We pushed through for about an hour, with Elise retreating to the RV with the twins to work on handwriting with markers instead of addition with tablets.
Back at work, the language I would use to describe this would be the difference between successful strategies and successful tactics. At a high level, I'd say Henry, Ali and Cate are in a good groove (strategy) but, on this occasion, the tactics failed. In contract, our approach to Lily's schooling, which is basically an online version of a traditional school day and week, is a total disaster and entirely at odds with the modus operandi of our trip.
This means we're having to figure out how to transition, a month into the school year, from one strategy. Thanks to the internet gods, we were able to order a new math curriculum and deliver it to an Amazon locker in Birmingham, where we'll fetch it later this week. That leaves "English" (known these days as "language arts") and on this topic we are pretty confounded.
Again, strategies and tactics. Obviously, there's no problem picking books to read, assigning essays to write, picking discussion guides to structure the process...but then there's the tactics. We (Elise and I) agree with the collective perspective in the world that it's ideal, especially with a tween, to externalize the structure of the syllabus. Better to have a calendar that is a third party than ourselves. So while it might be easier to be entirely self-paced, that means the tension is between child/student and parent/teacher. And so the search continues.
Meanwhile, we arrived today in Montgomery, Alabama, for the start of our civil rights "module." I've been looking forward to the education I hope we will achieve here. I'm optimistic. But it's like a microcosm of the last month. From the outside, this trip is an epic education and it seems like the more we "do" the bigger and better the learning. But we still have the basics to cover. Almost every day, we face this tradeoff between the conventional and the unconventional education.
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