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- W&L professor's memoir offers insight into short-term <b>homeschooling</b>
- Laura Brodie's adventures in home schooling
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| W&L professor's memoir offers insight into short-term <b>homeschooling</b> Posted: 08 Apr 2010 04:09 AM PDT LEXINGTON — For Laura Brodie, the defining moment came when she realized her ten-year-old daughter Julia had hidden in a closet for an hour just to avoid doing 10 minutes of homework. "The thought of that warped equation broke my heart," said Brodie. It confirmed what she had been thinking for the past year-that her daughter was miserable and needed a break from elementary school. As a professor of English at Washington and Lee University, Brodie understood the benefits of sabbaticals and decided that Julia should be homeschooled for one year. Brodie's new book "Love in a Time of Homeschooling: A Mother and Daughter's Uncommon Year," published this month by HarperCollins, tells the story of her year teaching Julia and how it affected them both. Mary Pipher, author of "Reviving Ophelia: Saving the Selves of Adolescent Girls" called Brodie's story "funny, heart cracking, and ultimately profoundly educational. I recommend this book to all parents and educators who have ever thought, 'I wish things could be different.'" Brodie cites the Standards of Learning (SOLs) as a factor in her decision to homeschool Julia. "Teachers at Julia's school say over 80 percent of their curriculum is test driven, with a lot of memorization of facts provided by the state of Virginia. I'm not against all standardized testing-it makes sense for English and math in the elementary grades. But what they've done by adding SOLs to the teaching of history and science in Virginia is sad," she said. "We're producing a generation of children who are good at multiple choice but aren't really learning critical thinking." Brodie saw homeschooling as an opportunity to explore her daughter's interests in history and science, as well as covering the fifth grade essentials. So she immersed herself in a crash course on homeschooling. She found that in spite of the stereotypes about the nearly two million homeschoolers in the United States-that they are mostly Christian conservatives or the far left-there is a new trend of public school parents opting for short-term homeschooling. "It can help with a child who is being bullied or dislikes school. I think parents need to be in control of their children's education as much as they want to be. There are options, whether that means a private school or a year of homeschooling," she said. Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction. |
| Laura Brodie's adventures in home schooling Posted: 07 Apr 2010 04:10 PM PDT Julia had always been a dreamer, the kind of student teachers described as "unusual." She balked at structure and change and often drifted away from group activities. She struggled with spelling and needed extra time for math. Then came the standardized tests, rote worksheets and mountains of homework. "If Julia's wandering mind had been our only challenge," Brodie writes, "I never would have opted for homeschooling." But, she explains, "I kept looking at the bland content in Julia's worksheets and tests, and thinking, 'Oh, c'mon. I could do much better than this.' " (Private school options were limited by distance and expense.) The legal requirements for home schooling in Virginia, Brodie learned, are not terribly stringent: Because Brodie had more than a high school diploma, all she needed was a curriculum to share with her local school superintendent and for Julia to score above the lowest 25th percentile in a standardized test that Brodie could choose and administer. The more difficult part was persuading her daughter, whose initial reaction -- a shrug -- was overcome by the promise that her only homework would be to write one page in a journal and to read for one hour a day. Together, mother and daughter constructed a fifth-grade curriculum that embraced Julia's interests and Brodie's hopes: a wide range of subjects from Mayan culture and dinosaurs to typing and knitting. The pair went on field trips to Washington, Jamestown and Williamsburg; they attended lectures and a protest and were regulars at a coffee shop where they listened to live music. Brodie's husband took Julia to the gym and tried to teach her flute. From the beginning, Brodie knew that this was only a year-long experiment, modeled on a university sabbatical. Also, she admits, "one year was the limit of my patience." As Brodie chronicles with refreshing frankness, not every day was an ode to the joys of learning (or teaching). Mother and daughter clashed over spelling and violin lessons, and at one low point there was name-calling and even a swat. Brodie had to deal with the jealousy of her other two daughters, then 6 and 8, and conflicts with her husband about how to teach. But mother and daughter agree that it was worth the trouble. With home schooling, "you get to feel that you are remotely in control of your own education," says Julia, now a ninth-grader at Rockbridge County High School in Lexington. Brodie concurs, noting the added benefit of practicing "the art of patience." We asked Brodie to elaborate on these and other lessons she and her daughter gleaned from their year playing hooky from public school.
Describe a typical home schooling day. We would begin by 8:45 a.m. at the kitchen table doing math. We would play some math games; then Julia would do a sheet of equations or build objects out of geometric shapes -- hands-on, fun learning. Then we might go into English and history-writing, then 30 minutes for violin practice. I didn't ring a bell and never had an hour-to-hour schedule. Mornings were a time to get paperwork done; afternoons were more open for outdoor play, music, science experiments and art projects. Most days involved something outside the house, exploring the community: going to the knitting cottage, a coffee shop to hear bluegrass music, to Washington and Lee to hear a talk, even grocery shopping. Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction. |
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