Tag Archives: school

Markers

It’s seems important to have markers—points along the continuum to clearly state something has ended and something has begun. And even though most people seem drawn towards delineations on some level, there’s something about having kids that really pushes the demand for recording the beginnings and the ends.

It starts with birth and quickly becomes first foods, words, and steps. Just as you record one marker another has already passed and pretty soon you just can’t keep up. But today was a clear marker that’s pretty easy to name but hard to consolidate into a concise description that captures everything that was experienced.

School has begun. Again.

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Photos from June 2016

Photos from May 2016

Diving into Unschooling

I wrote my first post about unschooling and how we were thinking about ways to homeschool a little less than three weeks ago, and pretty much right after I wrote that, it became clear we would be jumping in head first, sooner than later. As the testing began and the pressure rose for our first grader, her days became more miserable and her nights filled with stress and anxiety. We found ourselves thinking (again), surely there must be a better way. So we took the plunge and pulled her out of school.

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Unschoolery: A Look Beyond Limitations

Cross-posted at my personal blog, hokament.

Our oldest has just entered her fifth year of public school with our middle child entering her second, and it's becoming more and more clear, every day, that much of what I read about school from around the country is true for us: public education is broken. I am not an education expert, nor do I play one on TV, but it seems to be that even at some of the "best" schools, education and learning is still about getting good grades to get a good job to make money to buy stuff. And how to get good grades still looks very similar to my primary school education 20+ years ago. In fact, the rubric for success in school is basically the same, too (i.e. turn in your homework, do well on tests, don't rock the boat, etc.).

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And Now We Shift Gears…

Last week we were camping in the mountains at an annual event with friends and family, trying to keep the focus on the moment, our surroundings, and simplifying. This coming week, school starts. We’ll try to keep the focus on the moment, but somehow school raises the level of anxiety and stress about 100 notches—which has us questioning (again) if the path we’re on is the right one.

Isn’t that the constant in parenting? Assessing and finding balance. What’s working, what’s not? What do you change and what do you accept? How can we get close to everyone being happy and content? What can we do now to help our kids be the most well-balanced adults they can be?

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