homeschooling 12

My mom knew that she could not transfer the entire corpus of Western thought to us because she didn’t have it. But she did have love

The basic principle of education is that you can’t learn anything you don’t want to learn

Why does my third child, my little son whom I mention above, need me to be in physical contact with him while he reads? Because it helps him feel warm…

The overall message is: here, readers, we have discovered a whole new mysterious island filled with these strange savages, previously unexplored. You wouldn’t believe what they’re doing out there! So…

It is, I realized, handy to have a proper template handy, ready to use, should my fears come true, and I discover that I really did forget to answer an…

Repeatedly, some of the best students I have taught have been homeschooled. What set them apart was precisely the spirit of bold curiosity that I see in my own kids:…

It is profoundly strange to suggest (as Shiny Happy People implicitly does) that there is something strange and nefarious about people who believe in their principles wanting to see them…

One learning outcome I had in mind for this academic year was to teach all students to close the bathroom door when using the facilities. Alas, we seem to have…

Being a teacher is a demanding job, whether in a college, school, or home setting. It requires tremendous energy, responsiveness, and mental flexibility. It requires that you, the teacher, also…

The pandemic has provided an opportunity to recenter our lives around home and family

On a gorgeous April Wednesday I am filling in as substitute homeschool teacher. We do arithmetic; we do a language lesson about adverbs and Emily Dickinson. Then—did I mention the…

What is this thing we call “socialization” and why is there a perception that this is best achieved in the classroom and thwarted by homeschooling?