It's Homeschool, NOT School at Home

Written by Jessica.

On a typical school morning in my house, in between their schoolwork, my children engage in any number of activities that don’t look much like “real” school.

Coloring 

Building something

Playing with favorite toys 

Doing a puzzle

Making a fort 

Petting the cat

Playing together 

Just being

Maybe your homeschool functions a lot like ours, with lots of white space built naturally into your day – but, like me, you have to keep reminding yourself that shorter school days and more free time really are okay.

Maybe you feel the burden of your own or others’ expectations, or the ghosts of your past experiences with traditional schooling.

Or maybe you feel hemmed in by your state’s requirements for paperwork, standardized state tests, or X number of school days/X numbers of hours. Or maybe you struggle with deciding how those hours and days should be filled. 

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Here's a glimpse into the traditional school classroom and some perspective on why longer lessons and longer school days are necessary there, and why it’s more than okay to do things differently at home:

There’s a whole lotta wasted time in traditional classrooms. 

In the school

Taking attendance and lunch count, responding to parental correspondence, practicing things like fire drills and emergency dismissal procedures…this takes time. Waiting for all students to take out their books and supplies, to be prepared for a lesson, to put away their materials…this takes time. Learning classroom routines like lining up, procedures for doing centers or group work, how to go in and out of the classroom for lunch, recess, and extra classes…all of these things take time. In fact, much time is lost in the traditional classroom just learning how to do routines, not to mention waiting for all the students to follow them.

In the home

By its very nature, a homeschooling day is going to be shorter than a school day in a traditional classroom. The routine is usually far more efficient and has less administrative requirements, and the teacher-to-student ratio is much smaller. There isn’t going to be that wasted time doing school-specific routines or waiting for a large group to do things in unison. So instead of looking at free time in our homeschool days as something to be filled up just because we “should,” let’s look at it for what it is: a gift. 

There are extra interruptions and delays in the traditional classroom due to the volume of students.

In the school

Even in the most highly ordered classroom, there are a plethora of interruptions.

The parent that stops by during arrival time with “just a quick question.”
The child who can’t find ___ for the lesson.
The child who has been absent for several days and now has to be caught up to be able to keep up with the rest of the class.
Bathroom requests.
Water requests.
The ever-constant need to sharpen pencils.
A child that has a dentist appointment that afternoon and who needs all of their remaining classwork and homework put together at a moment’s notice.
Children being pulled out for speech therapy or remedial reading who need to be caught back up to the rest of the class once they return.
A squabble at recess that needs to be addressed immediately.

These constant interruptions and delays chip away at authentic learning time. 

In the home

Interruptions, demands, and time constraints that cause teachers to be unable to meet all of their students’ academic needs effectively are frustrating no matter the setting. As homeschooling parents, we often feel pulled in many different directions, too - trying to balance home and school, to teach multi-ages at the same time, and to meet the needs of all our children, who often vary greatly in age and abilities. But when children have to wait – for their turn, for help, or for the next activity – that time is much better spent in play or pursuing a hobby or interest than sitting confined to a desk in the classroom. 

  

Hours spent in a classroom do not automatically equate to hours learning. 

In the school

Yes, the standard school day is six hours. But every single minute of every single one of those hours is not being spent learning. And I’m not talking about recess and lunch or all of the wasted time described above. The actual learning time is also less.

Any time students are learning in a large group, there is always a group of kids who are advanced learners - the ones who don’t need the slow pace or the lengthy time spent on topics. These children are held back from being challenged and reaching their fullest potential. At the opposite end, there are children who really struggle to learn. These are the kids who are failed by being rushed and moved along to the next topic (and later, to the next grade level) even when they have mastered nothing. And let’s not peg children into categories. At any given time, any child might really excel at a given topic…or might really struggle. And what happens when students are not engaged in the lesson? They daydream, mess around, worry, shut down, or just plain do something else. The trouble with whole-group instruction is that it is next to impossible to effectively and meaningfully reach everyone’s level at once. And if students are regularly sitting through lessons that are too easy, or redundant, or too difficult, are they engaged and actually learning? Nope.

In the home

Teaching one child, or even a group of siblings, does not take as long as it takes to teach a classroom of children. Moving at the pace appropriate for our children, being able to work 1:1 to ensure a child is engaged, reviewing only what needs to be reviewed, and pushing on ahead when a child is ready to are all benefits of learning at home. A short lesson of 20-30 minutes of fully engaged instruction, especially instruction specifically tailored to the needs and abilities of the child being taught, is always going to be more meaningful and effective than a lesson twice as long where there is intermittent or no engagement at all. 

The answer to different abilities in the school setting is to offer customized and individualized instruction. 

In the school

A child who has anything at all atypical about them AND who is fortunate enough to be correctly diagnosed AND who is fortunate enough to be in a school setting that has the resources to provide extra services, receives an IEP. Whether it is giftedness, or a special need/disability, or a mental illness, or a behavioral issue, or allergies, or the need for speech therapy or remediation…whatever the difference is, it is addressed in an IEP, or Individualized Education Plan. The child’s needs are diagnosed and responded to with accommodations written into their own unique learning plan.

In the home

As homeschoolers, we provide an individualized education plan method for all of our children even if we don’t give it a special acronym. Our methods of instruction, the curriculum, and the pacing of our lessons are intentionally chosen with our children’s needs and abilities in mind. Homeschooling allows for teaching and learning outside of the one-size-fits-all model. That individualized approach often creates a more optimal learning environment - one that is much more efficient and that breaks the conventions of what “school” should look like.

Not all classrooms and schools fit the same mold. 

In the school

When we think of “school,” most of us think of traditional-style public or private schools. But within every state, there are unique school settings. Montessori, Waldorf, Charlotte Mason, independent/free, charter, and even some private schools all have different values and their own way of doing things. There are schools within every state that do not follow Common Core and do not do standardized state testing. There are schools that have substantial hours allotted for nature study, gardening, life skills, play time, the arts, athletics, and more.

In the home

Not all homeschools are the same. Even if a state has very specific homeschooling requirements for testing, number of hours, or number of days, it’s good to remember that how our “school time” is filled does not have to look exactly the way it does in a traditional school - and to remember that there are plenty of “brick and mortar schools” that are doing things their own way, too.

Bottom line? 

Homeschooling is learning at home, but it doesn’t always have to look like school at home. If our lessons and our school days are much shorter or look quite different from “real school,” let’s embrace that time and freedom. 

As John Holt famously wrote, 

“What is most important and valuable about the home as a base for children's growth into the world is not that it is a better school than the schools, but that it isn't a school at all.”

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