Unschool Rules

So it’s been a few months since I last posted an update on what we’ve been doing. In that time, we’ve had some major changes in our family and, to be honest, it would have been easy for me to just let “learning” go by the wayside and figure, hey, we’ll catch up later.

Disclosure: This post has some affiliate links. I only link to things we legitimately use and recommend, so if you see such a link, it's because we really do believe in the book or item!

But that’s the coolest part of our unschooling lifestyle. We have never done much that looks like traditional learning, and in the craziness that has been winter 2015, if we were trying to do a standard curriculum, we’d be hopelessly behind.

Instead, we’ve learned and experienced a ton, and by taking the time now to try to document what I can, I’m trying to show that learning really does happen anywhere, anytime.

(If this is your first time catching our month(s)-in-review posts, welcome! Check out our archive of previous wrapups here for some more info on why we take this approach to documenting some of our unschooling learning adventures.)

The big highlight of the past few months: Going to New York City to see The Phantom of the Opera on Broadway! The tickets were a Christmas gift from Chris, who was working and couldn’t even go himself! Pictured are Kaitlyn, Ashar and me in front of the theater.

Books

Ashar and I had art on display in two local galleries in November and December. This is her work “Geordi’s Visor” featured in a gallery called The Parliament in York.

Movies and TV

The Bourne Identity
The Bourne Supremacy
The Bourne Ultimatum
Video Game High School

Grease
Sherlock
Star Trek: Voyager (This ALONE more than pays for our Netflix subscription!)
Guardians of the GalaxyGuardians of the Galaxy
Big Hero 6 (This might get our vote for “Movie of the Year.”)
Into the Woods
Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit
Defiance
Annie
Live Die Repeat: Edge of Tomorrow
Equilibrium (Side recommendation: Read the book “1984” and then watch this movie – great parallels!)
The Wolverine
X-Men Origins: Wolverine

This is Ashar with her art and mine at the York Art Association gallery. At the top is her painting “The Dragon,” and below is one of mine called “Grapefruit Sunrise.”

Video games

Ashar and Chris took a November hike along the Heritage Rail Trail County Park here in York County and found an old switch.

Videos

Post by Joan Concilio.

This is Ashar, reciting the first stanza of The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe.

She’d mentioned a couple months ago that she wanted to memorize the whole poem, but I never saw/heard her working on it, and I assumed she’d lost interest until, one night before bed, she said, “Hey, Mom, want to hear something?”

The stage setting for The Phantom of the Opera on Broadway was awesome!

Places and projects

Ashar had art on display at shows at the York Art Association and The Parliament, area galleries.

At Sarah's request, we checked out the site of the World Trade Center in New York. This building is a ceremonial 1,776 feet tall.

At Ashar’s request, we checked out the site of the World Trade Center in New York. This building is a ceremonial 1,776 feet tall.

We took a three-day trip to New York City to see The Phantom of the Opera on Broadway (!!) and the new World Trade Center site.
Not for Ashar, but for me: I spoke in December to a group of parents in my county interested in learning more about unschooling, yay!
Christmas! We celebrated belatedly and in true night owl style, on New Year’s Eve into New Year’s Day, but before that Ashar had marked three other Christmases with different parts of her family.
We went to see Northeastern High School’s production of Night Tales, a Poe story collection, as their fall play.
Ashar went hiking along the Rail Trail with Chris.
At the York County 4-H alpaca club elections, Ashar ran for and was named the club historian.

One amazing Christmas gift: My mom drew Ashar for me in charcoals, then had it framed. It now hangs in our dining room!

Odds and ends of stuff we’ve talked about/read/geeked out over

What jobs you can get with a philosophy degree.
The Pennsylvania governor’s race between incumbent Tom Corbett and Democratic challenger Tom Wolf, who won.

New hair color was had.

Population vs. population density (and did you know that the populations of London and New York City are almost the same?)
The Matrix Reloaded, machines and control, as it relates to the democratization of learning and information.
In sad news, our cat Floyd passed away due to complications from surgery. We talked about why it was still the right thing to do to get him the surgery, and why they didn’t bother to biopsy the tumor they’d removed after he passed away – Ashar wished they had, “Because then we’d know.”
Political slogans (like “Tippecanoe and Tyler Too”) and the pros and cons of a two-party system.
Tons of facts about the Eiffel Tower as part of our “Words of the Day” series (more on this to come).
All about the Bielski Brothers and the Jewish resistance during World War II, and also some information on Holocaust Remembrance Day.
A skinny pig on display at the pet store.
New haircuts and colors!

Mom got Ashar a Michael Jordan varsity jacket for Christmas. See, even homeschoolers get varsity jackets. Or… something.

So what’s new with your family this month? Drop me a comment! I love hearing from all my “blog friends!”

I am one of the most outspoken advocates that homeschooling as a working mom can – and does – work.

I’m also quick to admit that in our house, as in any blogger’s house (and homeschool), sometimes, things do not run … according to plan.

And I’m ready to put out there, openly, here and now, that there are times when unschooling while working really doesn’t work.

That’s why, for the second year in a row, I’m joining the iHomeschool Network’s imperfect homeschool linkup… because I think it’s important to share our real story, even when it isn’t pretty, as well as the strategies we use to try to get back on track when things are kind of crummy.

imperfect-homeschool-2014

The background: Our homeschooling-while-working situation

I work full-time, in-office, as an editor at our local newspaper, 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Mondays through Thursdays and 1:30 to 10:30 p.m. Fridays. Probably two nights a week, I bring about an hour’s worth of work home with me. In good news, our office is exactly half a mile from our house, so no commute.

I freelance about 10 to 15 hours a week for various clients from home, online.

I get up around 8:30 a.m. (Yeah, I don’t do a lot to get ready for work. Probably to my coworkers’ dismay; sorry, everybody. I do manage a shower most days.) I go to bed around 2 a.m. If I’m lucky, I try to fit in yoga practice at home in the evenings, or a walk, but my former three-days-a-week tae kwon do practice has given up the ghost thanks to the schedule.

For Ashar’s part, she (a) needs more sleep and (b) is an even bigger night owl than me. That means she gets up around noon and comes downstairs around 1 or 2 p.m. (when she gets hungry), and goes to bed around 3:30 or 4 a.m.

That sets the stage: Except for weekends, our time together is from about 6:30 p.m. to 2 a.m., which sounds like a lot of time, but which includes things like an hour or more of work-from-home time for me, an hour for family dinner, and the fact that fundamentally, I’m not good for much useful after midnight, and we’re cramming a lot into a relatively short time.

Sometimes that’s good. Sometimes, it’s not.

When unschooling while working doesn’t work

The problem comes when we’re – OK, I’m – overcommitted. Say I work all day, and bring work home because I didn’t get it all done. Then say I have to run a couple errands after work, and have a freelance project due that takes longer than I expect. Then suddenly it’s 11 o’clock, Ashar is engrossed in a movie or game, and I’ve missed my window to connect with her.

I wish I could say that’s rare, but the fact is, it happens more than I want to admit. And when it happens one day, when we get out of a rhythm that has us engaging and interacting, it tends to happen more in the following days.

The great thing about unschooling is that we don’t have “tasks” to complete each day. There’s no lesson plan to follow, which is great when it means we can go off on a two-hour rabbit trail reading about Hitler, World War II, D-Day and more without worrying about what we didn’t get done from the science plan.

But the part that’s not so great is that there’s no checklist to keep us accountable to actively learning and engaging together.

And that’s where things go wrong. Because I’m gone for 9 or more hours a day, there isn’t much “buffer” if my evenings fill up.

And even though I’m present physically, if my mind is elsewhere, if I’m exhausted and zoned out, then even when Ashar wants to engage in learning and discussing and generally being the cool person that she is, I’m not part of it, and our unschooling suffers pretty hardcore.

How we get back on course

For me, it comes down to saying no more often. No to this new freelance project, no to another load of laundry, no to going out with friends for a coworker’s birthday.

And that frees me up to say YES to what really matters, and intentionally choosing to do so instead of letting my newly acquired time fill up with Facebook surfing or random chores or other mindless junk.

Instead, I say yes to doing a “word of the day” project with Sarah.

Yes to painting together.

Yes to listening to what Ashar’s reading about in “The Matrix and Philosophy” and an hourlong conversation based on it.

Yes to a three-hour World War II movie.

Yes to being with my daughter, this wonderful, amazing person who is soon going to be 15 (ahh!) and who, all too soon, I won’t be sharing my evenings with.

That’s what matters, and when I can remind myself of it, even the imperfect days seem a lot better.