First Homeschool Evaluation

Evaluations for homeschool were waived this year, but I decided to schedule one anyway. I felt if I went through another school year without knowing if my paperwork was adequate, it would stress me out too much. Plus, I wanted to recognize and validate Laurel and Marko's hard work in some way. They wrote letters and I wrote a summary and we put samples of their work in plastic sleeves. It was very satisfying to see them holding the completed portfolios and talking about what they had learned. We met with the evaluator on her back porch and did elbow bumps instead of hand shaking when we finished. It turns out she also went to Pitt to be a reading specialist and we knew a lot of the same people! 

As new homeschoolers, we ditched a lot of what we originally planned. I did a ton of planning and fretting last summer! I even went to a homeschooling conference. Thankfully I didn't spend a ton of money on things we didn't use, but I definitely filled up my computer with files.

I ended up not doing a lot of daily lesson planning in advance. Instead we followed some routines (math, reading, writing and physical education every day....all other subjects once a week) and I would log what we read or did on these monthly log forms. Basically I just jotted down the title of the book or video and maybe a short note about an activity. I sat down with each kid one-on-one every day, but not for very long. We kept a lot of goal lists in our notebooks and referenced them frequently. We came up with some ways to make sure M got to work with the kids. Every few months I would glance over the standards on PDESAS just to see that we were on the right track or if there was something I should steer us towards by finding a book or video on a subject. 

The best mid year purchase I made was Brave Writer Arrow guides, but I also got a lot out of the (free) Brave Writer podcasts.  Julie Bogart's advice that "help helps" and "joy is the best teacher" really helped me break some of my worst teacher-y habits. I used to make kids struggle for so long on their own when they didn't know what the hell they were doing because I thought it was good for them to figure it out on their own. It was painful for everybody. She also helped me trust that my kids could actually master skills and content without doing massive amounts of repetitive work. The key is to spiral back and have them review things periodically. Waiting until my kids were in a good head space to tackle hard material was revolutionary. They become incredibly easy to teach and we both end up learning and having fun with each other. And that last part is really the thing that I'm going to focus on during the coming year...learning new things is fun and a great way to build a relationship.

We had a lot of adventures this year and it was wild to hear Marko and Laurel tell about watching a video on the Spiral Jetty and then driving down a dusty dirt road to actually see it in person. "It's art made of rocks! You can walk on it!" But even these months stuck at home, Marko learned to use a dremel and Laurel learned to double or half recipes and everybody made some music and read a million books. 

The big regret of this year was not connecting with other homeschoolers as much. We traveled a lot and then when we came back the pandemic kind of killed the opportunity for meetups or homeschool classes. We are still in touch with school friends, but it's a really challenging time to foster friendships with children.