“For us, homeschooling isn’t doing school at home, it’s a whole lifestyle of learning! It’s a way of life!”
“The first thing I tell new homeschoolers is you don’t have to make it look like school at home!”
“Homeschooling is nothing like school at home.”
I came across another one of these again today. Homeschoolers love to talk about (and talk shit about) this phrase “school at home.” The idea is that some people may think that in order to educate their kids at home, they have to recreate what’s happening in the average school classroom. But not to worry! More seasoned homeschoolers are here to correct them! And you know what? There’s some merit to this idea. After all, a whole lot of people turn to home education because they don’t like what’s happening in classrooms! And when people first begin to educate at home, it may be that school is the only paradigm they’ve ever considered for children learning the things they need to learn. Some people really do need a little help to “think outside the box” so to speak. Sure.
But.
We are way beyond gently encouraging parents to be creative and not rush out to buy desks and line them up in rows. In most of the homeschool spaces I’ve been in, “school at home” is practically a strawman. It’s the most hated and derided of educational methodologies, and basically no one will admit to doing it.
Seeing yet another “homeschooling is not the same as school at home!” post on social media made me want to offer a mild defense of the concept. Because while it’s true that we should analyze our assumptions about learning and that learning doesn’t have to look like what’s happening in the classroom, that truth goes both ways.
Just because something happens in classrooms doesn’t mean it’s all bad, and doesn’t mean it’s not learning.
So here it is, your permission to do “school at home” if it works for you! And here are six reasons that your home education might look a bit more like school than some folks are comfortable with other than what they seem to assume (you’re brainwashed, naturally).
1. You and/or your children want and/or need a consistent and predictable routine.
“We don’t have a school schedule, because learning happens all the time!”
That’s nice, but most kids thrive on some level of predictability, and some more than others. Some adults too! A consistent and reliable routine can help us to feel safe and calm, which aside from just being a good way to feel, can make it easier to focus and you know, learn stuff. As an autistic parent, if my day has a reliable and consistent pattern to it, I feel ok, but if it feels unpredictable, I feel confused, hazy, and panicky, all day. It puts me on edge and makes me more likely to lose my temper. I am not a good teacher under those circumstances!
But you don’t have to have a particular neurodivergence to benefit from a regular schedule, lots of people just seem to prefer it that way, and you know what? That’s fine. It doesn’t make you incapable of being spontaneous (although I might be!). It doesn’t make you a stick in the mud. If it feels good for you and your family to have a schedule, there’s no reason not to do it.
Also, we live in capitalism and a whole lot of us work at least part time while home educating. That may mean that being ready to help your kids learn on the fly 24/7 just isn’t possible for you, even if you would otherwise be cool with that lifestyle.
The fact that you do not have to have a strict schedule to homeschool does not mean that there are no benefits to a consistent routine.
2. You and/or your children enjoy having dedicated space for learning.
A lot of homeschooling families do most of their “book work” at the dining table, and that’s fine and good. A lot of kids may move around throughout the day, all over the house, doing “school stuff.” This is also fine! Kids do half their work outside? Awesome! In the car! That’s chill as long as they don’t get motion sickness.
But some people like having a dedicated space. A “classroom” if you will. And you know what? Those people just like it! It doesn’t mean they’re not creative or are too rigid or whatever else you may have heard about the boogeyman of “school at home.”
Why might you want dedicated space? Maybe it means you have a room in which you can leave our half finished projects and experiments without having them in the general living space! Maybe it just makes sense with the layout of your home. Or maybe it’s a helpful mental cue for you or the kids like “when we go through this door, we’re in learning mode.” I put specific background sounds on on my headphones when I need to focus on certain types of tasks. Having a “classroom space” works the same way for lots of people.
3. The structure just works for your kids’ learning styles.
We’ve all met those kids who push back against every single curriculum. Being told what to do pisses them off, and they struggle to focus on anything that looks or feels like “school work” even when they try. But you know what? All kids are different. Some kids love curriculum. Some kids relax into a well planned lesson. Some kids like for things to be strucutured, to have clear goals, and to work towards them.
Teaching those kids is going to look a good deal more “schoolish.”
4. Scheduling around extracurriculars and work schedules may mean “school hours” are the best time to “do school.”
One thing about educating at home that many homeschoolers love to celebrate is the flexible schedule. You can do whatever you want, whenever you want, so why would you do education from nine to three? I’ve known families where the older kids do most of their school work in the evening, when the littler kids have already gone to bed so they aren’t bugging them. A whole lot of families school with a “checklist” method. They know they’re going to do math and language arts at some point today, but who knows when! They’ll get to it when they get to it. And then there are the many homeschoolers who brag that they are done with school by noon every day. “That way we have the afternoon for fun.”
All of that is fine, if it works. And yes, it’s true that the hours and days that kids tend to be in school aren’t necessarily the best for learning for everyone (but often correlate to the hours a lot of folks need childcare). But guess what? Some people end up doing their homeschool stuff during “regular school hours.” If kids want to participate in afterschool activities with kids who do go to school, they can’t be doing school during those times! And while yes there’s no reason kids need to do schoolwork five days a week per se, if one of their parents works a M-F 9-5 you may want to leave weekends open for family time.
And while some families may be able to power through everything before lunch, others are going to need regular breaks in order to focus, and that stretches thing out considerably. If you are spreading lessons out throughout the day, you may end up deciding “we want to be done by 4 because of soccer” or whatever! And it’s fine, just like it’s fine if you do school in the evening or whatever else!
5. Skills practice requires regularity and review. For some kids this is even more needed.
Kids can learn so many cool things by following their interests! But now, if you’ve been here awhile, you know what I’m going to bring up next: reading. Some kids can and will teach themselves to read (my partner did at age) but others can’t and won’t. Most kids need some help with reading, and reading isn’t just one skill, it’s a complex blending of multiple skills and all of those skills require practice.
For some kids, it’s a lot of practice. And that’s ok! And they may not always be self motivated to do it, and you know what? That’s ok too. An educator’s job is to give kids tools, and part of that is saying “I know you might not want to practice phonics today, but I also know that when you practice every day, it gets easier.”
While it’s true that homeschooling overall takes less time than the typical school day, it’s also true that how much less time varies. Sometimes to work on skills practice (spelling, reading, math, handwriting, etc) it requires a fuller day and a day that looks more like school than what many home educators prefer.
6. Assessments can be helpful for measuring some things, and they don’t have to be traumatic or scary.
Ok, we’re talking about tests! Most home educators seem to hate them and put them off as long as possible. And you know what? That has been me. I’ve watched the educational system become more and more obsessed with assessment and standardized tests, to the point where teachers have to “teach to the test” most of the year, and I’ve seen how it frustrates everyone. I’m fortunate to have one child, and a lot of the time I can tell how she’s doing on a subject by simply paying attention.
But some homeschoolers do test! And that doesn’t make them evil or whatever. Tests are there to measure things and they can be useful. And one thing that I have recently learned is that if you don’t put a lot of pressure on tests and treat them like the be all end all of whether or not a kid is “good” or “smart” or whatever, they don’t necessarily stress kids out.
When my child attended school this year, she had to take a standardized test. It was explained to her that it was simply to measure where she was at in various subjects so that the teachers would know how best ot help her. Now when I was a kid, I understood that the point of tests was to do as well as possible, and that if I didn’t do excellent I would be in trouble. But my kid? She believed them! They told her she could take as long as she needed and it didn’t matter how she did.
Reader, she said the test was “kind of fun.”
She took the longest in her class. And then we got the results. And much to my shock, they were interesting and useful to me! She was much further along in reading than I expected. My own assessment of her just by watchin her in lessons, that was subjective. But the test wasn’t, or at least not in the same way. We may test again in the spring!
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It’s true that home education doesn’t have to look the same as classroom education, and you do not have to do all six of these things, anymore than you have to rush out and buy desks and workbooks! Most people don’t do them all, in fact. You may have a set schedule, but no homeschooling space. You may do a lot of typical classroom things but do them entirely on your own timeline. Hell, you could even go totally interest led learning but then test twice a year!
But whatever you do or don’t do, when the “it doesn’t have to be school at home!” homeschoolers come for you, I’ll be here to back you up with a hearty “yeah but doesn’t doesn’t have to not be that either!”
Over the years, I have found our homeschool looking an awful lot like “school at home.” While we don’t have one dedicated space, we do have a beloved chalkboard! And yeah, we school approximately 9am to 3pm, with lots of breaks for movement and meals in there. When my daughter briefly attended school, she loved the academics, and when she returned to home education the first thing she asked for was more “classes” per day. That’s shifting a bit now, and that’s ok too. The point is that the flexibility of home education is cool and useful, but to actually be flexible it has to include the option of doing the “normal” thing too.
To put it another way, sometimes you think outside the box, and then realize the box is actually a pretty good size and shape for your purpose.