Part Three - First Year 1989-1990

When I first felt that I should write the story of our 24 years of homeschooling, I thought it might take a few blog posts. Then I thought it could be a book. Now I think it could be an encyclopedia or maybe a library of encyclopedias...?

Beware long posts about homeschooling--

BEGINNING

In the fall 1989 when I began homeschooling, Amber was seven, Jasmyn was five, and Hal was two. I didn’t know anything about homeschooling, so I stumbled blindly along: I had no internet, no instructions, and only knew of a few people doing it at the same time. I knew about homeschooling like one knows about leprosy—I had no real knowledge of the disease, but I knew it was bad. 

Nevertheless I had several things going for me--a supportive husband, a tenacity of will, a passion for learning, education in the humanities, a family library consisting of over a thousand books, (a knowledge of that number was gained by Amber during an assignment in first grade to count all the books in her home), and a Divine Call to Action. I knew I could not fail. The thought never crossed my mind that I would fail.

Miraculously I found a few other homeschoolers and joined a loose group of families who gathered under what was called an umbrella school. It was only an organization that would file the proper paperwork with the state so that I could legally teach my kids at home in California. I also went to a parking lot curriculum give-away through the county schools or something like that. I just remember filling the back of our little red truck with workbooks and textbooks and readers. I sorted everything at home, and with our own library and the library to supplement things I figured I was set for the year. The one last thing that helped me get started was an acquaintance who was in the same umbrella school--Katie Sinclair.

Amber and Jasmyn perform in a Christmas musical with our umbrella school group:



I played the piano:

MISSING KINDERGARTEN

I don’t remember how I met Katie, but she saved my homeschooling life that first year.  Jasmyn wanted to go to school ever since Amber had left her at home to attend kindergarten. Jasmyn was smart and knew that kindergarten was coming and she was determined to go to school too. How was I going to tell her that she wouldn’t be going to kindergarten? Fortunately Katie had a small piece of land where her family raised a few animals, including a horse, goats and chickens. From my recollection, I remember going over to Katie’s home a few weeks before the start of school, where our children played together with the animals. I decided that I could talk Jasmyn into staying home if I told her that Amber was going to be homeschooled and would be playing at the Sinclair’s home with the animals. If Jasmyn went to kindergarten she would miss the animals we would be visiting from time to time.   

That was a tough decision for Jasmyn, but she finally decided to stay with us. Actually I was going to keep her home anyway, but I wanted it to be her idea.  

 22-YEAR-OLD FIRST-GRADER

That year I had one goal for my little school—to help Amber Kei detoxify from first grade. Even though I loved her school, I knew she was over-taxed with life—I used to call her “my 22-year-old-first-grader,” because of the schedule she kept. I don't know how I knew that Amber needed time to detox, but I knew she did.

(side note: For many years now, when a mother asks me where to begin to homeschool or how to convince her husband or whatever it is, I tell her to go to the Utah Home Educators Association pages.) 

I didn't have their info back then, but somehow I realized this when I brought Amber home:   

If your children have been in a classroom setting they need time to unwind and unlearn how they learned. Many children who have been taught in a classroom setting expect you to tell them what to do every minute. In a structured classroom setting, the students rarely have any agency in their education. They don't know how to learn on their own. - See more at: http://www.uhea.org/ideas-for-beginners#sthash.OS5oVjU5.dpuf

In first grade Amber did chores and practiced the piano before school. She left on the bus and was gone for the bulk of the day. Every afternoon she had homework. It was only a page a day, but it was still homework and something she had to finish every day before she could play. After awhile I remember thinking “I’m doing the teaching around here and I still don’t see her for most of the day. What is she doing at school?”

Later I read how American schools are backwards--they take little kids who should be exploring and experiencing the world, i.e., playing, and give them homework every day after school so that their time to learn to be kids is diminished. Then during the time they should be doing the hard work of learning--in high school--students are given lots of play time and not so much homework. I know this is a generalization, but the idea stuck with me and I was living the first part of that experience.

"It should be noted that children at play are not playing about; their games should be seen as their most serious-minded activity." Michel de Montaigne

While Amber was working away and probably being over-stressed in first grade, I kept wondering how she would possibly have the time to learn to sew. If Amber was gone nine hours a day, plus homework, chores and piano, how would she ever have time for other things? I did worry about things like this, even before I thought that she could learn at home. 

BETTER LATE THAN EARLY

Sometime before we started homeschooling I drove with another lady to a homeschool function, just to check it out. As we rode along she told me that her son didn't learn how to read until he was nine. I'm a good enough actress that I held in my shock and dismay at this. "But," she told me, "within just a few months of learning to read he was doing so at an eighth grade level." That made me pause.

Then she told me how boys, in general, need more time to mature developmentally than girls, and yet our society treats them the same educationally; that something like 80 percent of the special education students are boys. That made sense to me because when I was young the only people I knew in special education were boys. 

She also told me that when children are pushed to learn, they learn to hate learning. That made sense too. In junior high school my brain just wasn't developed enough or something, to learn Spanish--either that or the teacher was pretty bad. But in high school I got straight A's in French. Since they're both Romantic languages, I don't think it was the language difference, I think it was my brain was not developed enough to grasp the concepts.

The last thing I learned from her was that Patrick Henry said that a child shouldn't darken the door of a school house until they are eight years old, and until then they should play and explore the outdoors. (See Raymond Moore--teacher, principal, superintendent and finally homeschool pioneer and author of Better Late Than Early)

Later I learned that the actual structure of a child's brain is not developed enough to think rationally until the age of late seven to early eleven years of age. (That's why Dr. Moore says to wait to put children into school).  This development of the brain was described by a professor as a veil--interesting term--that drops down to help a child understand the difference between reality and fantasy.  This professor said that until the age of seven the mind is one mind. There is no conscious or sub-conscious, it's all one. To children, television and movies are real.

At this time I walked in the mornings with my bishop's wife, Cleone Black. She was pregnant with her 12th child I believe. (She now has 16 children). She was and is a genuinely good and great person, and a hard worker. We personally knew several of her teenage children well and were impressed with all of them. One day I asked Cleone the secret to her success as a mother and she would only tell me one thing: "I hold the boys back one year in school." How could that possibly help? She told me that all her boys were bigger, smarter, and more mature than all the other kids in their class, and consequently, they all excelled in school.  

All of this proved to me that pushing Amber academically was not wise, and so we could take things slowly to detox from school.   

 OUR CURRICULUM

We concentrated on the Three R's, used the county curriculum, and went to the library just down the street from our home. I still remember sitting on the couch in our little brown house helping Jasmyn read.  At first we used some very simple books, and then she picked up the state reader I got at the book give-away. 

I opened that book and read something like this--I'm not exagerating:

"Juan and Maria walk down the street." 

"They walk to the county office."

"The social worker helps them."

"She gives them a welfare check."

That day I threw all the free, government-indoctrination trash where it belonged.

Since then I've learned that county book giveaways happen every year or so. My take on it is this: 1) A publishing company gets a politician in their pocket and gives them the contract to print school books, even though the ones the school has are brand new, like the ones we had, and/or 2) The indoctrination in the books isn't potent or subtle enough to get past parents. Take your pick. 

READING

Jasmyn learned to read that year because she pestered us non-stop to help her. One day she came into my room and told me that she just read a story in the Reader's Digest ,(Hal's parents had given us a subscription to the magazine that year). I didn't think a 5-year-old could read and understand it, so I asked her a question about it. When she told me the details of a story, I remained calm, but thereafter removed that magazine from our bathroom. (I'm not sure there's anything wrong with the RD, but I don't think it's appropriate for 5-year-olds.)

A MOVE AND A NEW BABY

The summer before we began our first school year our family moved to a dumpy, little starter home that would take lots of work and funds to fix up. We gutted our kitchen and half the bathroom that summer, and lived in chaos for half the year while we remodeled in the do-it-almost-yourself style. To top that off, I was pregnant while remodeling and doing our first year of homeschooling, and Chase was born that spring. I don't know how I homeschooled my kids in the midst of all that. But when you receive revelation it's best to just obey, and I did. 

I now had four children responsible to teach at home. I think I have always been too naïve to be afraid of a big job. I always think I can conquer anything, so I didn't give it a second thought that four little ones, including a baby would be a big deal. 

UMBRELLA SCHOOL

Amber and Jasmyn in a patriotic performance at the end of our first year of homeschooling 1989-1990

I don’t remember how I found a small umbrella school in Apple Valley, but I vaguely remember attending some park days and some other things. The biggest thing we did with that group was put on a Christmas play in December and a patriotic performance at the end of the school year. Katie Sinclair and I were the only Mormons in the group, and the other mothers didn’t seem too sure about us being there. 

Later Katie and I thought it was ironic that we hard-working Mormons--the ones helping with the performances, were the ones the other ladies wanted to get rid of. They got their wish—near the end of that first school year Katie invited me to write a thematic school year for just our two families. So we left that group and embarked on our own.