Wednesday 28 March 2012

Socialisation

I first heard of homeschooling, when I was sitting a 3rd year university paper "Teaching Children With Special Abilities" towards my B.Ed. The compulsory text was a collection of essays edited by Don McAlpine and Roger Moltzen, titled "Gifted and Talented: New Zealand Perspectives". The last essay was written by Jean Hendy-Harris, a mother of (at least) one gifted child, who homeschooled. It's over ten years since I read it, so I may not recall precisely the wording or pertinent details, however one sentiment blazoned itself upon my little neuro-networks. Jean Hendy-Harris wrote that she was stunned that EVERY time she informed someone that she homeschooled, the response of the person she was speaknig to was something to the effect of "How will your child learn to get on with others?" Her conclusion: it was almost as if everyone understood that school is not about being educated, that school is about learning social skills.

School is not about being educated. School is about learning Social Skills...

This concept is supported, in part at least, by the fact that a key compenent of the Ministry of Education's  Application for an Excemption from being Enrolled at a Registered School is a need for the parent to demonstrate that their child will have ample opportunities to socialise and interact with other children while being homeschooled. The implication is that children who are homeschooled are at risk of having fewer social skills, and being less able to interact with others. As a group, homeschooling parents are a diverse lot. Our reasons for choosing to homeschool are varied. Our approaches to education are mixed.

There is one thing homeschooling families can all agree on. The ludicrousy of the idea that school children are better able to socialise than homeschool children.

Yesterday, Wednesday the 28th of March, an occurrence prompted the subject matter for this blog post. Wednesdays, we join a number of other homeschooling families in the Waitakere area at West Wave Recreational Centre. While our children engage in an hour of P.E. with the intsructors, the adults interact and support each other in our homeschooling journeys. We engage in dialogue about a variety of subjects revolving not only around homeschooling, but also life in general, topics of interest, and occassionally some debate. Essentially we use this time as crucial socialisation... for the adults. Upon the completion of the hour, a small group of homeschooling families then go the the swimming pool within the complex. We get a reduced entry rate, and our children will swim, play and interact, while we sit poolside, indulging in a coffee from the cafe there, and continue our networking.

On this particualr occassion, we discussed another parent's concern that her children seemed to be missing out on interactions with the other homeschooled children. We observed that a posible contributing factor, was that whenever her children struggled to intergrate within a group, she would promptly move in to resolve the situation for her children. We compared this to our approach that advocated a stand back, and 'let them work it out for themselves' approach, trusting that our children would persist, and develop effective and constructive strategies for integrating into the group. When our children became frustrated, they would come to us, we console them, or provide them an emotional refuge to regroup, and then suggest an alternate strategy (if needed) for them to implement. 

Meanwhile, in the pool, 7 of our 8 children were engaged in an active game of "Cops and Robbers" where the cops chased and gathered the robbers into a 'gaol'. The robbers would then escape, and the cops would once again go out to catch them. The robbers and cops were revolving roles. Everyone got the chance to escape, and be caught  My eldest son T, who was one of the two youngest in the game at age 8, and the children ranged in age upto 13. There were 3 girls, and 4 boys, from 4 families. Not long into their game, another child, of similar age, approached and tried to become involved.Our children quickly welcomed him into their game. Of the original 7 children, not one has ever attended a state school. 2 had been homeschooled their entire lives, 4 had attended a Waldorf school, and T had attended a Montessori school. All the chldren had been homeschooled for a timer period sufficient to have been de-schooled. Their exposure to typical school yard social skills has been somewhat limited. It was fascinating to observe the ensuing interactions. We sat as a group watching, and comentating on the actioons of the new child in particular. The following were some of the comments we made.

Who is that child?

Is he one of ours?

I don't recognise him...

He's obviously a school kid... look at his body language, so aggressive.

He hasn't a clue how to interact socially.

He's being pretty rough

Oh, did you see that, our child did not appreciate that at all

See how our lot are ignoring his inappropriate behaviours

It's like he's inviting them to gang up and belittle one of the others

Oh My God, look at that, T(8) is clinging on to B(13) to prevent her from escaping from the Gaol, and he's make lewd comments... T is 8 for goodness sake.

Did you see that? they all just moved together in a way to isolate him from the group. Clearly they're not appreciating his comments.

Oh he's not happy, look at his face, he's quite perplexed.

Uh..oh! Did you see that, He's starting to hit our children. (meanwhile in the background there is a loud blast of the whistle from the lifeguard, who gestures wildly at the 'new' child to stop).

At this stage, we were getting close to the time that we needed to leave. I moved over to the paddling pool where K(6) was enjoying splash-free water time, to let him know it would soon be time to go. While there, a mother with a toddler, and a belly that looked an awful lot like an early pregnancy protrusion, introduced herself. She'd recently moved to Auckland from Nelson, and had missed the P.E. but had decided to come and swim. I nodded towards the pool, and asked "Oh. Is he your son?" she answered in the affirmative. I asked if they had been homeschooling while in Nelson. Again an affirmative, however she did say it was new. They'd only been homeschooling since septemeber 2011. Internally a did a little dance of glee. We were right.

A few minutes later, as I was in the changing room with my two boys, we talked about the pool. T(8) mentioned how much fun he had playing with the others. I remarked that I had noticed that they had a few challenges with the new boy who had just moved to Auckland from Nelson. T(8)'s response blew my mind and instilled me with a sense of pride.

"Yeah.He didn't always play very nice. He must be new to homeschooling I guess" He paused and asked "Why do kids who go to school not know how to play nice?". I replied that at state school the children have to do what the teachers tell them to do, so they don't always get the chance to learn to do what is right, rather than what another person tells them to do. He replied "I didn't have to learn that though". No, I answered, but you didn't go to a school where the teachers told you everything you had to do. You went to a school where you got to make some decisions for yourself, and work things out for yourself, with help from the teacher. Another pause and T(8) stated "Well I guess we'll have to help him. And he might have to see you too so you can help him with his brain"

Clearly, Homeschool kids don't have strong social skills.

Oh, and in case you missed that... that was irony.

To be clear... from the Collins Concise English Dictionary Second edition

Socialise
1. vb to behave in a friendly or sociable manner.
2. to prepare for life in society

Irony
1. the humourous or mildly sarcastic use of words to imply the opposite of what they normally mean
2. an instance of this, used to draw attention to some incongruity or irrationality
3. incongruity between what is expected to be and what actually is, or a situation or result showing such incongruity


Monday 19 March 2012

The 3R's Part 2

K is a different child to T. He presents different challenges to our parenting. His attitude to  life in general, and learning particular things is very different to those of his older brother. This is apparent in how he is learning to read. He did not go to school, he was early in talking, he was never put into reading recovery, his journey to literacy will be much more 'natural' / unschooly than his elder brother. Having said that, he has witnessed his brother's outburst, and has learnt from this that reading is hard. He therefore does not want to have anything much to do with it. Furthermore, his overall disposition is one of encouraging others to do for him, rather than do for himself. As a result, he's not feeling any great incentive to attempt to read.

I have a secret weapon that is more effective with K than with T. K is passionate about games. Actually that's probably not entirely accurate. T is pretty passionate about games, K is more obsessed.

Christmas 2010 we purchased a nintendo DS game "Scribblenauts" with the intent of utilising K's passion for the DS, to encourage him to extend his awareness of the written word. We also strategically gifted this game to ourselves... knowing that K doesn't like "Little kids games" only "Grown up Games like Daddy plays". This strategy did not initially pan out as we had planned, largely due to the fact that in order to play fully you need to have a reasonable standard of literacy. This didn't phase K all that much, he was perfectly content to blithely go through the various 'levels' and hit random keys. The Game Designers had built in a feature where if it didn't recognise a word, it would offer a variety of options that may be somewhat similar to the letters randomly entered (or TM words like jedi). This was actually useful as a means to an end, K began to recognise and remember the first letters of words, find that letter on the qwerty keyboard of the DS screen, and was consequently able to find what he was looking for. In the sense that our goal had been to initiate and extend K's awareness of the written word, the Scribblenauts game did help achieve that goal. We did have some interesting exclamations from K such as "X-X-X spells axe", which led to a relevant tangent regarding spell-checkers, word recognition, pattern recognition, and similairties in words.

 K enjoys creating his own worlds and stories and games... any scenario where he is in full control and succesful. A few months ago, I suggested he could make his own stories. He would be the illustrator / narrator, and I would scribe for him. This pleased him. Here's one of his creations. I would guide his structure a little by asking clarification questions, and pointing out some minor tips about sequence, essentially I wrote what he dictated to me.

K's humans all have very short legs... clearly the legs are not yet a visually important factor, which surprises me considering how often he predominantly sees peoples legs, at his current stature.
Note my concientious effort to model making mistakes... and how to deal with them
Sir Tandy and hawkgagng are the main characters in the stories that Carl tells the boys in the evening. Hawkgang is a police guard dog in medeaval times.


Two weeks ago, he wanted to write a funny story for his friend's birthday. We used a process of spelling out each word on the magnetic board, and K would copy from the board. To ensure that there would be ample space for the story, he wrote the words before drawing the story. He then asked me to write the speech bubbles, because he couldn't write small enough to fit it all in. He's not reading yet, however he's prepared to take risks in creating stories and writing, as he has not had the same negative experiences as his brother.

When I asked K where the underwear were (I frequently rant about how children's books don't have illustrations that match the text) he laughed and with his finger underlined the word "underwear" stating "Here they are here Babsie!"



Sunday 18 March 2012

The "R" of the "3R's"


I grew up and was educated within the New Zealand state school system. Then I trained to become a teacher within that system. A system that was built upon the foundation of teaching the “3R's”: Reading, Writing and Arithmetic. I'm not even going to get into the probable efficacy of an education system that fails to recognise the accurate spelling of Writing and Arithmetic.

I chose to homeschool, and particularly to unschool, also known as natural learning. Unschooling seemed a natural follow-on from the attachment parenting philosophy I applied in my children's early childhood. It's a relaxed implementation of self-directed learning advocated in several discipline papers in my B.Ed course of study. Unschooling / Natural learning also provides a platform to eliminate the negative consequences of being “taught” before an individual is ready.

I frequently face some interesting internal challenges in our homeschooling / unschooling journey in finding a comfortable fit for myself, my husband, and my individual learners (my boys). On the one hand, we have the processes through which I was taught by going through the state school system as a student, and as a teacher. On the other hand we have the pedagogical philosophy I developed through later professional development and reflective research.
Without a doubt, to date, the greatest challenge is that revolving around the issue of reading.

In addition to my internal conflict and warring pedagogies of 'personal experience' vs 'best practice as shown in the latest research', I have the challenge of over coming the experiences my eldest had at school and reading recovery. Experiences which have left him with the firm belief that he is unable to read.

So far my belief in the latest research, is supported by reports coming out of scandinavian countries, who have the highest literacy rates in the world per capita, and where formal instruction in reading is not started until a child is at least 7 years of age. I have further support in the New Zealand based research showing that children who had trouble speaking, or are late to talk, will also be later in reading acquisition. The NZCER publication (pictured below) about the reading currciculum in New Zealand advocate delayed intervention for these children, have won out. I have not yet capitulated to my internal voice that stems from my own educational experiences, and force either child to *learn to read* by forcing the boys to read books with simplistic words, and mind numbing story lines.

NZCER publication created as a guide for teachers, principals and Board of Trustees to formulate reading programmes, apparently ignored by the school T was attending.


One benefit of the sitting down and having a child *read to you* is that you have an immediate evaluation tool to assess progress. As neither of my children sit down and read aloud, there is no immediately obvious means of assessing their progress, I have to be alert to more subtle cues and behaviours.

One of the biggest indicators of a reading child, is purportedly an enjoyment of books. Carl, my husband, and I LOVE to read. Both my babies quickly learned that there was no way they would be getting their Mama Melk if Mama did not have a book in hand. Once they achieved some independant mobility,  yet were not yet verbal, they'd ask for milk by approaching me with my book in hand. This active modelling of reading has been shown in various studies to be the key indicator in the succees of literacy acquisition in children, and has led to a number of inititaive such as Allan Duff's "Books in Homes" to promote literacy in New Zealand. When T(8) was in school two years ago he was quickly deposited into reading recovery, despite my pointing out that he was late is talking, had been in speech therapy, and would likely not be ready for reading yet. T however stated a desire to go and I agreed (had I known then about the puppy that the reading recovery teacher had in the room with her, I may have recieved this statement with a little more reservation). Two days after he started, he stopped looking at books at home. He used to spend upto 2 hours per day sitting and looking through books. He no longer enjoyed books. actually that's a huge statement... it needs to be written like this:

He no longer enjoyed books.

My biggest indicator that we were on the right track with homeschooling, was that after about 6 months he started to sit and look through books. It was marvellous, 6 months was the expected time frame for the de-schooling process, and sure enough, after 6 months he resumed his former habit of sitting for upto 2 hours looking at books. I introduced him to Asterix. After all, I taught myself to read in Dutch by reading my father's dutch asterix comics, it seemed perfectly reasonable to expect a similar result for T.

T was interested in learning Bridge not long after, so I created work sheets with information, that he then had to complete the reflective questions. I did not help him at all with these sheets.

T worked independantly, the answers clearly demonstrate his comprehension of the written questions.



After he had completed the first three or four, I felt some constructive feedback was required, as I knew he held the belief that he can not read. I said, "Hey, look at you, you're reading those questions and answering them" He looked up, aghast, and threw his clipboard with attached papers away. He shouted out "No! I can't read!" He has not touched them since!!
This is the 1/2 completed sheet that was thrown away in rejection of my statement that he was reading

I learned my lesson. Watch for the signs that he is reading, and register them internally, share them in private with Carl, but do NOT under any circumstance mention them to T(8).  I am developing a (currently very) little collection of indicators in addition to those above. He still happily spends long periods looking at books, and trips to the library are a weekly event, where he selects a variety of books... yet I still fret.

Indicators Collected:

"Babsie, what does O-L-E spell?" after reading Asterix in Corsica

In a shop, pulling K(6) back from a door saying "No see it says 'Staff Only', we can't go in there K"

While at Crystal Monuntain, and having seen a sign on the gate with an information plaque about Llama, the boys were walking around the park, when K(6) spotted a Llama and exclaimed "Hey what's that?"and T(8) replied "oh, that must be those lama's" (the mispronunciation made me realise he had read the sign, and not that he had overheard from someone else).

Getting information from a book, and sharing it with younger brother... but NOT reading (yeah Right)